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Dec. 27, 2005 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:29
December 27, 2005, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
You know, this is the biggest goof off week of the year.
Nobody's working this week.
The combination of Christmas falling on a Sunday, Christmas Eve on a Saturday, everybody took off work on December 23rd.
Then they all get the holiday from Monday the 26th.
You've got New Year's coming in this weekend, then we get a special extra day.
Most companies are giving January 2nd as a day off.
People in this country are not working for 10 days.
No one is working.
Rush isn't even working.
He's not here.
Brett, the call screener is not here.
In fact, we have HR doing the call screening on today's program, stepping down from the big chair to become a regular old call screener.
Are you out of practice or can you handle this?
Yeah.
Looks confident.
Russia's not here.
Brett's not here.
Most people aren't working.
Those who are working aren't real productive.
A lot of people shopping, going to movies and all of those things.
And I'm telling you, I would like to do a goof off show today.
I would like to do a show that's light and fitting with the spirit of where America is, and I'm probably going to have some of that.
But I don't get to do the show often.
Rush doesn't take that many days off.
There are all sorts of other people who guest host.
I'm only here every now and then, and I've got something on my mind, and it is serious.
So I'm going to be a downer.
This is going to be a little bit of a bummer of a topic.
It's not something that's very positive, but I feel as though it has to be said, and it's important that it be said.
The Democratic Party in the United States right now is playing political games with our safety.
We use that term, the national security, all the time, and nobody even thinks about what it means, because it's probably been abused, and that term has probably been broadly interpreted.
Anytime someone wants to do anything that might have the slightest foreign policy implication to it, we talk about the national security.
This really is the national security that I'm speaking of.
The attacks on President Bush's use of wiretaps on individuals here in the United States that are talking to al-Qaeda and the delaying of the approval of the Patriot Act are examples of one political party in this country.
For purely political purposes, messing around with truly the national security.
And I think it's deplorable.
This isn't a highway bill.
This isn't another pork barrel item to stick into the federal budget.
This isn't some small policy dispute.
This isn't even stopping us from drilling in Alaska.
This is the safety of all Americans.
I remember after 9-11, in fact, it was the day of 9-11.
Extraordinary event occurred.
All 100 members of the United States Senate appeared in the Capitol building and read the Pledge of Allegiance.
On the part of the congressional leadership of our country, Democrats and Republicans alike, telling the nation and the world that we all stand together.
When America is attacked, America is one.
That was only four years ago.
And the Democratic Party right now has abandoned any notion of trying to tell the rest of the world that we're all in it together.
They instead are playing partisan political games.
Now I'm going to deal with what's been going on with the Patriot Act a little bit later on.
I'd like to talk first about the wiretapping.
You've got Democrats talking about this being an impeachable offense.
What has the president done?
The president has, through the use of the National Security Agency and other agents of the government, wiretapped individuals here in the United States who had Contacts with Al Qaeda or other suspected terrorists overseas.
And he did this without court authorization.
That's it.
That's it.
You've got a group that not only has threatened to attack the United States, they did it.
And they did it in a very big way.
Four years ago, this organization knocked down both towers of the World Trade Center, flew a jet into the side of the Pentagon, and had a fourth jet.
That had it not been for some heroes on the flight who sacrificed their own lives, that fourth jet would have flown into the Capitol building of the United States, we believe.
That's the organization we're dealing with here.
This truly is the national security.
We haven't been attacked in this country on our own land in a century.
Pearl Harbor was a military base in the middle of the ocean.
True, it was an attack on the United States, but it wasn't on the mainland of this country.
It wasn't where the bulk of the population lives.
We were attacked here in our country.
In a major way, not by some two-bit organization, but by a very large, extremely well financed organization that is proven that it can deliver on its threats.
They killed several thousand people and they came very close to wiping out much of the Congress of the United States of America.
You talk about our national security.
What is a greater threat to our national security than that?
So here, this same organization, is now the focus, rightly so, of significant attention from the United States, from the CIA, the FBI, and the National Security Agency.
After we were asleep at the slit switch for 10 years, in terms of tracking and monitoring the activities of Al Qaeda, we made it our number one priority.
And we were able to find and identify Al Qaeda operatives overseas.
We are also well aware that there are people here in the United States that appear to be acting in concert with Al Qaeda.
When Al-Qaeda operatives overseas started communicating with the people here in the United States, the administration tried to monitor those conversations and learn what was going on.
They followed, they may have searched, and they certainly listened in on conversations through wiretapping.
