NSA wiretapping program

Brendan Minter, of Opinion Journal, doesn't think Bush is abusing power in the NSA wiretap program.

There is another check on executive power, however, that is being overlooked in this debate: personal accountability. If a long pattern of far-reaching abuse emerged in the wiretapping program authorized by this president, George W. Bush would be on the hook for it.

There is, of course, also a legal and constitutional argument to be made in favor of the wiretaps. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, a former top Justice Department official who has also served as a federal judge and a prosecutor, dropped by The Wall Street Journal's offices recently and made a compelling legal and constitutional case for the wiretap program in four succinct points:

• The very language of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution invites using a "reasonable" standard in deciding when to conduct searches.

• During the Cold War it was widely accepted that the federal government had the power to use radar to spot incoming Soviet bombers and missiles. Wiretaps are today's equivalent of the Cold War's radar because instead of Soviet missiles, we're confronting terrorists who would bring themselves and possibly small bombs in suitcases into the country.

• The FISA court itself has found that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not curtail the president's constitutional ability to conduct warrantless searches.

• The government is not listening to phone conversations that take place entirely within the United States. Each one of the calls monitored involves someone either calling from or calling to a foreign number (in addition to involving at least one suspected al Qaeda operative). It's long been accepted that the federal government has a wide latitude to conduct searches at the nation's borders, which is why passenger luggage, container ships and other things can be searched as they cross into the country without first getting a warrant.