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Incursions Spark Tension on U.S.-Mexico Border

Armed Mexican government personnel made five unauthorized incursions into the U.S. in the last three months of 2005, according to confidential Department of Homeland Security records. The incursions involved police officers or soldiers in military vehicles and were among 231 such incidents recorded by the U.S. Border Patrol in the past 10 years, the Los Angeles Times reports. "It's clear you're dealing with a large number of incursions by bona-fide Mexican military units, based on the tactics and the equipment being used," said T.J. Bonner, a Border Patrol veteran and president of the National Border Patrol Council, the agents' union. Bonner told the Washington Times that it was "common knowledge" along the border that some Mexican military units, federal and state police and former Mexican soldiers are paid by smugglers to protect shipments of cocaine and other drugs into the U.S. Incidents in the Homeland Security records include Mexican helicopters flying north into U.S. airspace near El Paso, Tex., for about 15 minutes; five Mexican officials armed with assault rifles entering the country near El Centro, Calif., and returning without incident; and two Mexican police officers observed on the U.S. side of the border near Yuma, Ariz. Details of the incidents emerged "as authorities on both sides of the border scrambled to investigate a dangerous confrontation Monday in Texas," the LA Times reported....


Sheriff demands probe of incursions

A Texas border sheriff yesterday demanded that the U.S. and Mexican governments investigate incursions into the United States by heavily armed drug escorts dressed in Mexican military uniforms "before someone gets killed." Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr., who heads the Texas Sheriff's Border Coalition, said a growing number of suspected incursions and violence aimed at the area's law-enforcement officers is making the border "a pretty dangerous place." "We have tried everything we know to make the federal government aware of the problems at the border and how they have affected us," said Sheriff Gonzalez, who has fewer than two dozen deputies to patrol 1,000 square miles, including 60 miles of Texas-Mexico border. "It appears our government is covering this thing up because it just doesn't want to admit there is a problem," he said. "Trade between the United States and Mexico may be more important to Washington than human lives." His comments come in the wake of an incident Monday in which U.S. law-enforcement authorities in Hudspeth County, Texas, confronted several men in Mexican military uniforms who were accompanying drug smugglers. The "soldiers" were in a camouflaged Humvee with a mounted .50-caliber machine gun, said Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West. Yesterday, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas Republican, said she was "deeply concerned" about the possible incursions and asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to "fully investigate this matter and report to Congress the details and confirm whether or not Mexican military officials were involved. "But make no mistake -- this is only a symptom of a much larger problem," she said. "Even after September 11, our nation's borders remain porous. We must take bold action in securing our borders." The Mexican government has denied that the men in any of the incidents were soldiers, saying that some drug smugglers dress in military-style uniforms, carry automatic weapons and drive military-style vehicles. Sheriff Gonzalez said he could not confirm that the men were soldiers, but said he was skeptical of the denials by the Mexican government. He described the suspected soldiers as "very military looking, clean cut and in good physical condition -- not your average drug smuggler." "When you spot a Humvee with military paint on it and a .50 caliber machine gun, this leads you to suspect that it's not a vehicle being used by drug lords," Sheriff Gonzalez said....


Cover-ups of Mexican military border crossings anger agents

Border patrol agents and other law enforcement officials are angry that Mexican and some U.S. officials refuse to acknowledge that Mexican soldiers are crossing into the United States. Some officials suggested Wednesday that the confrontation between Texas law officers earlier this week was with drug smugglers, not Mexican soldiers assisting narcotics traffickers across the Rio Grande. But a Border Patrol agent who spoke on condition of anonymity said continuous cover-ups by Mexican and U.S. officials have put many agents and American lives in danger. "I think it shows how desperate the situation has become. I think it's insulting to expect Americans to believe what (Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael) Chertoff and the Mexican government are saying," the agent said Wednesday. "Isn't it the most reasonable explanation that if men are dressed as soldiers, with military vehicles and mounted machine guns that these guys are soldiers - not some cartel trying to ruin diplomatic relations?" Photos of what appeared to be Mexican troops in the United States during Monday's incident shocked many Americans, although Mexico officials denied the military was involved. But to most Mexicans it just offered further proof that drug traffickers run rampant in the border area in military-style vehicles, wearing uniforms and, in some cases, using military firepower....

