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Presidential PowerIs Bush overstepping his executive authority?

President Bush has been busy defending the adminis-

tration’s electronic-surveillance program against critics

who say it unconstitutionally violates citizens’ civil

liberties. Bush says the surveillance is vital to the

nation’s anti-terrorism efforts, but critics say the president has over-

stepped his powers and infringed on Congress’ constitutional au-

thority, inviting opposition at home and criticism abroad. Other

questions about the president’s possible abuse of presidential

power involve the administration’s use of military tribunals and

its alleged use of torture, as well as its refusal to support a con-

gressional inquiry into the response to Hurricane Katrina. What’s

needed, critics say, is Supreme Court action limiting the adminis-

tration’s exercise of executive power. But administration supporters

reject claims that Bush has gone further than previous wartime

presidents and stress that as commander in chief he has the power

to do everything he deems necessary to protect the country.

I

N

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D

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THE ISSUES ......................171

BACKGROUND ..................177

CHRONOLOGY ..................179

AT ISSUE ..........................185

CURRENT SITUATION ..........186

OUTLOOK ........................187

BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................190

THE NEXT STEP ................191

THISREPORT

President Bush speaks to the press at the NationalSecurity Agency in early January after discussing his

controversial electronic-surveillance program with personnel at the top-secret agency.

CQResearcherPublished by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc.

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The CQ Researcher • Feb. 24, 2006 • www.thecqresearcher.comVolume 16, Number 8 • Pages 169-192

RECIPIENT OF SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS AWARD FOR

EXCELLENCE ◆ AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION SILVER GAVEL AWARD

170 The CQ Researcher

THE ISSUES

171 • Has President Bush over-stepped his authority in thewar against terrorism?• Has President Bush infringed on Congress’constitutional powers?• Should the courts limitthe Bush administration’sclaims of executive power?

BACKGROUND

177 ‘The Executive Power’Article II of the Constitutionvests executive power “in aPresident.”

178 Imperial Presidency?The president’s power in-creased in the 20th centuryuntil it provoked a backlash.

182 ‘Beleaguered’ PresidentsVietnam and the Watergatescandal caused problems forlate 20th-century presidents.

183 Post-9/11 PresidentGeorge W. Bush came tooffice determined to re-store the lost powers ofthe presidency.

CURRENT SITUATION

186 Detainee CasesSuspected terrorists cap-tured in Afghanistan chal-lenge Bush’s use of mili-tary tribunals.

186 Surveillance ProgramCongress may avoid a de-tailed inquiry into Bush’selectronic-surveillance anti-terrorism program.

OUTLOOK

187 Presidential Weakness?The president’s power islimited, according to a land-mark study.

SIDEBARS AND GRAPHICS

172 Americans Split Over Warrantless WiretappingA slight majority opposessurveillance of U.S. citizens.

176 How Bush Defends ‘Roving Wiretaps’He promised court orderswould be sought.

179 ChronologyKey events since 1933.

180 New Anti-Torture Law QuestionedExperts doubt a new measurewill be effective.

184 Youngstown Decision Tests President’s PowersPresident Truman’s 1952seizure of steel mills sparkedSupreme Court opinion.

185 At IssueIs the administration’s electronic-surveillance program legal?

FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

189 For More InformationOrganizations to contact.

190 BibliographySelected sources used.

191 The Next StepAdditional articles.

191 Citing the CQ ResearcherSample bibliography formats.

PRESIDENTIAL POWER

Cover: President Bush speaks to the press at the National Security Agency, in Fort Meade,Md., in early January after discussing his controversial electronic-surveillance-program withpersonnel at the top-secret agency. (Getty Images/Paul J. Richards)

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Presidential Power

THE ISSUEST he impressive resume

of Rep. Heather Wil-son of New Mexico

notes her service as an AirForce officer and NationalSecurity Council aide, not tomention the doctorate sheholds in international rela-tions. Those credentials pro-pelled her into a lead rolein shaping House Republi-cans’ messages after the Sept.11, 2001, terrorist attacksand during the Iraq war. Pres-ident Bush repaid Wilson forsupporting the administra-tion’s policies with a cam-paign visit in October 2002to boost her hard-fought bidfor re-election to a third term.

Wilson found herself ques-tioning the president’s poli-cies, however, after The NewYork Times reported in De-cember 2005 that Bush hadsecretly authorized a programfor intercepting telephonecalls and e-mail traffic be-tween suspected members of the alQaeda terrorist network overseas andpeople within the United States. TheTimes’ story said the surveillance pro-gram — carried out by the super-se-cret National Security Agency (NSA)— appeared to violate the 1978 For-eign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA),which requires judicial approval forany domestic wiretapping. *

Wilson was reportedly concernedenough to share her doubts with Rep.Jane Harman, a California Democratwho serves with her on the House In-telligence Committee. With the ad-ministration continuing to defend theprogram, Wilson went public with herdoubts on Feb. 7, telling The Timesshe had “serious concerns” about theprogram and calling for the Intelli-gence Committee to conduct a“painstaking” review. 1

Wilson’s break exemplified growingGOP skepticism over Bush’s claim thathe has the power to institute the sur-veillance program with or without con-gressional authorization. “You thinkyou’re right,” Senate Judiciary Commit-tee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., toldAttorney General Alberto Gonzales

during a daylong hearing onFeb. 6, “but a lot of peoplethink you’re wrong.”

The rumblings of discon-tent finally got the adminis-tration to move away fromwhat critics called its high-handed dealings with Congressover the program. Bush andother officials had been in-sisting the administration hadadequately consulted Congressby holding briefings on theprogram for the so-called Gangof Eight — the bipartisan lead-ers of Congress and the chair-men and ranking Democratson the House and Senate In-telligence committees. Broad-er disclosure would have riskedleaks, Vice President DickCheney said on Feb. 7. 2

After Wilson’s statements,however, the administrationagreed to give detailed brief-ings to all Intelligence com-mittee members.

The surveillance contro-versy epitomizes what manyobservers say has been Bush’sextraordinarily expansive view

of presidential power. “Bush has beenmore assertive of presidential prerog-atives than any president in Americanhistory,” says Michael A. Genovese, aprofessor of political science at LoyolaMarymount University in Los Angelesand author of an historical overviewof presidents from Washington throughClinton. “It’s the imperial presidencyon steroids.” 3

Democrats have pounced on thesurveillance program to buttress criti-cism of Bush for bypassing Congresson anti-terrorism policies and a rangeof other issues. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy,D-Vt., ranking Democrat on the Judi-ciary Committee, calls Bush “a presi-dent prone to unilateralism.” Bush isdrawing criticism from a variety of in-terest groups as well.

BY KENNETH JOST

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Critics say the use of military tribunals for detainees atthe U.S. Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,

reflects President Bush’s alleged abuse of presidentialpower, as do the administration’s alleged torture ofprisoners and its electronic-surveillance program.

* The surveillance program is widely describedas “domestic spying.” Administration officialssay the phrase is misleading because the pro-gram targets communications between some-one outside the United States who is suspect-ed of being a member or agent of al Qaedaor an affiliated terrorist organization and some-one in the United States. They prefer to callit the “terrorist surveillance program.”


“The president has advanced sweep-ing powers as commander in chiefthat I find totally unconvincing andtroublesome,” says Timothy Lynch, di-rector of the criminal-justice project atthe libertarian Cato Institute. “I do be-lieve that he has overstepped thebounds of his office in a number ofinstances.”

“The current surveillance of Ameri-cans is a chilling assertion of presi-dential power that has not been seensince the days of Richard Nixon,”

says Anthony Romero, executive di-rector of the American Civil LibertiesUnion (ACLU). President Nixon’sclaim of authority to conduct war-rantless domestic wiretapping wassoundly rejected by the U.S. SupremeCourt in a landmark 1972 decision,Romero noted at a Jan. 17 newsconference. 4 Romero spoke as heannounced the ACLU had filed suitin federal court in Michigan chal-lenging the legality of Bush’s sur-veillance program.

Administration critics cite other ev-idence of Bush’s expansive post-9/11view of presidential power. Theynote that he invoked the president’sauthority as commander in chief —established in Article II of the Con-stitution — to designate foreignersand U.S. citizens as “enemy combat-ants” and detain them for years with-out charging them with a crime andwith only limited opportunities to chal-lenge their confinements. The SupremeCourt dealt the administration a tem-porary setback in June 2004, laternegated by Congress, by requiringhearings or some form of judicial re-view for the detainees.

Bush also came under sharp criti-cism for a memo written by a JusticeDepartment lawyer in August 2002that argued the president could au-thorize torture in interrogating sus-pected terrorists. The White Housedisavowed the memo after it was dis-closed in June 2004. Despite evidenceof abuse of Iraqi prisoners and oth-ers, Bush and other officials contendthat U.S. policy prohibits torture orany other cruel, degrading or inhu-mane treatment of detainees. 5

Administration supporters rejectclaims that Bush has gone further thanprevious wartime presidents. “Earlierpresidents asserted much more sweep-ing authority in the name of the presi-dent’s power as commander in chief,”says Kris Kobach, a professor at theUniversity of Missouri School of Lawin Kansas City and former counselorto Bush’s first attorney general, JohnAshcroft. Kobach cites Franklin D.Roosevelt’s wiretapping during WorldWar II and Harry S Truman’s seizureof the nation’s steel mills during theKorean War — a move struck downby the Supreme Court as beyond thepresident’s powers. “President Bush’sactions appear minor by comparison,”Kobach says. (See sidebar, p. 184.)

But presidential scholar RichardPious, chairman of the Departmentof Political Science at Barnard College

PRESIDENTIAL POWER

Americans Split Over Warrantless Wiretapping

Polls indicate Americans are closely divided on the wisdom and the legality of the program of warrantless electronic surveillance that President Bush authorized after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The most recent poll — taken after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ Feb. 6 appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee — found a bare majority of those responding opposed to the program. An earlier poll by the same news organizations showed a bare majority in favor.

Source: CNN/USA Today/Gallup Polls; results are based on telephone interviews with 1,000 U.S. adults, ages 18 and older.

05

10152025

30%

Do you think the Bush administration was right or wrong in wiretapping these conversations without obtaining a court order?

Do you think George W. Bush — definitely broke the law, probably broke the law, probably did not break the law or definitely did not break the law when he authorized wiretapping of American citizens’ communications?

Jan. 6-8, 2006 (before Senate questioning of

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales)

Feb. 9-12, 2006 (after Senate questioning of

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales)Right

50%

Wrong 46%

4% No Opinion

Right 47%

Wrong 50%

3% No Opinion

Definitely broke the law

Probably broke the law

Probably did not break

the law

Definitely did not break

the law

No opinion

23%26% 24% 23%

3%


in New York City, says that even ifBush has followed other presidentsin claiming broad powers duringwartime, he has been “one of themost overbearing” of presidents inhis relations with Congress, criticsand subordinates. “There’s a deft way[of using power], and then there’s theBush way,” Pious says. “He’s been abull in a china shop.”

Bush entered the White House in2001 convinced that the presidencyhad been weakened since Nixon wasforced to resign in August 1974, fol-lowing the Watergate scandal. Thatview is held at least as strongly byCheney, who was chief of staff toNixon’s successor, Gerald R. Ford. 6

With the controversy over elec-tronic surveillance at a peak in mid-December, Cheney stoutly defendedthe administration’s record in trying torestore presidential power. “I believein a strong, robust executive authori-ty, and I think that the world we livein demands it,” Cheney told reporterstraveling with him on Air Force Twoon Dec. 20. In wartime, he added, thepresident “needs to have his consti-tutional authority unimpaired.” 7

Bush voiced similar views on Feb.10. “Sept. 11 changed the way I think,”Bush told GOP House lawmakers dur-ing a retreat in Cambridge, Md. “I toldthe people exactly what I felt at thetime, and I still feel it, and that is wemust do everything in our power toprotect the country.” 8

Critics, however, say Bush’s broadview of presidential powers is invit-ing opposition at home and criticismabroad. “When you disembody thepresident from the rule of law, youchange the very structure of govern-ment,” says Genovese. “You want toempower the Congress and the pres-ident to fight terror, but you don’twant to give them the store.”

