That's what some in the White House were using the tools of the Patriot Act for. They were muckraking with anything that they could find in their privileged positions in government offices, and not just close to the president. The dispersal of the information collected from NSA intercepts was used by many disparate interests in all levels of government.
As Legal times noted in September of this year,
"During the confirmation hearings of John Bolton as the U.S. representative to the United Nations, it came to light that the NSA had freely revealed intercepted conversations of U.S. citizens to Bolton while he served at the State Department. . . . More generally, Newsweek reports that from January 2004 to May 2005, the NSA supplied intercepts and names of 10,000 U.S. citizens to policy-makers at many departments, other U.S. intelligence services, and law enforcement agencies."
and,
"The trouble here is that the loophole is bigger than the law itself. If the National Security Agency provides officials with the identities of Americans on its tapes, what is the use of making secret those names in the first place? More troubling still is the apparent lack of guidelines or controls on this process: the whole thing seems like an invitation to any Beltway Richelieu hoping to gain an edge on his political foes."
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/12/16/142620/20Then there is the WP article today that reminds us that this is just one in a series of disclosures:
"Beginning in October, The Washington Post published articles describing a three-year-old Pentagon agency, the size and budget of which are classified, with wide new authority to undertake domestic investigations and operations against potential threats from U.S. residents and organizations against military personnel and facilities. The Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, began as a small policy-coordination office but has grown to encompass nine directorates and a staff exceeding 1,000. The agency's Talon database, collecting unconfirmed reports of suspicious activity from military bases and organizations around the country, has included "threat reports" of peaceful civilian protests and demonstrations.
"CIFA has also been empowered with what the military calls "tasking authority" -- the ability to give operational orders -- over Army, Navy and Air Force units whose combined roster of investigators, about 4,000, is nearly as large as the number of FBI special agents assigned to counterterrorist squads. Pentagon officials said this month they had ordered a review of the program after disclosures, in The Post, NBC News and the washingtonpost.com Web log of William M. Arkin, that CIFA compiled information about U.S. citizens engaging in constitutionally protected political activity such as protests against military recruiting."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10509407The Patriot Act allows the investigation of Americans based on certain activities such as the participation in a protest or any form of activism. The American Civil Liberties Union has charged that at events attended by President Bush and other senior federal officials around the country, the Secret Service has been discriminating against protesters in violation of their free speech rights.
The ACLU's legal papers listed more than a dozen examples of police censorship around the country. According to their fact sheet, "such incidents have spiked under the Bush administration," prompting the ACLU to charge government officials with a "pattern and practice" of discrimination against those who disagree with its policies." The ACLU had asked a federal court for a nationwide injunction barring the Secret Service from directing local police to restrict protesters' access to appearances by President Bush and other senior administration officials.
This is a Wilsonian assault on civil liberties and dissent. Woodrow Wilson urged legislative action against those who had "sought to bring the authority and 'good name' of the Government into contempt." He worried in his declaration of war, about "spies and criminal intrigues everywhere afoot" which had filled "our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government."
During his presidency more than 2,000 American citizens were jailed for protest, advocacy, and dissent, with the support of a compliant Supreme Court. The Wilson-era assaults on civil liberties; Schenck v. U.S.; Frohwerk v. U.S.; Debs v. U.S., Abrams v. U.S., were ratified by Supreme Court decisions which asserted that free speech in wartime was a hindrance to the efforts of peace.
I'm more worried about what
we will bequeath from Bush's meddling than I am about another inheritance he might recieve.