Porter Goss, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, has announced his resignation today. This is quite a surprise, as Goss’ tenure was quite short, and there was no real warning of this resignation.

The CIA has badly needed a house cleaning for some time, and it had been looking like Goss was doing exactly that. Since there was no warning for this resignation, it’s hard to understand why Goss chose to leave when he did – or whether the choice was really his or not.

I’m not sure what this means, but I’ll be following the story as it develops and provide more information as it comes.

UPDATE: The moonbat brigade is trotting out some story about Goss and hookers, which seems about as likely to me as Kos dating Anne Coulter. More realistically, John Podhoretz thinks this is a turf struggle between Goss and Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. That seems likely to me.

Hot Air notes that Goss’ resignation seems to be a major surprise to the Pentagon, although there were rumors about friction between Goss and Negroponte as well.

Remember, it could also be something entirely different and personal – a health issue with Mr. Goss, a family member, etc. Not everything in Washington involves some deep, sinister secret.

Mitch Berg notes that there are calls to end the Federal Emergency Management Agency and replace it with a new, more independent agency.

It made a certain amount of sense for FEMA to be part of the Department of Homeland Security. The whole point of the DHS was to facilitate information sharing between agencies and coordinate efforts better – and there’s no doubt that FEMA would have a role in the aftermath of any future terrorist attack. However, it was clear that after Katrina, FEMA was no longer capable of doing its job in its current form.

If we’re going to replace FEMA, we need to do a better job. The federal government needs to support local first responders first. First responders need to have the tools and skills to deal with disaster situations, and the federal government can and should have a supporting role, but too often the federal bureaucracy hinders, rather than helps, disaster recovery. We can’t federalize everything – and the best way to save lives is to have the people whose jobs it is to protect a specific area be training and supplied with everything they need to do their jobs.

Unfortunately, we all know that government tends to inject itself everywhere, whether it is wise or not – which is why the replacement agency for FEMA will undoubtedly have twice the budget, four times the waste, and ten times the bureaucracy.

Debra Burlingame, the sister of the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 pilot Chuck Burlingame, has a strongly-worded piece in The Wall Street Journal on the issue of national security. With Harry Reid boasting of having “killed” the PATRIOT Act, and the NSA wiretapping story still being flogged, Burlingame speaks out strongly on behalf of taking strong measures to prevent future terrorist attacks:

NBC News aired an “exclusive” story in 2004 that dramatically recounted how al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, the San Diego terrorists who would later hijack American Airlines flight 77 and fly it into the Pentagon, received more than a dozen calls from an al Qaeda “switchboard” inside Yemen where al-Mihdhar’s brother-in-law lived. The house received calls from Osama Bin Laden and relayed them to operatives around the world. Senior correspondent Lisa Myers told the shocking story of how, “The NSA had the actual phone number in the United States that the switchboard was calling, but didn’t deploy that equipment, fearing it would be accused of domestic spying.” Back then, the NBC script didn’t describe it as “spying on Americans.” Instead, it was called one of the “missed opportunities that could have saved 3,000 lives.”

Of course, the NSA wiretapping program was designed to allow the NSA to collect just that kind of information. For years we’ve heard constant criticism about how the government failed us before September 11, 2001 – much of it warranted. Now that has been revealed that the Justice Department and the NSA did something to rectify those problems, many of the same people are crying foul.

We now have the ability to put remote control cameras on the surface of Mars. Why should we allow enemies to annihilate us simply because we lack the clarity or resolve to strike a reasonable balance between a healthy skepticism of government power and the need to take proactive measures to protect ourselves from such threats? The mantra of civil-liberties hard-liners is to “question authority”–even when it is coming to our rescue–then blame that same authority when, hamstrung by civil liberties laws, it fails to save us. The old laws that would prevent FBI agents from stopping the next al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were built on the bedrock of a 35-year history of dark, defeating mistrust. More Americans should not die because the peace-at-any-cost fringe and antigovernment paranoids still fighting the ghost of Nixon hate George Bush more than they fear al Qaeda. Ask the American people what they want. They will say that they want the commander in chief to use all reasonable means to catch the people who are trying to rain terror on our cities. Those who cite the soaring principle of individual liberty do not appear to appreciate that our enemies are not seeking to destroy individuals, but whole populations.