For this, you've got Barbara Boxer using the I-word impeachment.
I'll tell you what would be impeachable.
What would be impeachable would be not to wiretap.
You talk about the duty that the President of the United States has, his number one duty, greater than any other responsibility that he has is to try to protect the American people from attack.
That is the highest priority of the president.
And these wiretaps were an attempt to protect this country.
To play games with this, to use this as one more issue for which we can bash Bush, the favorite activity of Democrats, is deplorable.
There is not only nothing legally wrong with what the president did, there certainly isn't anything morally wrong.
It is the greatest duty of the president to try to track the activities of people here in the United States who want to harm us.
Now, prior to 9-11, when some right winger like me or Rush would get out there and talk about things like this, a lot of the well-educated crowd would roll its eyes.
Oh, yeah, right.
there are terrorists who want to kill us.
Right.
There's the great big boogeyman again.
That's what they made fun of us all through the Cold War by talking about the Russian monster.
Nobody's gonna do anything to us.
That's all changed.
They did something to us.
And they are here.
Let me remind you that all of the hijackers on 9-11 were individuals that were here in the United States, who are moving freely in the United States, and obviously were in communication with the Al Qaeda leadership overseas.
They were even going to flight school.
Furthermore, our government has identified a number of individuals who haven't done much yet, but are known to still be communicating with Al Qaeda.
To not track their activities and see if they may be up to something.
Not only would be irresponsible, it would be crazy.
So what was the president supposed to do?
Not follow up, not wiretap, not monitor.
I've got some criticisms of President President Bush.
On many domestic issues, he has disappointed me.
Some can even argue about the war with Iraq.
But no one can dispute this.
Since September 11th of 2001, we have not been attacked in this country.
How many of us would have thought that on September 12th or the 14th or the 17th or the 21st of 2001?
Not me.
I presumed that we had entered a new era in this country, where we were now going to be like Israel.
Where the terrorists, the suicide bombers, the maniacs of the world would be hitting us from time to time, and we would have to find out a way to continue our daily lives, knowing that terror was now a reality here in the United States.
I didn't know if they'd hit every week or every month or every six months, but one presumed that they would continue to hit.
We haven't been hit.
I don't think it's because Al-Qaeda struck once and quit...
This wasn't Hillary and the pork futures.
They didn't hit once and have a great success and decide to quit.
I think they've tried to attack us.
Others couldn't get off the ground.
In some instances, we may have rounded up the individuals who were involved.
But I think they've tried.
For any criticism you may have of President Bush, the one thing we all must grant is this.
His administration and the men and women in the intelligence community and in law enforcement who have been assigned duties with regard to protecting us from terrorists, have been as successful as you could possibly be.
To talk about impeachment and to condemn the president for this is reprehensible.
They just want to bash Bush.
And they're now bashing him for what is the greatest success of his administration.
Keeping tabs on Al Qaeda, and for four years at least, stopping an attack on this country.
These criticisms are wrong.
They're being done for cheap political reasons, and in the end I think they're immoral.
We're going to continue to explore this topic.
If you'd like to participate, the number here is 1-800-282-2882.
1-800-282-2882.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush Shining IB.
I'm Mark Belling, sitting in for Rush.
I'm joined right now by David Rivkin.
He was a lawyer who served in the Justice Department during the Reagan administration and the administration of the first President Bush, uh, David Rivkin and Lee Casey today have an op-ed piece in the New York Times that deals with the legality of the President's wiretapping program.
David, David, uh, how are you today?
Um, nice to be with you.
Thanks.
Let's start with the legality aspect of this.
Does the president have the legal authority to conduct this wiretapping without judicial warrants?
Absolutely does.
Uh as a matter of fact, uh, this authority has been asserted by every single administration since PISA was enacted in 1978, which is basically Carter Reagan push what he wanted Clinton.
And uh we now know uh because of statements by uh several of Clinton uh uh Justice Department officials, including the deputy attorney general, uh, that this forty was actually used in time of peace.
Well the president didn't just talk about having the inherent power to obtain foreign intelligence, the president actually used it without going to FISA.
Um so we're talking, of course, the situation now that it's a time of war, uh the one we did not choose but were attacked on September eleventh, and the President is using his power very narrowly.
We're only talking about really gathering intelligence about the plans and dispositions of the very people who attacked us.
So it's only applicable when you have a person in the United States communicating of a ban initiating a phone call or receiving a phone call from somebody overseas, whom uh the administration believes good reason to be a member of Al Qaeda or one of a affiliated entities.
