Bush and the Cultivation of Fear

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An editorial in today’s Washington Post:

THE BUSH administration’s distortion, for political purposes, of the Democratic position on warrantless surveillance is loathsome. Despite the best efforts of Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, and Ken Mehlman, the Republican National Committee chairman, to make it seem otherwise, Democrats are not opposed to vigorous, effective surveillance that could uncover terrorist activity. Nor are the concerns that they are expressing unique to their party. Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Arlen Specter (Pa.), Chuck Hagel (Neb.), Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) and Sam Brownback (Kan.) have expressed legal doubts about the surveillance program. Do they, too, have a “pre-9/11 worldview,” as Mr. Rove said of the Democrats?

Believing there should be constraints on unchecked executive power is not the same as being weak-kneed about the war against terrorism. Critics are suggesting that President Bush should have gone through normal procedures for conducting such surveillance or asked Congress to provide clear legal authority for the National Security Agency activity. They are not contending that such surveillance shouldn’t be conducted at all. No leading Democrat has argued for barring this kind of potentially useful technique.

But you wouldn’t know that to listen to the GOP spin. “Let me be as clear as I can be — President Bush believes if al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why,” Mr. Rove said at the Republican National Committee winter meeting last week. “Some important Democrats clearly disagree.” Mr. Mehlman named names. “Do Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean really think that when the NSA is listening in on terrorists planning attacks on America, they need to hang up when those terrorists dial their sleeper cells inside the United States?” he asked.

This editorial isn’t as bold as might seem at first glance. I realized it doesn’t blame President Bush himself for any of this fear mongering, even though he’s been playing the same games. On the other hand, for once, WaPo doesn’t claim Dems are just as guilty. It’s a start.

Also in Wapo, Eugene Robinson — who deserves more attention from us liberals, btw — writes,

Once upon a time we had a great wartime president who told Americans they had nothing to fear but fear itself. Now we have George W. Bush, who uses fear as a tool of executive power and as a political weapon against his opponents.

Franklin D. Roosevelt tried his best to allay his nation’s fears in the midst of an epic struggle against fascism. Bush, as he leads the country in a war whose nature he is constantly redefining, keeps fear alive because it has been so useful. His political grand vizier, Karl Rove, was perfectly transparent the other day when he emerged from wherever he’s been hiding the past few months — consulting omens, reading entrails — and gave the Republican National Committee its positioning statement for the fall elections: Vote for us or die.

[Update: Several people have noted that FDR spoke the “nothing we have to fear” line in 1933, about the Great Depression. But FDR spoke about fear and freedom from fear in many other speeches, such as in the “four freedoms” speech from 1941. Since he didn’t use quotation marks I don’t believe Robinson was claiming FDR delivered that exact line about facism, but was just recalling it as a theme FDR used in speeches throughout his presidency.]

Recently a kind person forwarded to me a social psychology paper called “American Roulette: The Effect of Reminders of Death on Support for George W. Bush in the 2004 Presidential Election.” The authors are Florette Cohen and Daniel M. Ogilvie of Rutgers University; Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College; Jeff Greenberg of the University of Arizona; and Tom Pyszczynski of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. This paper is not online, but if you want a copy call Blackwell Publishing at (781) 388-8448.

The authors argue that in the 2004 election, the late October taped appearance of Osama bin Laden had the effect of swinging votes to Bush.

… a week before the election Senator John Kerry was reported to have a slight edge. On Friday, October 29, Osama Bin Laden’s videotaped threat reminded Americans of the death and destruction of 9/11. Americans once again became anxious as the Terror Alert was raised and the Bush administration relentlessly raised the specter of death should John Kerry be elected President. On November 3 Bush was declared the winner of the election by a margin of 3.5 million popular votes. From a terror management perspective, the United States’ electorate was exposed to a wide-ranging multidimensional mortality salience induction. Bush’s rise in popularity after September 11, 2001 and eventual victory in the 2004 presidential election seems highly likely to have been influenced by the appeal of his leadership style (i.e., proclaiming himself divinely ordained to rid the world of evil) to an electorate that was continually reminded of the trauma of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

(I love the part about how “the United States’ electorate was exposed to a wide-ranging multidimensional mortality salience induction.” There’s something about soc-psych jargon that just makes my heart go pitty-pat.)

