JFK, WIRETAPPER

You may believe that George W. Bush and Richard Nixon are the only presidents who have used their intelligence agencies for illegal domestic wiretapping. Think again. President John F. Kennedy did it, too, as shown in recently disclosed tapes and documents.

Mr. Kennedy was upset by a 1962 report in The New York Times by the newspaper’s military analyst, Hanson Baldwin, that the Soviet Union was hardening its missile launch sites with concrete bunkers. The obvious source was a leak of secret information.

His Central Intelligence Agency director and other national security officials advised creating a special CIA group that would tap the phones and track the movements of Mr. Baldwin and other leading news reporters. Mr. Kennedy approved the project even after being warned that domestic spying was illegal. It became part of a domestic surveillance program called Chaos that went on for seven years under Presidents Johnson and Nixon. The CIA indexed 300,000 names of American citizens and organizations and kept detailed files on 7,200 Americans.

Hearing JFK saying “That’s a very good idea. We’ll do that” in a current Internet video can send shivers down the spine. Even so, past misdeeds, as displayed in a recent unusual CIA disclosure of the “family jewels” as compiled in a long-secret 1973 internal investigation, certainly don’t justify current illegal acts.

That’s why the Senate Judiciary Committee has served subpoenas on the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and the Justice Department for documents relating to the authorization and legal justification for the Bush administration’s admitted warrantless wiretapping program.

The three most senior Republicans on the committee – Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Orrin Hatch of Utah and Chuck Grassley of Iowa – joined all the Democratic members in authorizing the subpoenas. So this is a bipartisan inquiry, not just a Democratic confrontation as described by a White House spokesman as well as some news reports.

The White House has refused to comply with the subpoenas.

The National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program started shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. It was a secret until The New York Times disclosed it in 2005.

The Senate Democrats have been investigating it, despite Republican obstruction. But dramatic testimony last month by James Comey, a former deputy attorney general, broadened the inquiry to include prominent Republicans. Mr. Comey disclosed that he and other Justice Department officials including then Attorney General John Ashcroft had threatened resignation over an administration effort to recertify the program.

President Bush, in a policy reversal, put the program under the supervision of a special court, but details continue to be veiled in secrecy.

Congress must continue to press for full disclosure of this illegal surveillance of American citizens.