Domestic Spying debate
Adam White & Daveed Gartenstein-Ross have published an important piece of analysis over at the American Spectator which begins like this
IN A BOLD AND CONTROVERSIAL DECISION, the president authorized a program for the surveillance of communications within the United States, seeking to prevent acts of domestic sabotage and espionage. In so doing, he ignored a statute that possibly forbade such activity, even though high-profile federal judges had affirmed the statute's validity. The president sought statutory amendments allowing this surveillance but, when no such legislation was forthcoming, he continued the program nonetheless. And when Congress demanded that he disclose details of the surveillance program, the attorney general said, in no uncertain terms, that it would get nothing of the sort.
They are not referring to President Bush, but about the icon of the Left, the original neo-Con, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And they are referring to a period in history that precedes America's entrance into WWII.
In an introduction to the piece at the CounterTerrorism Blog, co-author Daveed Gartenstein-Ross notes that a rational discussion of the issue is clouded by Bush-hatred
While there is no fool-proof solution to the proper balance between security and civil liberties in this case, one of the problems with the debate over NSA surveillance is the degree to which it has been personalized around President Bush. Many critics of the surveillance -- although clearly not all -- have an obvious hatred for the president that colors the way they see the administration's actions.
Read the whole thing.
It is a fact that President Clinton assumed more severe powers with regards to domestic spying than President Bush has, and there was no howling, neither from the Left nor the Right.
Legal guidelines for signals intelligence within the US during the Clinton Administration were spelled out, not by the NSA, but by President Clinton's (in)famous Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick who said
"The Department of Justice believes -- and the case law supports -- that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes and that the president may, as he has done, delegate this authority to the attorney general,"
What's more
One of the most famous examples of warrantless searches in recent years was the investigation of CIA official Aldrich H. Ames, who ultimately pleaded guilty to spying for the former Soviet Union. That case was largely built upon secret searches of Ames' home and office in 1993, conducted without federal warrants.
And
In 1994, President Clinton expanded the use of warrantless searches to entirely domestic situations with no foreign intelligence value whatsoever. In a radio address promoting a crime-fighting bill, Mr. Clinton discussed a new policy to conduct warrantless searches in highly violent public housing projects.
Previous administrations also asserted the authority of the president to conduct searches in the interest of national security.
And it doesn't stop with Clinton or FDR.
In 1978 ... Attorney General Griffin B. Bell testified before a federal judge about warrantless searches he and President Carter had authorized against two men suspected of spying on behalf of the Vietnam government.
So let's get an historical perspective and discuss this rationally.
'Kay?