The study involves lots of chi-squares and p values, and N = diverse numbers. But to explain very plainly and crudely, Cohen et al. found that test subjects were more likely to support Bush after being reminded they might die in a terrorist attack. The authors also cited other studies that showed people gravitate to charismatic leaders when they are afraid. And they wrote,

Allegiance to charismatic leaders may be one particularly effective mode of terror management. In Escape from Freedom, Eric Fromm (1941) proposed that loyalty to charismatic leaders results from a defensive need to feel a part of a larger whole, and surrendering one’s freedom to a larger-than-life leader can serve as a source of self-worth and meaning in life. Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death, 1973) posited that when mainstream worldviews are not serving people’s need for psychological security, concerns about mortality impel people to devote their psychological resources to following charismatic leaders who bolster their selfworth by making them feel that they are valued participants in a great mission to heroically triumph over evil.

Sound familiar?

This paragraph inspired me to google for Fromm. I dimly remember Fromm from college required reading lists, but I’m sorry to say I don’t retain a lot from those days. I remember going to college, but exactly what I did there is a bit hazy. It’s been a lot of years.

In any event, the googling brought me to this. To condense, Fromm argued that freedom causes anxiety and a sense of aloneness in some people. Coping mechanisms for this condition include automaton conformity, authoritarianism, destructiveness, and individuation. Taking these one at a time —

Automaton conformity: Fearful people can gain a sense of power by acting like everyone else, holding the same beliefs and values, purchasing the same products, and believing in the same morals. They give up much of their individuality, but they feel more secure.

Along these lines, have you ever noticed how righties believe with an absolute, pure faith that their beliefs and values are the beliefs and values of the majority, even when polls say otherwise? I noticed a long time ago that being one of the herd is terribly important to righties. If you argue them into a corner, they nearly always fall back on “most people agree with me, not you looney lefties.”

Authoritarianism contains a paradox — by giving up power to the powerful, the powerless feel more powerful. Put another way, we submit to a leader by submerging our individual identity with the identity of the leader, and thus become powerful like the leader. The more slavishly devoted to the leader we are, the more powerful we think we become. Or at least that’s what it feels like.

Destructiveness refers to destroying people we think keep power away from us. Thus the Right’s obsession with a powerful “liberal elite” that controls society in spite of the fact that it doesn’t exist.

This is the pathology that is contemporary American “conservatism” — great masses of Americans are afraid — of the world, of modernity, of diversity — and to cope with their fears they have submerged themselves in a cult of personality organized around George W. Bush. Righties want to see themselves as part of a powerful army of righteousness that stands united against perceived enemies, such as Islamic terrorists or liberals. And the more fearful they become, the deeper they submerge themselves into the cult. Until, at last, anything approximating “objective reality” is a distant memory.

Oh, that last thing Fromm talked about, individuation, is the ability to be yourself and enjoy true freedom. People at this stage don’t need a personality cult.

Let’s go back to Eugene Robinson. “While Bush gives off none of Rove’s Sith-lord menace,” Robinson writes, “he has made the cultivation of fear a hallmark of his governance.”

You got that right, Eugene. And fear is what rallies the faithful. How else to explain so many people blind to such staggering incompetence?

When the most recent Osama bin Laden tape emerged, I watched some cable TV bobbleheads schmooze about how this would help Bush’s popularity ratings. And why would that be? Why wouldn’t the appearance of the guy Bush vowed to get “dead or alive” more than four years ago remind us of what a flopping incompetent Bush is? Could it be that we are a nation of sheep? Is rallying to Bush some kind of conditioned fear response? Must be, because it sure as hell isn’t rational.

