(from the NY Times)
I was No. 8 on Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” — a strange assemblage of 20 people who had incurred the White House’s wrath because they had disagreed with administration policy. As the presidential counsel John Dean explained it in 1971, the list was part of a plan to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” My guess is that I earned this dubious distinction because of my opposition to the Vietnam War, though no one ever said for sure.
Because I rejected the Nixon administration’s use of national security as a pretext for broad assertions of unchecked executive power, I became engaged with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when it was proposed in the early 1970s. And because I reject the Bush administration’s equally extreme assertions of executive power at the expense of civil liberties, I have been engaged in trying to improve the current legislation.
The compromise legislation that will come to the Senate floor this week is not the legislation that I would have liked to see, but I disagree with those who suggest that senators are giving in by backing this bill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/opinion/08halperin.html?th&emc=th