Now, when we think about the need for search warrants, a lot of people get very jittery about the notion of the government just running around and listening to whomever it wants to listen to, and we do have all sorts of legal protections against that, but generally those are there in the case of dealing with crime.
And I think that the difference in this in in in the instance here is that we aren't trying to solve anything.
we're trying to protect us against acts of war as opposed to trying to solve a murder or something of that nature where we have these protections in place.
That is absolutely correct.
The government is in the most difficult situation that is trying to protect the right to use the information being gathered in a future prosecution, which the full protections of the Fourth Amendment apply And uh I will personally uh stipulate that I don't think any information being gathered in the course of warrantless surveillance can be used for purposes of criminal or even civil prosecution.
But as you correctly point out, we're talking about here really gathering uh and the word battlefield is is actually very apropos battlefield intelligence because w we know that the people attacked us here.
Uh this is about as well established uh core constitutional power of a president.
A person cannot gather information about uh the plans and intentions of a people who attacked us here and to try to attack us again, then these powers commanding in chief means absolutely nothing because h how are you supposed to prosecute a war if you cannot give a the intelligence about your enemy's intentions and plans.
And I think that's the problem here.
Some are not understanding that we are talking about a war.
Certainly in Iraq right now, if we have the ability to intercept communications uh involving some of the rebels over there, we would go ahead and do so.
But this is merely dealing with those individuals here, and I think that the fact that we were attacked on our own soil at nine eleven would certainly allow you allow us to accept your premise that this is an attempt to monitor wartime communications.
Absolutely.
I mean again, I I I mean, uh in a way we're sort of fallen uh put putting most charitable interpretation on the motives of a critics.
I think the administration has fallen prey to its own success because we have not had any attacks on American soil since September eleventh.
People ha obviously have forgotten that in September eleven uh there was an attack on the World Trade Center, attacking a Pentagon and attempted attack on uh uh uh the White House or or or the Capitol.
So uh and we know uh that uh the people who attacked us on September eleven are trained very hard to to mount an hour operation here.
Uh so it would be I mean recklessly criminally irresponsible for President not to do his best to obtain the intelligence again about this very narrow uh segment of the critics are saying that under the FISA Act, which is the one we're talking about here, the Foreign Intelligence Secrets Act, that the President could have simply gone to one of the judges that monitor FISA and gotten approval for these warrants.
How do you respond to that argument?
Well, uh respond in two ways.
First is as a legal matter.
Uh uh I think it's absolutely m an absolute uh misreading of FISA to think that this is an exclusive framework for which the president can operate.
That's not how FISA reads.
And if it were actually were to read this way, you would trench upon the core power of a president.
But more importantly, uh so to the extent that FISA legally is not required in this particular instance, especially for gathering this very narrow category, but I call battlefield intelligence.
For president to s to start using FISA voluntarily, as I think some critics have suggested, which had a horrible precedent because once you start doing it, you have to do it over time.
I mean, do you think the critics would be happy if a president used FISA, you know, ninety percent of a time and not ten?
But second, there's a very practical impediment.
And people, I don't think understand it.
It's not just a question of timing, because the typical responses, you know, would be do it now and then give it later.
And the problem is with time because uh you really what is the other problem though?
FISA court is not a robber stamp.
I think uh in other words, it might be turned down on the bottom.
I've got to stop you short here, David, because we are pushing up against the break.
David Rigkin, lawyer in the Reagan administration and first Bush administration justice departments, Mark Belling and for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush Limbaugh on EIB.
Because we were real tight against the last break.
I don't want you to miss the last comment that uh my guest David Rigg Rivkin had to offer, and that was in response to the question with regard to the domestic spying conducted by the Bush administration, why not just go and get a quote order?
He said, Look, some of these might be turned down.
And he's right about that.
You don't know what some federal judge is going to say.
The president of the United States is the constitutional authority to conduct foreign policy.
And if our government believes that there may be important information coming from the enemy, and that word is the appropriate word.
This is the enemy.
They attacked us.
They've already done it.
They've shown the capability to do it again.
If the president believes there's a way of getting viable information from that enemy, no other branch of government ought to be in a position to be able to stop that from happening.
And it's preposterous to argue that they should.
Do you really want us to be attacked again?
If not, we have got to allow our government to be able to use basic common sense measures to try to stop it from happening.
All right, to the telephones we go, Oklahoma City and Wade.
Wade, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Hey Mark, how are you doing?
I'm great, thank you.
