Tom Daschle proves it. Bush’s claim of “authority” to conduct spying on Americans is based somehow on the 2001 congressional authorization of the use of force in Afghanistan, which he says gives him the right to spy on Americans. Now Tom Daschle describes the very drafting of this authorization law in a detailed account of the night that law was passed, September 12, 2001:
Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words “in the United States and” after “appropriate force” in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas — where we all understood he wanted authority to act — but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.
The shock and rage we all felt in the hours after the attack were still fresh. America was reeling from the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not yet accounted for. Even so, a strong bipartisan majority could not agree to the administration’s request for an unprecedented grant of authority.
On the same day that Daschle wrote this, the Attorney General sent a letter to Congress saying this same law, in which Congress EXPLICITLY REFUSED Bush’s request for unfettered power, was the source of his authority for the illegal spying on Americans now revealed on the front pages. The false claims about this law providing authority aren’t just talking points anymore; they were officially entered into the record Thursday as Bush’s rationale just hours before Daschle revealed this claim to be a total lie.
This fiasco has entered territory uncharted in US history.
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