On this Date in Bush History 12/17: “it just ain’t right”

“If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States, 1949

2002: Today David Brant, one-time head of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), reports allegations of prisoner abuse at Gitmo to Navy general counsel, Albert Mora. Discussing what he found with the New Yorker magazine in 2006, Brant said that if an NCIS agent had taken part in similar abuses “we would have relieved, removed, and taken internal disciplinary action against the individual - let alone whether outside charges would have been brought”. Brant believes that abusive treatment can harm the government’s case when it attempts to prosecute detainees in the future. Brant thinks forced confessions may not be very reliable, and besides, “it just ain’t right”.

2006: President Bush admits that a NY Times story, a story claiming that his administration authorized spying on Americans without obtaining the warrants to do so that are required under U.S. law, is true. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to conduct electronic surveillance, except as “authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order”. The President said, “Yesterday, the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country”. A strange reaction from the president given that he didn’t seem too upset when it had turned out that members of his own administration had (unbelievably) leaked the identity of a CIA operative to the media. In fact, leaker Karl Rove, was (incredibly) allowed to continue working at the White House.