Tuesday FISA Follies

The latest excuse from Mike “Some Americans Are Going To Die!!” McConnell for expanding FISA is as follows (as noted here)…

"China and Russia's foreign intelligence services are among the most aggressive in collecting against sensitive and protected U.S. systems, facilities and development projects, and their efforts are approaching Cold War levels," McConnell says in his testimony. "Foreign intelligence information concerning the plans, activities and intentions of foreign powers and their agents is critical to protect the nation and preserve our security."

Of course, McConnell doesn’t really give us a hint as to that kind of “sensitive and protected U.S. systems, facilities, and development projects” he’s talking about (and by the way, we’re not completely innocent when it comes to spying either, as noted here; no country is).

As we know, McConnell has been caught lying about FISA in the past (such as here where he stated that it helped to crack a terror case in Germany). But as much as I would be concerned about domestic spying by those two countries (and I don’t think the so-called “expanded” FISA is relevant one way or the other to enhancing our ability to crack these cases – working within existing parameters of the law prior to recent Congressional meddling, including proper court oversight, should be good enough), there is at least one other country that I’m concerned about.

This post by Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com from April 2005 tells us of alleged spying by Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and this post notes that Our Gal Condi Rice (and when was the last time we saw her in public, by the way?) was subpoenaed by Rosen and Weissman in their trial that resulted from the investigation reported by Raimondo, with the two accused of violating the 1917 Espionage Act.

The only way FISA should be “expanded” (McConnell’s PR notwithstanding) is returning the law to its original statue mandating court oversight of all surveillance, regardless of whatever country may be trying to steal our secrets. After that, I want to see congressional hearings into the extent that AIPAC has influenced our foreign policy in the Middle East, with the runup to the Iraq war “front and center.”

In that event, I think we would discover that our “friend” in the Middle East, while not quite as much of a concern as our military enemies, merits close watch all the same (I know, “if I ruled the world…”).