Bush spying called threat to the republic

“A special counsel should immediately be appointed,” said Gore, the Democratic presidential candidate in the stolen 2000 election. “Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress should support the bipartisan call of the Liberty Coalition for the appointment of this special counsel to pursue the criminal issues raised by the warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the president.”

He was referring to Bush’s 2001 secret order that the National Security Agency (NSA) engage in widespread surveillance of law-abiding people without obtaining a warrant. Bush’s illegal spying, he added, “should be a political issue in any race, regardless of party, section of the country, house of Congress” in this year’s election.

In Baltimore, three leaders of the peace movement walking in the Martin Luther King Day parade echoed Gore’s charges. Max Obuszewski, Cindy Farquhar and Ellen Barfield told the World the NSA spied on them with the assistance of the Baltimore Police Intelligence Unit and the Joint Terrorism Task Force. A Baltimore City Council resolution approved overwhelmingly three years ago ordered Baltimore police not to cooperate with USA Patriot Act-sanctioned spying.

The three were arrested in October 2003 while protesting at the NSA complex at nearby Fort Meade. During their trial in August 2004, Farquhar, serving as her own attorney, questioned NSA Police Major Michael E. Talbert so persistently he let slip an eight-page NSA “action plan“ which revealed extensive spying on the Baltimore peace movement. It proved that protesters engaged in peaceful, constitutionally protected protest activities are the real target of Bush spying, not “terrorists.”

“This administration is shameless,” said Obuszewski, a leader of Baltimore Pledge of Resistance. “Bush is taunting us. He wants this NSA spying to go to the Supreme Court stacked with his appointees John Roberts and Samuel Alito. He wants to get a ruling that this is ‘wartime’ and he can do as he wants.”

Barfield, leader of the Baltimore chapter of Veterans for Peace, said the aim of Bush spying “is intimidation.”

“They won’t succeed in intimidating us,” she said. “But there are other people out there who may be just as concerned about the war in Iraq as we are who will be intimidated. They have jobs to worry about.”

More
http://pww.org/article/articleview/8405/1/304/