From AmericaBlog:
Posted by binky at January 6, 2006 12:52 AM | TrackBack | Posted to The Ever Shrinking Constitution
But before you say "yeah, go for it," consider the implications of tapping Christiane Amanpour's phones:
1. Such a wiretap would likely include her home, office, and cell phones, and email correspondence, at the very least.
2. That means anyone Christiane has conversed with in the past four years, at least by phone or email, could have had their conversation taped by the US government.
3. That also means that anyone who uses any of Christiane's telephones or computers (work or home) could also have had their conversation bugged.
4. This includes Christiane's husband, former Clinton administration senior official Jamie Rubin, who was spokesman for the State Department.
5. Jamie Rubin was also chief foreign policy adviser to General Wesley Clark's presidential campaign, and then worked as a senior national security adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign.
6. Did Jamie Rubin ever use his home phone, his wife's work phone, his wife's cell phone, her home computer or her work computer to communicate with John Kerry or Wesley Clark? If so, those conversations would have been bugged if Bush was tapping Amanpour.
7. Did Jamie Rubin ever in the past four years communicate with any elected officials in Washington, DC - any Senators or members of the US House? Any senior members of the Democratic party?
8. Has Rubin spoken with Bill Clinton, his former boss, in the past 4 years?
Now you understand how potentially broad a violation of privacy the Bush doctrine on illegal domestic spying really is. Everyone who's anyone is a degree or two of separation away from a terrorist.
Binky,
First of all, my heart goes out to whatever poor, unfortunate NSA worker gets assigned the piercing, monotonous Amanpour. It's bad enough when she comes on TV for thirty seconds and I hope the NSA's life insurance policy covers analysts who jump out a window rather than go through that.
Remember that we've had people like Rockefeller and others come forward and confirm this program's existence even though it was supposed to be top secret. That is, people have come forward and broken their code of silence, and no one's said anything about these wiretaps being used for political purposes. I understand this argument is necessary to make Bush look corrupt, so that you can in any way compare this to Watergate, or make him look half as venal as Clinton sleeping with an intern. But of all the people who've anonymously come forward, no one's said anything about journalists or political figures being spied upon. This does beg the question of what is different, what changed that led these people who before allowed this program its due secrecy to blare it anonymously all over the media. We haven't heard anything about this being something internal to the NSA program that's different, so I can't help wonder if this wasn't somebody not getting a promotion or some such thing that seems to lead up to most of the tell all books that have bashed Bush since he's been President. And if it is as this, then despite the claim of doing this to preserve civil rights, it's nothing but stress and anger that changed their hearts, because the civil rights issue has been there since the beginning, so why did it take them four years to figure it out?
Morris, maybe you missed the whole NBC flap. Adrienne Mitchell asked someone on air if C.A. was being spied on. When that made it to the transcript, MSNBC edited out the question. Seems a funny thing to do, and everyone is speculating. Of course, a fox news anchor called Amanpour a spokeswoman for Al Qaeda. Maybe that's enough to bring on the snoops.
UPDATE: CNN reports that the nsa says that it did not "target CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour or any other CNN journalist for surveillance."
Notice they didn't say "any journalists."
Posted by: binky at January 6, 2006 11:34 AM | PERMALINKBinky,
If some journalist sets up a meeting with a terrorist or talks with a terrorist, that seems to be a great opportunity to get useful intelligence. There certainly are some journalists who portray the terrorists as martyrs, and I hope we do have the opportunity to gain intelligence from any contacts they make with terrorists. Even lawyers in our country have exceptions to confidentiality when an ongoing criminal enterprise is being discussed. Are you suggesting journalists deserve more privacy than that extended to lawyers serving their clients?
Great title.
Made me laugh out loud.
Mike
Posted by: mikevotes at January 6, 2006 05:42 PM | PERMALINKStopped back by,still funny.
It reminds of of a daily show joke referring to something else,
the six degrees of Qevin Al Bacon.
Mike
Posted by: mikevotes at January 6, 2006 09:45 PM | PERMALINK