Ms. Burlingame is right – the American people will have their say on this issue, which is why the Democratic insistence on beating this particular dead horse will ultimately prove self-destructive. There’s a difference between a reasonable skepticism of government and succumbing to paranoia – and now we have the Democratic Party repeating the worst talking points of the radical militia movement they called “un-American” a decade ago. Ten years ago, someone with a bumper sticker that read “I love my country but fear my government” would have been treated as a Ted McVeigh-sympathizing radical right-wing kook – and not entirely without justification. Today, that seems to be the mantra of the left wing.

The notion that the Democrats still live in September 10 America is as good a way to put it as any. Many in the Democratic Party really do see George W. Bush as a greater threat to them than Osama bin Laden. So long as that attitude remains, the Democrats can never be a serious party on issues of national security. This NSA brouhaha is just a further example of the fundamental disconnect between the Democratic intelligentsia and the American people.

We live in a world where a group of shadowy and ruthless murderers are perfectly willing to blend in with our civilian population and launch mass-casualty attacks. They have the avowed goal of attacking us with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. They do not follow the rules of warfare, they do not provide us with clear warning, and they have struck us already. The threat is not exaggerated, it is not hypothetical, and it is far more prescient than some elaborate fantasy about American citizens being rounded up into camps. The paranoia of the left is quite obvious when one considers how many people are talking about some sinister conspiracy to silence dissent from TV news programs broadcasting nationwide while they hawk their books and movies. To people who have survived real totalitarianism, from Vietnamese boat people to Iraqi expatriates such rhetoric is not only idiotic, but insulting to their real suffering.

Burlingame is right to point out the utter hypocrisy and political grandstanding at play here. We need to realistically and firmly deal with the threat of terrorism – and that means giving law enforcement the tools necessary to find and disrupt terrorist cells in the United States. If the Democrats were truly serious about this program, they would be proposing realistic alternatives and systems that would allow the NSA to monitor al-Qaeda’s communications without sacrificing civil liberties – and the current FISA system has already been judged inadequate to that task by the 9/11 Commission However, this isn’t about terrorism, this is about politics, and once more the Democratic Party is playing games with our national security.

GWU law professor Orin Kerr has more on the legal and Constitutional issues surrounding the NSA wiretaps. He comes to the following conclusions:

My answer is pretty tentative, but here it goes: Although it hinges somewhat on technical details we don’t know, it seems that the program was probably constitutional but probably violated the federal law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. My answer is extra-cautious for two reasons. First, there is some wiggle room in FISA, depending on technical details we don’t know of how the surveillance was done. Second, there is at least a colorable argument — if, I think in the end, an unpersuasive one — that the surveillance was authorized by the Authorization to Use Miltary Force as construed in the Hamdi opinion.

Kerr argues that the intercepts were probably not in violation of the Fourth Amendment as there’s an already well-established principle that the US has a right to search objects coming across the border. It’s not a great stretch to apply that to data coming across the US borders as well – and indeed, there’s significant caselaw that would support that assertion. The Courts have always interpreted the President’s executive authority fairly broadly on similar issues, and it seems likely that a Fourth Amendment challenge wouldn’t survive much scrutiny by the courts.

On the issue of the legality of this program under FISA, Kerr believes that the NSA intercepts are in violation of FISA statutes:

Putting aside the AUMF and statutory exceptions for now, let’s consider whether the NSA surveillance program violates the basic prohibition of 50 U.S.C. 1809 — intentionally conducting electronic surveillance. I think the answer is probably yes. If the surveillance tapped wire communications under 1801(f)(2), the case is pretty clear: the surveillance involved people in the U.S. and survillance in the U.S., and that’s all that is required. If the surveillance involved radio communications (satellite communications, I’m guessing), that’s a bit trickier. There is at least a little wiggle room in Section 1801(f)(1). For example, you could say that the border search exception eliminates Fourth Amendment protection, such that there was no reasonable expectation of privacy and therefore there would be no warrant required in an analogous criminal case. In that case, the tapping of the radio communication wouldn’t count as “electronic surveillance.” I don’t think we know the details of how the communucations were obtained, so I think it’s fair to say that the surveillance probably violated the basic proibition but it at least arguably depends on some of the technical details we don’t know.

