Secretary Chertoff is one of the more honest brokers in the Bush Administration. But he is squandering his credibility in hastily jumping on the surveillance bandwagon. On the Sunday shows, Republicans wasted no time in misleading Americans into believing that Britain's domestic surveillance laws were responsible for thwarting the foiled terrorist plot.
Chertoff suggested that our legal system may not be flexible enough to permit the type of domestic surveillance employed by the
Brits:
''What helped the British in this case is the ability to be nimble, to be fast, to be flexible, to operate based on fast-moving information,'' he said. ''We have to make sure our legal system allows us to do that. It's not like the 20th century, where you had time to get warrants.''
Of course, Chertoff knows that FISA authorizes the President to broadly conduct foreign surveillance for up to one year.
He also knows that FISA authorizes the Attorney General to authorize, on an emergency basis, electronic surveillance for a period of 72 hours before obtaining a warrant.
There is no evidence to suggest that President does not have all of the legal tools available at his disposal to conduct domestic surveillance. There is ample evidence, however, that Republicans believe that they can "benefit" by employing this red herring against Democrats.
The Republican National Committee wasted little time in marshaling its resources to exploit Britain's success in foiling this terrorist plot for the "benefit" of Republican Congressional candidates.
It bears repeating that the apprehension of the suspected terrorists in Britain has far less to do with domestic surveillance than with human intelligence. The domestic surveillance in this investigation was borne from human intelligence. British authorities were able to infiltrate this cell, which led to the surveillance.
What the Administration would have us believe is that a program with a broad reach managed to capture communications from these individuals and foil the plot. We could learn important lessons from this foiled plot. Instead, Republicans are content to play politics.