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星期六， 2008年6月7日

由 查理野人 | 一位高级顾问对参议员 约翰McCain 先生说。 McCain相信布什总统的节目窃听没有保证是合法的，看上去带领他进入更加接近的对准线以布什政府法律队推挤的行政当局的详尽的理论的位置。

在全国回顾在网上张贴的信件这个星期，顾问，道格拉斯Holtz-Eakin，说先生。 McCain相信宪法给了先生。 布什力量批准 国家安全代办处 监测美国人’国际没有保证的电话和电子邮件，尽管要求监视法院失察的1978联邦法规。

先生。 McCain相信“管理和telecoms需要为多数人，除了A.C.L.U.的行动不道歉。 并且法庭律师，了解由于对9月的攻击是宪法和适当的。 11日2001年”，先生。 Holtz-Eakin写了。

并且，如果先生。 McCain被选举先生总统。 Holtz-Eakin增加了，他将做他可能防止恐怖分子攻击的一切， “包括请求telecoms适当的协助收集智力反对外国威胁对美国如由Article批准II宪法”。

虽然先生的一位发言人。 McCain，根据推定的共和党总统被提名人，被否认参议员的景色在监视和执行权转移了，法定专家说与声明先生对比的信件。 McCain早先做了关于总统力量极限。

在一次采访关于他的意图在执行权极限与波士顿地球六个月前，先生。 McCain强烈建议，如果他成为了下个总司令，他会自认被强制服从法规制约什么他在国家安全事态做了。

先生。 McCain被要求他不管联邦法规，是否相信总统在美国土壤有宪法力量举办监视为国家安全目的，不用保证。

他回复了： “有一些区域，法规不申请，例如在国外通信监视。 Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is.”

Following up, the interviewer asked whether Mr. McCain was saying a statute trumped a president’s powers as commander in chief when it came to a surveillance law. “I don’t think the president has the right to disobey any law,” Mr. McCain replied.

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that while the language used by Mr. McCain in his answers six months ago was imprecise, the recent statement by Mr. Holtz-Eakin “seems to contradict precisely what he said earlier.”

Mr. McCain’s position, as outlined by Mr. Holtz-Eakin, was criticized by the campaign of his presumptive Democratic opponent in the presidential election, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. Greg Craig, an Obama campaign adviser, said Wednesday that anyone reading Mr. McCain’s answers to The Globe and the more recent statement would be “totally confused” about “what Senator McCain thinks about what the Constitution means and what President Bush did.”

“American voters deserve to know which side of this flip-flop he’s on today, and what he would do as president,” Mr. Craig said in a phone interview.

Tucker Bounds, a McCain campaign spokesman, said Mr. McCain’s position on surveillance laws and executive power “has not changed.”

“John McCain has been an unequivocal advocate of pursuing the radicals and extremists who seek to attack Americans,” Mr. Bounds wrote in an e-mail message, adding that Mr. McCain’s “votes and positions have been completely consistent and any suggestion otherwise is a distortion of his clear record.”

Asked whether the views Mr. Holtz-Eakin imputed to Mr. McCain were inaccurate, Mr. Bounds did not repudiate the statement. But late Thursday Mr. Bounds called and said, “to the extent that the comments of members of our staff are misinterpreted, they shouldn’t be read into as anything otherwise.”

Neither Mr. McCain nor Mr. Holtz-Eakin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office who primarily advises the campaign on economic issues, was available for comment, Mr. Bounds said.

Mr. McCain has long distanced himself from the Bush administration on legal issues involving detention and interrogation in the fight against terrorism, an approach that has sometimes aroused suspicion among conservative supporters of the Bush administration.

But more recently, as Mr. McCain has worked to consolidate his party’s base, he has taken several positions that have won him praise from his former critics while drawing fire from Democrats.

In February, for example, Mr. McCain voted against limiting the Central Intelligence Agency to the techniques approved in the Army Field Manual on Interrogation, which complies with the Geneva Conventions. Mr. McCain said the C.I.A. needed the flexibility to use other techniques so long as it did not abuse detainees.

He also voted for legislation that would free telecommunications companies from lawsuits alleging that they illegally allowed the N.S.A. to eavesdrop on their customers’ phone calls and e-mail without a warrant. The legislation would also essentially legalize a form of surveillance without warrants going forward.

But Mr. McCain had previously stopped short of endorsing the view that Mr. Bush’s program of surveillance without warrants was lawful all along because a president’s wartime powers can trump statutory limits.

Andrew C. McCarthy, a National Review columnist who has defended the administration’s legal theories, wrote that Mr. Holtz-Eakin’s statement “implicitly shows Senator McCain’s thinking has changed as time has gone on and he has educated himself on this issue.”

And Glenn Greenwald, a Salon columnist and critic of the Bush administration’s legal claims, wrote that the statement was a “complete reversal” by Mr. McCain, accusing the candidate of seeking “to shore up the support of right-wing extremists.”

The reaction to Mr. Holtz-Eakin’s statement is the latest link in a chain of disputes over Mr. McCain’s positions on surveillance over the past two weeks.

On May 23, the McCain campaign sent a volunteer lawyer, Chuck Fish, to be the candidate’s surrogate at a conference on computer policy. Mr. Fish spoke at a panel discussion on whether phone and Internet companies should be granted immunity from lawsuits for having helped Mr. Bush’s surveillance program.

Mr. Fish suggested that Mr. McCain wanted to impose conditions — like Congressional hearings — that would ensure that such “forgiveness” would not signal that the telecoms should feel free to disregard communications privacy laws in the future if a president tells them to.

After Wired magazine wrote about Mr. Fish’s remarks on its blog, raising the question of whether Mr. McCain’s position had become more skeptical about immunity, the McCain campaign put out a statement saying that Mr. Fish was mistaken. Mr. McCain supported ending the lawsuits without conditions and his position had not changed, the campaign said.

On May 29, The Washington Post quoted Mr. Holtz-Eakin as saying that Mr. McCain did not want the telecoms “put into this position again” and that “there must be clear guidelines for their participation and sufficient vetting” in any future situation.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin’s comments in turn drew fire from Mr. McCarthy. In a blog posting on the National Review Web site, he demanded to know whether Mr. McCain believes the Constitution authorizes a president to lawfully go “arguably beyond what is prescribed in a statute” during a national security crisis.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin laid out Mr. McCain’s position on the president’s claimed constitutional powers to bypass surveillance laws in a letter to Mr. McCarthy, who this week called the statement “extremely significant” and said it “marks a welcome evolution on the senator’s thinking about executive power.”

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at 12:40 am and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights 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.

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