Boehner and CREW

If you've been paying any attention at all at the liberal blogs, you will have seen some ridiculous assertion about John Boehner leaking classified information on FOX News in an interview with Neil Cavuto. I know that my email box has been overflowing with news/web alerts on this absurd story. As usual, CREW and their accomplices in the liberal blogosphere have their facts wrong.

Let's start with what Boehner said on the show (Transcript of the entire segment):

CAVUTO: All right.

Speaking of which, you're concerned as well about the Democratic position on surveillance and a lot of the methods that you helped champion, with the president. You're concerned now they're scaling back on that, and that could leave us vulnerable.

Others are saying, look, it's — it's, sort of, like a freedom of speech, freedom of movement type of thing, and guys like you are getting in the way of that. Where does it...

(CROSSTALK)

BOEHNER: Well, Neil, we have a serious problem with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows us to listen in to phone conversations, other types of communications, with people who live outside of the United States without a warrant.

If we're going to listen to someone in the United States, we need to have a warrant. That's very clear.

There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States.

This means that our intelligence agencies are missing a wide swathe of potential information that could...

CAVUTO: Right.

BOEHNER: ... help protect the American people. The Democrats have known about this for months. We have had private conversations, we have had public conversations that this needs to be fixed. And Republicans are not going to leave this week until this problem is addressed.

The part that has all the liberals asking why John Boehner hates America is this bit:

“There’s been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States.”

So, liberals think John Boehner hates America because he wants to make sure that our intelligence agencies have the tools available to them to prevent another attack on Americans on American soil.

Uh-huh...

Okay, so now you're asking yourself about the "classified information" part of the complaint. Turns out, what Boehner is referring to a letter made public on January 17th from the Attorney General about how having the Terrorist Surveillance Program under FISA was seriously interfering with the abilities of our intelligence operatives from listening to terrorist communications around the world.

That letter, it turns out, is available on the website of...wait for it...Senator Leahy (D). An excerpt from that letter:

“I am writing to inform you that on January 10, 2007, a Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued orders authorizing the Government to target for collection international communications into or out of the United States where there is probable cause to believe that one of the communicants is a member or agent of al Qaeda or an associated terrorist organization. As a result of these orders, any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

Now Boehner had a problem with this ruling and apparently he wasn't alone. The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial on it here. And the Wshington Post has an editorial here. The Wall Street Journal thought this was so serious, they wrote a second editorial here.

On May 1, the Director of National Intelligence testified before the Senate saying that “we are actually missing a significant portion of [information] we should be getting.”

A Note About CREW

CREW tries to play itself off as some sort of non-partisan watchdog group. What they really are is a liberal 527 backed by the likes of George Soros, Barbra Streisand, David Geffen and the Tides Foundation. CREW's executive director, Melanie Sloan, is so non-partisan she was the legal counsel for Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame... The group was founded in 2001 with people that worked on Bill Clinton’s 1996 presidential campaign and Hillary’s 2000 senatorial campaign. Their goal: to defeat as many Republicans as possible.