Built-in scandal potential

By giving U.S. intelligence agencies unfettered, unsupervised access to the overseas telephone calls and e-mails of Americans, Congress has set the stage for a major scandal. If history is any indication, and it generally is, that scandal comes when someone discloses — or leaks, if you will — that the electronic spying is far more invasive than originally presented, despite assurances to the contrary.

But in the name of fighting terrorism, the good lawmakers who can’t solve any of the nation’s domestic problems because of partisan squabbling have agreed in their infinite wisdom that government spies and sub-spies are basically trustworthy and loyal and would never make unwarranted intrusions into the privacy of their fellow citizens. After all, haven’t all those who assured them that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction given their word that no honest American’s international communications would be the target of eavesdropping?

So where were all those congressional Democrats who pledged never again to allow such an unconstitutional disregard for American rights as the warrantless wiretapping that took place immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and was discontinued only after it was exposed? Fearing they might be labeled soft on terrorism in next year’s election, the Democrats scrambled to get aboard this latest circumvention of due process in the name of national security. In so doing, they proved once again that one doesn’t have to put them all in a bag of dog doo doo and shake them up for all to come out stinking.

But let’s get back to history. In those dark days of Watergate and Vietnam, nearly the same proposal came out of a White House where the only thing more pervasive than paranoia was dishonesty. It was a plan to do almost exactly what the current presidential administration has done — suspend judicial review of wiretapping and other surveillance in the name of protecting Americans from terrorism financed by outsiders. Young war protesters, some admittedly violent, had to be getting their support from overseas enemies, the White House reasoned, and the national interest demanded a suspension of the rules.

Everyone signed off on what was then called the Tom Charles Huston Plan, named after a wet-behind-the-ears junior aide to President Nixon. Everyone agreed — except J. Edgar Hoover, who found it too distasteful even for his red meat palate. Besides, the FBI director saw it as an invasion of his turf by the hated CIA and the equally sinister National Security Agency. He didn’t trust those agencies whose employees necessarily have taken the art of lying to new heights. So he refused to add his name to the approval list and the White House chickened out, canceling the plan and relegating Huston to an inglorious but important footnote in history.

Yet here we are again — with one difference. This time there is congressional certification that permits what more than one Founding patriot regarded as state usurpation of the most basic human right, privacy.

The barriers are down and the safeguards are gone no matter what the government says. The expanded surveillance rights of the state leave us little better than those nations where it is almost life-threatening to utter a criticism over the phone.

No one wants the faceless, morally twisted thugs that threaten our democracy to have free rein. We understand the need for swift access to the communications of those who would plot against us. But to do the job of limiting our liberties for them is intolerable. Judicial approval should never be suspended even if there is a remote chance some important clue might be missed. It is the price paid for freedom.

How long before it becomes clear that more information than is necessary is being compiled in government computers? How long before the oversight committee assigned to keep things pure and honest makes a serious mistake? Aren’t the panel’s interests too close to those doing the spying?

This is another Washington scandal waiting to happen, and when it does all those valiant lawmakers who were afraid of being charged with a callous disregard for the al Qaeda threat will once again run for cover and pledge it will never happen again. If this sounds hysterical and itself paranoid chalk it up to 45 years of watching these things occur here with regularity. One doesn’t have to be terribly perceptive and certainly not prescient.

Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.