ILLEGAL WIRETAPPING WON WORLD WAR II

As a former intelligence officer who spent 23 years at the CIA, I am an intelligence history buff.  So it is that the current media frenzy over "illegal NSA telephone taps" has an interesting precedent.

The New York Times and the Democrat Party are waging a campaign against Bush Administration electronic surveillance (misnamed "taps," by the way) of Al Qaeda communications with its contacts here in America.  Their goal is for the Democrats to gain control of Congress this November, and impeach President Bush for the "crime" of "domestic spying."

Let’s ask the New York Times editors if they would have President Roosevelt impeached for crimes that resulted in America’s winning World War II?

My CIA colleague and current president of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), S. Eugene Poteat, has revealed an extraordinary parallel to today’s surveillance furor.  The disdainful scorn for the value of spying and intelligence (the "gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail" mentality) was so great in the 1930s that Congress codified it into law.

The Communications Act of 1934 made it unlawful for any agency of the US government to listen in on any electronic communications, even enemy communications.

In the AFIO members’ journal Periscope last August, Mr. Poteat explains how the Office of Naval Intelligence purposefully and willfully proceeded to break this law and learned how to crack the secret transmission codes of the Japanese.  It took them a while, but they did it, just before the Navy’s turning-point victory at the Battle of Midway.

Being able to listen in on Japanese communications was absolutely critical in enabling the Navy to win at Midway, just six months (June 7, 1942) after Pearl Harbor, which turned the tide of the war in our favor.

The ONI "code-breakers" were also "law-breakers."  If the New York Times had found out about it, one can see the headlines:

Navy Violates Communications Law – Prevents Jap Victory at Midway – Congress to Investigate.

Navy Law-Breaking Scandal Escalates – Was Illegal Jap Surveillance Authorized by the President – Should President Roosevelt Be Impeached?

The parallel is instructive but far from exact.  While one often hears complaints about America’s destructive masochism  hobbling efforts to win the War with Islamofascism, we are less masochistic than we were 70 years ago.

Fortunately, there is nothing today like the Communications Act of 1934 that if used would restrict our intelligence services from monitoring the communications of those who would destroy us.

President Bush has clearly made no attempt to break any law, but rather has determined that his authorizing NSA surveillance of Al Qaeda communications is legal.

There is, however, the matter of the NSA programs having been ruined by misguided leaks to the media. These programs have been playing a vitally important role in our national security.  Thus the question:

How can our intelligence services carry on with what’s left of the programs, banking on the authority of the Executive granted by the Constitution, when that authority is under attack?

Lawrence B. Sulc is the Founder and President of the Nathan Hale Institute.  A CIA operations officer for 23 years, he was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-Departmental Affairs in the Reagan Administration.