In matters of federal prosecution, such as mob cases, it isn't unusual for prosecutors to offer immunity to accomplices in exchange for testimony implicating ring leaders.

In the case of warrantless spying, the telecoms were the accomplices, receiving "National Security Letters" instructing the phone companies to cooperate. These weren't court orders; but they sure looked official, coming from the White House and all.

It can be argued that the telecoms knowingly broke the law -- after all, it was Bush himself who said, on December 20, 2005, "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order."

In fact, anytime the US government listens in on the phone call of an American citizen without a warrant, whether you're calling your aunt Betty in Tuscan or your uncle Bill in Italy, it is a federal felony.

We now know that the wire tapping started long before 9/11, just months after Bush took office. What we don't know is just how many of these federal felonies have been committed.

But the telecoms do.

It is possible that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Ms. Rice, et al, having defecated all over the United States Constitution, and then wiping with the American flag, may well skate off into the sunset, having committed the most heinous crimes in the history of the country.

It is also possible that, at some point, the natural course of law will eventually lead to the prosecution of these same crimes.

THIS is why Mr. Bush wants "telecom immunity" so badly -- to neutralize the witnesses against him, who might well speak if they're facing time themselves.

Don't be fooled, truckers. We're not down yet -- steep grades and sharp curves ahead.

Keep your hands on that keyboard and on those phones, and keep telling your senators -- NO IMMUNITY FOR CRIMES AGAINST THIS COUNTRY.

Protecting America – From the President
by Paul Craig Roberts

President George W. Bush and his director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, are telling the American people that an unaccountable executive branch is necessary for their protection. Without the Protect America Act, Bush and McConnell claim, the executive branch will not be able to spy on terrorists, and we will all be blown up. Terrorists can only be stopped, Bush says, if Bush has the right to spy on everyone without any oversight by courts.

The fight over the Protect America Act has everything to do with our safety, only not in the way that Bush and McConnell assert.
Bush says the Democrats have put "our country more in danger of an attack" by letting the Protect America Act lapse. This claim is nonsense. The 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gives the executive branch all the power it needs to spy on terrorists.
The choice between FISA and the Protect America Act has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, at least not from foreign terrorists. Bush and his brownshirts object to FISA, because the law requires Bush to obtain warrants from a FISA court. Warrants mean that Bush is accountable. Bush and his brownshirts argue that accountability is an infringement on the power of the president.

To escape accountability, the Brownshirt Party came up with the Protect America Act. This act eliminates Bush's accountability to judges and gives the telecom companies immunity from the felonies they committed by acquiescing in Bush's illegal spying.
Bush began violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in October 2001 when he spied on Americans without obtaining warrants from the FISA court.

Bush pressured telecom companies to break the law in order to enable his illegal spying. In court documents, Joseph P. Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest Communications International, states that his firm was approached more than six months before the September 11, 2001, attacks and asked to participate in a spying operation that Qwest believed to be illegal. When Qwest refused, the Bush administration withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Nacchio himself was subsequently indicted for insider trading, sending the message to all telecom companies to cooperate with the Bush regime or else.

Bush has not been held accountable for the felonies he committed and for leading telecom companies into a life of crime.
As the lawmakers who gave us FISA understood, spying on people without warrants lets a political party collect dirt on its adversaries with which to blackmail them. As Bush illegally spied a long time before word of it got out, blackmail might be the reason the Democrats have ignored their congressional election mandate and have not put a stop to Bush's illegal wars and unconstitutional police state measures.

Perhaps the Democrats have finally caught on that they cannot function as a political party as long as they continue to permit Bush to spy on them. For one reason or another, they have let the Orwellian-named Protect America Act expire.

With the Protect America Act, Bush and his brownshirts are trying to establish the independence of the executive branch from statutory law and the Constitution. The FISA law means that the president is accountable to federal judges for warrants. Bush and the brownshirt Republicans are striving to make the president independent of all accountability. The brownshirts insist that the leader knows best and can tolerate no interference from the law, the judiciary, the Congress, or the Constitution, and certainly not from the American people who, the brownshirts tell us, won't be safe unless Bush is very powerful.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison saw it differently. The American people cannot be safe unless the president is accountable and under many restraints.

Pray that the Democrats have caught on that they cannot give the executive branch unaccountable powers to spy and still have grounds on which to refuse the executive branch unaccountable powers elsewhere. Republicans have used the "war on terror" to create an unaccountable executive. To prevent the presidency from becoming a dictatorial office, it is crucial that Congress cease acquiescing in Bush's grab for powers. As the Founding Fathers warned us, the terrorists we have to fear are the ones in power in Washington.

The al-Qaeda terrorists, with whom Bush has been frightening us, have no power to destroy our liberties. Compared to the loss of liberty, a terrorist attack is nothing.

Good luck with that.

A lot of good all that pre-9-11 illegal wiretapping and surveillance did. Other than violate the FISA law.

The fact that the US government was intercepting electronic and other communications in violation of the law - prior to - 9/11 renders their precious national security arguments moot.

Unless their real aim to to create a police state.

WRONG, the "immunities" given to Telecoms was to protect them from Lawsuits filed by the likes of the ACLU and the EFF.
These "Lawsuits" were filed to protect "American" citizens whose rights were being violated by these "warrant less" searches, even though these same warrant less searches were common under the Clinton Administration.
HOWEVER, the US Supremes last week threw OUT the lawsuit filed by the ACLU and EFF, because they could NOT demonstrate that even ONE citizen had been harmed. Nor can YOU demonstrate that ONE citizen would be spied upon for placing a phone call to your "Aunt Betty", or your "Uncle Billy".

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I wonder why rigor mortis always gives his own threads a "5-Star" rating?

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"... they could NOT demonstrate that even ONE citizen had been harmed. Nor can YOU demonstrate that ONE citizen would be spied upon ..."

This is true (regarding the phone companies**).

The reason that this is true is because the Bush administration has placed these activities under "terror investigations," "classified" due to "national security," so a citizen has no way of finding out if he or she has been wire tapped, or whether an FBI officer may have had a "sneak-and-peek" while s/he was away from home.

** We do know, however, (thanks to an ACLU lawsuit) that hundreds of people in Denver who attended anti-war rallies were followed to our cars, had our tags recorded, and our names passed on to the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

I'm no more a terrorist than you are.

I am an American citizen.

It is these actions, by the federal government, that are un-American.

The Al-Qaeda terrorists, with whom Bush has been frightening us, have no power to destroy our liberties. Compared to the loss of liberty, a terrorist attack is nothing.[/quote]

Do you really think that some of these self proclaimed "Conservatives" (in actuality they're really quite radical in their worldviews) will ever understand this?
rx

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If demons did not exist, government would find it necessary to invent them.

[/quote]

Yeah, I'll just bet that the 2500 or so people that rode the WTC building to the ground were all having a last thought that as long as no one was listening to their phone calls, they could deal with what was happening.

I'm also sure that the folks sitting in the planes that morning after the hijackers took over the plane were relieved that the airphones and their cellphones weren't being tapped into when they called their loved ones to say goodbye.

So, are you willing to throw away the constitutional liberties of a nation of 330 MILLION for the lives of 2500?

And your appeal to emotion on this issue is a fallacy. The Administration has admitted that they were illegally wiretapping and other electronic surveillances PRIOR to the 9/11 attacks, so again, you argument is moot.