By Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t
Two years ago, US District Court Judge James Robertson sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., notifying him of his resignation from a secret intelligence court set up to monitor the federal government’s domestic surveillance activities.
Robertson’s abrupt departure came on the heels of a December 2005 report in The New York Times that first exposed the White House’s warrantless wiretapping program President Bush had authorized shortly after 9/11. Robertson, who was appointed to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court by the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, told colleagues that President Bush’s unilateral decision to spy on Americans suspected of links to terrorists, without first seeking approval from the 11 judges assigned to the FISA court, was legally questionable and his resignation should be interpreted as a sign of protest.
Publicly, President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had said at the time the domestic spying activities were revealed in December 2005 the administration circumvented the FISA court because the approval process was too “cumbersome.”
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