As the debate over presidentialpower in the post-9/11 world contin-ues, here are some of the questionsbeing considered:

Has President Bush oversteppedhis authority in the war againstterrorism?

When reports surfaced in late April2004 that U.S. servicemembers hadmistreated Iraqi captives in Baghdad,President Bush quickly denounced theabuse. 9 But his comments wereclouded by disclosures in June of mem-oranda by government lawyers sug-gesting the president could authorizetorture even in the face of a con-gressional statute and internationaltreaties prohibiting such practices.

“Congress may no more regulatethe president’s ability to detain andinterrogate enemy combatants than itmay regulate his ability to directtroop movements on the battlefield,”a ranking Justice Department officialwrote. 10

Over the next 18 months, an in-dignant Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whowas tortured as a prisoner of war dur-ing the Vietnam conflict, led an ulti-mately successful effort in Congress towrite into law a specific prohibition oftorture or any “cruel, inhuman or de-grading” treatment of prisoners at thehands of U.S. servicemembers. AlthoughBush signed the measure on Dec. 30,2005, he included a “signing statement”that suggested he was not bound byit. “The executive branch shall con-strue [the law] in a manner consistentwith the constitutional authority of thepresident to supervise the unitary ex-ecutive branch and as commander inchief,” the statement read. 11 *

Throughout the controversy, admin-istration officials have depicted the dis-pute as largely theoretical, saying thatBush has restated official U.S. policyagainst the use of torture. And one ad-

ministration supporter suggests that Bush’ssigning statement carries little weight.“Signing statements have only the effectthat the courts choose to give them —which is minimal in almost all cases,”says the University of Missouri’s Kobach.

Still, Bush’s decision to risk furtherpublic and congressional criticism onthe detainee-treatment issue continueshis policy of claiming broad presiden-tial powers and resisting efforts to limitthe scope of his authority. Bush adopt-ed a similar posture in defending theelectronic-surveillance program after itwas disclosed in December. In a radioaddress the next day, Bush said he in-stituted the program under his au-thority as commander in chief and in-tended to continue it despite criticism.

“The American people expect meto do everything in my power underour laws and Constitution to protectthem and their civil liberties,” Bushsaid. “And that is exactly what I willcontinue to do, so long as I’m thepresident of the United States.” 12

Critics contend that Bush has gonebeyond his lawful powers and violat-ed both congressional laws and theConstitution not only with his electronic-surveillance program but also withother policies as well. The accusationsof presidential lawbreaking receivedhigh-profile attention in January fromthe man who lost the presidency toBush in 2000: former Vice President AlGore. Gore charged Bush with “break-ing the law repeatedly and insistently,”citing the electronic-surveillance pro-gram as the latest example.

“If the president has the inherentauthority to eavesdrop, imprison citi-zens on his own declaration, kidnapforeign citizens off the streets of othercountries and torture, then what can’the do?” Gore asked in a major speechin Washington on Jan. 16 cosponsoredby the liberal American ConstitutionSociety and the conservative-libertarianLiberty Coalition. He added: “A presi-dent who breaks the law is a threat tothe very structure of our government.”

* The unitary executive theory holds that underthe Constitution Congress cannot limit thepresident’s authority to control executive branchofficials. Some proponents of the theory sayit also gives the president powers unspecifiedin Article II. The Supreme Court has rejectedthe theory.


A Republican Party spokeswomandenigrated Gore’s speech as political-ly motivated. “Gore’s incessant needto insert himself in the headline of theday is almost as glaring as his lack ofunderstanding of the threats facingAmerica,” Republican National Com-mittee spokeswomanTracey Schmitt said in astatement. “While thepresident works to pro-tect Americans from ter-rorists, Democrats de-liver no solutions of theirown, only diatribesladen with inaccuraciesand anger.”

With the electronic-surveillance debatecontinuing, administra-tion officials are de-fending the practice onstatutory grounds and aswithin the president’s in-herent powers as com-mander in chief. Inlegal memoranda andin Gonzales’ testimonybefore the Senate Judi-ciary Committee, the Jus-tice Department claimsthat the Sept. 14, 2001,congressional resolutionauthorizing the use ofmilitary force against alQaeda or other terroristorganizations gives the president powerto conduct warrantless electronic sur-veillance against the enemy both out-side and within the United States.

Administration supporters echo thatargument while continuing to defendthe surveillance program as a naturalpart of the president’s war-making pow-ers. “It would be remarkable if ourpresident was not attempting to useall the forces available to him to in-tercept the enemy’s communications,”says Todd Gaziano, director of legaland judicial studies at the conserva-tive Heritage Foundation in Washing-ton. “When we’re at war, all of our

enemy communications should be in-tercepted if at all possible.”

Critics say the administration is wrongon both points. The argument that the2001 use-of-force resolution supersedesthe specific prohibition against domes-tic warrantless wiretapping is “laugh-

able,” says Geoffrey Stone, a law pro-fessor at the University of Chicago andauthor of a book on civil liberties inwartime. In a similar vein, Stone saysintelligence gathering is “not sufficientlyconnected” to the use of force to beencompassed within the president’scommander-in-chief powers.

Polls show the public closely di-vided on the issues. The Los AngelesTimes and Bloomberg News in lateJanuary found a narrow plurality ofrespondents — 49 percent to 45 per-cent — supporting the program. Alater poll by CNN-USA Today-Gallup— taken in February after Gonzales’

appearance — found a bare majorityopposed to the program: 50 percentto 47 percent. In a second question,49 percent of those responding thoughtBush may have violated the law inauthorizing the program while 47 per-cent believed he had not. 13

Has President Bush in-fringed on Congress’constitutional powers?

After 14 coal miners diedin two separate accidents inWest Virginia in January,the Senate Labor Appropri-ations Subcommittee calledin the head of the MineSafety and Health Adminis-tration (MSHA) to ask whatthe agency was doing toprevent future tragedies. Act-ing Administrator David Dyespent an hour on the wit-ness stand on Jan. 23 tellingthe senators that there wasmore safety enforcementthan ever before.

Once the questions wereover, Dye started to leave,saying that he could notstay to answer follow-upsafter testimony from otherwitnesses. “There’s 15,000mines in the United States,and we’ve got some reallypressing matters,” Dye said.

With dripping sarcasm, subcommitteeChairman Specter told Dye that the sen-ators also had “other pressing matters”— pointing to the planned hearings onthe NSA surveillance program as one ex-ample. “So we don’t think we’re im-posing too much to keep you here foranother hour,” Specter said. Undeterred,Dye departed, leaving aides behind tofield any other questions.

As slights go, it was a small one —but nonetheless indicative of what manyobservers see as the Bush administra-tion’s disdain for Congress as a sup-posedly coequal branch of government.“Bush has been more successful than

PRESIDENTIAL POWER

Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., has questioned the president’sprogram for intercepting telephone calls and e-mail traffic

between suspected terrorists overseas and people within the United States.

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any president I’ve seen in asserting pres-idential powers and in giving Congressthe back of his hand,” says NormanOrnstein, a resident scholar at the Amer-ican Enterprise Institute and a Congress-watcher for more than 40 years.

Among other examples, the WhiteHouse in January refused a request bya Senate committee investigating thegovernment’s response to HurricaneKatrina for presidential aides’ e-mailcorrespondence on the subject. Earlier,the administration had turned aside ef-forts by Senate Democrats during con-firmation hearings for Supreme Courtnominees John G. Roberts Jr. and SamuelA. Alito Jr. to obtain documents fromtheir time as Justice Department lawyersin the 1980s.

The debate over the electronic-surveillance program pitted the presi-dent against Congress in a higher-stakesconfrontation. From The Times’ initialdisclosure on Dec. 16, lawmakers inboth parties faulted the administrationfor giving Congress too little informa-tion about the program. Five membersof the Senate Intelligence Committee —including Republicans Chuck Hagel ofNebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine— signed a letter on Dec. 20 callingfor the panel to conduct “an immedi-ate inquiry” into the program.

Democrats were especially critical ofthe administration’s failure to brief thefull membership of the two Intelligencecommittees about the program. Theygained support for their critique in Jan-uary from the Congressional ResearchService (CRS), which said the limitedbriefings to House and Senate leadersviolated a broad disclosure requirementcontained in a 1991 law.

The law, an amendment to the Na-tional Security Act passed as part of the1991 intelligence authorization measure,required that the two congressional In-telligence committees be kept “fully andcurrently informed” of U.S. “intelligenceactivities.” Limited disclosures to the so-called Gang of Eight were allowed onlyfor “covert operations.” 14

The administration’s belated deci-sion in February to provide more de-tailed briefings to both Intelligencecommittees may have mooted the dis-closure issue. Earlier, however, CRSlawyers also voiced strong doubts aboutthe program’s legal basis. In a 44-pagememorandum, attorneys ElizabethBazan and Jennifer Elsea concludedthat courts had previously upheldCongress’ power to regulate intelli-gence gathering and were “unlikely”to find that Congress had expressly orimplicitly authorized the program.

Nevertheless, during his JudiciaryCommittee appearance AttorneyGeneral Gonzales rejected sugges-tions by senators in both parties forsteps to strengthen the legal basisfor the program. Specter suggestedthe administration present the pro-gram to the Foreign IntelligenceSurveillance Court — the specialcourt created to consider applica-tions for warrants under FISA. Sev-eral other senators seemed almostto plead with Gonzales to join insupporting legislation to authorizethe program. Gonzales said the ad-ministration would listen to ideasf rom Congress , but made nopromises.

The stirrings of resistance fromwithin GOP ranks to Bush’s positionrepresent a departure from the most-ly unified and nearly unquestioningsupport that Hill Republicans gave tothe White House during Bush’s firstterm. “Clearly, the executive branch isdoing whatever it can to maximize itsinfluence. That’s as natural as it canbe,” says Marc Hetherington, an as-sociate professor of political scienceat Vanderbilt University in Nashville.“What strikes me as interesting is howlittle Congress has done to stop it.”

Ornstein agrees. The reason, he says,is that from the start of his administra-tion, congressional Republicans haveseen their fate as “inextricably linked”to Bush’s. “They saw themselves as fieldsoldiers much more than they saw them-

selves as an independent, distinct branchof government,” Ornstein explains. “Theysaw oversight as something that couldembarrass the president — and there-fore did little to nothing.”

The rumblings of independence with-in GOP ranks, however, may remindBush of the risks of being too high-handed with Congress. “Maybe it’s short-sighted to be so blunt with the leg-islative branch,” says John Marini, anassociate professor of political scienceat the University of Nevada-Reno anda critic of what he called “the imper-ial Congress” that was under Democ-ratic control during the Reagan presi-dency in the 1980s.

“The legislative branch has morepower than any of the other branches,”Marini says. “Congress has the power toslap the president down at any time.The bulk of the power is in the legis-lature if it’s willing to use it.”

Should the courts limit the Bushadministration’s claims of execu-tive power?

Just after launching the war inAfghanistan, President Bush issuedan executive order on Nov. 13, 2001,allowing establishment of so-called“military commissions” to try sus-pected terrorists captured there orelsewhere. Critics questioned the legalbasis for the order, but Bush point-ed to Congress’ Sept. 14 use-of-forceresolution as giving him the author-ity needed to set up the tribunals.

After several years of legal skir-mishes, the Supreme Court agreed inNovember 2005 to hear a challengeto Bush’s order brought by SalimAhmed Hamdan, a one-time driver foral Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden anda detainee at Guantánamo since 2002.But now the Bush administration wantsthe court to dismiss Hamdan’s case,saying that Congress in December elim-inated the federal courts’ power tohear challenges by Guantánamo de-tainees except after final decisions intheir cases by the military tribunals.


McCain’s anti-torture legislationthat cleared Congress in Decemberincluded a provision — the so-called

Graham-Levin amendment — barringGuantánamo detainees from chal-lenging their detentions in federal court.

Instead, it provided for limited reviewof the tribunals’ final decisions by theD.C. Circuit.

PRESIDENTIAL POWER

I n April 2004, during the presidential campaign, PresidentBush was drumming up support for the USA Patriot Actbefore a law-enforcement group in Buffalo, N.Y.

Bush acknowledged controversy over the anti-terrorism law’scontroversial “roving wiretaps,” which allow government in-vestigators to listen in on conversations as targets move fromone cell phone to another.

