Warrantless wiretapping: two of Michigan’s congressional delegation in the mix

Spencer Ackerman at our sister site, The Washington Independent, wrote about Keith Olbermann’s Wednesday evening Countdown program on MSNBC, featuring guest Russell Tice; Tice is one of a few government whistleblowers who revealed the existence of the government’s warrantless domestic wiretapping programs. Tice attempted to disclose to government officials these unconstitutional intelligence gathering activities; while doing so, he was warned by the National Security Administration about revealing any classified information, although one might read the NSA’s letter as a veiled threat.

Sending letters to the chairs of the House and Senate Intelligence, Appropriations and Services Committees, Tice persevered, asking to meet with the committees to pass on his concerns while ensuring no classified information was disclosed. Tice appeared again on KO’s show Thursday night to elaborate further, with support from journalist James Risen who said he’d been spied on by the government (video below).

So what’s all this mean to Michiganders? You might be interested to know that two of the members of Congress that Tice contacted about the unconstitutional spying are from Michigan. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (MI-02) and Sen. Carl Levin both received letters from Tice. Hoekstra was the chair of the House Intelligence Committee at the time, and Levin was the ranking minority member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Hoekstra’s response, if slow, was the more obvious of the two in the media — but also to be expected as chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Levin, as part of a bi-partisan group of senators, wrote a letter to the chairs of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees three days after the New York Times broke news on Dec. 16, 2005, about the warrantless wiretapping; the letter asked the committees to investigate this ostensibly illegal activity. Hoekstra admonished the intelligence community months later — in a letter to the White House in May of 2006 about several intelligence matters — for failing to notify Congress that there were programs that did not meet constitutional standards. And this appears to be the extent of Hoekstra’s response, at least from a public perspective.

Some might wonder why Hoekstra didn’t take a more aggressive stance on such obvious assaults against the Fourth Amendment. But then some might also wonder why Hoekstra’s office hasn’t had particularly good answers about Hoekstra’s meetings with certain iffy characters, at least one of which has had two CIA “burn notices” issued against them as highly suspect intelligence sources.  Perhaps a lack of transparency might be a pattern with this potential Michigan gubernatorial candidate?

Wednesday night’s appearance of Russell Tice on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown (via Firedoglake):

Tice’s Thursday night appearance on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown (via Firedoglake):