Michael Hayden as Director of the NSA approved and oversaw the secret warrantless and felonious wiretapping of hundreds of millions of Americans that began in February 2001 (before 9/11) and continued through both terms of the Bush White House. This surveillance presumably continues to this day since the Obama Administration has not announced its cessation and Senator Obama voted for the Telecom Amnesty Bill, retroactively protecting and sanctioning the telecom companies who went along with the Bush Regime’s illegal requests for that surveillance.
From Sourcewatch:
“Hayden … spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on January 23, 2006.
“Knight Ridder reporter Jonathan Landay prefaced a question by noting that ‘the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American's right against unlawful searches and seizures.’ Hayden responded: ‘No, actually--the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.... That's what it says.’ When Landay continued, ‘But does it not say probable—‘ Hayden said: ‘No. The amendment says...unreasonable search and seizure.’
“In fact, the amendment refers to both ‘reasonable searches and seizures’ and ‘probable cause.’
“Later, responding to Landay's question, Hayden stated:
“’Just to be very clear--and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment…The constitutional standard is "reasonable." And we believe--I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable.’”
What Hayden was doing, then, in trying to verbally redact the “probable cause” requirement from the Fourth Amendment was claim that the NSA’s surveillance of us all was not a violation because all of the NSA’s surveillance was “reasonable” search and seizure. This was not according to the FISA court that was supposed to make this judgment but was bypassed by the Bush Regime; it was reasonable according to the NSA itself. This is known in layperson’s terms as the fox guarding the hen house. The simple fact that all of us were being spied upon means that Hayden thinks that it is reasonable to spy upon us all. The price of freedom, apparently, is to lose your freedom. And not just our freedoms, but anyone that our government deems suspicious.
“Writing up the exchange, the online magazine Editor & Publisher (January 23, 2006) wrote that Hayden ‘appeared to be unfamiliar with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when pressed by a reporter with Knight Ridder's Washington office--despite his claims that he was actually something of an expert on it.’"
That's alright because even though Michael Hayden doesn't grasp what the Fourth Amendment says, he has our best interests in mind. Government figures who assure us that they are doing everything with our best interests in mind can always be trusted and taken at their word, especially after they have been caught lying repeatedly.
Sourcewatch goes on to recount Hayden’s claims about rendition in a September 2007 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations:
Hayden claimed that renditions have "...been conducted lawfully, responsibly, and with a clear and simple purpose: to get terrorists off the streets and gain intelligence on those still at large."
In contrast to this, Sourcewatch recounts:
“According to a December 2005 Washington Post article on the abduction of German citizen Khaled El-Masri,
"’Masri was held for five months largely because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al Qaeda unit 'believed he was someone else,' one former CIA official said. 'She didn't really know. She just had a hunch.'"
"...In the first weeks of 2004, an argument arose over whether the CIA should take Masri from local authorities and remove him from the country for interrogation, a classic rendition operation. The director of the al Qaeda unit supported that approach. She insisted he was probably a terrorist, and should be imprisoned and interrogated immediately. Others were doubtful. They wanted to wait to see whether the passport was proved fraudulent. Beyond that, there was no evidence Masri was not who he claimed to be -- a German citizen of Arab descent traveling after a disagreement with his wife. The unit's director won the argument. She ordered Masri captured and flown to a CIA prison in Afghanistan."
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