By Emmett Tyrrell
Thursday, June 13, 2013
WASHINGTON -- I depart America for two blissful weeks in
Italy and return to find that my country has been transformed, rather rudely,
into a totalitarian state on the order of Iran, possibly even North Korea. My
telephone is directly plugged into something called PRISM. Big Brother hounds
my email, even when I am only viewing the weather. Soon I shall be wearing a
Mao jacket -- or perhaps not. Possibly my fears are overheated. Yet President
Barack Obama got us into this mess, and it is unlikely that he will get us out.
He seems smugly unconcerned about the fears of almost 50 percent of the
American people who, I adjudge, are almost as worried as I am.
Consider recent news stories that have nothing to do with
PRISM, the National Security Agency or my fears. Consider the claim that the
Internal Revenue Service has been molesting people of faith, members of the
conservative movement and stalwarts of the Tea Party movement. Consider that
the Justice Department has been subpoenaing journalists' work. Countless news
stories on these matters have made many Americans a little edgy. Then came this
thunderbolt. Some dimwit associated with the NSA project or the CIA has leaked
to the Guardian and to the Washington Post evidence that the government of the
United States has been eavesdropping on the Internet communications and the
telephone calls of all Americans and especially of foreigners for evidence of
terrorist plots. Barack Obama could not have orchestrated an outbreak of
paranoia on a national scale any more effectively. First came the stories about
the IRS and the subpoenaing of journalists. Then came this NSA story. Barack,
you have only yourself to blame on this one, not George W., not even Richard
Nixon. This wave of suspicion that has swept the country was achieved only by
you and your maladroit administration assisted by a thousand or so loyal
facilitators in the relevant government departments and agencies.
Fortunately, before I gave up my citizenship and returned
to Italy, I picked up the indispensable Wall Street Journal. And there on the
op-ed page was an illuminating essay by one of my favorite civil libertarians,
Michael Mukasey, Eric Holder's predecessor as U.S. attorney general as well as
a former U.S. district judge for the Southern District of New York. Mukasey has
reassured me that the NSA's actions have merit, though they could still go too
far. Since the ghastly attack of 9/11, there are real threats to our freedoms
and our safety. Government has thwarted further 9/11 attacks and has led to the
arrest of others, for instance, Najibullah Zazi, the would-be New York City
subway bomber.
The government eavesdropping is conducted according to
the law. Nothing that has been done thus far is illegal. And the rights of the
citizenry have been protected. "Given the nature of the data being
collected," writes Mukasey, "and the relatively small number and
awful responsibility of those who do the collecting, the claims of pervasive
spying, even if sincere, appear not merely exaggerated but downright
irrational." Well, I part company with Mukasey here. Given the nature of
the IRS scandal and of the Justice Department's hassling of journalists, there
are grounds for our suspicion.
Yet Mukasey is convincing, though I wish he had taken up
the question of the dimwit who was the Guardian's and the Post's source. His
name is Edward J. Snowden, and today he is trying to pass himself off as a
modern-day Daniel Ellsberg. I say of him as I said years ago of Ellsberg. Throw
the book at him. He has endangered the security of the country.
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