I can agree with everything that President Bush has done, and I'll give you one real good example real quick, and that is the capture of those guys up in Oregon, where they were going to start a terrorist training camp.
But I heard the dumbest thing I've ever heard from one of these anti-Bush types on the cable news networks this weekend.
They were talking about, oh, he'll use this to investigate PETA or the ACLU or the Earth Liberation Front.
And they asked him, how can you justify that?
And he said, it was in the newspaper, so it has to be true.
Well, yeah, they create a hypothetical like that that's absurd.
If the president, Mark, there's no hypothetical to it.
I can understand where they would go after these people.
I used to live in the state of Washington.
Well, not my I know, but my point is they haven't.
And therefore, they're trying to argue about something that hasn't happened.
They're creating the impression that the president is running around out there wiretapping you and wiretapping me and wiretapping individual citizens.
They're acting as though this is President Nixon and the enemies list from the 1970s.
Oh, exactly.
What this was was a very, very limited operation and a limited program in which they only dealt with people who were communicating with Al Qaeda members overseas.
That's all they did here.
Now, if you want to create scenarios that would be improper, and there are some, then go ahead, then go ahead and find them.
But we don't have any instances like this.
This was an extremely limited program, and the times that it has been used were appropriate.
So they can they can say, well, you're going to have him going and spying on Al Franken.
They're not going to pay attention to Al Franken because Al Franken's not important.
But you know who is important?
The people who are here in this country that are communicating with Al Qaeda.
I don't know who the next 9-11 hijackers are, but our government isn't going to know either if we aren't going to use all of the resources that we have available to try and find out who they are.
Thank you for the call, Wade, to Jacksonville, Florida and Mike.
Mike, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
Hi, Mark.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year, thank you.
My comment is that um this isn't the first time we've heard about impeachment over the course of the last five years that Bush has been in.
Anything that comes up they want to impeach Bush over.
And the only reason why and it keeps coming up is because we got their guy.
And I can remember back during that time that they made threats.
You know, they were saying, well, if you get our guy down the road, we're going to get your guy somehow, somewhere.
In other words, because Clinton was impeached, they've got to trot out the I-word any time that you know any time they feel like it with regard to Bush.
You know what would be impeachable, Mike?
If the president had information that Al Qaeda was talking to terrorists here in the United States, and those terrorists then hit and instructed a terrible bl and inflicted a terrible blow on us, blew up one of our bridges, uh, launched a dirty bomb in some city, and we knew who those people were.
And we knew they were talking to Al Qaeda.
But the President sat around and twiddled his thumbs rather than wiretap.
That could be impeachable.
That is not protecting the people of this country.
That is ignoring one of the duties that the president swore to in his presidential oath of office.
That might be impeachable.
But to suggest that he's done something wrong for preventing those kinds of attacks is just crazy.
The problem here is they don't, as David Reefkin said, they don't want to give Bush credit for keeping us safe.
So now they're turning around and they're blaming him for keeping us safe.
That's what they are doing.
And I would like just one or two Democrats to stand up and condemn their party over this.
Where's the Joe Lieberman crowd on this?
They aren't even there.
It's just deplorable.
And it's something that every American ought to criticize and be aware that there is a political agenda in place, and that is raising all of these red herrings, these phony issues, to attack the president.
And I certainly hope that the end result of this isn't that the administration now backs off a little bit on this type of spying for fear that there's going to be another page one story in the New York Times.
Exactly.
Thank you, Mark.
Thank you for the call, Mike.
I appreciate it.
To Portland, Oregon, and Tony.
Tony, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
Hey, how are you doing, Mark?
I'm great, thanks.
Um, it sounds to me like what what what your whole argument is is that the Constitution and the laws we have on the books have become such a pain in the ass that the president needs to just go ahead and skirt them.
Well, first of all, watch the language.
So I'm sorry.
But secondly, the president hasn't broken any laws.
The authority wait a minute.
The authority he has used.
But you said you've got to be able to do that.
Do you want to hear my response or not?
The authority he has used was used by President Carter, by Reagan, by Bush won, and by Clinton.
The Clinton administration spied on Aldrich Ames, who was the uh CIA agent who passed along secrets to the uh to the Russians.
This has been used by every single administration, so all of a sudden now it is illegal to do.
That's silly.
I just don't understand why he couldn't just go ahead and go wiretap and then go back to the courts.
There are several reasons for it.
First of all, he didn't have to do it.
The author Well, he didn't have to do it.
You can laugh about that, but there is nothing anywhere you're protecting.