“A great wartime leader rallies his citizens by informing them and inspiring them,” writes Robinson. “He certainly doesn’t use threats to our national security for political gain. He doesn’t just point at a map and say ‘Boo.'”

That’s right. But a great wartime leader ain’t what we got. What we got, is Bush. And what we need, to be freed from his incompetence and his culties, is the mother of all interventions.

Filibuster?

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This afternoon Sen. John Kerry has been trying to organize a filibuster against confirmation of Sam Alito. Kerry needs 41 votes. I just heard on CNN that Majority Leader Frist will call for cloture on Monday; Frist will need 60 votes.

According to CNN,

Nearly all 55 Republican senators have said they will vote for Alito. Only three Democrats — Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota — have said they will vote for the nominee.

Earlier Thursday, Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana said she would oppose a filibuster.

Landrieu hasn’t said how she will vote, I don’t believe.

Bob Fertik at Democrats.com is sorting out which other Dems might be wobbly. Likely suspects:

Tom Carper (DE)
Kent Conrad (ND)
Byron Dorgan (ND)
Blanche Lincoln (AR)
Mark Pryor (AR)
Daniel Inouye (HI)
Joseph I. Lieberman (CT)

Bob says Ken Salazar (CO) has spoken out against the filibuster, but we don’t know how he will vote.

Beside the Dems, three other Senators are on the fence as of this afternoon: Olympia Snowe of Maine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Ted Stevens of Alaska have not yet announced support for Alito.

Bob says: “Use these toll free numbers to call the Capitol: 888-355-3588 or 888-818-6641. If you can’t get through, look up your Senator’s District Office number in your phone book or here.

Do it tomorrow! Final decisions will be made this weekend!

Points to Ponder

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You have to scroll ten paragraphs down to find proper credit given to Glenn Greenwald, but in today’s Washington Post Dan Eggan picks up on Glenn’s Tuesday post, “The Administration’s new FISA defense is factually false.” Jonathan S. Landay of Knight Ridder places Glenn in the eighth paragraph, but in David Savage’s story in the Los Angeles Times, Glenn’s credit appears at the very end.

So far, only a handful of rightie bloggers have weighed in, and the big guns like Captain Ed, the PowerLine trio and Glenn Reynolds as of this morning are holding fire. One suspects they’ll be spending part of today in conference calls with GOP strategists, brainstorming new and convoluted legalisms meant to confound public debate. As soon as they come up with something I’ll blog about it.

Basically, as Glenn explained,

In light of Gen. Hayden’s new claim yesterday that the reason the Bush Administration decided to eavesdrop outside of FISA is because the “probable cause” standard for obtaining a FISA warrant was too onerous (and prevented them from obtaining warrants they needed to eavesdrop), there is a fact which I have not seen discussed anywhere but which now appears extremely significant, at least to me.

In June, 2002, Republican Sen. Michael DeWine of Ohio introduced legislation (S. 2659) which would have eliminated the exact barrier to FISA which Gen. Hayden yesterday said is what necessitated the Administration bypassing FISA.

David Savage in today’s Los Angeles Times:

Four years ago, top Bush administration lawyers told Congress they opposed lowering the legal standard for intercepting the phone calls of foreigners who were in the United States, even while the administration had secretly adopted a lower standard on its own.

The government’s public position then was the mirror opposite of its rationale today in defending its warrantless domestic spying program, which has come under attack as a violation of civil liberties. . . .

… A Justice Department spokesman confirmed Wednesday the administration had opposed changing the law in 2002 in part because it did not want to publicly debate the issue.

Sounds about right. And I predict rank-and-file righties will justify rejection of the DeWine proposal by claiming the Bush Administration didn’t want al Qaeda to know it was wiretapping them. (If you aren’t a terrorists, see, you don’t have to worry about it.)

Glenn and others have already discussed the legal and constitutional issues surrounding the DeWine proposal and the NSA program, so I won’t go into them here.

