Satellite Spying on Americans

Michelle Malkin blogged My column today covers the civil liberties absolutists' hindsight hypocrisy and selective uproar over the NSA's surveillance of communications between suspected al Qaeda operatives and their contacts. I note the silence of the New York Times and the privacy crusaders over a report last week that military spy satellites were used to monitor suspects after the Oklahoma City bombing:

Funny enough, another story about unprecedented domestic spying measures broke a week before the Times's stunt. But neither the Times, nor the ACLU, nor the Democrat Party leadership had a peep to say about the reported infringements on Americans' civil liberties.... According to the McCurtain Daily Gazette, in the days after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the U.S. government used a spy satellite to gather intelligence on a white separatist compound in Oklahoma.... The Left believes the government should do whatever it takes to fight terrorists--­but only when the terrorists look like Timothy McVeigh. If you're on the MCI Friends and Family plan of Osama bin Laden and Abu Zubaydah, you're home free.

Meanwhile, a sane Democrat lawyer who served in the Clinton administration supports President Bush's legal position on the post-9/11 electronic surveillance program.

John Hinderaker wants a reply from the NYTimes reporters.

What Bush did was authorize listening in on calls between Al Qaeda people in other countries and people in their cells here in the US. The white separatist compound in Oklahoma Clinton spied on is totally within the US (in fact it is close to the geographic center of the US).