Thanks to Washington's Blog for this excert from C-Span of Sen. Ron Wyden's speech to the US Senate regarding the renewal of the Patriot Act. This liberal Republican from Oregon, who has served on the Senate Intelligence Committee for a decade, argued against passage in its present form. (It was passed anyway.) His basic argument is that secret interpretations of intelligence laws are, and have been, used and inevitably they are eventually revealed to the public. This results in the undermining of public confidence in the legal system. He seems to suggest that it is only a problem because the public eventually finds out about it. Although he started off his speech with the correct ominous tone, he went on to praise the work of the well intentioned intelligence community for protecting our nation. Finally, he never revealed what the classified interpretation of the Patriot Act really is.
I believe he either fails to understand what he knows about our secret government, or he is deliberately understating the significance of this practice in order to pacify the public into believing that Congress will change things. He certainly did not set off any alarms bells to alarm mainstream media or much of the alternative media.
If you read The Fish is Red by Hinckle and Turner, The Secret Team by Col. (ret) L. Fletcher Prouty, and The Mighty Wurlitzer by Hugh Wilford you will not be reassured by Wyden's speech. You will conclude that much of US foreign and domestic policy is determined behind official government agencies by mostly unknown, unelected members of the security/defense establishment in spite of many years of Congressional and even Presidential attempts to bring it under the control of law.