Points for discussion:

The most obvious point — what are the Bushies really up to? No good, I say. There is no plausible explanation for Bushie behavior in this matter that exonerates them.

Next — let’s hear it for bloggers.

Point 3 — The time has come for people calling themselves “conservatives” to make a choice — either you believe in small, unobtrusive government, “strict construction” of the Constitution and fiscal restraint — as the Right has been claiming for several years — or you admit that your political affiliation has devolved into a cult of personality “erected around the person of George W. Bush.” You can’t have it both ways any more. Some will try, of course. But from now on anyone clinging to the myth that George W. Bush Republicans believe in small government and fiscal restraint will have left ordinary cognitive dissonance far behind. They will have entered the Twilight Zone.

Final point: I understand that some commenters are declaring the American people have chosen to give up some civil liberty for the sake of security. I must have missed when the question was put to a vote, but never mind. What passes for political debate on the MSM has failed to articulate one critical point — if we allow the 4th Amendment to be nullified for the sake of the “war on terror,” this will not be a temporary measure. It will be permanent. And once one part of the Bill of Rights is nullified, ignoring other parts will become that much easier.

The one thing that has held our big, sprawling, diverse, messy nation together all these years is the Constitution. Throughout our history we have taken it seriously — so seriously that we engaged in Civil War over what amounted to a constitutional crisis. Over the years we have had honest differences over what some clauses meant, and how they should be applied. Sometimes expedience requires rethinking — during the Lincoln Administration the meaning of coining money was expanded to include printing, for example — and sometimes emergencies require extraconstitutional action — e.g., Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus. And occasionally we choose to amend the Constitution. But we’ve never just walked away from any part of the Constitution that clearly articulated a power or privilege.

But that’s what we’re being asked to do now.

Constitutions, like laws, have authority only when they are enforced. Many nations have adopted democratic constitutions but ignored them. The former Soviet Union, I’ve been told, had a constitution that had no bearing whatsoever on the way government actually operated or on the lives of citizens. It wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

As I said above, in times of extreme danger presidents have taken on extraconstitutional powers. But it has always been understood that these were temporary measures required to save the nation. Not just provide enhanced security for some citizens, mind you, but to ensure the continued existence of the United States itself. And when these war powers have been used, they’ve been used openly, and for a brief time. They were given up as soon as the immediate crisis had passed.

But Bush’s “war on terror” may not end in our lifetimes. Probably won’t, in fact. This nation could be under a threat of terrorism for the next few centuries. Even if Osama bin Laden were captured tomorrow and al Qaeda were disbanded, other leaders and organizations will arise to fill the void. I understand this is happening already. And even if the threat of radical Islamic terrorism were to end we might not realize it for a few years. And in that time other threats may emerge.

In other words, the 9/11 state of emergency is now the new normal. This is the way the world is going to be for a long time. I believe we are entering a new stage of human history in which wars are no longer fought between nation-states but between ideological tribes of people. All of our rules and conventions that applied to the Civil War or World War I and II will need to be re-examined in light of new reality. The phrase state of war itself may need to be redefined.

It is unrealistic to abandon an article of the Bill of Rights for decades, generations, centuries, and expect that it will somehow come back into force in some unknowable future. And if Sam Alito is confirmed to the SCOTUS we cannot count on the courts to save us from the folly of the rest of government. No; if we abandon an article of the Bill of Rights now, for the sake of “security,” we are abandoning it for good.

I’d like to see that point brought up, even once, by the MSM.

Update: Jacob Weisberg writes in Slate:

In fact, the Senate hearings on NSA domestic espionage set to begin next month will confront fundamental questions about the balance of power within our system. Even if one assumes that every unknown instance of warrant-less spying by the NSA were justified on security grounds, the arguments issuing from the White House threaten the concept of checks and balances as it has been understood in America for the last 218 years. Simply put, Bush and his lawyers contend that the president’s national security powers are unlimited. And since the war on terror is currently scheduled to run indefinitely, the executive supremacy they’re asserting won’t be a temporary condition.