But Bush promised the law did not affect constitutional safe-guards: “Now, by the way, any time you hear the United Statesgovernment talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap re-quires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. Whenwe’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking aboutgetting a court order before we do so.” 1

Bush failed to mention, however, that in 2001, just as Con-gress was shaping the Patriot Act, he had secretly authorizeda program of warrantless eavesdropping on telephone calls ande-mail traffic between people in the United States and mem-bers or supporters of the terrorist group al Qaeda overseas.Bush had approved the surveillance by the super-secret Na-tional Security Agency after receiving assurances from JusticeDepartment lawyers that the program was legal despite provi-sions in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) re-quiring a warrant for any domestic wiretaps.

Information about the surveillance program emerged onlyin December 2005, after The New York Times blazoned it acrossthe front page. The revelation provoked a debate on CapitolHill and around the country not only about the program butalso about the president’s legality in authorizing it. The Timessaid it had withheld the story for nearly a year at the admin-istration’s request, for national security reasons. 2

The White House quickly moved to defend the program. Bushrefused to confirm the existence of the program in a previouslyscheduled interview on Dec. 16 on PBS’ “NewsHour with JimLehrer.” The next day, however, Bush acknowledged the program,insisting it was “consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution.” 3

While continuing to shield most details of the program, Bushand other administration officials — notably, Vice PresidentDick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales — areunswervingly defending it. The legal defense — detailed in a42-page Justice Department memorandum — rests on both thepresident’s inherent constitutional powers as commander inchief and on the Authorization to Use Military Force approvedby Congress three days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 4

Intelligence gathering directed against an enemy is one ofthe “traditional and accepted incidents of force,” the memo ar-gues. On that basis, the president as commander in chief hasinherent power to use any intelligence methods — includingwiretaps, which Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D.

Roosevelt both authorized during the 20th century’s two worldwars. The use-of-force resolution “confirms and supplements”that power, the memo contends.

As for FISA, the Justice Department memo notes the act pro-hibits warrantless wiretaps unless authorized by a separate statute.It goes on to contend that the use-of-force resolution providesthat separate authorization. Even without that argument, the memosays, FISA should be interpreted narrowly to avoid a constitu-tional clash with the president’s powers as commander in chief.

Most of the legal scholars and experts weighing in on theissue — representing a range of ideological viewpoints — rejectthe administration’s ultimate conclusion, as does the nonpartisanCongressional Research Service. 5 Two main points seem tocommand wide agreement among the critics:

• That the 1978 FISA law validly limits whatever inherentpower the president may have exercised in the past togather intelligence on the enemy;

• That Congress’ broadly phrased authorization to use “allnecessary and appropriate force” against those responsiblefor the 9/11 attacks cannot be read to permit warrantlesswiretapping within the United States in violation of FISA.

In defending the administration’s position, Gonzales ran intoa buzz saw of criticism from Democrats and some Republicansin a daylong appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committeeon Feb. 6. The committee is now planning a second daylonghearing with supporters and opponents of the program.

Meanwhile, the administration is sending signals that it mightagree to legislation on the issue, which — if passed — couldeliminate some, though not all, of the legal arguments againstthe program.

1 For the full text of Bush’s remarks, see Weekly Compilation of PresidentialDocuments, April 26, 2004, pp. 638-645 (www.gpoaccess.gov/wcomp/). Forcoverage, see Steve Orr, “Bush Makes Case for Anti-Terror Act,” RochesterDemocrat and Chronicle, April 21, 2004, p. A1; Dan Herbeck, “Freedom vs.Security at Issue,” Buffalo News, April 21, 2004, p. A1.2 See James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers With-out Courts,” The New York Times, Dec. 16, 2005, p. A1. See also James Risen,State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (2006),pp. 39-60.3 For the text of the Dec. 17 address, see Weekly Compilation of Presi-dential Documents, Dec. 26, 2005, pp. 1880-1882. Bush was also questionedat length about the program in a news conference on Dec. 19. Ibid., pp.1885-1896.4 U.S. Deparment of Justice, “Legal Authorities Supporting the Activities ofthe National Security Agency Described by the President,” Jan. 19, 2006(www.usdoj.gov/opa/whitepaperonnsalegalauthorities.pdf).5 See Congressional Research Service, “Presidential Authority to ConductWarrantless Electronic Surveillance to Gather Foreign Intelligence Informa-tion,” Jan. 5, 2006; critical commentary can be found in op-ed articles inmany newspapers, on the Web site www.findlaw.com, and on various in-terest group Web sites, including the American Civil Liberties Union’s(www.aclu.org/nsaspying).

How Bush Defends ‘Roving Wiretaps’


“Congress made clear that the feder-al courts no longer have jurisdiction overactions filed on behalf of Guantánamodetainees,” the government argues in amotion filed with the high court in Ham-dan’s case on Jan. 12. The governmentfiled a similar motion urging the U.S.Court of Appeals for the District of Co-lumbia to throw out two pending casesbrought on behalf of about 60 otherGuantánamo detainees. 15

Hamdan’s lawyer, Georgetown Uni-versity Law Center Professor NealKatyal, argues that Bush’s order cre-ating the tribunals established “a newform of military jurisdiction” withoutcongressional authority and in viola-tion of the Geneva Conventions. Dis-missing the case, he writes in responseto the government motion, would meanthat most broad challenges to the tri-bunals “could never be brought at all.”

Administration supporters, in fact,want to limit any review of the de-tainees’ cases. “The idea that the mil-itary ought to be spending its timegoing through case by case present-ing detailed evidence is ridiculous,”says Richard Samp, senior attorney atthe conservative Washington LegalFoundation, who has filed briefs sup-porting the government in the SupremeCourt and D.C. Circuit cases.

Lawyers for the detainees counterthat many of them are in fact inno-cent of any terrorism charge and that,in any event, they deserve a fair hear-ing. “The idea of justice is not to letpeople go. It is to let these peoplehave a hearing,” says Bill Goodman,legal director for the New York-basedCenter for Constitutional Rights, whichbrought the major detainee cases.

The cases have given Bush’s criticstheir best opportunity so far to test thepresident’s powers in court. The SupremeCourt in June 2004 rejected the admin-istration’s broad efforts to deny or se-verely limit suspected terrorists’ abilityto challenge their detentions in court.In one decision, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, thecourt upheld the president’s authority

to detain U.S. citizens as enemy com-batants but required that they be given“a meaningful opportunity to contest thefactual basis for the detention before aneutral decisionmaker.” In a second rul-ing, Rasul v. Bush, the court held thatfederal courts have jurisdiction overhabeas corpus challenges filed by aliensheld at Guantánamo. 16

The administration moved to min-imize the impact of the rulings. Inthe citizen enemy-combatant case,the government released YaserHamdi in October 2004 on the con-dition that he renounce his U.S. cit-izenship and relocate to Saudi Ara-bia, where he held dual citizenship.Later, the government transferred asecond U.S. citizen held as an enemycombatant, Jose Padilla, from a navalbrig to a federal jail in January 2006after obtaining an indictment againsthim for aiding terrorist activityabroad. Padilla is now awaiting trialin Miami while asking the high courtto rule his previous three-year de-tention without charges unlawful. 17

Meanwhile, the Defense Depart-ment is devising rules for CombatantStatus Review Tribunals to be held fordetainees at Guantánamo, but the rulesin some ways limit detainees’ proce-dural rights. At the same time, the gov-ernment wants the federal courts inWashington — where the Guantánamocases all have been consolidated — ei-ther to postpone action or to rule infavor of the legality of the tribunalsand their procedures.

The D.C. Circuit handed the ad-ministration a major victory on July 15,2005, by upholding the president’spower under the use-of-force resolu-tion to create the tribunals and reject-ing other challenges to their proce-dures. Congress appeared to buttressthe administration’s stance with theGraham-Levin amendment. However,the amendment sponsors differ onwhether it applies to the pending cases.Republican Lindsey Graham of SouthCarolina says it does, while Democrat

Carl Levin of Michigan says it does not.The issue turns partly on a close read-ing of a somewhat complex statute.But Hamdan’s lawyers argue that ap-plying the law retroactively wouldamount to “the extraordinary step ofstripping the federal courts — and [theSupreme Court] in particular — of ju-risdiction over seminal pending cases.”

Congress intended that exact result,Samp says. “Now that Congress hastold the courts that they shouldn’t getinvolved, I hope the courts will final-ly take the hint,” he says. In response,Goodman contends that the lawamounts to an unconstitutional sus-pension of habeas corpus and — evenif valid — applies only to future cases,not those already pending.

BACKGROUND‘The Executive Power’

T he framers of the Constitution pro-vided in Article II that “the ex-

ecutive power” of the new nationalgovernment “shall be vested in a Pres-ident of the United States of Ameri-ca.” Some of the president’s powerswere specified, but the list was not aslong or as inclusive as the “enumer-ated” powers of Congress in Article I.

The meaning of the text and theintention of the framers have been de-bated through history up to the pre-sent day. Over time, the presidencyhas gained power. But each presidenthas had to establish his own poweranew in the face of opposition or re-sistance from other power centers: Con-gress, the courts, the federal bureau-cracy and public opinion. 18

The Constitutional Convention metin 1787 with a consensus that thenew government needed a strongerexecutive than was provided in the


Articles of Confederation. Neverthe-less, Article II is the “poorest draft-ed” part of the Constitution, accord-ing to historian Forrest McDonald, anemeritus professor at the Universityof Alabama. Delegates turned to lay-ing out the president’s powers onlyafter devising the Electoral Collegesystem for the election of the presi-dent and rejecting the strong minori-ty viewpoint for a “plural” chief ex-ecutive. With time running out, theframers left the president’s powers “am-biguous and undecided,” McDonaldsays. For example, the article dividesthe power of appointment betweenthe Senate and the president but saysnothing about removing an officer.(Alexander Hamilton, who supporteda strong chief executive, nonethelessbelieved the Senate had to consent.)Still, two provisions in particularpoint toward a strong executive: thedesignation of the president as com-mander in chief and the broad dutyto “take care that the laws be faith-fully executed.”

Despite its ambiguities, Article IIgave the president opportunities to actif he took them. George Washington(1789-1797) did. He established theprecedents of firing Cabinet officers,vetoing legislation on constitutionalgrounds and controlling foreign poli-cy. Among pre-Civil War presidents,several others stretched the office’spowers beyond Article II’s stated terms.Despite doubts about his own au-thority, Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809)completed the Louisiana Purchase uni-laterally, choosing speed over consti-tutional niceties.

More boldly, Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) declared the president — notCongress — to be “the direct repre-sentative” of the American people. Hesuccessively defied the Supreme Court(by refusing to help enforce a contro-versial decision), Congress (by vetoingrenewal of the national bank) and theSouthern states (by rejecting their powerto nullify acts of Congress). James K.

Polk (1845-1849) followed his mentorJackson’s example by stretching thepresident’s power — most notably, byprovoking the war with Mexico thatexpanded the country’s borders to thePacific.

In his effort to save the Union, Abra-ham Lincoln (1861-1865) construed thepresident’s power more broadly thananyone before or perhaps since, ac-cording to political scientist Genovese.Newly inaugurated and with Congressnot in session, Lincoln responded tothe Southern states’ secession and thefiring on Fort Sumter by commencingmilitary action, calling for new troops,declaring a blockade of Southern portsand suspending habeas corpus. He actedunilaterally again in issuing the Eman-cipation Proclamation. But McDonaldsays Lincoln also allowed Congress tohelp direct military operations and soughtafter-the-fact legislative support for hisdecision to free the slaves. And despiteChief Justice Roger Taney’s ruling tothe contrary, Lincoln always believedhe had followed the law in suspend-ing habeas corpus.

The strong presidents had their crit-ics. Jackson’s opponents labeled him“King Andrew,” Lincoln’s called him a“dictator.”

Through the 19th century, howev-er, Congress was far and away morepowerful than the president. Presidentsonly sparingly proposed legislation. Theytangled with Congress over spendingand with the Senate over appoint-ments. Among post-Civil War presidents,only Grover Cleveland (1885-1889, 1893-1897) stood up to Congress — and heonly with the negative power of theveto. As the young scholar WoodrowWilson wrote in 1885, Congress was“unquestionably the predominant andcontrolling force” in national affairs. 19

Imperial Presidency?

