Judge rules Bush’s wiretapping illegal
A federal judge in Detroit ruled Thursday that the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program is unconstitutional, delivering the first decision that the Bush administration’s effort to monitor communications without court oversight runs afoul of the Bill of Rights and federal law.
U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ordered a halt to the wiretap program, secretly authorized by Bush in 2001, but both sides in the lawsuit agreed to delay that action while the Justice Department appeals her decision.
Legal scholars said Taylor’s decision is likely to receive heavy scrutiny from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati, and some criticized her ruling as poorly reasoned.
Ruling in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups in the Eastern District of Michigan, Taylor said that the NSA wiretapping program, aimed at communications by potential terrorists, violates privacy and free speech rights and the constitutional separation of powers between the three branches of government. She also found that the wiretaps violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law enacted to provide judicial oversight of clandestine surveillance within the United States.
“It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,” Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion. “There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all ‘inherent powers’ must derive from that Constitution.”
The ruling is the latest courtroom setback for the Bush administration’s controversial antiterrorism and detention policies, which have frequently relied on broad assertions of presidential power. In a landmark case in June, the Supreme Court rejected Bush’s claims of executive power, ruling 5-3 that special military trials for alleged terrorists were not authorized under federal law and ran afoul of the Geneva Conventions.
The decision could complicate efforts by the White House and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to win approval for a bill that would allow, but not require, Bush to submit the NSA program to a secret court for legal review.
The eavesdropping program, revealed in news reports in December 2005, allows the NSA to intercept telephone calls and e-mails between the United States and overseas without court approval in cases where the government suspects one party of links to terrorism.
The NSA refused to discuss Taylor’s ruling or whether it had suspended any surveillance activities. The office of John Negroponte, Bush’s director for national intelligence, also declined to comment.
Several dozen court lawsuits have been filed around the country challenging the program’s legality, but Thursday’s ruling marked the first time that a judge had ruled it unconstitutional. Experts in national security law argued, however, that Taylor offered meager support for her findings on separation of powers and other key issues.
“Regardless of what your position is on the merits of the issue, there’s no question that it’s a poorly reasoned decision,” said Bobby Chesney, a national security law specialist at Wake Forest University who takes a moderate stance on the legal debate over the NSA program. “The opinion kind of reads like an outline of possible grounds to strike down the program, without analysis to fill it in.”
White House spokesman Tony Snow said the Bush administration “couldn’t disagree more with this ruling,” calling it “carefully administered.”