Update update: Why Orrin Judd remains my favorite rightie:

Note that her [Hillary Clinton’s] argument requires us to accept that the routine spying carried out by pretty much every American leader since George Washington in the Revolution was illegal up until 1978? In point of constitutional fact, the Executive has not been and can not be bound by Congress in this area, not does the Court have jurisdiction to rule in the matter–that’s just how separation of powers works.

Brilliant. Wrong, but brilliant.

Update update update: Carla at Preemptive Karma writes,

Over the many messy, tumultuous, violent and dark times this nation has withstood, the Constitution has been the thread that’s bound us together. Once we nullify a piece of it by Executive fiat..which pieces are next? How will it effect the unity of the states?

This is the question We, the People must address, and now.

Knock Knock

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Righties are congenitally unable to recognize and appreciate satire, but judging by the reactions to this, some lefties don’t get it, either.

Update: To those of you who, so far, aren’t getting the point: The “jokes” aren’t jokes. They aren’t supposed to be funny. Humor is not the point.

Update update: This, on the other hand, is genuinely amusing.

Why George Bush Is President

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Screen capture of actual email to The Mahablog. You can’t make this shit up.

The text reads:

YOU CAN TELL YOUR A LIBERAL THAT BELIEVES GOOD IS BAD AND BAD IS GOOD,,,THERE SURE NOT HARD TO SPOT..YOUR PROBABLY AN ACLU SUPPORTER THAT IS SOCIALIST AND THERE GOAL IS TO TURN OUR COUNTRY INTO A COMMUNIST STATE,,,WAKE UP. WILL IT TAKE ANOTHER BAD BOMBING TO WAKE UP YOU TED KENNEDY LIBERALS,? I HOPE NOT..FOR ALL OF OUR FUTURE CHILDRENS SAKE, YOURS TRULY, JOHN AN ANGRY AMERICAN.

Another victim of the dreaded caps lock syndrome. And an AOL user, to boot. Sad.

More Bush Bumbling

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If you watched last night’s The Daily Show you saw a clip of Bush at Kansas State University taking a question about education — today Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe provides a description —

In the question-and-answer period, there was a moment when Bush was caught confused about his assets in another arena. Someone asked Bush, ”Recently, $12.7 billion was cut from education . . . How is that supposed to help our futures?”

There was applause from the crowd.

Bush stumbled. ”Education budget was cut? Say it again. What was cut?”

The person said, ”$12.7 billion was cut from education. And I was just wanting to know: How is that supposed to help our futures?”

Bush said, ”At the federal level?”

The person said, ”Yes.”

Bush said, ”I don’t think we’ve actually — for higher education?”

The person said, ”Student loans.”

Bush said, ”Student loans?”

The person said, ”Yes, student loans.”

Bush said, ”Actually I think what we did was reform the student loan program. We are not cutting money out of it. In other words, people aren’t going to be cut off the program. We’re just making sure . . . it functions better. In other words, we are not taking people off student loans. We are saving money in the student loan program because it’s inefficient.”

Bush continued, ”And secondly, . . . we’re actually expanding the number of Pell grants through our budget.”

Derrick Jackson provides the correct answer:

The questioner at Kansas State was correct. In December, the Senate passed a $12.7 billion cut in loan aid, which would force college students and their families to pay much higher interest rates on their loans. Pell grants would remain capped at $4,050 for the fourth straight year, further depressing a purchasing power which has declined, according to the American Council on Education, from covering 84 percent of the cost of a public four-year college in 1972 to 34 percent today.

Jackson points out that just two weeks earlier Bush gave an address at an elementary school in Maryland to observe the anniversary of No Child Left Behind and promote the importance of education.

There are many observations one could make about the exchange at KSU. For one, can you imagine any other president of recent memory being caught that flat-footed by a question? (And did no one on the Bushie team anticipate that university students might ask a question about Pell Grants?) Once again, we see that Bush isn’t really interested in governing. He’s interested in power, and the perks of office, but the governing thing just doesn’t get his attention.

