Two Civil Rights Groups Suing Administration Over NSA Spying

Two major civil rights groups, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), are filing lawsuits today against the Bush administration over the extra-legal warrantless NSA eavesdropping.

Today's New York Times describes the rationale of the suits, which are completely separate cases:

(T)o determine whether the operation was used to monitor 10 defense lawyers, journalists, scholars, political activists and other Americans with ties to the Middle East...

Both groups are seeking to have the courts order an immediate end to the program, which the groups say is illegal and unconstitutional. The Bush administration has strongly defended the legality and necessity of the surveillance program, and officials said the Justice Department would probably vigorously oppose the lawsuits on national security grounds.

It can be safely assumed that actual court cases will be a better tool to uncover details about the program than the congressional (whitewashes) investigations that are currently planned.

The lawsuits seek to answer one of the major questions surrounding the eavesdropping program: has it been used solely to single out the international phone calls and e-mail messages of people with known links to Al Qaeda, as President Bush and his most senior advisers have maintained, or has it been abused in ways that civil rights advocates say could hark back to the political spying abuses of the 1960's and 70's?

"There's almost a feeling of deja vu with this program," said James Bamford, an author and journalist who is one of five individual plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit who say they suspect that the program may have been used to monitor their international communications.

Several of the plaintiffs have fairly strong causes of action or standing to seek relief from the court:

The lawsuit to be filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights has as plaintiffs four lawyers at the center and a legal assistant there who work on terrorism-related cases at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and overseas, which often involves international e-mail messages and phone calls. Similarly, the plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit include five Americans who work in international policy and terrorism, along with the A.C.L.U. and three other advocacy groups.

"We don't have any direct evidence" that the plaintiffs were monitored by the security agency, said Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the A.C.L.U. "But the plaintiffs have a well-founded belief that they may have been monitored, and there's a real chilling effect in the fear that they can no longer have confidential discussions with clients or sources without the possibility that the N.S.A. is listening."

One of the plantiffs seems so unlikely that I had to blink my eyes to make sure I was reading the name right:

Also named as plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit (is) the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has written in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Will wonders never cease? Or does the devious Hitchens have another agenda?

Or maybe he has decided to become a leftist again. Such a move would be much more meritorious than carrying water for the administration.