Why I Am Not So Concerned About the FISA Memo

By Robert Wenzel

National Review says that the FISA memo is scarier than Watergate.

As NR notes, the memo reveals that members of the Obama administration’s Department of Justice sought court approval for the surveillance of Carter Page, allegedly for colluding with Russian interests, and extended the surveillance three times. But none of these government officials told the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the warrant requests were based on an unverified dossier that had originated as a hit piece funded in part by the Hillary Clinton campaign to smear Donald Trump during the current 2016 campaign.

So why does NR believe that this is "bigger than Watergate"? NR tells us:

In the current FISA-gate scandal, most of the media and liberal civil libertarians are now opposing the disclosure of public documents. They are siding with those in the government who disingenuously sought surveillance to facilitate the efforts of a political campaign. This time around, the press is not after a hated Nixon administration. Civil libertarians are not demanding accountability from a conservative Reagan team. Instead, the roles are reversed.

NR is correct here as far as the facts are concerned but this is just big league power politics. Different factions vying for power will do what they can to cause power to operate for their benefit. The Dulles brothers used the CIA to benefit their crony operations. J. Edgar Hoover spied and had files on everyone. This is what government does.

The focus shouldn't be on prosecuting those who abuse power (Though I wouldn't mind if they all get sent to a supermax facility) but on eliminating the power centers that will always be targets of operators who want to abuse the centers for their own benefit. Remember, Hayek in Chapter 10 of The Road to Serfdom teaches us that the worst get on top precisely because they are willing to do whatever it takes to gain power.

Thus, the focus shouldn't be as much on the perpetrators who abused power this time but on the shutting down of power centers. All of them, the FISA courts, the FBI, the CIA and the NSA, for starters.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of  EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. The Robert Wenzel podcast is on  iphone and stitcher.