License to lie


This is so bizarre that even I find it a little hard (well, not really that hard) to believe. Americablog reports that the Bush Administration has authorized the phone companies to lie about their involvement in the domestic spying program:

I'd read yesterday on another blog (can't find the link now), and just had it confirmed by a second source today, that's there's a memo out there from the Bush administration, an "Executive Memorandum" dated May 5th of this year, that grants the phone companies participating in the NSA domestic spying scandal the right to publicly deny their involvement.

If they did this, it's a logical extension of the Bush Doctrine that the law does not apply to all things Bush. Nonetheless, quite bizarre. After all, the phone companies have a perfect right to lie about their involvement without a Dispensation from Little Brother. It's only a crime if you're under oath, after all. Presumably, though, it would also sanction perjury at a Congressional hearing, but is there any corporate lawyer who would believe that even Bush's Supreme Court would go along with granting George Bush the power of prospective remission of crimes? Even the Pope hasn't done that since the Crusades. Yet, as Americablog points out, there is circumstantial evidence for something of this sort:

All I have to say about that is, isn't it interesting that it took BellSouth and Verizon days and days and days to finally put out a "denial" of their involvement in this program (and AT&T has YET to deny their involvement)? Why wouldn't you deny it immediately if it weren't true? Not to mention, all three companies were contacted by USA Today BEFORE the story ran, and they refused to deny their involvement even then. That means it's been quite a long time that they knew about this story, but only now they're claiming they weren't involved.

If this is true then it means that the Bush Administration has taken the position that it can prospectively authorize criminal acts. If it's not true, it's a sad state of affairs that it is so easy to believe that it might be true.
Posted: Thursday - May 18, 2006 at 08:56 PM          

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