Let the witch hunts begin!

Except, y’know … witch hunts are sometimes necessary to uncover real witches.

Since The New York Times first revealed in 2005 that the NSA was eavesdropping on citizens’ overseas phone calls and e-mail, few additional details about the massive “Terrorist Surveillance Program” have emerged. That’s because the Bush administration has stonewalled, misled and denied documents to Congress, and subpoenaed the phone records of the investigative reporters.

Now privacy advocates are hopeful that President Obama will be more forthcoming with information. But for the quickest and most honest account of Bush’s illegal policies, they say don’t look to the incoming president. Watch instead for the hidden army of would-be whistle-blowers who’ve been waiting for Inauguration Day to open the spigot on the truth.

“I’d bet there are a lot of career employees in the intelligence agencies who’ll be glad to see Obama take the oath so they can finally speak out against all this illegal spying and get back to their real mission,” says Caroline Fredrickson, the ACLU’s Washington D.C. legislative director.

New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersh already has a slew of sources waiting to spill the Bush administration’s darkest secrets, he said in an interview last month. “You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on January 20. [They say,] ‘You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then.'”

The other hope from privacy advocates (and, one would think, small-government advocates, though too many of them have been too silent on the subject) is that the Obama Administration will, itself be more forthcoming on a lot of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans on under the Bush watch.

I suspect there will be roll-back of some of the Bush Administration actions. Others may well not be rolled back — the fact is, there may well be some increased surveillance and investigative tools that are, actually, justifiable (in which case I think the Obama Administration will be more forthcoming in providing justifications), but also some that need to be justifiably secret (in which case I think the Obama Administration will be more willing to set up oversight mechanisms, e.g., FISA).

I suspect that there will be some seriously awful and arguably illegal things revealed. There are a lot of arguments to be made for nailing every malefactor to the wall (never again!), and a lot of arguments to be made for being selective in whatever prosecutions take place (can we focus on the big names, at least), and a lot of arguments to be made for a “peace & reconciliation” model (if only to get to the truth). It’s hard to say the best course, because it’s been several years at least since we could count on any sort of governmental investigation into anything the Administration has done.

But I also suspect that the privacy and clean government advocates will not be altogether happy with the final solution. Not everyone in the Bush Administration can, or should, be prosecuted. And Obama’s a pragmatic man, not necessarily an ideologue (though he’s also a constitutional scholar), and there are Things We Don’t Know. To a certain degree, we will need to trust him and his until they demonstrate they cannot be trusted (or the extent to which we should). I seriously doubt that the Intelligence / Homeland Security picture will (or necessarily should) roll back to where it was when Bush took office. 

That said, there’s a lot of way to make all that more compatible with American ideals. And that’s where my hope lies.