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Last week, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on American citizens for the past four years. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the government to conduct such operations, so long as it obtains a warrant from the FISA court. So why didn’t the NSA get the necessary paperwork? washingtonpost.com blogger William Arkin tells Brooke that the Administration offered two reasons: time and technology.
The 9/11 commission has issued its final report card on the government's implementation of recommendations for preventing another terrorist attack. The overall grade: C-, with 5 Fs and 12 Ds among the 41 categories. Was it big news? Should it be? Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell surveyed major dailies, and tells Bob what he found.
In what was billed as a major policy speech, President Bush on Wednesday unveiled his "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq." While interpretations varied in the ensuing media flurry, Brooke noticed that many of the reportorial techniques, from man-on-the-street interviews to instant fact-checks, came straight from election season's bag of reportorial tricks.
Last week, Democratic Congressman John Murtha called for a resolution terminating U.S. troop involvement in Iraq. Amid an increasingly acrimonious debate on the Iraq war, his comments drew an extremely sharp reaction from congressional Republicans and the White House. Bob talks to Mark Halperin, political director of ABC News and editor of The Note, about the press coverage of this latest war of words.
Federal use of the "mosaic theory" of classifying information, whereby otherwise individual pieces of unclassified information are deemed classified because when viewed together they take on added significance, has enjoyed a resurgence since 9/11. Brooke discusses the theory with David Pozen, author of a forthcoming Yale Law Journal article about its uses and abuses.
The storm brewing over public broadcasting unleashed another deluge this week, in the form of a long-awaited internal report about the man at the top. The report charges former Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson with playing politics in ways that violated the letter and spirit of the law, and using his influence to put more conservatives on the air. Brooke reviews the allegations with Current reporter Karen Everhart.
Since its passage after September 11th, the USA Patriot Act has become institutionalized in law enforcement, especially at the FBI. The Bureau relies on relaxed legal requirements for issuing National Security Letters, a form of secret subpoena introduced in the 1970s to track transactions of suspected terrorists. The Washington Post’s Barton Gellman recently reported on this investigative tool and discusses it with Bob.
The Washington Post reported last week that the CIA is operating secret terror-suspect detention facilities in eight countries around the world, including two Eastern European democracies. One immediate reaction from Republican leaders in Congress was not to express outrage at a CIA prison archipelago, but to find out who leaked the story to reporter Dana Priest. National Security Archive analyst Peter Kornbluh talks to Bob.
