Obama adviser: Obama naive, “knee-jerk” on telecom immunity
posted at 7:05 am on March 8, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Barack Obama has resolutely opposed giving American telecommunications companies immunity from lawsuits for their work with the NSA, under Department of Justice assurances of legality, to assist in surveillance. He voted against the bipartisan Senate FISA reform bill that Democratic House leadership has stalled. Now Obama’s national-security advisor has gone public in opposing Obama on the key national security issue:
In a new interview with National Journal magazine, an intelligence adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign broke with his candidate’s position opposing retroactive legal protection for telecommunications companies being sued for cooperating with a dubious U.S. government domestic surveillance program.
“I do believe strongly that [telecoms] should be granted that immunity,” former CIA official John Brennan told National Journal reporter Shane Harris in the interview. “They were told to [cooperate] by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context.”
Disagreement on policy points occur between candidates and their advisers, although open breaks on major issues are somewhat rare. However, Brennan goes farther than just mere disagreement:
That wasn’t just a personal opinion, Brennan made clear to Harris. “My advice, to whoever is coming in [to the White House], is they need to spend some time learning, understanding what’s out there, identifying those key issues,” including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, he said — the law at the heart of the immunity debate.
“They need to make sure they do their homework, and it’s not just going to be knee-jerk responses,” Brennan said of the presidential hopefuls.
Brennan isn’t just some guy who did a couple of years at Langley and then wrote a book. He headed the National Counterterrorism Center, which coordinated efforts between the CIA, FBI, and other law-enforcement and intel agencies. He understands how to conduct counterintelligence and the resources needed for its success.
This statement will underscore the lack of seasoning that Obama would bring to the White House. Obama’s own policy adviser describes Obama’s position as one that lacks understanding and/or ignorant, as well as “knee-jerk”. It also points up another aspect of Obama on telecom immunity: for a man who claims he will forge bipartisan solutions, Obama seems determined to sabotage this bipartisan effort led by the man who endorses him as “brilliant”, Jay Rockefeller.
We can take from this that Obama is a naive, knee-jerk liberal who hasn’t done his homework on counterterrorism. And we apparently can quote the Obama campaign on that.
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In a word, SOP.
theregoestheneighborhood on March 9, 2008 at 1:28 PM
Oh, this is fun.
As if these are mutually exclusive… Obama, like most liberals, is pretty much fact-free.
If it were manifestly false, you wouldn’t have to argue the question. If it were illegal, you would still not have demonstrated that the companies knew this. And your claim that it was illegal is based on your own misinterpretation of the Constitution, misunderstanding of national security and the powers of the Presidency, and misapplication of Constitutional questions to a private company responding to a lawful demand by the lawful government in pursuance of a lawful goal.
But you think a private company has the right to determine for themselves which laws they have to obey? Worse, you seem to think the government should allow a company to be sued in civil court for obeying the laws.
theregoestheneighborhood on March 9, 2008 at 2:01 PM
So,
Now that’s how you make a manifestly false statement.
And that’s how you make an ad hominem argument.
And that’s how you make a “straw man” argument. It’s not a question of whether courts can address the issue, but whether a telecom company should have to spend millions defending themselves in a civil court because they obeyed the government’s demand for information. Furthermore, for all the braying about “illegal” requests, the immunity in question is not for a crime. It’s about immunity from civil lawsuits. If the request were truly illegal, then the companies should be charged with crimes, not threatened with lawsuits. They’re threatened with lawsuits precisely because they can’t be charged with crimes.
It’s also interesting that you bring up separation of powers when the President does something you don’t like, but have no problem with courts trying to extend their power into issues of national security.
You have all the marks of a liberal on this issue:
– Believe in separation of powers when it comes to restricting the power of the President
– Don’t believe in separation of powers when Congress wants to restrict the role of the courts
– Don’t believe in separation of powers when it comes to asking the courts to decide what laws should be obeyed (the role of Congress) or how foreign surveillance should be conducted (role of the President)
– Label an action you don’t like “illegal” repeatedly
– Want the courts to decide “standards” that the legislature and executive should follow
– Are a whole lot more concerned about keeping the President in line than protecting us from our enemies
– Confuse the right of Americans to be free from unreasonable search and seizure with the ability of the government to spy on known foreign enemies.
– Regard the ACLU “quite highly”
theregoestheneighborhood on March 9, 2008 at 2:38 PM
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