Political opposites aligned against Bush wiretaps

Larry Diamond, a Democrat and a Hoover Institution senior fellow, went to Baghdad in 2004 as a consultant for the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority, believing strongly in the Bush administration's goal of building a democracy there. While critical of many aspects of the Iraq war, he has, he says, wholeheartedly supported President Bush's aggressive approach to the war on terror. Grover Norquist is one of the most influential conservative Republicans in Washington. His weekly "Wednesday Meeting" at his L Street office is a must for conservative strategists, and he has been called the "managing director of the hard-core right" by the liberal Nation magazine. Perhaps the country's leading anti-tax enthusiast, he is, like Diamond, a hawk in the war on terror. Despite coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum, they agree on one other major issue: that the Bush administration's program of domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency without obtaining court warrants has less to do with the war on terror than with threats to the nation's civil liberties. "My view on the terrorists is that we should find all of them and kill them," said Norquist. "But we should also protect our civil liberties, which the terrorists are trying to destroy." Diamond, whose academic specialty is the building of democracies, has taken his opposition one step further, joining a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union last week to halt the president's program....

A Founding Father on presidential powers

The press was barred from the 1787 Constitutional Convention so that the contentious delegates could speak freely. However, James Madison's notes on the debates are a valuable source for our founding origins as a nation. And, in the Federalist Papers, Madison — urging the new Americans to vote to ratify the proposed Constitution — wrote on an issue now being fiercely debated again: the extent of a president's powers. In this case, what George W. Bush claims are his "inherent" constitutional powers in the war on terrorism. The time has come for Madison to enter the present debate. In the Federalist No. 47, Madison said plainly: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." On Dec. 16 — on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" — Bruce Fein, former associate deputy attorney general in President Reagan's administration, and a continually challenging conservative constitutional scholar — explained why this continuing debate on the sweeping powers of "the unitary executive" is the most crucial of all controversies during the Bush presidency so far: "We must protect the Constitution," Fein said, "for those yet to be born — whether (the future) Congress or the White House is controlled by Republicans or Democrats. We need an aggressive fight against terrorism, but we can do it without compromising the Constitution ... If he (George W. Bush) insists he can do anything (against the Bill of Rights) in the war against terrorism, then he is indistinguishable from King George III." That led me to look again at the Declaration of Independence's list of "repeated injuries and usurpations" by King George III, headed by the charge: "He has refused his Assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."....

WHAT IF WIRETAPPING WORKS?

he revelation by The New York Times that the National Security Agency (NSA) is conducting a secret program of electronic surveillance outside the framework of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (fisa) has sparked a hot debate in the press and in the blogosphere. But there is something odd about the debate: It is aridly legal. Civil libertarians contend that the program is illegal, even unconstitutional; some want President Bush impeached for breaking the law. The administration and its defenders have responded that the program is perfectly legal; if it does violate fisa (the administration denies that it does), then, to that extent, the law is unconstitutional. This legal debate is complex, even esoteric. But, apart from a handful of not very impressive anecdotes (did the NSA program really prevent the Brooklyn Bridge from being destroyed by blowtorches?), there has been little discussion of the program's concrete value as a counterterrorism measure or of the inroads it has or has not made on liberty or privacy. Not only are these questions more important to most people than the legal questions; they are fundamental to those questions. Lawyers who are busily debating legality without first trying to assess the consequences of the program have put the cart before the horse. Law in the United States is not a Platonic abstraction but a flexible tool of social policy. In analyzing all but the simplest legal questions, one is well advised to begin by asking what social policies are at stake. Suppose the NSA program is vital to the nation's defense, and its impingements on civil liberties are slight. That would not prove the program's legality, because not every good thing is legal; law and policy are not perfectly aligned. But a conviction that the program had great merit would shape and hone the legal inquiry. We would search harder for grounds to affirm its legality, and, if our search were to fail, at least we would know how to change the law--or how to change the program to make it comply with the law--without destroying its effectiveness. Similarly, if the program's contribution to national security were negligible--as we learn, also from the Times, that some FBI personnel are indiscreetly whispering--and it is undermining our civil liberties, this would push the legal analysis in the opposite direction....

