Attorney General Alberto Gonzales visited the U.S. Air Force Academy Nov. 18, making an unusual Saturday presentation to a law class at the school. Gonzales chided critics of warrantless surveillance and extraordinary rendition for harboring "myths" about the nature of U.S. law. What is frightening, considering Gonzales' role as the nation's top law enforcement officer, is that what he calls myth would be defined as basic constitutional tenet by most legal scholars. If Gonzales' view of C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) prevails in the 110th Congress, engineers who go job hunting in the intelligence community should be careful.

In many ways, Gonzales is more frightening than his predecessor, John Ashcroft, who merely wielded the hammer of executive privilege without seeking legal justification for his actions. Gonzales, even before taking the top slot at the Justice Department, has continually looked for legal outs on electronic surveillance, treatment of foreign prisoners and similar areas where the White House has sought to extend the power of the executive branch.

Let's examine National Security Agency basics. The notion of intercepting and cryptanalyzing a diplomat's mail or point-to-point communication may raise hackles from an ethics standpoint, but it's been common practice for centuries. The NSA's global electronic surveillance network, by contrast, has no basis for existence in U.S. or international law. Ordinarily, other nations might complain about NSA resources that can literally scan all global communications--except that most nations are trying to field similar resources.

After hearings on the NSA in 1975-76, Congress tried to limit domestic use of the so-called Echelon network by passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under FISA, a secret court was established to hear special requests for domestic interception. It quickly developed a reputation as a rubber-stamp court that approved almost every request brought before it.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the president could have sought an expansion of FISA, particularly since the sitting Congress was the most complacent in a century. He did not. Instead he bypassed FISA entirely, citing executive privilege. Constitutional scholars call this one of the weakest legs a president can stand on in any effort to broaden his power. Yet Gonzales calls abuse of NSA and FISA procedures a myth.

The operational use of NSA resources impinges on the working life of EEs in at least two ways. First, the NSA and many of its prime contractors, such as Science Applications International Corp., desperately need design engineers with security clearance. They even took part in a special advertising insert section in November's IEEE Spectrum, seeking employees for international and homeland expansion. While the tendency is always to hope one is contributing to the nation's security, engineers should carefully consider the scope of projects in which they get involved. And that's difficult, given today's security compartmentalization.

Second, prime contractors are overseeing gargantuan military electronics projects that have not been vetted by adequate congressional oversight. Individual members of Congress have complained that projects like the Misty stealth satellite, Space-Based Infrared System, Transformational Communications Satellite system and Future Imagery Architecture underwent little, if any, critical review in the complacent 109th Congress. Now the infrared system will almost certainly face the chopping block, and other electronic intelligence systems will undergo budgetary scrutiny that has been absent for six years. Jumping on board a bloated intelligence or surveillance project's design team may not be a wise career move in 2007.

The attorney general has also lambasted critics of prisoner treatment at Guantanamo. It's true that prisoners there are treated under conditions close to Geneva constraints. But making that argument is a version of the old bait-and-switch routine, since critics are more upset about Abu Ghraib, Baghram and the secret European facilities established by the CIA for "extraordinary renditions," i.e., kidnappings.

Some blame Vice President Dick Cheney for the problems at sites the administration does not acknowledge even exist. The CIA admitted in early November that its prisons were established by presidential directive, under which Gonzales and Cheney both apparently consulted with President Bush.

Yet Gonzales told the cadets that mistreatment of "enemy combatants" (itself a legally questionable term) is "a mistaken perception."

Gonzales and former Justice Department "torture expert" John Yoo are not waffling on ex post facto justifications of presidential behavior. They appear to genuinely believe in the expansion of presidential power evidenced in the NSA and CIA actions. And that's frightening to consider if our three branches of government are to remain balanced. Gonzales' comments to cadets suggest he would also believe in such White House powers as "signing statements," allowing the president to indicate which portions of a new law he would enforce, and refusals to send cabinet officials to testify on Capitol Hill.

The administration has been helped by the laziest Congress in a century, in terms of its willingness to conduct oversight hearings. In a study for the November-December Foreign Affairs magazine, "When Congress Checks Out," Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann claim the 109th Congress not only held the fewest hearings of any type to examine executive-branch behavior but logged the fewest hours in session of any Congress since the middle of the 20th century.

Gonzales expressed optimism that he can reach accommodation with the 110th Congress, and many legislative leaders in both parties seem ready to compromise with Bush. But to do so, they will have to see evidence of a willingness to pull back on presidential power. When the attorney general calls balanced law scholars the purveyors of myth, it's the equivalent of the president's calling Democrats unpatriotic. The Justice Department had better purge its true-believer syndrome and brush up on the Constitution, or it will see its power cut back by legislative or judicial fiat.

By Loring Wirbel (lwirbel@cmp.com), communications editor for EE Times