There is nothing by taking the right.
You can throw those, you can throw those comments around, but I'd like you to respond to the substance of them.
Okay.
He didn't have to do it.
Secondly, there is a time problem associated with it.
And thirdly, as Rivkin points out.
When you get information about this, you've got to act on it, and you've got to move.
Right.
Then you go ahead and move, and then you go back to the court and you say this is what we did.
You can make the case that perhaps he should have done that, but there isn't anything in the statute that requires it.
Furthermore, Congress passed the resolution in 2001.
Oh, that's a week.
You haven't even heard it yet.
Well, I ever heard it on the every Republican National Committee talking points, you guys stuffed down our throats.
I've heard it from all of you.
There may be a few in the audience who haven't heard it.
Maybe I'll express it in such a way that you'll be able to grasp it, which you fail to do with the with the others.
The 2001 resolution gives the president authority to use any means possible to fight El Qaeda.
This is a means.
What you are trying to do is suggest that civil liberties belong to individuals who are at war with the United States.
You know, as a civil liberty, you do.
Even if you've broken a law here in this country, you still have civil rights.
There is nothing that gives civil rights or civil liberties to an enemy of the United States that we are at war with.
They don't have Miranda warnings.
They don't have any of those protections.
This authority Is being limited only to people who are dealing with an organization that attacked the United States on our soil.
And now you're asking us to trust the administration's judgment on what that should be.
Well, who would you rather have running the foreign policy of this country?
That's who the Constitution gives it to.
Okay, let's change the subject.
You said my argument about 2000, you said the argument about 2001 is weak, yet you didn't respond to it.
The congressional resolution, which the administration is going to use as j partial justification for what they have done here, gives the president the authority to use any means necessary to deal with our enemy.
Why is this not a means necessary?
It's not breaking the law if they've authorized him to be able to do it.
Is it?
I just don't understand why he has to hide everything.
If he's so justified and he's so complicated, and he's so much more than a good thing.
You're right, he has to hide it.
What he ought to do, what he ought to do after, wire tapping al Qaeda members here in the United States is let them know, hey, when you talked about planting that bomb under that bridge, we heard you do that.
We know who your people are here.
We let's tell in fact, let's tell bin Laden right now about all of the individuals that we've identified here in the United States that are working with him so he can simply go and use some new people that we haven't found out about.
That is silly.
You want you want us to conduct this war, an intelligence gathering, and act as though it's the same as some sort of school board meeting.
It's just silly.
Would you be happier if the administration wasn't doing this if we weren't monitoring these people?
No, you're right on that point.
I mean, I I do agree with with the necessity to do some things that are.
What?
Has President Bush kept you safe?
I don't know.
How many how many how many attacks have we had previous to 9-11?
What is that?
What's that point?
Well, I you you're telling me that we haven't been attacked since 9-11.
How many times do we have taxed previous to 9 11?
Well, that's the most re ridiculous point that you can make.
9-11 proved that that organization would strike.
As far as we know, nobody just uh hasn't attacked us yet.
Uh I could make an assumption that he has protected us.
Well, what about 1993 in the World Trade Center?
Well, yeah, and that was what?
That was eight years without it without a terrorist attack.
So okay, it's just been dumb luck.
We've just been fortunate that Al Qaeda has retreated and has an attack.
You're not saying you're not saying I'm not saying that.
That is exactly what you just said.
I'm responding to everything that you have to say.
Your basic problem is that you don't want to give support to President Bush for anything.
Even on the most basic thing for which all Americans ought to be united, he has kept us safe and he has done so legally, morally, and responsibly.
My name is Mark Belling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Belling sitting in for Rush.
You shoot and kill somebody.
You have rights.
The feds want to search your house, they have to get a warrant.
If they want to listen to your conversations even after you shot somebody, they've got to get a warrant to do that too.
They want to put a wire on an informant, they need a warrant to be able to do that.
But if you are part of an organization that is at war with the United States, you don't have those rights.
It's a different ball game.
With regard to the war on terror, the focus can't be on who did it to us after they've already done it.
The focus has to be on gathering information to stop it from happening.
Since some of these terrorists are suicide terrorists, there isn't much point in figuring out how to convict them after they've done it.
The sole priority has to be to try to stop it from happening.
The president has used this authority on a very limited basis.
Because the impact of what they have done is to stop tacts of terror here in the United States.
In Iowa, Brett, Brett, you're on EIB with Mark Belling.
Hi, Mr. Bellings.
Hi.
Hi, thanks for taking my call.
