Holder Dodges Questions About Legality of Bush-Era Warrantless Wiretapping

Pressed by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) on his view of whether the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was illegal, Attorney General Eric Holder said the program was “inconsistent” with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, but repeatedly refused to say it was “illegal,” or that President Bush broke the More…

Feingold Asks Obama to Clarify Position on Warrantless Wiretapping

Responding to the controversial assertion by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair on June 8 that warrantless wiretapping “wasn’t illegal,” Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) today sent a letter to President Obama asking him to make clear that he is not claiming that extraordinary executive authority to disregard the Foreign More…

Harman to Holder: Investigate the Wiretapping of Congress

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), under fire for seemingly promising to intervene in a Justice Department probe and caught on a wiretap — Harman denies all wrongdoing — is demanding the department investigate improper wiretapping of her Congressional colleagues. (And also to release the transcripts of her own tapped calls.) More…

Will Harman Still Speak at AIPAC Summit Next Month?

Guess who’s scheduled to speak at the opening session of next month’s America Israel Public Affairs Committee gala in Washington? Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who CQ reported was caught on an National Security Agency wiretap telling a “suspected Israeli agent” that she’d intervene with the Justice Department on More…

Jane Harman’s Calls Recorded Wiretapped By NSA

Whether Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) is the “member of Congress” whose National Security Agency-tapped phone calls were referenced in last week’s New York Times piece seems unlikely, for reasons I’ll get into in a second. But Jeff Stein of Congressional Quarterly has a monster story: the NSA More…

Way More Than 27 Members of Congress Were Potentially Wiretapped

I put together a preliminary list yesterday of 27 members of Congress who visited the Middle East in 2005 and 2006 — making them, per The New York Times, possible victims of illegal National Security Agency surveillance. Sadly, the release of the Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel More…

NSA Revelations Spark Push to Restore FISA

In 2007 and 2008, as the Democratic-led Congress and the Bush administration collaborated in rewriting several elements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, civil libertarians in and outside of Congress warned that the changes would institutionalize wide-ranging surveillance by the National Security Agency on U.S. citizens. In the wake of More…

The NSA is Still Wiretapping. And We’re Surprised?

I hate to say it, but, I told you so…

Just the other day, when I was writing about the case of Jewel v. NSA (and responding to the Columbia Journalism Review’s criticism that no one was covering this important case about warrantless wiretapping), I remarked that while More…

So Which Member of Congress Was Wiretapped?

The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency improperly wiretapped a member of Congress who was “part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006.” Greg Sargent wants to know who it was. Don’t we all. To the Googling stations!

Court of Appeals Denies DOJ Attempt to Hide Evidence of Warrantless Wiretapping

A U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco today rejected the Obama Justice Department’s attempt to continue to conceal evidence of warrantless wiretapping.

As I wrote in my story today, the government filed an emergency appeal last week hoping to halt the release of documents More…