December 30, 2005 - You have to be exceedingly naïve to believe that America’s enemies had not imagined that their telephone, wire, and radio transmissions were being intercepted. Any reasonable person would have believed that the United States was reading Al Qaeda’s mail long before the New York Times broke the story of the Presidents illicit directive. So now the Justice Department is investigating the leak of the President’s direction to skip getting an FISA warrant before or within 72 hours after eavesdropping.

Back in the era when Richard M. Nixon occupied the White House and Richard B. Cheney was Don Rumsfield’s assistant at Nixon’s OEO those of us who were opposed to the war answered the telephone with, “Hello. Can you hear me, J. Edgar?” We assumed that the government was engaged in illegal wiretapping. We were right. We assumed that the government was engaged in illegal entries. We were right. Now, thirty years later, are we to believe that a sophisticated enemy planning guerilla attacks on United States interests here and abroad is less suspicious than we were three decades ago?

The capability of NSA to intercept and monitor communications with technology we can only imagine has long been known to the public. Are we to assume that Al Qaeda had their ears stopped when that information was put out by the government? Are we to assume that before the New York Times published an article revealing that the President had directed that FISA be ignored Al Qaeda operatives had no idea that their communications could be intercepted? To ask these questions is to answer them.

Then what did the leak tell Al Qaeda that it did not know or strongly suspect? The answer is nothing. Remember that the niceties of American civil liberties are not present in the cultures that have bred the terrorist network. It is reasonable to assume that the Al Qaeda operatives whose communications were being intercepted do not have an understanding of the nuances of American search and seizure law. They would have no idea whether or not the President had obtained secret FISA warrants. The only harm that has been done is to the President’s political standing with the American people. The only persons aggrieved by the information contained in the leak are the American People who learned that their President simply ignores the law when he does not like it.

The President is reacting to Americans learning that their President thinks that he is above the law in the same manner as did Richard Cheney’s old boss. He has called in the Plumbers. The only difference is that these Plumbers have set up shop at the Department of Justice instead of the West Wing basement.