Dead Republic Blues: Bush Illegal Wiretapping Scheme Gets Darker and Dirtier

Chris Floyd , Empire Burlesque

The latest revelations in the Bush Administration's long-unfolding, ever-growing illegal wiretapping scandal carry with them a multiple string. For not only do they bear upon Bush's vast system of lawless espionage aimed at the American people, but they also underscore the perversion of the Justice Department into an armed enforcer of partisan thuggery and confirm that that the unprecedented authoritarian powers that Bush has seized have nothing to do with their ostensible justification, the 9/11 attacks, but were part of a pre-planned evisceration of the constitutional republic that began in the first days of his ill-gotten presidency...

What's more, the revelations give strong indications that nothing about the domestic spying program will change under a Democratic administration – because the heart of the scheme was in fact created under Bush's predecessor, who bears the same last name as Bush's likely successor.

The new data has emerged from the case of Joseph Nacchio, the former CEO of the telecommunications giant, Qwest. Nacchio was prosecuted by the Justice Department and convicted of insider trading -- after he turned down a request from the National Security Agency to give the Bush Administration unrestricted access to the telephone records of Qwest customers without a warrant. According to recently unsealed filings in Nacchio's appeal of the conviction, the Bush Administration first pressured him to sign up with the warrantless surveillance program in February 2001 -- seven months before the 9/11 attacks that "changed everything" and ushered in a new era of acquiescence to draconian measures.

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