Critics pile on columnist for mischaracterizing FISA debate Nick Juliano

Published: Friday November 23, 2007



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Print This Email This Joe Klein is among the most prodigious columnists reflecting Washington's conventional wisdom on Democratic politics, yet has perhaps the fewest friends in the liberal blogosphere. His latest effort relies on a mischaracterization of the debate over warrantless wiretapping in order to accuse Democrats of being "tone-deaf" in their approach to national security, and it has not gone unnoticed. "The article is entitled 'Still Stumbling on National Security' and contains every 1980-2003 cliche about how Democrats better not oppose the big, mean, tough George Bush on war issues or else Rush Limbaugh will attack them and they'll lose," writes Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald, who excoriates the columnist for misstating the Democrats' approach to reining in President Bush's authority to spy on Americans. Greenwald, who is well-versed in the debate over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, assails Klein for essentially arguing that Democrats want to grant terrorist suspects the same right as Americans. "'Well beyond stupid' is a good description for what Klein wrote here. 'Factually false' is even better. ... But Klein's far more pernicious 'error' is his Limbaugh-copying claim that the House bill 'require[s] the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court.' It just does not," Greenwald writes. In his column, Klein summed up the FISA debate as follows: The Democratic strategy on the FISA legislation in the House is equally foolish. There is broad, bipartisan agreement on how to legalize the surveillance of phone calls and emails of foreign intelligence targets. The basic principle is this: if a suspicious pattern of calls from a terrorist suspect to a U.S. citizen is found, a FISA court warrant is necessary to monitor those communications. But to safeguard against civil-liberty abuses, all records of clearly nontargeted Americans who receive emails or phone calls from foreign suspects would be, in effect, erased. Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee's bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that  Limbaugh is salivating  would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only. In the lethal shorthand of political advertising, it would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans. That is well beyond stupid. Wired's Ryan Singel, who also has closely been covering FISA, agrees that Klein completely misses the mark. "The whole debate is about how the NSA wiretaps INSIDE the United States, but Klein can't grasp that simple concept," he writes. "That makes it impossible for him to also understand that there are good reasons to be wary of giving intelligence agencies free access to the nation's communication infrastructure." Over at Time's Swampland blog, commenters joined in on the excoriation of Kiline. "There's no point in reading such a column. It's just Joe maintaining his 'centrist' bona fides by spinning bs," wrote one. "This is why no one but your beltway butt buddies respects you, Joe."