T he president’s power increased inthe 20th century as the national

government itself grew more power-ful, playing a larger role in domesticsocial and economic policies and act-ing more assertively in world affairs.Presidents assumed a major role in ini-tiating legislation for Congress to con-sider and became figures of interna-tional importance as the United Statesemerged as the world’s strongest na-tion, both economically and militarily.Yet even successful presidents stum-bled by considering their powers moresweeping than they actually were. Andthe growth of presidential power halt-ed with the backlash in the late 1960sand early ’70s against what historianArthur Schlesinger Jr. lastingly labeled“the imperial presidency.” 20

The modern presidency began tak-ing shape under William McKinley (1897-1901), who used his experience as aformer senator to gather legislative powerinto the White House and led the Unit-ed States into its first overseas conflict:the Spanish-American War. After McKin-ley’s assassination, Theodore Roosevelt(1901-1909) moved more boldly athome and abroad, presenting an ambi-tious domestic legislative agenda and adetermination — in political scientistGenovese’s phrasing — to “dominate”the world stage. Most significantly, Roo-sevelt personalized the presidency asnever before. He viewed himself as “thesteward of the people” and his officeas a “bully pulpit” from which he couldshape public opinion.

Wilson (1913-1921) likewise became— in McDonald’s words — the na-tion’s “chief legislator” at home and acommanding figure abroad. But hispresidency ended with the Senate’s re-jection of the Versailles Treaty, due inpart to Wilson’s refusal to compromisewith opponents.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945)combined all these strands, accordingto McDonald: chief legislator, nationalsymbol, world leader — and man ona white horse. Elected with a man-date to lift the nation out of the Great

PRESIDENTIAL POWER

Continued on p. 180


ChronologyBefore 1900Congress is generally the domi-nant branch of the government.

•

20th CenturyPresidents become more power-ful with advent of modern com-munications and U.S. emergenceas world power.

1933-1945Franklin D. Roosevelt takes officewith mandate to lift U.S. out ofGreat Depression; Congress passeshis “New Deal” economic-recoveryprogram but rebuffs his 1937 ef-fort to “pack” Supreme Court.

1951States ratify 22nd Amendment, limit-ing future presidents to two terms.

1952Supreme Court says President HarryS Truman exceeded his authority inseizing steel mills during Korean War.

1963After assassination of President JohnF. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnsonwins passage of ambitious agenda.

1972Supreme Court says PresidentRichard M. Nixon cannot orderwarrantless wiretapping in domestic-security cases.

1973War Powers Act requires Congress’approval before U.S. forces aresent into combat.

1974Congressional Budget and Impound-ment Control Act limits president’sauthority to withhold spending ap-proved by Congress. . . . Supreme

Court orders Nixon to turn overtapes of Watergate-related conversa-tions; evidence of Nixon’s role incover-up forces him to resign.

1978Foreign Intelligence SurveillanceAct (FISA) requires judicial warrantfrom special court for foreign-intel-ligence gathering inside U.S. . . .Congress requires appointment ofindependent counsel to investigatealleged wrongdoing by president.

•

1980s Ronald Reaganbecomes first two-term presidentsince Eisenhower.

1986-1987Iran-contra scandal weakens Reagan.

•

1990s Bill Clinton isfirst Democratic president toserve two full terms since FDR.

1990Congress approves PresidentGeorge H. W. Bush’s request thatU.S. lead U.N. coalition in PersianGulf War against Iraq.

1997Supreme Court rules a presidentcan be sued for unofficial actions.

1998Clinton’s sexual liaison with WhiteHouse intern is revealed; House inDecember impeaches Clinton forperjury and obstruction; after Senatetrial, Clinton is acquitted in Febru-ary 1999.

1999Congress allows independent-counselact to expire.

2000-PresentPresident Bush moves tostrengthen executive powers.

2001President George W. Bush quicklymoves to reassert executive pre-rogatives; after 9/11 terrorist at-tacks Congress passes Authoriza-tion to Use Military Forceresolution aimed at al Qaeda, thegroup blamed for attacks, andUSA Patriot Act. . . . Bush createsmilitary tribunals to try enemycombatants captured inAfghanistan.

2002At Bush’s request, Congress autho-rizes U.S. invasion of Iraq. . . .Justice Department memo claimspresident has power to authorizetorture of detainees; memo is dis-avowed when disclosed in 2004.

2004Supreme Court backs president’sauthority to hold “enemy combat-ant” but says U.S. citizens must begiven hearing, and aliens can usehabeas corpus to challenge deten-tion. . . . Bush re-elected.

2005Bush is said to have authorizedsecret electronic surveillance ofphone calls, e-mails between sus-pected terrorists overseas and per-sons in the U.S.; Bush, others de-fend program, despite criticism thatit is illegal. . . . Detainee Treat-ment Act bars torture or abusivetreatment of detainees, limits legalchallenges to confinement.

2006White House signals open mind onpossible legislation to authorize war-rantless surveillance program. . . .Supreme Court due to hear chal-lenge to military tribunals.


Depression, he wrote the most am-bitious legislative agenda in U.S. his-tory — known as the New Deal —and got it enacted within 100 days.His radio “fireside chats” established

the model of personal communica-tion between the president and thepeople. He led the nation and theworld in defeating German Nazismin Europe and Japanese aggressionin the Pacific.

But FDR also stumbled — most no-tably when Congress rejected his 1937plan to “pack” the Supreme Court.And his legacy was clouded by thetwo-term constitutional amendment rat-ified six years after his death and the

PRESIDENTIAL POWER

Continued from p. 178

Reports that the CIA secretly imprisons foreigners in coun-tries that might condone torture have raised questions aboutwhether President Bush has overstepped his authority and

violated international laws in his war against terrorism.If the U.S. president can “kidnap foreign citizens off the

streets of other countries and torture, then what can’t he do?”asked former Vice President Al Gore in a Jan. 16 speech out-lining concerns about the expansion of executive power dur-ing the Bush presidency. 1

And experts doubt that anti-torture measures passed by Con-gress in December — authored by former Navy pilot and Viet-nam prisoner of war Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — will halt thepractice.

President Bush neither confirms nor denies the existence of se-cret CIA prisons or that the United States transfers foreign citizensto other countries to be interrogated. However, he told reportersin November that the United States is at war with an enemy “thatlurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again. Andso, you bet, we’ll aggressively pursue them, but we’ll do so underthe law.” But he quickly added, “We do not torture.” 2

According to the press reports, after the 9/11 terrorist attacksthe CIA initiated a covert anti-terrorism program involving so-calledextraordinary rendition, in which the agency helps capture sus-pected terrorists abroad and transfers them to third countries wherethey are subjected to interrogation techniques that some lawyerssay violate anti-torture treaties. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., con-demned the practice as “an extrajudicial, secret process in whichthe CIA or some other U.S. government entity acts as prosecutor,judge and jury and without any due process may send a detaineeto any country in the world, including some of the planet’s mostnotorious human-rights abusers.” 3

Then in November The Washington Post disclosed that theCIA has been hiding and interrogating terrorist captives in se-cret prisons around the world, including in Eastern Europeandemocracies. 4 After the revelations touched off an uproar bothat home and in Europe, the detainees allegedly were movedto similar CIA facilities elsewhere, referred to as “black sites”in classified documents. 5

The European Union and human-rights organizations saythe practice may violate international and domestic laws, in-cluding the U.N. Convention against Torture and the EuropeanConvention on Human Rights. Forcibly detaining a person andthen refusing to acknowledge the detention or allow the per-son legal protection is called a “forced disappearance,” says

Human Rights Watch. “The U.S. has long condemned othercountries that engage in forced disappearances” and helpeddraft U.N. condemnations of such activities — with no excep-tions for national security, the group says. 6

The allegations about the renditions and secret prisons fur-ther damaged America’s reputation abroad, already severely tar-nished by the 2004 exposé of detainee abuse in U.S. militaryprisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. 7

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice tried to assure Europeanofficials last December that the U.N. convention applies to U.S.personnel “wherever they are, whether they are in the UnitedStates or outside of the United States.” 8

Despite the assurances, both the European Union’s Parliamentand the Council of Europe — the continent’s main human-rightsorganization — launched separate investigations into whether theCIA may have illegally transferred prisoners through Europeanairports. Now questions are being raised as to whether Europeangovernments may have cooperated secretly with the United States.On Feb. 20, 2006, German prosecutors announced they wereinvestigating whether Germany acted as a silent partner in theabduction of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Arab descentwho was mistaken for a terrorism suspect. El-Masri says he wasabducted while on vacation in Macedonia in 2003 and flown toan American prison in Afghanistan, where he was held andtortured for five months. 9

In December, amid new outrage over allegations that the ad-ministration had approved surveillance of U.S. citizens’ telephoneand e-mail communications, Congress began to push back againstBush’s controversial wartime tactics. Both chambers inserted lan-guage drafted by McCain into the 2006 Defense appropriationsand authorization bills prohibiting Americans from engaging in“cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of prisoners anywherein the world and restricting the U.S. military to interrogation tech-niques listed in the U.S. Army Field Manual.

“It’s an important first step, but it definitely hasn’t solved theproblem,” says Joanne Mariner, director of the counterterrorismprogram at Human Rights Watch. Questions still remain, accord-ing to her and others, as to how it will be enforced, exactlywhat the Army Field Manual — which is being revised — willsay, and who will define torture or cruel, inhuman and degrad-ing treatment for CIA personnel.

In addition, says Mariner, it addresses only the behavior ofU.S. personnel, so it will not specifically prevent the CIA from“outsourcing torture” to interrogators in other countries.

New Anti-Torture Law Questioned


repudiation decades later of his wartimeinternment of Japanese-Americans.

The Cold War’s ever-present threatof nuclear war focused attention andpower all the more on the president.Meanwhile, the advent of television mag-

nified the president’s ability to speakdirectly to the people. Yet each of thefirst three Cold War presidents — HarryS Truman (1945-1953), Dwight D.Eisenhower (1953-1961) and John F.Kennedy (1961-1963) — was political-

ly weakened by congressional opposi-tion. In addition, domestic- and national-security apparatuses were growingwithin the executive branch, largely outof public view and, to some extent, be-yond the president’s control.

Enforcement of the McCain amend-ment was complicated by the inclu-sion of another provision — writtenby Sens. Lindsey Graham, a South Car-olina Republican, and Democrat CarlLevin of Michigan — prohibiting the500-plus detainees at GuantánamoBay, Cuba, from challenging their de-tention or treatment in a U.S. court.

“If the McCain law demonstratesto the world that the United Statesreally opposes torture, the Graham-Levin amendment risks telling theworld the opposite,” said Tom Ma-linowski, Washington advocacy di-rector at Human Rights Watch. Thetreatment of Guantánamo Bay de-tainees will remain “shrouded in se-crecy, placing detainees at risk forfuture abuse.” 10

Robert K. Goldman, an AmericanUniversity law professor and former president of the Inter-Amer-ican Commission on Human Rights, agrees the McCain amend-ment has great symbolic value overseas. “It helps to clean up ourimage, which has been so battered around the world,” he said.But Scott L. Silliman, executive director of Duke Law School’sCenter on Law, Ethics and National Security, says the measure al-lows CIA and Justice Department lawyers to determine which in-terrogation techniques CIA and civilian interrogators can use. 11

And effective policing by those departments is unlikely, saidEugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Jus-tice. “You could have a wonderful McCain amendment, but ifthere’s no enforcement mechanism, it’s worthless or worse thanworthless because it would be an empty promise.” 12

Many experts agree enforcement appears doubtful. After hav-ing unsuccessfully tried to get Congress to exempt CIA oper-atives from McCain’s abuse ban, President Bush signed the twolaws reluctantly, saying on both occasions that he would en-force the provisions “in a manner consistent with the consti-tutional authority of the president to supervise the unitary ex-ecutive branch and as commander in chief.” Many read hisstatement as signaling his intention to disregard the law. 13

But McCain and Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., chairman of theSenate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement on Jan.

