The Anchoress
UPDATE: Byron York has just posted a more extensive look at Bill Clinton and Warrantless Searches. Interesting reading.
John Schmidt, who served under President Clinton from 1994 to 1997 as the associate attorney general of the United States, says The President has the authority:
President Bush’s post- Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents.
In the Supreme Court’s 1972 Keith decision holding that the president does not have inherent authority to order wiretapping without warrants to combat domestic threats, the court said explicitly that it was not questioning the president’s authority to take such action in response to threats from abroad.
Four federal courts of appeal subsequently faced the issue squarely and held that the president has inherent authority to authorize wiretapping for foreign intelligence purposes without judicial warrant. In the most recent judicial statement on the issue, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, composed of three federal appellate court judges, said in 2002 that “All the … courts to have decided the issue held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence … We take for granted that the president does have that authority.”
Every president since FISA’s passage has asserted that he retained inherent power to go beyond the act’s terms. Under President Clinton, deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie Gorelick testified that “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.”
We cannot eliminate the need for extraordinary action in the kind of unforeseen circumstances presented by Sept. 11. I do not believe the Constitution allows Congress to take away from the president the inherent authority to act in response to a foreign attack. That inherent power is reason to be careful about who we elect as president, but it is authority we have needed in the past and, in the light of history, could well need again.
Kobayashi Maru is venting today, on a fine rant against the spilling of state secrets, the death of the Patriot Act and such.
What is different today versus 9-11 is a natural (if juvenile) human tendency: the desire not to confront painful realities. In this case those realities (for Democrats) are near-complete political castration/repudiation, terrorist atrocities that we’re unable to completely contain, the virtual inevitability of a domestic attack that will make 9-11 look like a dress rehearsal, and the likelihood that this will at some point entail personal sacrifice (as all wars eventually do).
Given the choice, it is characteristic of children – especially spoiled ones – that they will avoid or postpone any unpleasantness that’s within their power to avoid or postpone. If hiding under the bed, clinging to the doorframe, playing adults off one another and/or throwing a tantrum are the most effective tactics to accomplish that, then so be it. I don’t want to go to the dentist. I don’t want to eat my Brussels sprouts. I don’t want to go to school. I want an Oompah Loompah, now, daddy! Right now!
You’ll want to read the whole thing.
In a similar vein, the NRO editors write about September 10th Americans.
Michelle Malkin wonders why the NY Times has no outrage re Clinton’s use of satellights to spy on citizens after the OKC bombing?
Matt May in the American Thinker has some questions he wants answered.
Via Drudge:
CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SECRET SEARCH ON AMERICANS — WITHOUT COURT ORDER
CARTER EXECUTIVE ORDER: ‘ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE’ WITHOUT COURT ORDER
Bill Clinton Signed Executive Order that allowed Attorney General to do searches without court approval
Clinton, February 9, 1995: “The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order”
WASH POST, July 15, 1994: Extend not only to searches of the homes of U.S. citizens but also — in the delicate words of a Justice Department official — to “places where you wouldn’t find or would be unlikely to find information involving a U.S. citizen… would allow the government to use classified electronic surveillance techniques, such as infrared sensors to observe people inside their homes, without a court order.”
Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, the Clinton administration believes the president “has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes.”
Secret searches and wiretaps of Aldrich Ames’s office and home in June and October 1993, both without a federal warrant.
Jimmy Carter Signed Executive Order on May 23, 1979: “Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order.”END
Andrew McCarthy:
When not cavalierly talking “impeachment,” here’s the Left’s talking point of the day:
What makes this president think he can invade the privacy of Americans without a warrant?
Read it all, to find out.
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