World News | Forum | UK News | USA News | Global News | Political News | Sci-Tech News | War & Terrorism News | Sports News | Multimedia | Set Homepage

Translate:

Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

By Nicole Belle

Download (Windows) Download (Quicktime)

BILL MOYERS: Remember “The Lives of Others” - the movie that won this year’s Academy Award for best foreign language film….a story of life under East Germany’s secret police. The critic Roger Ebert said: “The movie is relevant today, as our government ignores habeas corpus, practices secret torture, and asks for the right to wiretap and eavesdrop on its citizens. Such tactics, he said, did not save East Germany; they destroyed it, by making it a country its most loyal citizens could no longer believe in.” You want to say it couldn’t happen here but we’ve been close before. During the cold war with the Soviet Union and then the hot war in Vietnam, a secret government mushroomed in this country. …(transcript)

In 1975 the Select Senate Committee headed by Sen Frank Church (D-ID) began looking into allegations first reported by Seymour Hersh in the NYT and found that the CIA, NSA, FBI and other federal agencies had been involved in everything from plots to assassinate foreign leaders, illegal storage of poisons and biological warfare agents including anthrax, warrantless opening of mail and wiretapping and other intel-gathering on US citizens, and misuse of the IRS , just to name a few of the abuses by the Executive Branch they discovered. One of the ways Congress responded to try and restore checks and balances was by passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, which established a secret court to oversee all domestic wiretapping activity. Bill Moyers looks at the undoing of Congress’ checks and balances put in place following the Church Committee hearings and the unprecedented expansion of Executive authority in the wake of 9-11. You can watch the entire episode online here.

Have Your Say: ‘When President does it, it’s not illegal’
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report here.

RSS TrackBack URL

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Related News

• Bush Derails Attempts To End Illegal Wiretaps
• Court Ruling that NSA Wiretapping is Illegal Drives Emergency Push for New Spy Powers, Newsweek Reports
• NSA Surveillance Program Violated Congressional Notification Law
• ‘No need’ for a UK Guantanamo
• U.S. opposes release of court rulings on wiretaps

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 10:49 am and is filed under Political News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Loading ...

ADVERTISEMENTS

SITE MAPS

7/7 Activism News Afghanistan Alternative-Energy Art Barack Obama BBC Big-Brother Bilderberg Biometrics Bush CCTV Censorship CIA Climate-Change Cover-Up Cults Culture Database-State David-Hicks David-Ray-Griffin Debt Democrats Demos Drugs Education Entertainment Environmental News EU False-Flag FBI Fraud Free-Speech Freemasons G8 Global-News Global-News Globalization Guantanamo Health-News History ID-Cards Internet Iran Iraq Israel John McCain Law Marches Media News MI5 MI6 Microsoft Military MoD Money Music NASA Neocons New World Order NSA Oil Pakistan Podcast Police-State Political News Propaganda Reviews RFID RINF Rumsfeld Science Science & Technology News Secrecy Security Slavery Space Sports Spy Spying Stephen-Lendman Technology Terrorism Tony-Blair Torture TV UK-News UN USA- USA-News Video Voting war War & Terrorism News Warfare Web Development News White-House Wolfowitz World_News Yahoo
2003 - 2005 Archives | 2005 - 2007 Archives | 2007 - 2008 Archives | Current Archives | Past Version