4, 2006, that they expect the president toabide by the law. “We believe the pres-ident understands Congress’s intent inpassing by very large majorities legisla-tion governing the treatment of detainees,”they said, and that Congress had specif-ically declined “to include a presidentialwaiver of the restrictions included in ourlegislation.” Further, they said, their com-mittee “intends through strict oversight tomonitor the administration’s implementa-tion of the new law.”

Meanwhile, the European Parliamentwas scheduled to begin hearings into thesecret prison allegations on Feb. 23. “Thefact that Europe is investigating this andnot the U.S. Congress is disappointing,”says Human Rights Watch’s Mariner.

— Kathy Koch

1 The speech is available at www.acslaw.org.2 Michael A. Fletcher, “Bush Defends CIA’s Clandestine Prisons; ‘We Do NotTorture,’ President Says,” The Washington Post, Nov. 8, 2005, p. A15.3 Randy Hall, “ ‘Outsourcing Torture’ Condemned by Dems, Activists,”CNSNews.com, March 11, 2005.4 Dana Priest, “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons; Debate Is GrowingWithin Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After9/11,” The Washington Post, Nov. 2, 2005, p. A1.5 Dana Priest, “Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor; Anti-Terror EffortContinues to Grow,” The Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2005, p. A1.6 “Questions and Answers: U.S. Detainees Disappeared into Secret Prisons:Illegal under Domestic and International Law,” Human Rights Watch Back-grounder, Dec. 9, 2005, http://hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/us1205/index.htm.7 For background, see Mary H. Cooper, “Privatizing the Military,” CQ Re-searcher, June 25, 2004, pp. 565-588.8 Glenn Kessler and Josh White, “Rice Seeks To Clarify Policy on Prison-ers; Cruel, Inhuman Tactics By U.S. Personnel Barred Overseas and atHome,” The Washington Post, Dec. 8, 2005, p. A1.9 Don Van Natta Jr., “Germany Weighs if It Played Role in Seizure by U.S.,”The New York Times, Feb. 21, 2006, p. A1.10 Quoted at http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/16/usdom12311.htm.11 Quoted in Seth Stern, “McCain’s Detainee Language May Give Non-Military Interrogators Leeway, Experts Say,” CQ Today, Dec. 18, 2005.12 Ibid.13 Quoted in John M. Donnelly, “Bush Signs Defense Authorization Bill,Repeats Reservations,” CQ Today, Jan. 9, 2006.

German citizen Khaled el-Masri, shownon TV, says he was illegally abducted,detained and tortured last year in a

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After Kennedy’s assassination, Lyn-don B. Johnson (1963-1969) took uphis predecessor’s mantle and used hisunequaled mastery of legislative skills topush through Congress a “Great Society”program that rivaled if not surpassedRoosevelt’s New Deal. After a landslideelection in 1964, however, his presi-dency crashed and burned in Vietnam.Johnson claimed congressional supportfor the war on the dubious authority ofthe controversial Gulf of Tonkin reso-lution. Despite his doubts about a pos-sible victory, he staved off defeat inVietnam to avoid being tagged “soft oncommunism” by the military or con-gressional Republicans. But by 1968 thewar was so unpopular he had to stepaside rather than seek re-election.

Richard M. Nixon (1969-1974) ex-panded presidential powers past the break-ing point. Campaigning, he claimed hehad a “secret plan” to end the war; inoffice, he continued the conflict and se-cretly expanded it into neighboring Cam-bodia with no congressional sanction.Domestically, he achieved many successesworking with a Democratic-controlledCongress, but he angered lawmakers byclaiming the authority to “impound” con-gressionally approved spending.

By the time the Watergate scandalforced Nixon to resign, the office wasbeing weakened. Congress passed theWar Powers Act of 1973 to control thepresident’s military powers; a year later,the Congressional Budget and Im-poundment Control Act rejected thepresident’s authority to withhold spend-ing. And the Supreme Court’s deci-sion in United States v. Nixon (1974)requiring him to turn over the Water-gate tapes to a special prosecutor putjudicial teeth behind the truism that— whatever his powers — the pres-ident was not above the law. 21

‘Beleaguered’ Presidents

P residents of the late 20th centurygoverned with the burdens creat-

ed by two national traumas. The Viet-nam War made the public wary of mil-itary conflicts abroad, while the Water-gate scandal left them cynical aboutgovernment and fearful of official abus-es. Three of the five presidents hadtenures cut short by the voters, whilethe two who served the constitutionalmaximum of two terms were beset byscandals exploited by Congresses con-trolled by the opposite party. The neo-conservative scholar Aaron Wildavskysaw the presidency as “beleaguered,”while political scientist Genovese sayseach successive president left the officeweaker than before. 22

The first two post-Watergate presi-dents, Gerald R. Ford (1974-1977) andJimmy Carter (1977-1981), used low-key styles to try to regain public trust.But Ford never recovered from his1974 decision to pardon Nixon for hisWatergate crimes, saving him from apossible trial. With Ford in the WhiteHouse, the Senate in 1976 respondedto a damning report on the CIA asboth incompetent and unaccountableby creating a new Select Committeeon Intelligence to strengthen congres-sional oversight of the agency. TheHouse created a counterpart commit-tee the next year.

Carter famously promised in his 1976campaign that he would never lie tothe American people, but his moral-istic persona proved ill-suited to na-tional leadership and to managing aCongress controlled by elders of hisown party. He also signed the 1978law providing for appointment of in-dependent counsels to investigate thepresident or high-ranking executive of-ficials — a statute that would cometo bedevil presidents of both parties.

Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) and BillClinton (1993-2001) both came to theWhite House with well-honed com-munications skills and well-developedpolicy views. Both had significant leg-islative successes in their first terms.Both were willing to commit U.S. troopsto overseas missions in less than clear-

cut threats to national security. Andboth won re-election to second termsonly to struggle to hold power in theface of political scandals.

Reagan faced a challenge to hiscredibility and character with the dis-closure in November 1986 that theUnited States had traded arms to Iranin exchange for American hostagesand used the illegal profits to funnelaid to the U.S-backed contras seekingto topple the leftist regime in Nicaragua.Reagan’s initial denial — “We did nottrade weapons or anything else forhostages” — gave way in March 1987to an admission that “the facts andthe evidence” said otherwise. The scan-dal resulted in an investigation by aspecial House-Senate committee anda subsequent critical report as well asthe appointment of an independentcounsel with ensuing criminal prose-cutions. Reagan remained personallyand politically popular, but his powerin his final two years was at an ebb.

Clinton faced questions about hischaracter throughout his presidency, butthey came to a head with the disclo-sure in January 1998 that he had hadsexual encounters with an intern,Monica Lewinsky, inside the WhiteHouse. Clinton initially denied that hehad had “sexual relations with thatwoman” and repeated that denial in asworn deposition only to admit an “im-proper physical relationship” in a grand-jury appearance in August. After re-ceiving a harshly critical report fromindependent counsel Kenneth Starr, theHouse voted in November to impeachClinton for perjury (two counts), ob-struction of justice and abuse of office.The trial in the Republican-controlledSenate ended in February 1999 withClinton’s acquittal, but he was left se-verely weakened for his last two yearsin office. Clinton’s legal troubles alsoproduced a Supreme Court decision,Clinton v. Jones (1997), holding that apresident could be sued while in of-fice for actions unrelated to his officialduties. 23

PRESIDENTIAL POWER


By the turn of the century, Rea-gan and Clinton could be creditedwith revitalizing the president’s roleas Legislator in Chief — but withmixed results in the face of opposi-tion-controlled Congresses for muchof their time in office. Along withGeorge H. W. Bush (1989-1993), theyalso renewed the commander in chief’spower to send troops abroad withouta congressional say-so: Reagan toGrenada, Bush to Panama and Clin-ton in different contexts to Haiti, So-malia and Kosovo. And Bush askedfor and got authorization from Con-gress in 1990 for the U.S. role in theUnited Nations-mandated Gulf War.

More broadly, however, the presi-dency suffered from what Genovesecalls the “highly personalized, exces-sively partisan and deeply hurtful” po-litical climate. As a result, he says, “thepresidency became a smaller, less dig-nified office.” 24

Post-9/11 President

G eorge W. Bush came to officein January 2001 determined to

restore what both he and his vice pres-ident, Cheney, viewed as the lost pow-ers of the presidency. The terrorist at-tacks of Sept. 11, 2001, forged theseviews into a hard-and-fast policy ofasserting maximum presidential au-thority to fight a war against terrorismat home and abroad.

The Bush-Cheney doctrine got itsfirst test in a domestic policy setting.As head of an energy task force cre-ated by Bush in his first month inoffice, Cheney invoked the president’sneed for candid advice in refusing todivulge details about its proceedingsbefore release of the group’s final re-port in May 2001 and during a legalbattle extending through May 2005.The administration rebuffed requestsfor information about the task forcefrom Congress and later successfullyfought a suit by two interest groups

to use federal access laws to learnof the group’s contacts with industryexecutives.

The White House responded to the9/11 attacks by simultaneously de-fending Bush’s power as commanderin chief to take military action on hisown and working with Congress ona resolution to authorize the use offorce. Initially, the administrationwanted authority to “deter and pre-empt” future acts of terrorism or ag-gression. But lawmakers insisted on anarrower resolution directed onlyagainst those responsible for the Sept.11 attacks. It cleared Congress onSept. 14 — three days after the at-tacks — with one dissenting vote inthe House and none in the Senate.

The administration also had to settlefor somewhat less than it wanted in theUSA Patriot Act, the broad counterter-rorism measure passed by Congress onOct. 25, 2001. The law increased penal-ties for terrorism and expanded feder-al law-enforcement powers in terrorism-related investigations. But Congressbalked at the administration’s request toindefinitely detain immigrants suspect-ed of terrorism. It also inserted a “sun-set” clause to terminate some of theact’s provisions after four years. And,significantly for later developments, itincluded no authority to use foreign-intelligence-gathering wiretaps withinthe United States.

Bush also drew criticism on CapitolHill when he issued an executive orderon Nov. 13 authorizing military tribunalsto try non-citizens suspected of terror-ism. “I need to have that extraordinaryoption at my fingertips,” Bush said afew days later. Democrats and somelibertarian-minded Republicans com-plained, but Bush refused to back off— foreshadowing the stout legal de-fense of the program that administra-tion lawyers have waged ever since.

With the war in Afghanistan endedin December 2001, the administrationin early 2002 began focusing on Iraq.By June, Bush was explicitly warning

of a possible pre-emptive strike —prompting lawmakers to warn againstinitiating military action without con-gressional approval. A White House-drafted resolution served as the basisfor a measure finally approved in Oc-tober that authorized Bush to use“necessary and appropriate” forceagainst “the continuing threat posedby Iraq” and to enforce “all relevant”U.N. Security Council resolutions againstIraq. The House approved the mea-sure, 296-133; the Senate, 77-23. Underpressure from Congress and from theUnited States’ main ally — Britain —Bush continued seeking United Na-tions approval for the action almostup until the day the United States in-vaded Baghdad on March 19, 2003.

Despite quick success in removingSaddam Hussein from power and sub-duing the Iraqi army, the United Statesremains bogged down in a deadly fightwith a stubborn insurgency in Iraq.With no final resolution, Bush hasbeen faced with a steady stream ofcomplaints about faulty intelligence —particularly on the issue of Iraq’s sus-pected weapons of mass destruction— and poor planning and executionof postwar reconstruction.

Meanwhile, the administration wascoming under increasing criticism inCongress and elsewhere for abuse andtorture of suspected terrorists capturedin Afghanistan and elsewhere andheld at Guantánamo Bay. Rejectingthe administration’s arguments for afree hand, the Supreme Court in June2004 ruled that detainees could go tofederal courts to challenge their con-finement.

By late 2005, Bush was being po-litically weakened by other issues —notably, the administration’s flawed re-sponse to Hurricane Katrina in Au-gust. 25 Polls showed Bush’s publicapproval sagging. Despite resistanceby the White House, both the Senateand House included anti-torture pro-visions in military-funding measures.On Dec. 15, Bush met with McCain


PRESIDENTIAL POWER

at the White House and agreed to ac-cept the restriction.