Back from paternity leave (yeah!) Dan Froomkin also provides commentary on Bush’s appearance at KSU.

How can a president of the United States talk for almost two hours, unscripted, and be so fundamentally unrevealing? …

… Just by virtue of his speaking so long, the meandering talk at Kansas State University generated zillions of column inches this morning in which reporters dutifully recorded the one genuinely new development — his rechristening of “domestic spying” as “terrorist surveillance” — as well as his playful digs at his wife, his hemming and hawing when asked about that gay cowboy movie, and so on.

And simply by taking a baby step outside his protective bubble and fielding unscreened questions (most, but not all of them, softballs) from a starry-eyed, solidly red-state audience, he garnered buzz about being forthcoming.

But he wasn’t.

Ultimately Bush unplugged gave a performance of remarkably little substance. There was no new thinking on display. There were no real insights shared. Instead, we heard mostly restatements of policy, familiar phrases and even whole stories recycled from the 2004 campaign.

My favorite Bush line, as recorded by Froomkin: “If I had to give you a job description, it would be a decision-maker. I make a lot of decisions.”

Wow, that’s …. inane.

Harold Meyerson: A Light Dawns

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I don’t think this qualifies as shrill, but it’s damn close.

Incompetence is not one of the seven deadly sins, and it’s hardly the worst attribute that can be ascribed to George W. Bush. But it is this president’s defining attribute. Historians, looking back at the hash that his administration has made of his war in Iraq, his response to Hurricane Katrina and his Medicare drug plan, will have to grapple with how one president could so cosmically botch so many big things — particularly when most of them were the president’s own initiatives.

In numbing profusion, the newspapers are filled with litanies of screw-ups. Yesterday’s New York Times brought news of the first official assessment of our reconstruction efforts in Iraq, in which the government’s special inspector general depicted a policy beset, as Times reporter James Glanz put it, “by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting [and] secrecy.” At one point, rebuilding efforts were divided, bewilderingly and counterproductively, between the Army Corps of Engineers and, for projects involving water, the Navy. That’s when you’d think a president would make clear in no uncertain terms that bureaucratic turf battles would not be allowed to impede Iraq’s reconstruction. But then, the president had no guiding vision for how to rebuild Iraq — indeed, he went to war believing that such an undertaking really wouldn’t require much in the way of American treasure and American lives.

Meyerson then goes into detail on the boondoggle extraordinaire that is the President’s Medicare Prescription Drug program, and concludes:

This is, remember, the president’s signature domestic initiative, just as the Iraq war is his signature foreign initiative.

How could a president get these things so wrong? Incompetence may describe this presidency, but it doesn’t explain it. For that, historians may need to turn to the seven deadly sins: to greed, in understanding why Bush entrusted his new drug entitlement to a financial mainstay of modern Republicanism. To sloth, in understanding why Incurious George has repeatedly ignored the work of experts whose advice runs counter to his desires.

To achieve True Shrillness, IMO, Meyerson needs to look deeper into the explanation of why the Bush Administration is so incompetent. Greed and sloth are apparent, but just the tip of the iceberg. And he also needs to ask why it is the Republican Party and most of the news media continue to dance to his tune.

A recent American Research Group poll put Bush’s approval rating at 36 percent. This time last year, the same poll had Bush at a 51 percent approval. Clearly, the American people are turning against him. Why is it that “Democratic strategists” (I use the term loosely) are afraid to take him on?

Any answers to those questions lead to utter, mouth foaming, incoherent, howling-at-the-moon shrillness. Guaranteed.

Six Degrees of NSA Wiretapping

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If you missed Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night, you missed this:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE:

When you‘re talking to your daughter at state college, this program cannot intercept your conversations. And when she takes a semester abroad to complete her Arabic studies, this program will not intercept your communications.