Just wanted to respond to uh a gentleman you just spoke with a few minutes ago.
Um his point or his concern about our president um conducting these operations was was completely off base.
Um, first and foremost, it in a nutshell is who does he want in charge of our national security?
A federal judge is in no way accountable to the people of the United States.
He's he's simply put on the bench once he's nominated and on the federal bench, that's it.
He's not privy to any of the information um that our president is, and he's not charged with um keeping our country safe.
So you're right.
And the founding fathers knew this.
They knew that you couldn't have judges making wartime decisions, and you can't have the Congress doing it.
The Congress's authority and foreign policy is very limited.
We have elected a president, and one of the duties of the president, in fact, the greatest duty, is to serve as commander in chief of the United States.
These are wartime information, and I don't perceive this as being any different than if we're out there monitoring the activities of the Taliban and Afghanistan when we're fighting it, or the terrorists and that are operating in Iraq right now.
Of course you try to find out what they're up to and listen into their conversations.
That's just basic.
Right now we are talking about individuals here in the United States who are plotting war against us on our own soil, and to suggest that we can't use tactics that we would use overseas is just silly.
And you are exactly right.
The President is given the responsibility to do this.
The real problem isn't that that caller wants federal judges to make these decisions.
That caller wanted John Kerry and Al Gore to make these decisions, and I think that this is all about Bush and just the constant desire to to bash him, as opposed to anything substantive because the substantive arguments that they make here are silly.
And I couldn't agree more, and and with with that motivation behind it all, to me there isn't anything more deplorable than uh putting our uh national security behind uh politics.
Well, and I don't think this is going to work for them.
I think if you ask most Americans, do you want the president to try to monitor the activities of Al Qaeda operatives in the United States, they aren't going to say no.
Thank you for the call, Brett, to Winston Salem, North Carolina.
Lulu, you're on Russia's program with Mark Belling.
Hey, Mark, thanks for having me on.
Hey, the point that I wanted to make was I I'm a libertarian down here in North Carolina, and you know, I understand I'm always uh, you know, worried about the government listening or really doing anything.
But that's not really the point here.
The point is what the law says and what the president says.
And the previous presidents have had the power to be able to do this.
Now they want to debate whether it's constitutional, that's great, and I'm all for that, but that's not what they're saying.
I mean, it it's a clear-cut case of partisanship.
What's good for their guy is not good for our guy.
Well, particularly since they weren't bothered when their guys did it.
Griffin Bell, who was in attorney with the attorney general during the Carter administration says that they did it.
Um in that case, it had to do with uh spying for Vietnam.
It was used during the Clinton administration, as I mentioned in the Aldrich James case.
I don't recall any Democrats talking about impeaching Clinton for that.
In this case, the you know, the the grounds for Bush to do so are even more blatant.
You are talking about people who have talked to members of Al Qaeda, the organization that we know to be responsible for the attacks on nine-eleven.
I don't know for certain which, if any attacks we have prevented.
But we do know this.
They had information for a time about potentially something happening in transportation systems.
Bridges had been talked about.
There were there were fears on the uh first fourth of July after 9-11, 4th of July in 2002, that there were going to be attacks.
We don't know if because of our activities we got on to things and stopped them from happening.
There's no way of knowing that.
What we do know is this.
Al-Qaeda has not hit us since 9-11.
And for that, our president deserves praise, not criticism.
Thanks for the call.
My name is Mark Gelling, and I'm sitting in for Rush.
I'm Mark Gulling filling in for Rush Limbaugh to Willoughby, Ohio, and Sal.
Cell, how are you doing?
Hey, doing great, Mark.
Uh, you're doing a great job there.
Thank you.
Hey, uh, keep saying all the things that you're saying because they need to be said, and uh what I need to be said needs to be said, and that is if there's a terrorist attack as a direct result of some of these leaks, either via the media or any of the Congress people who are sworn to keep these things secret.
I'm putting together a class action suit, and I'm gonna go after these people, because if any of my family or friends are injured as a result of those leaks, there needs to be somebody accountable.
Isn't it interesting that the media seems to be showing no interest at all in who leaked this story to the New York to the New York Times?
You know, the leak about uh Valerie Plain.
They speculated for three years.
They're still trying to find out who first talked to Bob Novak about this.
There's no speculation at all about who's the source of this particular leak.
We do know this.
Members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees were briefed by the administration about this operation.
If this leak came out of Congress, then you are talking, I think, about criminal offenses because whoever leaked this did damage the national security priorities of the United States.
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