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Andrew Mason

January, 2007

Policy Tree is a reference guide for U.S. policy discourse. Policy Tree helps us navigate our complex media landscape by presenting the range of political perspectives as a logical flowchart. 1
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Featured Debate:

The Bush administration broke the law by secretly authorizing wiretaps on U.S. citizens.

"I think [President Bush] probably did [break the law], and I think almost every senator of both parties thinks he probably did... The President doesn't get to decide to make up the laws, and to start wiretapping people just because he thinks it's a good idea. ...I think he may have broken the law."²

Background:

"Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials."

"Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications."

"The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches."¹