Had this program been in effect prior to 9/11, it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the 9/11 al Qaeda operatives in the United States, and we would have identified them as such.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: For a reality check on that claim and everything else we heard from the Bush administration today, I‘m joined now by Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies.

Ms. Martin, thanks for being with us tonight.

KATE MARTIN, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES: Thank you.

OLBERMANN: That‘s a pretty bold claim there from General Hayden today, obviously an improvable one. What credibility is it given by experts in the field?

MARTIN: Well, you know, Vice President Cheney made the same statement, I think, in an effort to deflect the conversation from whether or not the president broke the law.

I mean, what General Hayden said is that we would have detected al Qaeda operatives in the United States before 9/11. But, of course, the 9/11 commission found that they did detect two al Qaeda operatives, two of the hijackers, in the United States before 9/11, they knew they were al Qaeda, and they didn‘t do anything about it.

OLBERMANN: The issue then was not finding, but knowing what to do when you find.

MARTIN: Yes.

OLBERMANN: A question about the semantics of what we just heard General Hayden say about the domestic spying program. He said that a call to your kid at state college “cannot” be intercepted by this program, but he then said that if she‘s studying Arabic, the program “will not” intercept. Is that anything more than just somebody writing it unclearly? Or should we assume that there‘s something about “will not” that implies that in the past the program could have intercepted those calls?

MARTIN: Well, I think the problem is that the administration hasn‘t been forthcoming about who they are listening to at all. The only thing they‘ve said is, they are listening Americans without warrants who are calling overseas, and that there‘s some link to al Qaeda.

And so he‘s trying to reassure people. But, of course, if you look at the actual law and their words about what is that mean with regard to the link to al Qaeda, any American who‘s conspiring with al Qaeda, they can get a warrant on in about two seconds.

And so these people that they‘re wiretapping, and we don‘t know who they are, appear to be people who are maybe calling somebody who, in turn, is calling somebody, who then may be linked to some al Qaeda affiliate.

And that‘s apparently why they haven‘t gone to court to get a warrant do the wiretapping.

OLBERMANN: Even in—just in terms of the technology, could this domestic spying program really be targeted, as targeted, as limited, as the administration is saying? Because this is what does not add up for me. How would you know in advance that it‘s an al Qaeda operative making a phone call, sending an e-mail, making a contact in some way with somebody here?

Is there not necessarily, even if you‘re hitting a 500 percentage here, is there not some fishing around just to find out, in fact, that it‘s an al Qaeda representative calling someone?

MARTIN: Well, those are all unanswered questions, but very good questions, because, of course, the NSA does have the capability to vacuum up millions of telephone conversations and then sort them through a computer and pick out which ones some actual person is going to listen to.

And even though the law that the president is ignoring, and, in my judgment, violating is very specific, that if you have some probable cause that an American is in communication with, is involved with, al Qaeda or some other terrorist organization, you can get a secret warrant and secretly wiretap them.

So the question that hasn‘t been answered by the administration is, why didn‘t they get those warrants? Who is it that they‘re trying to wire—that they are wiretapping, who the judge wouldn‘t give them a warrant for? The judges have given them 13,000 warrants, and generally say yes when they ask.

OLBERMANN: Which question resonates more within the intelligence community, that one, or the one that the president asked today rhetorically that, of course it was legal, because if he were trying to break the law, why would he have briefed Congress?

MARTIN: Well, of course, if you—he did not brief Congress in any forthcoming way at all. In fact, Senator Rockefeller wrote Vice President Cheney a handwritten note after that briefing, saying, You told me something, I don‘t understand the significance, it was completely confused. And then you told me that I was prohibited from telling my staff or anyone else. I want more details.

He never got an answer.

And, you know, telling Congress, of course, doesn‘t matter, because the law says you may not wiretap without a warrant. And whether or not he told Congress doesn‘t make it legal.

OLBERMANN: Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, thanks for your perspective. Thanks for joining us tonight.

MARTIN: Thank you.

Update: MUST READ post at Unclaimed Territory!