Al Gore and his time machine
I’m with Les. I can’t really take Al Gore seriously regarding his criticism of warrantless wiretaps. Maybe if he’d taken a stand against his boss in 1994 over this, he’d be a bit credible. The NYT has apparently changed its tune too.
Hack meet hack.
January 17th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
My reading, watching, and listening of Gore’s speech led me to believe his complaint was with the executive wilfully violating the law…
Yeah, he was a more than a little blinded to the dangers of warrantless
wiretappingdomestic searches in 1994… and yeah, he’s a little more alert to them now (even able to put them in historical context)… it’s amazing how much clearer issues seem when it’s the other guy…But what takes this to the whole other level is that Bush has declared himself & his office above the law, and promised to continue breaking it. That’s the scary part, and that’s part of what makes the warrantless wiretapping scary, too.
And, after all, there are only so many agents around to physically snoop a domicile… Those that are done, if it becomes public, will be readily identifiable as “in the name of national security” vs. “for less savory purposes.”… not so with the wiretapping…
Even so… the Clinton administration actually pushed to have domestic searches covered under FISA so that nat’l security needs could be met without pushing the 4th amendment envelope…
So, what past blindness Gore may have had do not make anything like a convincing “tu quoque” argument for dismissing his Monday speech.
IMHO.
January 18th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
As smijer says, it’s a vastly different thing, because what the Clinton Administration did in 1994 was not (yet) explicitly prohibited by legislation, whereas what Bush did in 2005 (and possibly before) was. Further, while the administration performed some warrantless searches in 1994, they were working extensively with the FISC on other issues concerning that case, so the court at least knew that the target was being investigated.
Contrast that against what the Bush Administration seems to have done, bypassing the FISC completely, violating explicit prohibitions in FISA (which didn’t apply to Clinton because they didn’t exist yet in 1994), and refusing to even name who’s been under investigation, even to the secret court.
Now you might argue that legalities aside, the Clinton Administration’s 1994 warrantless searches were equally wrong (even if not illegal), and that’s a separate debate. I think enough is different about the Clinton case (single, named target that the FISC was aware of) and the Bush case (multiple, unnamed targets not known by the FISC) that I’m willing to call them apples and oranges, even without the difference in legalities. At the same time, I don’t know enough about the 1994 searches to unconditionally defend them, either.
Note, too, that there’s no constitutional prohibition against warrantless searches, only against unreasonable searches. And the courts are the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes “reasonable” versus “unreasonable.” So if there was no law prohibiting the Clinton Administration’s 1994 searches, then it all boils down to the reasonableness of those searches.