The Senate is expected to vote on a controversial measure to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, tomorrow. The legislation would rewrite the nation’s surveillance laws and authorize the National Security Agency’s secret program of warrantless wiretapping. It gives the government new powers to eavesdrop on both domestic and international communications and could also grant immunity to phone companies involved in President Bush’s secret domestic spy program. The Democratic-controlled House approved its version of the bill late last month.
Mark Klein talking:
Congress never invited me to testify, although I did go to Washington to lobby, but no committee has ever invited me to testify, which says something about Congress.
But going back to 2002, we were told one day in late 2002 that an NSA representative was coming to the office to speak to a certain management technician about a special job. And this turned out to be installing a secret room in the next office I was going to be in the following year. And that secret room involved a lot of spying equipment. Only this one management technician could go in there, and the regular union technicians were not allowed to go in there.
But when — in 2003 I was assigned to that office, and I got hold of the documents which were available — they’re not classified — and the documents showed what they were doing. They were basically copying the entire data stream going across critical internet cables and copying the entire data stream to this secret room, so the NSA was getting everything.
while I was still working at AT&T, I didn’t say anything, because I wanted to keep my job, and it was a scary atmosphere back then, you may remember. But I sat on it, then took some mental notes, and after I retired in 2004 and the end of 2005, when the New York Times came out with their expose that there was warrantless wiretapping going on, then I came forward in early 2006, and I tried to present my documents to some media groups and to some civil liberties groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And I became a witness in EFF’s lawsuit against AT&T. And eventually, the media came onto the story. The New York Times came out with the story in April 2006.
the Democratic Party and the Congress, in general, has been unfriendly to me for the last two years of my efforts. As I say, I’ve been trying to bring my information forward for about two years now. Even after the Congress went Democratic, they turned their back on me, except for a couple of individuals, like Senator Dodd was friendly and a couple of congressmen. No committee of Congress would invite me to testify; it’s never happened. My attorney sent letters, which were never answered. And they never — and they voted not to investigate. So it’s been clear for some time that Congress wants to help the President cover this up, and they were just looking for a way to do it.
And so, now they have a bill that claims to get some kind of concessions. In fact, they got no concessions. This bill would give immunity to the phone companies and thus would kill any hope of finding out what happened by the lawsuits against AT&T and the other companies. And so, Congress is intervening against the judicial process to kill the lawsuits and essentially protect the President.
And it’s kind of ironic, because, you may know, the FISA law itself originated when the Democratic Party in Congress discovered that Nixon was trying to spy on Democratic National Committee headquarters in the ’70s, and they passed this law to require that any domestic spying must go — must be approved by a secret court, a FISA court. And now, the Democratic Party is helping to basically destroy this law. If this bill passes, the law will become a toothless dead letter, as far as I can tell.
The message that will go out is that, on paper, the President is not supposed to do this, but everybody knows the President violated the law over and over, and now he’s going to get away with it. That’s the message if they pass this law: you can get away with it; we’re not going to enforce this law.
Senator Feingold and Senator Dodd have been waging a valiant last-ditch effort to stop this thing. The problem they face is that their own party leadership is against them. This latest bill was rammed through the House by Speaker Pelosi, who had said earlier that she was against immunity, but then she suddenly turned and rammed this through.
And the same thing is happening now in the Senate. And Senator Obama, who a few months ago, before he was the nominee, explicitly said he would not vote for any bill that had immunity in it, and now, a few days ago, he’s reversed his position and said he will vote for this bill.
So the Democratic leadership is overriding the fights that Feingold and Dodd are trying to wage, and they’re basically carrying out a secret agreement with the White House. Remember, there were never any open hearings on this. They met in secret with the telephone lobbyists and with intelligence agency officials. It was all a secret deal, a conspiracy against the American people. They never had hearings. I was never invited to any hearings. And they’re going to ram this through.
Judge Vaughn Walker, it’s his court where the AT&T case is in now, and he’s clearly been unsympathetic to the government’s attempts to squash this case, and that’s why they went secretly to Congress to squash the case, because they’re really afraid of an open court hearing. They don’t want an open court hearing.
And Judge Walker did a fine ruling, basically arguing that the President had no authority to override FISA. And that’s one of three rulings that have happened against the President and against the government. The problem, of course, is that Walker’s ruling has no practical effect, because the case he was ruling on, the Al-Haramain case, cannot go forward, because the only piece of evidence they have has been declared a state secret by the government. That’s their convenient way of getting rid of evidence is declare it a state secret, so therefore, it’s out of the court, court can’t handle it.
The AT&T case is in his court right now, just awaiting the approval to go forward. We’re waiting for the Ninth Circuit to give the green light to go forward with the case.
this legislation will direct the court to dismiss all the cases against AT&T and other companies, if they can just show they have a piece of paper showing that they got an order from the President to do this. It’s — I call it the Nuremberg defense: “We were just following orders.” The judge won’t be able to rule on whether the law — the order was legal. He can only rule on where they got this piece of paper. It’s a ridiculous ruling and attempt by the Congress to gag the judge and prevent him from ruling on the legality of the order, and the judge has to simply just determine that their paperwork is in order. So everybody knows, if this bill passes, the judge will be forced to dismiss the cases.
I assume the case will just get dismissed, and it’ll never happen. I’ll never get called. There will never be any hearings. It will die, and you’ll never find out what they did. And that was the point of having this lawsuit. It wasn’t about getting money out of the companies. I wouldn’t get anything, by the way; I’m just a witness, I’m not a party to this lawsuit. And it was about finding out what happened. And that’s why they want to kill the lawsuit.
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Mark Klein, former technician at AT&T for over twenty-two years. He discovered that internet traffic in AT&T operations centers was being regularly diverted to the National Security Agency. Klein is a witness in a lawsuit filed against AT&T by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which alleges AT&T illegally gave the NSA access to its networks.
— source democracynow.org