The Legal War On Terror

As it begins in earnest to publicly justify and defend its domestic surveillance program, the White House is couching the controversial initiative in military terms. So "electronic surveillance" now is referred to by Justice Department officials as "signals intelligence activities" and the program itself now is labeled as a "core military" function that acts as an "early-warning system" designed to prevent future terror attacks. Suspected terrorists, meanwhile, are "enemy forces" the warrantless surveillance of whom result from "tactical military decisions" necessary as "a fundamental tool of war." There is no great surprise in this. The best argument President George W. Bush has to support the National Security Agency's surveillance program is that it is a legal and reasonable exercise of his broad constitutional war powers. These powers, the White House asserts, trump any past Congressional effort to limit warrantless surveillance through the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act and any prospective judicial interference in the function. On the eve of Congressional hearings into the legality of the program, the executive branch, you might say, is putting the "war" back into the legal war on terrorism. Last Thursday, two days after two complaints were filed to stop the NSA program, and on the same day that Osama Bin Laden reintroduced himself onto the world scene with the release of a grainy audiotape threatening more violence in America, the Justice Department distributed a 42-page legal analysis and defense of the government's eavesdropping practice. The first time you read the "White Paper," you feel like it is describing a foreign country guided by an unfamiliar constitution. The second time you read the memo, you have plenty of questions, legal and otherwise, about many of the assertions it contains. The third time you read it, you wonder if the conservative Supreme Court won't, in the end, somehow recognize its breathtakingly broad view of executive power. As the Justice Department sees it, the president has the constitutional authority as commander in chief to wiretap anyone in the name of national security during a war. This constitutional authority "to protect the Nation from armed attack," the argument goes, was used to justify warrantless domestic surveillance by Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and was recognized by White House officials during the Carter administration, even as the FISA law was being enacted by Congress. "In exercising his constitutional powers," the Justice Department asserts, "the President has wide discretion, consistent with the Constitution, over the methods of gathering intelligence about the Nation's enemies in a time of armed conflict."....

NSA Accused of Psychologically Abusing Whistleblowers

Five current and former National Security Agency (NSA) employees have told Cybercast News Service that the agency frequently retaliates against whistleblowers by falsely labeling them "delusional," "paranoid" or "psychotic." The intimidation tactics are allegedly used to protect powerful superiors who might be incriminated by damaging information, the whistleblowers say. They also point to a climate of fear that now pervades the agency. Critics warn that because some employees blew the whistle on alleged foreign espionage and criminal activity, the "psychiatric abuse" and subsequent firings are undermining national security. A spokesman for the NSA declined to comment about the allegations contained in this report. The accusations of "Soviet-era tactics" are being made by former NSA intelligence analysts and action officers Russell D. Tice, Diane T. Ring, Thomas G. Reinbold, and a former employee who spoke on condition of anonymity. The allegations have been corroborated by a current NSA officer, who also insisted on anonymity, agreeing only to be referenced as "Agent X." Tice, a former NSA intelligence analyst and action officer, first drew media attention in 2004 after the Pentagon investigated possible retaliation by the NSA against him. The controversy began in early 2001, when Tice reported that a co-worker at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) appeared to be engaged in espionage for China....

Wiretap defense invokes Lincoln, Roosevelt

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that President Bush was following in the tradition of such other wartime presidents as Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt when he ordered warrantless domestic wiretaps. Gonzales also reiterated Bush's contention that his order for the surveillance had been implicitly allowed by Congress shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when it authorized him to use force against al Qaeda. Gonzales, as White House counsel, helped create the Bush-ordered program in 2001 that allows the secret National Security Agency to intercept calls and e-mails within the country that intelligence officials believe are directed to terrorists abroad. The order allows the spying to occur without a warrant from a special court. The attorney general's speech before Georgetown University law students -- some of whom silently protested Gonzales' appearance by turning their backs as he spoke -- was part of an administration campaign to sway public opinion in favor of the spying program. The effort included the release last week of a Justice Department report laying out the legal justification for the program, a Monday speech by the country's No. 2 intelligence official and numerous mentions by the president at his appearances....


