"Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could
not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret
court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.
Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to
decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.
As a
result of the January agreement, the administration said that the National
Security Agency’s domestic spying program has been brought under the legal
structure laid out in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires
court-approved warrants for the wiretapping of American citizens and others
inside the United States.
But on Tuesday, the senior officials, including
Michael McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, said they believed
that the president still had the authority under Article II of the Constitution
to once again order the N.S.A. to conduct surveillance inside the country
without warrants. "
I think this is a clear abuse of Presidential power. If there is honestly a threat, then the process will work to make the case against the threat stronger. Working against the process of law threatens the legality of the case. It also threatens the rights of innocent individuals and guilty individuals.
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