Bush-Era Surveillance Tactics Called Illegal

Inspectors General fault Bush-Era surveillance tactics for questionable effectiveness and circumvention of legal safeguards.

Top federal investigators from the Department of Justice, Department of Defense, CIA, Directorate of National Intelligence, and the National Security Agency issued a detailed and scathing report Friday describing the existence of Bush-era secret surveillance efforts beyond the wiretapping program that had been previously disclosed by the Bush Administration.

The report states that the Bush Administration´s structuring and clearing of the program was "extraordinary and inappropriate." The surveillance efforts, known as the "President's Surveillance Program," was adopted in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attack. The report stated that agents were unable to identify "the precise contribution" of the program to national security but that the program was riddled with questionable legal tactics.

A dispute about the surveillance efforts resulted in a showdown in 2004 in the hospital room of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft between then-Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez. In that incident Comey raced to Ashcroft's hospital room to prevent Gonzalez from taking advantages of Ashcroft, who was heavily medicated.

Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden (D-OR) stated in a press release, "This report allows the American people to see how senior Bush Administration officials concocted the program first, and came up with its creative legal justifications later." In a particularly telling passage, the report states that deficiencies in the legal analysis justifying the program "became apparent" once Department of Justice attorneys – other than the one relatively low-level attorney pre-selected by the Bush Administration to vet the program – became aware of the facts and operation of the President´s Surveillance Program.

The repot also accuses then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales of giving, "inaccurate" and "misleading" Congressional testimony when he said that the Justice Department had not expressed legal concerns about the program in 2004. Amid much controversy, Gonzales is scheduled to join the faculty at Texas Tech this fall.

Legal scholars anticipate continued investigations and prosecutions of high-ranking Bush Administration officials in the wake of this report.