Legal memos released on Bush-era justification for warrantless wiretapping

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The Justice Department released two decade-old memos on Sept 5, offering the fullest public airing to date of the Bush administration’s legal justification for the warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails -- a program that began in secret after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The broad outlines of the argument -- that the president has inherent constitutional power to monitor Americans’ communications without a warrant in a time of war -- were known, but the sweep of the reasoning becomes even clearer in the memos written by then-Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith, who was head of President George W. Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel. “What these memos show is that nearly three years after President Bush authorized the warrantless wiretapping of Americans’ e-mails and phone calls, government lawyers were still struggling to put the program on sound legal footing,” said Patrick Toomey, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the memos through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. “Their conclusions are deeply disturbing,” he said. “They suggest that the president’s power to monitor the communications of Americans is virtually unlimited -- by the Constitution, or by Congress -- when it comes to foreign intelligence.”


Legal memos released on Bush-era justification for warrantless wiretapping