American Spectator: FDR's Domestic Surveillance

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

After a short lull, the debate over the administration's warrantless NSA surveillance seems certain to heat up again. Proof of this can be seen in Sen. Arlen Specter's April 27 press conference, in which he demanded that President Bush disclose details of the NSA's surveillance program and threatened to suspend the program's funding. While there is no fool-proof solution to the proper balance between security and civil liberties in this case, one of the problems with the debate over NSA surveillance is the degree to which it has been personalized around President Bush. Many critics of the surveillance -- although clearly not all -- have an obvious hatred for the president that colors the way they see the administration's actions. Thus, it's instructive to see how the Roosevelt administration handled a similar situation on the eve of World War II.

My new article at the American Spectator, co-authored with my colleague Adam White, examines FDR's surveillance program. In researching the article, we obtained relevant memos from Justice Jackson's archives at the Library of Congress that haven't been previously discussed in the press. The controversy then generated is strikingly similar to the present debate over NSA surveillance. An excerpt:

Despite FDR's readiness to use his inherent authority, he and [attorney general and future Supreme Court justice Robert] Jackson pushed Congress to give the administration statutory authority. As Jackson recounted in his memoir, the administration sought authorization for surveillance for not only "espionage [and] sabotage," but also "extortion and kidnapping cases." The House was willing only to authorize FBI wiretapping "in the interest of national defense." As today, any such legislation was opposed by the ACLU, as well as (in Jackson's words) "others of liberal persuasion."

FDR and Jackson also opposed those who sought to require that surveillance be approved not only by the attorney general but also by the courts, through warrant requirements. As Jackson wrote in a March 19, 1941 letter to Rep. Hatton Summers, "I do not favor the search warrant procedure.... Such procedure means loss of precious time, probably publicity, and filing of charges against persons as a basis for wire tapping before investigation is complete which might easily result in great injury to such persons."

In the end, FDR and the Congress weren't able to agree on a legislative compromise. Nonetheless, President Roosevelt continued to authorize national-security surveillance. All of this predated America's entry into the Second World War.

Read the whole article here.

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