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FISA Judge: Bush Wiretapping Broke No Law
In a significant vindication for President Bush, a judge who co-authored the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act said Tuesday that the president was duly authorized under the Constitution to order the wiretapping of suspected terrorists - without getting a warrant from the FISA Court. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, former FISA Court Judge Allan Kornblum said that president's Constitutional powers supersede the FISA law, which critics claim the Bush program violated. "If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review, the president can under executive order act unilaterally, which he is doing now," said Kornblum, in quotes picked up by the Washington Times. Kornblum, who supervised Justice Department wiretap applications to the FISA court for years, is now a magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.
Story Continues Below Testifying along with four other former FISA Court judges, Judge Kornblum suggested that it would have been irresponsible for Bush to have deferred to the FISA Court. "I think that the president would be remiss exercising his constitutional authority by giving all of that power over to a statute," the FISA author said. While the Washington Times said Kornblum's testimony indicated that the Bush surveillance program did not violate the law, other media outlets interpreted the judges' comments differently. On the same concept of inherent constitutional authority, the Associated Press quoted Kornblum as saying: "I am very wary of inherent authority . . . It sounds very much like King George." The AP didn't mention the FISA author's other remarks about Bush having the power to "act unilaterally." The New York Times also failed to find vindication for Bush in Kornblum's words, reporting instead that the FISA judges "voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president's constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order." Instead of Kornblum, the Times focused on the opinion of former FISA Judge Harold A. Baker, who said the president was bound by the law "like everyone else." If a law like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is duly enacted by Congress and considered constitutional, "'the president ignores it at the president's peril," Baker insisted. The other FISA judges who testified before the committee were Stanley Brotman of Camden, NJ; John Keenan of the southern district of New York City; and William Stafford of Pensacola, Fla.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration Inside Cover Stories
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