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Tomgram: De la Vega on Bush's Infinite Constitutional Loop

Since today's dispatch is by a former federal prosecutor, let me suggest a small "law" of my own, one fit for the present moment: When it comes to the Bush administration, whatever the subject may be and however bad you think things are, they're going to be at least several fallback positions worse than whatever top administration officials may be fessing up to at any given moment. This, after all, is the administration of adamant denials, followed by forceful non-confessions, followed by proud statements, followed by limited hang-outs, followed by even more grudging, only slightly less limited hang-outs. In that spirit, without a bit of insider information but with recent history as my guide and with consummate confidence, let me assure you that the NSA warrantless surveillance operation Elizabeth de la Vega takes up below will turn out to be anything but the limited progra! m described in the first set of Bush administration fall-back positions. It will be a miracle if it has not swept up near-infinite American conversations, startling numbers of which won't have been conducted with overseas parties (and don't even get me started on the subject of the secret data-mining of our phone and email life); and surely, before we're done, it will turn out that this particular NSA surveillance program is only the tip of the administration's surveillance iceberg. Where the NSA already is, can the Pentagon or the CIA be far behind? Not likely.

Now, consider the infinite loop this President and his top advisors have set us journeying along, as de la Vega lays it out. Tom

Reprogramming the Infinite Loop

The NSA Spying Debate
By Elizabeth de la Vega

It has now been three months since the Bush administration reluctantly admitted that it has been conducting warrantless surveillance on American citizens, despite the explicit prohibitions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Since then, the public has been treated to endless and, unfortunately, fruitless discussion about the issue. We have experts and scholars earnestly responding, and responding yet again, to administration arguments (both legal and factual) that can best be described as protean, internally inconsistent, and occasionally evanescent. We have the administration refusing to explain the program, but enjoining everyone to "trust them." And we have legislators trying to "fix" a problem that is undefined by proposing new laws that the administration doesn't want. We are, in short, trapped in an infinite loop.

In computer parlance, an infinite loop is a coding sequence that has no effective exit because of a flaw in the program. It's a bit like trying to call your HMO with what you think is the flu and having a recording guide you through a series of numbers that land you back at the initial message welcoming you to the system. Of course, you can end that phone loop simply by hanging up. The only way to permanently extract yourself from an infinite loop in a computer program, however, is to find the programming defect. Press the refresh key, check the power chord, buy a new computer -- none of these fixes will work as long as the fundamental flaw in the program is ignored.

If you have any doubt that the NSA spying "debate" is trapped in an infinite loop, you need only review two pieces of evidence. The first, which we'll call "Exhibit A," is an article, dated March 8, 2006, entitled "Gonzales: NSA Program Doesn't Need a Law." Aha, you say, a mere headline. But this is what the article says: "The Attorney General made clear Wednesday, March 8, that the White House is not seeking congressional action to inscribe the National Security Agency's monitoring into U.S. law."

How, you wonder, could that be true? Since December, the President, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others, have said that FISA is outdated, not sufficiently agile, ineffective against terrorists, and too paper-intensive. Perhaps the AP reporter misinterpreted Gonzales' remarks…

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