Bush spy scandal causes ruling-class rift

As each day goes by, revelations emerge demonstrating the relentless campaign by the Bush administration to undermine civil liberties, promote the extra-legal powers of spy agencies, use secret prisons, torture and military courts, and expand the repressive authority of the presidency by going beyond conventional bourgeois legality. These revelations are finally coming out because important sections of the ruling class are becoming alarmed at this development.

The latest uproar concerns the authority that President George W. Bush has granted to the National Security Agency (NSA) to carry out surveillance, including wiretapping, monitoring cell phones and reading e-mail of individuals in the U.S. whom the NSA declares to be “terror suspects” without the government first obtaining a warrant from the special secret courts that have been set up to oversee such spying.

The NSA, which operates under the authority of the president, is the most powerful spy agency in the government. It is charged with spying on everything from foreign governments to diplomats to resistance movements to trade negotiations. It has the most technologically advanced spying equip ment in the world and is so secretive that the letters NSA are often referred to cynically as No Such Agency.

Under the rules of U.S. imperialism, the NSA has complete legal license to spy abroad without requiring a warrant—no matter how much this damages the interests and violates the rights of oppressed peoples and working class movements. But it is required to get a warrant if it wants to spy on someone in the U.S., and then can only legally spy on them if they are in the process of carrying on international communications.

The restrictions are based on the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed in the wake of the Watergate affair when Richard Nixon used the CIA, the NSA and other agencies to spy on the anti-war movement. He also used them to go after his “enemies’ list,” which included rival factions in the ruling class and Democratic Party politicians, among others. The scandal caused Nixon to resign.

The statute set up a FISA court of 11 judges who meet secretly in the Justice Department to review requests by intelligence agencies for surveillance permission. If they approve, they grant a warrant allowing spying. Since the court was established, it has approved thousands and thousands of warrants and has denied only four.

Nevertheless, after Sept. 11, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, with the support of Attorney General John Ashcroft, decided to disregard the required FISA court-approval process of obtaining warrants. They established what they called the “special collections program.” The so-called legal authority for Bush to override the law was established by then-Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, a right-winger who wrote that after Sept. 11 Bush could use his powers as “commander in chief” to circumvent the FISA court.

John Yoo is author of the infamous “torture memo” that declared Bush could give the authority to torture, deriving from his military powers as commander in chief. This memo, which created the political environment for torture at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, was later disavowed by the Bush administration.

This conspiracy was outed by the New York Times in a major article in its Dec. 17 edition. The Times had sat on the article for more than a year at the request of the government. Because it had Watergate-like implications, the publisher and the editor of the Times, Arthur Sulzberger and Bill Keller, respectively, were called to the Oval Office and pressured not to print it.

Bush at first tried to duck questions about it. Then he went on the offensive, defiantly taking responsibility for ordering the illegal searches. But he declared his determination to continue them, saying they were constitutional, denounced his critics and is calling for an investigation of the leak.

Bush, Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have mounted a defense. Their line is that they had to move quickly in the post-Sept. 11 era to “save lives.” But the remarkable fact is that they continue to maintain this position, even though they have the authority under the law to move without the permission of the court, so long as they retroactively apply for the warrant within 72 hours.

At least two conclusions can be drawn from this. First, the spying that they are doing is so outrageously unrelated to anything but bringing terror and intimidation with wild fishing expeditions that they might run into FISA court opposition. Second, the Bush-Cheney group, feeling all-powerful in the wake of Sept. 11, thought they were in a position to defy bourgeois legality and give Bush authoritarian powers.

In fact, during a recent flight on his way back from Pakistan, Cheney gave an interview to the New York Times, published on Dec. 21, in which he openly discussed his role in trying to reshape the presidency and reverse the post-Watergate reforms. He said that the War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to go to Congress for approval within 90 days after sending U.S. forces abroad, was “an infringement on the authority of the presidency” and suggested it could be unconstitutional. The FISA statute was one of those reforms.

Meanwhile, the Democrats and moderate Republicans like Arlen Specter and Chuck Hagel are calling for investigations. Watergate figure John Dean stated that Bush is the first president to openly admit to an impeachable offense. Back-room talk of impeachment is surfacing and Specter has promised hearings in January.

The whistle was blown by “nearly a dozen current and former officials” of the NSA, according to the Times. Countless legal experts from the civilian and military establishment have expressed dismay at what Bush did. If the reactionary officials, whose job it is to monitor and help disrupt governments, liberation movements, trade negotiations and anything that might harm U.S. imperialism, are breaking ranks with Bush over the “special collections program,” then the masses of people should know that there is much more beneath the surface than is being admitted during this dispute.

The ruling class generally adheres to imperialist democracy, not because it is concerned with the rights of the workers and oppressed or for the protection of progressive forces. Its concerns that any one reactionary grouping might seize control are on various grounds: an out-of-control group ruining the position of U.S. imperialism in the world, as the Bush administration has gone a long way toward doing; a narrow grouping giving the lion’s share of the spoils from a $2 trillion state budget to its friends and shutting out its rivals; the establishing of processes, like many provisions in the Patriot Act, that can interfere with business operations and enable spying on corporations.

These are all ruling-class motives that can ignite a struggle against a narrow, power-hungry grouping that tries to monopolize the capitalist state. But the workers and oppressed have an independent interest in defending basic constitutional legality: to defend their own rights against the bosses and their government. This they have to do through their own independent struggle.