Trying to put the best face on the

reversal, Bush told reporters, “We’ve beenhappy to work with [Sen. McCain] toachieve a common objective, and that

is to make clear that this governmentdoes not torture.” 26

Continued on p. 186

Can President Bush authorize the National SecurityAgency to monitor telephone calls between a U.S. cit-izen and a suspected terrorist overseas without a judi-

cial warrant? Can he order a foreign terror suspect to be triedbefore a military tribunal without access to federal courts?

Many experts think the answers are contained in a landmarkSupreme Court decision overturning President Harry S Truman’sseizure of the nation’s steel mills in 1952 to avert a strike dur-ing the Korean War. In a concurring opinion in the decision,Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, Justice Robert H. Jack-son set out a three-tiered structure for judging the scope of thepresident’s power — now recognizedas the starting point for any consti-tutional decision in the area.

Jackson — who had served as at-torney general under one of the na-tion’s most powerful presidents,Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was chiefU.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg war-crimes trial in Germany in 1945 and1946 — reasoned that the chief ex-ecutive’s power depends in part onwhat, if anything, Congress has saidabout a particular subject. The pres-ident’s authority “is at its maximum,”wrote Jackson, when he acts “pur-suant to an express or implied au-thorization of Congress.” In such in-stances, the president’s power includes“all that he possesses in his own rightplus all that Congress can delegate.”

By contrast, the president’s power“is at its lowest ebb” when he “takesmeasures incompatible with the ex-pressed or implied will of Congress,”Jackson said. Under those circumstances, the president “can relyonly upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitu-tional powers of Congress over the matter.”

In the middle are cases where the president has acted “inabsence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority,”Jackson said. He called this area “a zone of twilight” in whichthe president and Congress may share authority or the distri-bution of power between the two branches may be uncertain.

In those instances, Jackson continued, congressional “iner-tia, indifference or quiescence” may either enable or at leastinvite the president to act on his own. And the legality of thepresident’s actions, he concluded, would depend “on the im-peratives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than

on abstract theories of law.”Bush and his supporters argue that the electronic surveillance

and military tribunals fit squarely into Jackson’s first category.They say Congress gave Bush the needed powers on Sept. 14,2001, when it passed the Authorization to Use Military Forceagainst the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And evenif the use-of-force resolution is not read that broadly, adminis-tration officials and supporters argue, the president has inherentauthority to gather intelligence against a foreign enemy and pro-vide for trials of captured enemy combatants.

Opponents of Bush’s policies say the electronic surveillancefalls squarely in Jackson’s “lowest ebb” cat-egory — where Congress has prohibitedthe president’s actions. They say the For-eign Intelligence Surveillance Act specifi-cally requires a court warrant for any for-eign-intelligence gathering within the UnitedStates. As for military tribunals, the ad-ministration’s critics contend that despitethe president’s powers as commander inchief to capture and hold enemy combat-ants, he cannot bypass provisions of theUniform Code of Military Justice or theGeneva Conventions that govern hearingsfor detainees.

In the steel-seizure case, Jackson hadno difficulty in concluding that Truman hadno congressional authorization for his ac-tion. In fact, he argued, it ran afoul of theprocedure Congress set out in the Taft-Hart-ley Act for putting an industry back to workafter a strike. He then rejected the Trumanadministration’s arguments that the presi-dent had the power to put the steel millsback to work in the face of contrary con-

gressional legislation.“No doctrine that the Court could promulgate would seem

to me more sinister and alarming than that a President whoseconduct of foreign affairs is so largely uncontrolled, and ofteneven is unknown, can vastly enlarge his mastery over the in-ternal affairs of the country by his own commitment of theNation’s armed forces to some foreign venture,” Jackson wrote.

“With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men havediscovered no technique for long preserving free governmentexcept that the Executive be under the law, and that the lawbe made by parliamentary deliberations,” Jackson concluded.“Such institutions may be destined to pass away. But it is theduty of the Court to be last, not first, to give them up.”

Youngstown Decision Offers Test for President’s Powers

Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson.

The

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At Issue:Is the administration’s electronic-surveillance program legal?Yes

yesROBERT F. TURNERCO-FOUNDER, CENTER FOR NATIONAL SECURITYLAW, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA LAW SCHOOL

WRITTEN FOR THE CQ RESEARCHER, FEBRUARY 2006

c ritics who call President Bush a “lawbreaker” for autho-rizing National Security Agency surveillance of interna-tional communications between suspected al Qaeda op-

eratives abroad and people inside our country are focusing onthe wrong “law.” In reality, this is a constitutional issue pittingprivacy interests protected by the Fourth Amendment againstthe president’s independent “executive” and “commander-in-chief” powers. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act(FISA) could no more usurp authority vested by the Constitutionin the president’s discretion than Congress could narrow theFourth Amendment’s protections by mere statute.

John Jay explained in Federalist No. 64 that the new Con-stitution left the president free “to manage the business of in-telligence as prudence might suggest”; and Washington, Jeffer-son, Madison, Hamilton and Chief Justice Marshall each notedthat the grant of “executive power” to the president includedcontrol over foreign relations. In Marbury v. Madison, Mar-shall noted that the Constitution gave the president importantpolitical powers about which “the decision of the executive isconclusive.”

In 1818, Rep. Henry Clay reasoned it would be improperfor Congress to inquire into foreign-intelligence activities au-thorized by the president. And in the landmark 1936 Curtiss-Wright case, the Supreme Court found Congress “powerless toinvade” the president’s “plenary and exclusive power” over in-ternational diplomacy.

The Fourth Amendment binds in peace and war, but in nei-ther is it absolute. It prohibits only “unreasonable” searches andseizures — a standard obviously affected when Congress autho-rizes war — and the idea that warrantless surveillance of our na-tion’s enemies during wartime is “unreasonable” finds no supportin historic practice or judicial opinions. The test involves balanc-ing the privacy interest against the governmental interest, and theSupreme Court has repeatedly observed: “no governmental inter-est is more compelling than the security of the Nation.”

The courts are clearly with the president. When the SupremeCourt held in the 1972 United States v. United States DistrictCourt case that warrants would be required for national securitywiretaps of purely domestic targets (like the Black Panthers), itcarefully distinguished its holding from a case involving foreignagents. In 2002, the FISA Court of Review observed that everyfederal appeals court to consider the issue has held the presi-dent has independent constitutional power to authorize warrant-less foreign-intelligence wiretaps, and noted “FISA could not en-croach upon the president’s constitutional power.”No

KATE MARTINDIRECTOR, CENTER FOR NATIONAL SECURITYSTUDIES

WRITTEN FOR THE CQ RESEARCHER, FEBRUARY 2006

w hen Congress authorized secret wiretaps of Ameri-cans in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence SurveillanceAct (FISA), it required special orders from the FISA

court. It did so in order to implement the Fourth Amendment’scommand that searches be authorized by judicial warrant to safe-guard individual privacy against arbitrary government invasion.

Congress explicitly prohibited any future president fromconducting warrantless eavesdropping and made FISA and thecriminal wiretap laws “the exclusive means” for carrying outelectronic surveillance in the Untied States. Congress refusedto enact any exception for “inherent presidential power” andmade it a crime for government officials to wiretap without awarrant.

The president now claims the power to act in violation ofFISA as well as the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement,citing his commander-in-chief authority. But the president’s au-thorization of such wiretapping — done in secret and deliber-ately withheld from the public and the Congress — is un-precedented. Nothing in the Constitution authorizes thepresident to violate the law or to decide on his own to se-cretly wiretap Americans — even during wartime.

The Justice Department pays lip service to the principlethat the president is bound by the law when it argues thatCongress gave the president this power in the authorization touse force against al Qaeda, and that such warrantless surveil-lance is “reasonable.” The authorization argument is too frivo-lous to respond to in this limited space. The president’s realclaim is that he has exclusive power to conduct such wire-taps, that Congress may not limit that power, and judges maynot review it.

The Supreme Court has never upheld such a claim of monar-chical power. To the contrary, it reiterated in the Hamdi case:“Whatever power the . . . Constitution envisions for the Execu-tive in its exchanges with other nations or with enemy organiza-tions in times of conflict, it most assuredly envisions a role forall three branches when individual liberties are at stake.”

The president can make no claim of necessity for exercis-ing exclusive power. Following the law and obtaining a war-rant would not make it impossible to conduct surveillancenecessary to prevent future attacks. Courts would issue war-rants for surveillance of communications with al Qaeda, whichis manifestly reasonable. The Congress would amend FISA ifthe president demonstrates the necessity, as it has alreadydone since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The secret program ofwarrantless surveillance is illegal and unconstitutional.


PRESIDENTIAL POWER

CURRENTSITUATION

Detainee Cases

F our years after President Bush or-dered the use of military tribunals

for suspected terrorists captured inAfghanistan, the administration is nowhoping a new law passed by Congresswill prevent hundreds of detainees fromchallenging his action in federal court.Lawyers for the detainees, however, saythe government’s interpretation of thelaw is either wrong or unconstitutional.

In December 2005, when Congresspassed McCain’s anti-torture measure,known officially as the Detainee Treat-ment Act, it was responding to theSupreme Court’s June 2004 decision toallow federal courts to hear habeas cor-pus petitions filed by detainees held atthe U.S. Naval Station at GuantánamoBay. The act — signed by Bush as partof the Defense Department annual fund-ing measure — provides instead that“no court, justice or judge shall havejurisdiction” to consider a habeas cor-pus petition filed by any Guantánamodetainee.

Justice Department lawyers now citethe act in asking the Supreme Court todismiss the Hamdan case, which thejustices had agreed to consider in No-vember. The act “plainly divests thecourts of jurisdiction” to hear Hamdan’spretrial challenge to the military tri-bunal, the government wrote in the mo-tion filed with the Supreme Court onJan. 12. The government is similarlyasking the federal appeals court for theD.C. Circuit to dismiss consolidated casesbrought on behalf of about 60 otherGuantánamo detainees.

In all of the cases, the governmentis contending that the new law requires

detainees to wait until their cases aredecided by the so-called combatantstatus-review tribunals before comingto federal court. The law also providesthat any appeals go to the D.C. Circuit,which would exercise only limited re-view over the tribunals’ decisions.

Detainees’ lawyers say the law doesnot apply to any of the pending cases.The two principal sponsors of the pro-vision — Sens. Graham and Levin —disagree over whether it applies retroac-tively. If the law is held to apply toHamdan’s case, his lawyer, George-town Professor Katyal, argues that Con-gress cannot suspend habeas corpusexcept by a more explicit provisionand, in any event, has acted improp-erly by barring the use of habeas cor-pus only by Guantánamo detainees.

The high court had already sched-uled arguments in the Hamdan casefor March 28 before the government’smotion to dismiss in January. Katyalurged the justices either to reject themotion altogether or, alternatively, toconsider the issue along with the mer-its of the case in the March arguments.

In their action in November, thejustices agreed to consider two is-sues Hamdan raised after the D.C.Circuit had rejected his claims. Thefirst is whether Bush had the powerto establish the military tribunalseither under his inherent authorityor under the use-of-force resolutionCongress passed in September 2001.The second issue is whether feder-al courts can enforce a provision ofthe Geneva Conventions that, ac-cording to lawyers for the detainees,requires a formal court-martial tofirst determine whether detainees areentitled to prisoner-of-war status withadditional procedural safeguards.

Two lawyers on opposing sides ofthe case speculate that the court maybe reluctant to dismiss Hamdan’s ap-peal altogether. “The government isgoing to have a tough row to hoe onthe jurisdictional issue,” says Samp ofthe Washington Legal Foundation.

Pamela Karlan, a Stanford Univer-sity law professor who filed an ami-cus brief in support of Hamdan, notesthat under the late Chief JusticeWilliam H. Rehnquist, the high court“did not shy away from asserting itsjurisdiction over a wide range of is-sues.” While the court’s direction underChief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is notyet clear, Karlan stresses that the gov-ernment wants to block any ruling onHamdan’s legal argument until afterthe military tribunal has decided hiscase. “The government is saying notonly that the Supreme Court can’t hearthe case but that none of the courtsbelow can hear it,” she explains.

Roberts will not be participating inthe case because he was one of thejudges in the D.C. Circuit’s ruling. Byrecusing himself, Roberts raises thepossibility of a 4-4 split, which wouldleave the appeals court’s ruling for thegovernment standing. If the justiceshear the case on March 28, a deci-sion would be expected in late June.