In 2002, Justice Department said eavesdropping law working well

A July 2002 Justice Department statement to a Senate committee appears to contradict several key arguments that the Bush administration is making to defend its eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without court warrants. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law governing such operations, was working well, the department said in 2002. A "significant review" would be needed to determine whether FISA's legal requirements for obtaining warrants should be loosened because they hampered counterterrorism efforts, the department said then. President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other top officials now argue that warrantless eavesdropping is necessary in part because complying with the FISA law is too burdensome and impedes the government's ability to rapidly track communications between suspected terrorists. In its 2002 statement, the Justice Department said it opposed a legislative proposal to change FISA to make it easier to obtain warrants that would allow the super-secret National Security Agency to listen in on communications involving non-U.S. citizens inside the United States. Today, senior U.S. officials complain that FISA prevents them from doing that. James A. Baker, the Justice Department's top lawyer on intelligence policy, made the statement before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 31, 2002. He was laying out the department's position on an amendment to FISA proposed by Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio. The committee rejected DeWine's proposal, leaving FISA intact. So while Congress chose not to weaken FISA in 2002, today Bush and his allies contend that Congress implicitly gave Bush the authority to evade FISA's requirements when it authorized him to use force in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks three days after they occurred - a contention that many lawmakers reject....

“Oogling My Googling”

But there is a larger issue here worth considering. It has become something of an article of faith that technology is always on the side of liberty. In the old Soviet Union, the Xerox machines were chained up at night in order to prevent unauthorized photocopying. (Of course, they weren't called "Xerox machines" but "Glorious People's Photostatic Replicator" or "Trabant Machine" or some such.) The Soviet authorities recognized that information technology was the enemy of totalitarianism. Freedom of the photocopier was not only freedom of the press, but freedom to communicate, which lies at the core of all liberty. The Internet age has seemingly confirmed this. In China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other oppressive regimes, Internet usage is severely policed because the free-flow of information is seen as a threat to the regime. But even if the liberating power of technology is an iron law of history in the long run, that doesn't mean that in the short run technology can't be on the side of oppression — and the short run can last a lifetime. After all, the Soviets used technology to oppress their people for 70 years. Technology brings change and requires adaptation — by the state and the individual alike. It's not obvious how we should view Google searches, for example. Are they like letters or diary entries or something else entirely? It's revealing that no sane person would condone local libraries giving stacks of hardcore porn to little kids. But some Internet voluptuaries see nothing wrong with pretty much the exact same thing over the web....

Make Speeding Impossible?

Now, however, the technology exists for a great leap forward -- or backward, depending on your point of view. The Canadians are testing out a system that pairs onboard Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology with a digital speed limit map. It works very much like the in-car GPS navigation systems that have become so common on late model cars -- but with a twist. Instead of helping you find a destination, the system prevents you from driving any faster than the posted speed limit of the road you happen to be on. As in a conventional GPS-equipped car or truck, the system knows what road you happen to be on, as well as the direction you're traveling. And the information is continuously updating as you move. But in addition to this, the system also acquires information about the speed limit on each road, as you drive. Once your vehicle reaches that limit, the car's computer makes it increasingly difficult to go any faster. And unlike in years past, when a clumsy mechanical device would be used to physically prevent the gas pedal from being depressed all the way (or the carburetor's throttle plates opened fully), vehicle speed can be easily (and much more thoroughly) limited by a modern car's onboard electronics. Indeed, a few new cars -- mostly powerful sports cars -- already have what's known as a "valet key" that's used to significantly cut back available power at the owner's discretion. But in this case, the cutting back would be controlled by Big Momma -- and "I can't drive 55" a toothless battle cry from a bygone era. Ten vehicles equipped with this technology are currently being tested in the Ottawa area; if the trial is "successful," a wider series of tests is planned -- and it's a sure bet the entire thing will eventually be the object of a very strong-armed push to make it mandatory equipment in every new car. It will be sold as a "safety" measure -- just like the 55-mph National Maximum Speed Limit was in this country....