A Dark and Dangerous Secret
It's a little like President Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
The fourteen months of massive bombing was certainly no secret to the Cambodians and the Vietcong on whose heads the bombs were falling. It was an illegal act that was being kept secret from the US Congress and the American people.
And so it is with President Bush's secret wiretapping of US citizens. The president would have you believe the secrecy was necessary to keep suspected terrorists unaware that we were eavesdropping on their chatter. But that's nonsense — surely they know they are targets of all forms of surveillance.
The secret was that the wiretaps were (and still are) being authorized by the president without the required warrant. And that little piece of information was intended to be kept not from the suspects, but from the American people.
But why? If, as the president insists:
It is legal to do so. I swore to uphold the laws. Legal authority is derived from the constitution.
Then why the big secret?
Possibly, it's because someone at the White House remembers that the first impeachment resolution brought against Richard Nixon was not about obstruction of justice or anything to do with Watergate. It was about the secret bombing of Cambodia.