Surveillance Program

C ongress may be backing awayfrom a detailed inquiry into the

operations of the NSA electronic-surveillance program as the adminis-tration moves toward accepting leg-islative proposals to provide specificlegal authorization for it.

Legislation could complicate court chal-lenges to the surveillance, which in anyevent face daunting obstacles and areunlikely to be ruled on any time soon.

The Senate Intelligence Committeegave the administration a significantvictory Feb. 16 by refusing to take upa motion by the panel’s Democraticvice chairman, West Virginia’s John D.Rockefeller IV, to open an inquiry onthe surveillance program. Republicanshave an 8-7 majority on the commit-tee, but two GOP senators — Snoweand Hagel — had called for an in-quiry in December. 27

Continued from p. 184


Committee Chairman Pat Roberts ofKansas strongly opposes any inquiryas “unwarranted” and potentially“detrimental to this highly classifiedprogram.” In the days before the com-mittee’s meeting, the White Househelped Roberts resist the inquiry bysignaling that the administration wouldprovide more details on the programto the Intelligence Committee and thatit might accept legislation to authorizethe program with more congressionaloversight.

Following the closed-door meeting,Roberts told reporters the committeehad adjourned without voting on Rock-efeller’s motion. Rockefeller criticizedthe delay, saying the committee had“once again abdicated its responsibility”to oversee intelligence activities. For herpart, Snowe said in a statement that itwas “imperative” for the administrationto provide more information about theprogram before the committee’s nextscheduled meeting on March 7.

Meanwhile, leaders of the HouseIntelligence Committee reportedlyagreed to open an inquiry into theprogram, but the scope of the plannedreview was unclear. New Mexico’sRep. Wilson, who chairs the panel’sSubcommittee on Technical Intelligence,told The New York Times that the re-view would have “multiple avenues.”But The Times quoted a spokesmanfor committee Chairman Peter Hoek-stra, R-Mich., as saying the review wouldnot be “an inquiry into the program”but an examination of ways to “mod-ernize” the FISA statute. 28

Two GOP senators are promotingseparate proposals for legislation on theissue. Judiciary Committee ChairmanSpecter is drafting a measure to requirethe attorney general to seek permissionfrom the FISA court to eavesdrop onU.S. communications, to identify whowas being monitored and why and toapply for reauthorization every 45 days.The proposal also would authorize thecourt to rule on whether the programwas constitutional.

Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, a mem-ber of both the Judiciary and Intelli-gence committees, is instead propos-ing that Congress simply exempteavesdropping on al Qaeda or otherterrorist groups from FISA’s warrantrequirement. His proposal also wouldrequire the NSA to provide newly cre-ated Intelligence subcommittees withmore details on the surveillance.

The White House continues to saythat no legislation is needed to au-thorize the program, but press secre-tary Scott McClellan said on Feb. 16the administration is willing to “workwith Congress on legislation that wouldnot undermine the president’s abilityto protect Americans.” Between thetwo senators’ proposals, DeWine’s ap-pears to sit better with the White House.DeWine said White House counselHarriet Miers called him on Feb. 15to discuss his proposal and suggestedonly minor changes.

Opponents of the program, mean-while, are pressing ahead with legalchallenges. 29 The ACLU and the Cen-ter for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filedseparate suits in federal courts in De-troit and New York, respectively, chal-lenging the program as a violation ofthe First and Fourth Amendments andseparation-of-powers principles. TheACLU says criminal-defense lawyers,journalists, scholars and nonprofit or-ganizations are among those who feartheir communications with people inpredominantly Muslim countries arebeing monitored without just cause.The CCR filed suits in its own behalf.

Separately, two Washington-basedgroups — the Electronic Privacy In-formation Center and People for theAmerican Way — are suing the Jus-tice Department and the NSA, re-spectively, under the federal Freedomof Information Act (FOIA) to try toforce disclosure of legal opinions andoperational details of the program. Ina preliminary ruling on Feb. 16, U.S.District Judge Harry Kennedy direct-ed the Justice Department to turn over

documents within 20 days or providea list of documents being withheld.

In addition, the Electronic FrontierFoundation, a San Francisco-based,free-speech advocacy group, is suingmajor telephone companies, claimingtheir cooperation with the NSA sur-veillance program violates customers’privacy rights. The suit is pending infederal court in San Francisco.

The suits face a variety of legal hur-dles, including questions about thelegal standing of the plaintiffs in theACLU and CCR suits and broad ex-emptions for intelligence activities inthe FOIA actions.

And even if courts allow the cases toproceed, they are unlikely to issue sub-stantive rulings in the near future. “Allthese cases take a long period of time,”says Caroline Frederickson, the ACLU’sWashington legislative director.

OUTLOOKPresidential Weakness?

T he political scientist RichardNeustadt focused his landmark

1960 study Presidential Power not onthe strength of the office but on itsweakness — with formal powers ef-fectively limited by the other branch-es of government, private interestgroups, the press and public opinion.In a revised edition 30 years later,Neustadt repeated the same theme.The office is inherently weak, he wrote,“in the sense of the great gap betweenwhat is expected [of the president] andassured capacity to carry through.” 30

George W. Bush entered the WhiteHouse in 2001 believing the office hadbeen weakened even further. But heseemed to defy its weaknesses with astrategy of boldness. Working with Re-publican majorities in both houses ofCongress, he won major legislative vic-


PRESIDENTIAL POWER

tories in his first months and then gainedenough support after the 9/11 terroristattacks to wage a quick war in Afghanistanand to get congressional approval a yearlater for a second war in Iraq.

Today, Bush seems to be paying aprice for flexing his political power. Withthe conflict in Iraq continuing and hisdomestic agenda stalled, Bush’s bold-ness is now seen on Capitol Hill as high-handedness and among much of thepublic as manipulativeness or outrightdeception. His approval ratings hover inthe low 40 percent range, and somepolls indicate a voter shift toward De-mocrats and away from Republicans. 31

Bush’s slippage may not be simplya backlash to his style of governing,historian McDonald says. “It’s a very,very divided country,” McDonald says.“The backlash would have comewhether he’d been bold or not.”

Whatever the reason, the co-equalbranches of government are pushingback, if tentatively. The Supreme Courtin 2004 rejected Bush’s boldest claimsin the enemy-combatant cases for hisactions to be completely free of judicialreview even if they upheld some pres-idential power to detain them. The cases“were not a tremendous victory for thepresident,” says John McGinnis, a con-servative constitutional law expert atNorthwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

On Capitol Hill, the Republican-controlled Congress showed virtuallyno interest in the Social Security pri-vatization proposal that Bush show-cased in his 2005 State of the Unionaddress. The laundry list of domesticproposals in his 2006 address on

Jan. 31 seems to have been forgottenwithin a matter of days.

Instead, the major news from Capi-tol Hill in February has been the toughgrilling administered to AttorneyGeneral Gonzales on the electronic-surveillance program and the tongue-lashing delivered to Homeland SecuritySecretary Michael Chertoff from aspecial House committee for the bun-gled response to Hurricane Katrina.

American Enterprise Institute schol-ar Ornstein thinks resistance, even fromGOP lawmakers, was inevitable. “Atsome point, they will have had enough,”he says. “They will realize they are amajority.” Still, Ornstein does not ex-pect a direct confrontation betweenthe White House and Congress soon.“It’s going to be a while,” he says.

For its part, the White House maybe coming around to giving Congressa greater role on the two issues —electronic surveillance and detainees —that the administration had previouslychosen to handle on its own. Bushultimately agreed to Sen. McCain’s anti-torture proposal. And the White Houseis signaling that it will accept some leg-islative fix on the electronic-surveillanceprogram.

Bradford Berenson, a Washingtonlawyer who served as associate WhiteHouse counsel in Bush’s first term, saysthe administration should work withCongress on the issues. “Congress shouldbecome involved,” Berenson remarkedat a Feb. 16 forum at Georgetown Uni-versity Law Center in Washington. “Itis the right policymaker to engage withthe administration.”

Appearing on the same panel, Sen.Specter said both the president and theCongress need to do a better job ofthe separate roles that each has in theconstitutional order. “He’s got to tell usmore in a democracy,” Specter said,“and the Congress has to be a lot moreassertive than it has been.”

Notes1 For The Times’ original story, see James Risenand Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy onCallers Without Courts,” Dec. 16, 2005, p. A1.For Wilson’s comments and later reaction, seeEric Lichtblau, “Republican Who Oversees N.S.A.Calls for Wiretap Inquiry,” The New York Times,Feb. 8, 2006, p. A1, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg,“Republican Speaks Up, Leading Others toChallenge,” The New York Times, Feb. 11, 2006,p. A1. Some background on Wilson drawnfrom CQ’s Politics in America (13th ed., 2005).2 Cheney was interviewed on “The NewsHourwith Jim Lehrer,” Public Broadcasting Service,Feb. 7, 2006.3 See Michael A. Genovese, The Power of theAmerican Presidency 1789-2000 (2001).4 United States v. U.S. District Court, 407 U.S.297 (1972). The decision is commonly calledthe Keith case after the federal district courtjudge whose ruling was upheld by theSupreme Court.5 For background, see David Masci, “Torture,”CQ Researcher, April 18, 2003, pp. 345-368.6 For previous background, see Adriel Bet-telheim, “Presidential Power,” CQ Researcher,Nov. 15, 2002, pp. 945-968.7 Quoted in Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei,“Clash Is Latest Chapter in Effort to WidenExecutive Power,” The Washington Post, Dec.21, 2005, p. A1.8 Quoted in Stolberg, op. cit. Bush appar-ently was unaware that his microphone wason and his remarks audible to reporters.9 For background, see Mary H. Cooper, “Pri-vatizing the Military,” CQ Researcher, June25, 2004, pp. 565-588.10 The Aug. 1, 2002, memo signed by Jay S.Bybee, then director of the Office of LegalCounsel, can be found on FindLaw.com(http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/doj/bybee80102ltr.html. For coverage of Bybee’s memo,see Dana Priest and R. Jeffrey Smith, “MemoOffered Justification for Use of Torture,” TheWashington Post, June 8, 2004, p. A1. For

About the AuthorAssociate Editor Kenneth Jost graduated from HarvardCollege and Georgetown University Law Center. He is theauthor of the Supreme Court Yearbook and editor of TheSupreme Court from A to Z (both CQ Press). He was amember of the CQ Researcher team that won the 2002ABA Silver Gavel Award. His recent reports include “SupremeCourt’s Future” and “Future of Newspapers.”


coverage of similar memoranda, see Neil A.Lewis and Eric Schmitt, “Lawyers Decided Banon Torture Didn’t Bind Bush,” The New YorkTimes, June 23, 2004, p. A1.11 For Bush’s signing statement, see WeeklyCompilation of Presidential Documents, Jan. 2,2006, pp. 1918-1919. For coverage, see twoarticles by Charlie Savage in The Boston Globe:“Bush Could Bypass New Torture Ban,” Jan.4, 2006, p. A1; “3 GOP Senators Blast BushBid to Bypass Torture Ban,” Jan. 5, 2006, A3.12 See Peter Baker, “President Says He OrderedDomestic NSA Spying,” The Washington Post,Dec. 18, 2005, p. A1. For background, see Ken-neth Jost, “Civil Liberties Debates,” CQ Researcher,Oct. 24, 2003, pp. 871-894; and David Masci,“Civil Liberties in Wartime,” CQ Researcher, Dec.12, 2001, pp. 1017-1040.13 See Ronald Brownstein, “Bush’s RatingsSink, but Trust Remains,” Los Angeles Times,Jan. 27, 2006, p. A1; CNN/USA Today/GallupPoll, www.usatoday.com (posted Feb. 14, 2005).14 Congressional Research Service, “StatutoryProcedures Under Which Congress Is To BeInformed of U.S. Intelligence Activities, In-cluding Covert Actions,” Jan. 18, 2006.15 The Supreme Court case is Hamdan v.Rumsfeld, 05-184. For court decisions, briefsand selected articles, see www.hamdan-vrumsfeld.com. The D.C. Circuit cases are AlOdah v. United States, 05-5064, and Boume-diene v. Bush, 05-5062.16 The citations are Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542U.S. 507, and Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466,both June 28, 2004.17 The case is Padilla v. Hanft, 05-533. TheSupreme Court had dismissed Padilla’s habeascorpus petition on a procedural issue, Rumsfeldv. Padilla, 542 U.S. 426 (June 28, 2004), but hefiled a new petition to “cure” the defect.18 Historical background drawn in part fromGenovese, op. cit., and Forrest McDonald,The American Presidency: An IntellectualHistory (1994).19 Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Govern-ment (1885), p. 31, cited in Genovese, op.cit., p. 104.20 Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The ImperialPresidency (1973).21 The citation is United States v. Nixon, 418U.S. 683 (1974). For background, see KennethJost, “Independent Counsels Re-Examined,”CQ Researcher, May 7, 1999, pp. 377-400.22 Aaron Wildavsky, The Beleaguered Presi-dency (1991); Genovese, op. cit. Wildavskydied in 1993.23 The citation is Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S.

