The FBI, George W
Bush, 9/11 and Illegal Wiretaps
Below is an excerpt
from a longer interview
GROSS: I've been focusing on the Hoover era of the FBI, but
your book goes past that. And just a couple of questions, one or two questions
about the George W. Bush era. You talk about some of the boundaries that were
crossed in terms of getting intelligence. What do you see as the biggest transgression
of the law in how the Bush administration tried to work with the FBI to gather
intelligence on Americans?
WEINER: There is an incredibly dramatic moment in 2004 where
the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller - Robert S. Mueller III, or Bobby
"Three Sticks," as his agents call him - who took office, let's
remember, a week before 9/11, confronts the president of the United States in
the Oval Office over the White House's secret eavesdropping program that has
transgressed its boundaries and overstepped the law and the Constitution.
Through its data mining tactics, through its eavesdropping
technologies, they've gone beyond what even the secret court that oversees
eavesdropping will authorize. They're going to get in trouble - deep, deep
trouble. And Mueller tells the president, in the Oval Office, face to face,
with a handwritten letter of resignation in his breast pocket that either the
program is curtailed and brought within the law or he, the head of the FBI,
will resign, as will the entire command structure of the Justice Department,
from the attorney general down.
And President Bush says, according to his memoirs: What are
you talking about? What program? What problems? What legal issues? And Mueller
looks at him with a very steely gaze and says: I think you know what we're
talking about, Mr. President. And at that point, it's a crime to lie to the
FBI. It's punishable by five years in prison. And that's where we were.
We were - the president had chalks on his spikes at that
moment. He was at the line, and about to cross it. And he says, Bush says in
his memoir: Visions of the Saturday night massacre during Watergate dance in
his head when, you know, two attorneys general and the command structure of the
FBI resigned rather than cover up for the president.
Mueller wins. Bush eventually backs down, and that is a
triumph of the rule of law. And that's what the FBI does and should stand for.
The great dilemma for Mueller and for the American people is: How do you do
secret intelligence operations within the rule of law? Secret intelligence
operations require stealing other people's secrets, breaking into their houses,
tapping their telephones, reading their email.
How do you do that within the rule of law? We've got a
secret court set up in this country called the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court that meets in secret at the top of the Justice Department's
roof. And they were set up to authorize this kind of thing after Watergate. You
either work with the rule of law - if you don't, and if you're protecting
American national security in the country and you lose your freedoms in the
process, you fight the war on terror and you lose your freedoms, you've lost.
