Bush Demands Further Capitulation

I was going to comment on the statement the President made as he signed the new FISA amendments into law, but Jack Balkin beat me to the punch. The title of his post sums it all up: Bush to Democratic Congress: Your Complete Capitulation is Not Good Enough. Jack highlights this part of the President's statement:

When Congress returns in September the Intelligence committees and leaders in both parties will need to complete work on the comprehensive reforms requested by Director McConnell, including the important issue of providing meaningful liability protection to those who are alleged to have assisted our Nation following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Jack responds:

I particularly love the phrase "alleged to have assisted our Nation." In his letter to Congress the other day Intelligence Director Michael McConnell spoke of "liability protection for those who are alleged to have helped the country stay safe after September 11, 2001." Apparently "allegedly helped us stay safe" is Bush Administration code for telecom companies and government officials who participated in a conspiracy to perform illegal surveillance. Because what they did is illegal, we do not admit that they actually did it, we only say that they are alleged to have done it. Or perhaps the Administration is suggesting that although such parties are alleged to have helped the country stay safe, there's no evidence that their repeated violations of federal law actually did much to promote our security. No, they couldn't mean that.

My guess is that President Bush plans to award those who allegedly helped save the country with alleged medals.

My post would have essentially said the same thing, only less eloquently.

I'll add, though, that the potential liability the telecom companies face for their participation in these activities appears to have been the driving force behind the Bush administration's eventual decision to submit the NSA program to the FISA court for review. As James Risen reports today in the New York Times:

In fact, pressure from the telecommunications companies on the Bush administration has apparently played a major hidden role in the political battle over the surveillance issue over the past few months.

In January, the administration placed the N.S.A.’s warrantless wiretapping program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and subjected it for the first time to the scrutiny of the FISA court.

Democratic Congressional aides said Sunday that they believed that pressure from major telecommunications companies on the White House was a major factor in persuading the Bush administration to do that. Those companies were facing major lawsuits for having secretly cooperated with the warrantless wiretapping program, and now wanted greater legal protections before cooperating further.

If Congress were to retroactively immunize these companies from liability, as President Bush is demanding, it would remove one of the few remaining points of leverage that still exists to try to pry the truth out of the administration about what happened over the last six years.