681 (1997).24 Ibid., p. 189. See also Adriel Bettelheim,“State of the Presidency: What Bush Inherits,”CQ Weekly, Jan. 20, 2001, p. 162.25 For background, see Pamela Prah, “Dis-aster Preparedness,” CQ Researcher, Nov.18,2005, pp. 981-1004.26 See John M. Donnelly and Anne Plummer,“After Long Fight, McCain Wins Bush’s Sup-port on Treatment of Detainees,” CQ Today,Dec. 15, 2005.27 See Mary Speck, “Revamp of Spy ProgramGets Boost,” CQ Today, Feb. 16, 2006; andthese Feb. 17 stories: Charles Babington andCarol D. Leonnig, “Senate Rejects Wiretap-ping Probe,” The Washington Post; and GregMiller and Maura Reynolds, “Spying InquiryBlocked by GOP,” Los Angeles Times.28 See Eric Lichtblau and Sheryl Gay Stolberg,“Accord in House to Hold Inquiry on Sur-veillance,” The New York Times, Feb. 17, 2006.

29 Cases discussed and Web sites for moreinformation include American Civil LibertiesUnion v. National Security Agency (www.aclu.org/nsaspying); Center for Constitutional Rightsv. Bush (www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/govt_mis-conduct/docs/NSAcomplaintFINAL11706.pdf);Electronic Privacy Information Center v. De-partment of Justice (www.epic.org); People forthe American Way Foundation v. National Se-curity Agency (http://media.pfaw.org/pdf/civil_liberties/PFAWFvsNSAComplaint.pdf); andHepting v. AT&T Corp. (www.eff.org).30 Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power andthe Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leader-ship from Roosevelt to Reagan (1990), p. ix.Neustadt died in 2003.31 See Dan Balz, “Bush’s Midterm Challenge:Rebuilding Public Support May Bolster GOPCandidates,” The Washington Post, Jan. 29,2006, p. A1.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONAmerican Civil Liberties Union, 125 Broad St., 18th floor; New York, NY 10004;(212) 549-2500; 122 Maryland Ave., N.E., Washington, DC 20002; (202) 544-1681;www.aclu.org. The ACLU filed a broad legal challenge to the warrantless electronic-surveillance program established by President Bush after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, 1333 H St., N.W., 11thFloor, Washington, DC 20005; (202) 393-6181; www.acslaw.org. A liberal educa-tional organization focusing on preserving individual rights and liberties; co-spon-sored former Vice President Al Gore’s Jan. 16 speech on presidential power.

The Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20001; (202)842-0200; www.cato.org. Public-policy organization that advocates limited government.

Center for Constitutional Rights, 666 Broadway, 7th floor, New York, NY 10012;(212) 614-6464; www.ccr-ny.org. Founded in 1966; has been coordinating legal rep-resentation of detainees held at the U.S. Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Center for National Security Studies, 1120 19th St., N.W., 8th floor, Washing-ton, DC 20036; (202) 721-5650; www.cnss.org. A research and advocacy organiza-tion, founded in 1974 and now affiliated with George Washington University, thatseeks to prevent claims of national security from eroding civil liberties and consti-tutional protections.

Center for the Study of the Presidency, 1020 19th St., N.W., Suite 250, Washing-ton, DC 20036; (202) 872-9800; www.thepresidency.org. A nonpartisan center found-ed in 1979 to further the understanding and functioning of the U.S. presidency.

Federalist Society, 1015 18th St., N.W., Suite 425, Washington, DC 20036; (202) 822-8138; www.fed-soc.org. Founded in 1982 to promote conservative and libertarianviews in opposition to what it saw as a dominant liberal ideology at U.S. law schools.

Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Ave., N.E., Washington DC 20002; (202)546-4400; www.heritage.org. Founded in 1973; seeks to formulate and promoteconservative public policies.

FOR MORE INFORMATION


Books

Genovese, Michael A., The Power of the American Presi-dency 1789-2000, Oxford University Press, 2001.A professor of political science at Loyola Marymount Univer-

sity provides an historical overview of the growth — and lim-its — of presidential power with individual portraits of eachchief executive from George Washington through Bill Clinton.Includes appendices, notes and an 11-page bibliography.Genovese is also co-editor with Robert J. Spitzer of The Presi-dency and The Constitution: Cases and Controversies (PalgraveMacmillan, 2005), a compilation of excerpts of major SupremeCourt decisions affecting presidential powers.

McDonald, Forrest, The American Presidency: An Intel-lectual History, University Press of Kansas, 1994.A professor emeritus at the University of Alabama describes

his book as “a history of the idea of the presidency — howit was born, how it was initially implemented, how it hasevolved, and what it has become through practice.”

Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power and the ModernPresidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt toReagan, Free Press, 1990.The late professor of political science at Harvard Universi-

ty emphasized the personal rather than the formal aspectsof presidential power in an updated version of his classicstudy, originally written in 1960. Includes detailed notes.

Wildavsky, Aaron, The Beleaguered Presidency, TransactionPublishers, 1991.A longtime professor of political science at the University

of California-Berkeley until his death in 1993 argued thatLyndon B. Johnson’s presidency ushered in a period of sig-nificantly increased criticism that left him and subsequentpresidents “beleaguered” — under perpetual assault. Includesbrief chapter notes.

Yoo, John, The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitutionand Foreign Affairs After 9/11, University of Chicago Press,2005.A law professor at the University of California-Berkeley and

formerly a high-ranking Justice Department lawyer underPresident George W. Bush, argues that the Constitution vests“the bulk” of powers over foreign and military affairs to thepresident. Includes detailed notes.

On the WebThe White House’s Web site is at www.whitehouse.gov.

The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents can befound at www.gpoaccess.gov/wcomp/index.html. The Pres-idency Research Group, a section of the American PoliticalScience Association, provides articles, bibliographies, coursesyllabi and other information on line at http://cstl-cla.semo.edu/Renka/prg/; the moderator is Russell Renka, aprofessor of political science at Southeast Missouri StateUniversity, Cape Girardeau.

Selected Sources

Bibliography

Books on the Presidency From CQ PressCQ Press publishes a number of reference works and college texts about the U.S. presidency.Michael Nelson’s comprehensive two-volume Guide to the Presidency (8th ed., 2006) provides an array of factual infor-

mation about the institution and the presidents, along with analytical chapters that explain the structure and operations of theoffice and the president’s relationship to Congress and to the Supreme Court. The Presidency A to Z (3rd ed., 2003) is aone-volume encyclopedia with more than 300 alphabetical, easy-to-read entries.

Nelson, a professor of political science at Rhodes College, is also editor of The Presidency and the Political System(8th ed., 2006), a collection of 21 essays examining presidential powers and perceptions, and co-editor with Richard Ellisof Debating the Presidency: Conflicting Perspectives on the Executive (2006), pro-con essays written as debate reso-lutions on a series of pivotal issues facing the modern presidency.

The Politics of the Presidency (Joseph A. Pika and John Anthony Maltese, rev. 6th ed., 2006) provides an in-depth as-sessment of the institution, the individuals who have served, the presidents’ interactions with the public and their impact onpublic policy. For a substantive look at the current administration, The George W. Bush Presidency: Appraisals and Prospects(edited by Colin Campbell and Bert A. Rockman, 2004) is a collection of essays that provides measured and nuanced assess-ments of Bush’s accomplishments, failures and frustrations at a particularly eventful time in U.S. history. For an innovative the-oretical study, Going Public (Samuel Kernell, 3rd ed., 1997) examines the increasingly frequent presidential practice of ap-pealing for support directly to the public.

The Presidents, First Ladies, and Vice Presidents: White House Biographies, 1789-2005 (Daniel C. Diller and Stephen L.Robertson, 2005) highlights the public and private lives of chief executives, their wives and their seconds-in-command. Other refer-ence titles include Presidential Elections 1789-2004 (2005), a comprehensive guide to the history and evolution of U.S. presi-dential elections, and Presidential Winners and Losers: Words of Victory and Concession (John Vile, 2002), a collection ofmore than 500 speeches and other documents from George Washington to George W. Bush relating to the outcome of elections.


Courts

Goldstein, Amy, and Jo Becker, “Alito Hearings Conclude,”The Washington Post, Jan. 14, 2006, p. A3.Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Samuel

A. Alito Jr. explored his support for the “unitary executivetheory,” which Bush embraced to justify controversial anti-terrorism policies.

Lewis, Neil A., “Court Gives Bush Right to Detain U.S.Combatant,” The New York Times, Sept. 10, 2005, p. A1.A federal appeals court panel ruled that President Bush

had the authority to detain American citizens as enemy com-batants if they fought U.S. forces on foreign soil.

Richey, Warren, “Military Tribunals to Get a Test in SupremeCourt,” The Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 8, 2005, p. 1.The Supreme Court will examine whether the president

can try al Qaeda suspects before military commissions.

Weinstein, Henry, “Debating the Power of the Presidency,”Los Angeles Times, Aug. 14, 2005, p. A20.Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. may have a

big impact on executive power, probably sympathizing withpresidential claims of authority.

Electronic Surveillance

“Surveillance Static,” The Houston Chronicle, Feb. 8, 2006,p. B10.Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and other Republicans expressed

fears about Bush’s secret surveillance program.

Balz, Dan, and Claudia Deane, “Differing Views on Ter-rorism,” The Washington Post, Jan. 11, 2006, p. A4.Americans are divided sharply along partisan lines over the

legitimacy of Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program.

Barr, Bob, “Presidential Snooping Damages the Nation,”Time, Jan. 9, 2006, p. 34.Former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., rejects the Bush administra-

tion’s defense of its secret electronic-surveillance program.

Ebrahim, Margaret, “Warrantless Surveillance DebatedDuring Ford Term,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 5,2006, p. A10.Debate over warrantless domestic wiretaps in terrorism in-

vestigations also erupted during the Ford administration.

Yen, Hope, “Bush Broke Law in Spying Request, SpecterSays,” The Houston Chronicle, Feb. 6, 2006, p. A6.Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Bush violated the Foreign

Intelligence Surveillance Act when he failed to seek courtapproval for secret domestic surveillance.

Executive Power

Feldman, Noah, “Who Can Check the President?” The NewYork Times Magazine, Jan. 8, 2006, p. 52.Feldman profiles the history of the presidency, the Bush

administration’s push to extend presidential power and therole of the Supreme Court and Congress in checking thepresident’s power.

Stevenson, Richard W., “For This President, Power is Therefor the Taking,” The New York Times, May 15, 2005, p. 3.Stevenson says Bush has not fundamentally altered the presi-

dency in ways that will outlast his tenure, arguing that what thepresident has done is a product of a particular time and place.

Wartime

Russell, Gail, “Senate Target: Bush’s War Powers,” TheChristian Science Monitor, Feb. 1, 2006, p. 1.The Republican-controlled Congress has gone along with the

Bush administration’s moves to aggressively expand presidentialpower in wartime, but that deference may be coming to an end.

Savage, David G., “The Power of the President,” LosAngeles Times, Feb. 6, 2006, p. A10.Bush argues the president has an “inherent authority” to

act without first seeking congressional approval in wartime.

Silva, Mark, “In the Midst of Conflict, George W. Bush isNot the First to Stretch the Powers of the Executive,” Chica-go Tribune, Jan. 12, 2006, p. C1.Bush belongs to a long line of presidents who asserted ex-

traordinary powers in wartime, but some legal scholars andcritics say he is claiming war powers like few before him.

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