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A retired NSA official and friend put it this way: "Our problem, given the broad array of modern telecommunications technology, is that we don't know what we have until we have it." Put differently, we have the ability to monitor massive amounts of information between persons in the United States and others overseas. Any one of millions of messages, phone calls, faxes, e-mails or data transfers could be an instruction to carry out another Sept. 11. Do we want our government to intercept and act on such communications before an attack and save lives? It has worked before.

Nineteen years ago this month, our intelligence services intercepted a message from an overseas capital instructing a terrorist "sleeper cell" in a Washington, D.C. suburb to assassinate a U.S. military officer living in northern Virginia. The FBI alerted the target, and the Department of Defense secretly moved the officer, his wife and children to a military base in North Carolina. The terrorists were apprehended as they prepared to carry out their attack. The technology used to detect the attack is still secret. The lives that were saved were mine and those of my wife and children.

Do we want our government to be able to save lives like this -- very likely on a far broader scale -- in the future? If so, then at the very least, we should take the debate behind closed doors and stop risking the compromise of very sensitive collection capabilities.

Attorney General Gonzales put it succinctly in his testimony before the Judiciary Committee this week: "Our enemy is listening. And I cannot help but wonder if they aren't shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would imperil such a sensitive program by leaking its existence in the first place -- and smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more or perhaps even unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the war on terror." Failing to heed this advice is nothing short of a death wish.

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COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.

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