NSA Surveillance—Officials Sued

The Bush Administration, it seems, is committed to making sure that absolutely no person gets any information whatsoever in its zealous protection of “state secrets” and the NSA phone records controversy.^[1] And it isn’t just ordinary citizens which the administration wants to keep from succeeding, its States’ Attorneys General.^[2]

The New Jersey Attorney General and other officials have been sued by the federal government “to stop them from seeking information about telephone companies’ cooperation with the [NSA].”^[3] Atty. Gen. Zulima Farber and other officials “sent subpoenas to five carriers on May 17, asking for documents that would explain whether they supplied customer records to the NSA,” suspecting that “state consumer protection laws may have been violated.”^[4]

The federal government however, says that the New Jersey officials “are treading on federal turf and that the companies, if forced to comply with the subpoenas, would be confirming or denying the existence of the program.”^[5] Furthermore, Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler, “also warned lawyers for the phone companies that responding to the subpoenas ‘would violate federal laws and executive orders.’”^[6] Not responding, however, could be seen as a violation of State law, which could establish a very exciting battle of legal primacy. The federal government obviously does not want this battle, and has asked for New Jersey to “withdraw the subpoenas, so that litigation over this matter can be avoided.”^[7]

In related news, Senator Arlen Specter last week accused “Vice-President Dick Cheney of trying to influence an inquiry into the legality” of the investigation.^[8] In an open letter to Mr. Cheney, “Mr. Specter accused the vice-president of lobbying other Judiciary Committee members to dissuade them from holding a hearing. ‘It is neither pleasant nor easy to raise these issues with the administration of my own party, but I do so because of their importance,’ he wrote. ‘I was advised…that you had called Republican members of the Judiciary Committee lobbying them to oppose any Judiciary Committee hearing—even a closed one—with the telephone companies.”^[9] Completely unsurprisingly, Mr. Cheney has “defended his actions in a letter to [Mr.] Specter … saying his intention was to avert testimony that may involve ‘extremely sensitive classified information.’”^[10]

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[1] Mark Sherman, Officials Sued Over Phone Records Access, AP (via Yahoo!), Jun. 14, 2006.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] Cheney Accused Over Wiretap Probe, BBC News, Jun. 8, 2006.
[9] Id.
[10] Michael A. Fletcher, Cheney Plays Down Dispute With Specter, Wash. Post, Jun. 9, 2006.