The problem here is that we don’t – nor should we, know all the details of the program. The essential problem here is that these are communications which are occurring across the national border but involve US residents. There’s a large legal grey area where that is concerned. Adding to these issues is that the Administration is using the post-September 11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force as a justification for the program. Already the Courts have determined in the Hamdi decision that this gives the Administration wide latitude in dealing with the terrorist threat. However, Kerr also finds this argument unpersuasive – if the AUMF authorized such surveillance, why was there a need to modify FISA guidelines as part of the PATRIOT Act?

The Administration does have some questions to answer, and it seems almost certain that the Courts will end up being involved in this case. However, past precedent argues for broad executive latitude in gathering national intelligence.

There’s nothing untoward or inappropriate about seeing this program as a potential threat to civil liberties. However, the fact is that there was significant legal review of this program, both through the FISA Court and Congress. As James Robbins writes in National Review:

The attorney general must report to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 30 days prior to the surveillance, except in cases of emergency, when he must report immediately. He must furthermore “fully inform” those committees on a semiannual basis thereafter, per section 1808 subsection (a). He must also send a copy of the surveillance authorization under seal to the so-called FISA Court as established in section 1803; not for a warrant, but to remain under seal unless certification is necessary under future court actions from aggrieved parties under section 1806 (f).

While these searches do not require a warrant they are not free from reporting requirements under FISA. Members of Congress, including Harry Reid, Tom Daschle, and Nancy Pelosi were briefed on this program. The grandstanding of the Democrats in Congress only shows how shamelessly partisan they’ve become. Now that this information has leaked, terrorists will begin to alter their patterns of communications to avoid making transoceanic calls so that they can avoid surveillance. Valuable intelligence will have been lost, and our national security has been irreparably harmed. Those responsible for this leak deserve to be found and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The Executive’s powers during wartime are not unlimited, but there’s nothing particularly shocking about the fact that someone who is making calls from within the United States to a foreign individual tied to terrorism might have their communications intercepted. As Congress itself determined, the old FISA procedures failed us before 9/11. We are in a state of war against a shadowy terrorist network who has absolutely no compunction against committing acts of mass murder on US soil – that requires the government to take difficult steps to deal with the problem. These wiretaps are narrowly focused – the average citizen isn’t going to spend their time speaking with an al-Qaeda agent in Lahore. This isn’t “domestic spying” in a conventional sense, this is allowing the NSA the ability to gather intelligence and do their job.

Critics say that we didn’t do enough to put the pieces together to stop the September 11 attacks – and they were right. However, it seems as those same critics now want to forbid agencies such as the NSA from having the authority to put those pieces together at all. As the 9/11 Commission determined as recently as last year:

Many agents in the field told us that although there is now less hesitancy in seeking approval for electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, the application process nonetheless continues to be long and slow. Requests for such approvals are overwhelming the ability of the system to process them and to conduct the surveillance.

We can’t afford those kind of bottlenecks, especially when we have someone who is a significantly high-priority target to afford such surveillance. The use of these wiretaps is not designed for domestic intelligence, they are narrowly targeted, and they were conducted with the knowledge of Congress and the FISA Court. In short, this is exactly what the government should be doing in a time of war against a group like al-Qaeda. Programs like ECHELON, which have existed for years, have done much the same thing under less dire circumstances. If we are to combat terrorism in an effective manner, we have to be willing to give law enforcement and the military a reasonable set of tools to work with. I would rather have a narrowly-targeted program like this than a widely-targeted system based on key phrases like ECHELON.

What is truly disgusting is how The New York Times is cynically harming national security in order to pimp a book. The revelation of this program has undoubtedly harmed our ability to collect valuable intelligence on al-Qaeda’s operations here in the US. Apparently to some, embarrassing the Bush Administration is far more important than protecting ourselves from terrorism.

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein has a massive roundup of links and Glenn Reynolds notes that warrentless searches were frequently used in the previous Administration – and for purposes far less crucial than fighting al-Qaeda.

I’m in general agreement with those who think that there’s a deeper technological reason why FISA is too limiting in these cases – I think that the NSA was using some kind of data-mining operation that couldn’t distinguish the targets of surveillance within the 72-hour timeframe included in FISA.

And of course, rather than coming up with constructive solutions, expect the Democrats to do nothing more than grandstand and preen for the cameras – because politics always seems to trump national security with them.

UPDATE: Ars Technica has a fascinating piece that argues that these wiretaps may be part of a voice-recognition system. I have a feeling it is something like that, which is why everyone’s being so coy about the details of the program.