What to make of Heather Wilson

Representative Heather Wilson from New Mexico, a republican and chairman of a House oversight committee on the NSA, is making a splash by announcing that the super snoop program is troubling and should receive a full investigation from the House:

Ms. Wilson, who was a National Security Council aide in the administration of President Bush's father, is the first Republican on either the House's Intelligence Committee or the Senate's to call for a full Congressional investigation into the program, in which the N.S.A. has been eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of people inside the United States believed to have links with terrorists.

Ms. Wilson surely cannot be presumed to be a rank partisan (I don't know enough about New Mexico politics to suggest she's playing to a certain constituency, but I doubt it). However, since the left has jumped on this admission...and since this a conservative leaning blog...I suppose a few comments are appropriate.

First, presumably Ms. Wilson was not among the few House members briefed on the program, so perhaps she doesn't understand the gravity. It's clear the constitutionality is still rather tenuous, as pointed out here, but my opinion has always been that a president MUST ACT in the exigency of the circumstances if he thinks current methods are inadequate, then let Congress or the American people "sort him out" later. We have a CIC for a reason.

Riding along close to that is secrecy. Let's for a moment assume the administration possesses credible information of an ongoing threat, for example something placed within this country by terrorists before 9/11, say WMDs for instance, and are deadly afraid of a trigger call from Bin Laden or someone else. Subterfuge would be absolutely needed to maintain our ability to defeat such a threat, however a public debate on tactics might well defeat our ability to defeat.

Within that secrecy context are way too many dangling check and balance questions. Indeed, in our currently electrified partisan climate the president is painted as a nazi, breaking the law for his own personal empire building desires. Yet, by aggressively challenging that authority Congress might shoot itself (and us) in the perverbial foot by ignoring the threats in their zeal to check presidential power and/or score political points.

Is it possible the terrorists figured all of this out in advance? Doubtful. However, their state sponsors probably did. And if so, their plan is coming along rather nicely.

THE CAT IS OUT 2/8/06

Wow, Ms. Wilson is either extremely persuasive or Bush really, really, really wants to keep this NSA gig rolling, even to the point of trusting more Congresspeoples. Details were released today, enough to produce this amazing quote from a ranking democrat:

"It's a different program than I was beginning to let myself believe," said Alabama Rep. Bud Cramer, the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee's oversight subcommittee.

"This may be a valuable program," Cramer said, adding that he didn't know if it was legal. "My direction of thinking was changed tremendously."

I sense a huge bursting bubble.

NOT SO FAST 2/9/06

There is still far too much controversy and discord to make any proclamations about 'bubble behavior'. So I retract the above for now. However, the fact that nobody is in a real hurry to disband the program remains a telltale for me. Our elected reps do have serious questions about how this type of measure affects our Constitutional protections, as do I, and they appear to be proceeding in a way to try to bridge the gap, rather than tear it down.

Well, except for the irresponsible few who want to use it as a partisan bat to smack Bush over the head with.