FISA Fight: How predictable was this?

Right on cue, Fred Hiatt turns real estate on his editorial pages over to the lies and fear mongering of everyone's favorite Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell. Point by point, every paragraph that McConnell pens, contains a falsehood.

The first: "the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- has not kept up with the technology revolution we have experienced over the past 30 years." The reality? FISA has been updated multiple times since it was enacted in 1978. It covers all of the modern technologies, including cell phones and computers. In fact, Congress updated it in October, 2001, and as Greenwald reminds us Bush lauded it then, saying "This new law I sign today will allow surveillance of all communications used by terrorists, including e-mails, the Internet, and cell phones."

Having started out with a whopper, McConnell continues, and gets to the real point, or rather, the point they're hanging their hats on while desperately trying to cover the administration's ass on its illegal activities since February, 2001:

The Protect America Act, passed by Congress last August, temporarily closed the gaps in our intelligence collection, but there was a glaring omission: liability protection for those private-sector firms that helped defend the nation after the Sept. 11 attacks. This month, I testified before Congress, along with the other senior leaders of the intelligence community, on the continuing threats to the United States from terrorists and other foreign intelligence targets. We stated that long-term legislation that modernized FISA and provided retroactive liability protection was vital to our operations. The director of the FBI told the Senate that "in protecting the homeland it's absolutely essential" to have the support of private parties.

To be perfectly clear, "liability protection" has absolutely nothing to do with creating a gap in our intelligence collection. None. Which, conveniently, McConnell himself stated in an interview on NPR this morning (h/t Greenwald):

NPR: Mr. McConnell, the Bush administration says that if the Protect America Act isn't made permanent, it will tie your hands, intelligence hands, especially when it comes to new threats. But isn't it true that any surveillance underway does not expire, even if this law isn't renewed by tomorrow?

MCCONNELL: Well, Renee it's a very complex issue. It's true that some of the authorities would carry over to the period they were established for one year. That would put us into the August, September time-frame. However, that's not the real issue. The issue is liability protection for the private sector.

Intelligence gaps are not "the real issue." Greenwald:

Rather, as McConnell candidly admits, the "real issue" is "liability protection for the private sector." To take them at their word, George Bush and Mike McConnell are putting the nation at risk in order to ensure that AT&T and Verizon do not have to be held accountable in a court of law for having broken the law. Think about how twisted and corrupt that calculus is.

Twisted and corrupt indeed. But, remember, it's not just so that AT&T and Verison aren't held accountable. It's to prevent legal action going forward that, in the discovery process, would expose the full extent of the administration's illegal activity. This isn't just protecting AT&T and Verizon. It's protecting the Rove/Gonzales/Cheney/Bush cabal.

A final point, again from Greenwald:

One other vital point: The claim that telecoms will cease to cooperate without retroactive immunity is deeply dishonest on multiple levels, but the dishonesty is most easily understood when one realizes that, under the law, telecoms are required to cooperate with legal requests from the government. They don't have the option to "refuse." Without amnesty, telecoms will be reluctant in the future to break the law again, which we should want. But there is no risk that they will refuse requests to cooperate with legal surveillance, particularly since they are legally obligated to cooperate in those circumstances. The claim the telcoms will cease to cooperate with surveillance requests is pure fear-mongering, and is purely dishonest.

It is purely dishonest, and it's absolutely no surprise that the venue for it today is Fred Hiatt's editorial page, where there obviously are no fact-checkers. You would have thought after seven years of pushing Bush administration lies, they'd have the self-respect to stop pushing them. But no, they're going to come out of the Bush administration looking just as tainted as every damned lying one of the bunch.