The Spy Who Shagged America

The revelations - or reminders - of the Clinton administration's fondness for domestic espionage, first cited here yesterday, just keep growing. Today at NRO, Byron York detailed how Mr. Bill didn't just use the NSA to conduct "economic" spooking, but also claimed authority to conduct no-warrant searches more vehemently than George Bush ever has - and for far less compelling reasons:

In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has "inherent authority" to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body. Even after the administration ultimately [knuckled under to] Congress's decision to place the authority to pre-approve such searches in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, President Clinton still maintained that he had sufficient authority to order such searches on his own.

"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," Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick [Yes, the "wall" babe] testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994, "and that
the president may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General."

"It is important to understand," Gorelick continued, "that the rules and methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the president in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities."

The WaPo was all over this bombshell, plastering the scandalous story all over....page A19. Under the bland headline, "Administration Backing No-Warrant Spy Searches," instead of something more robust like, "Sick Willie Makes Grab For Total Power, Civil Liberties in Mortal Peril." And no Democrats - they were in the majority in Congress back then, remember? - erupting in feigned outrage, demanding investigatory hearings, and/or igniting a drive for Bubba's immediate and summary impeachment.

Why not? What else? The same old tiresome left-wing double-standard. Which, in almost obligatory fashion, Gorelick herself personified in another WaPo article today:

"The issue here is this: If you're John McCain, and you just got Congress to agree to limits on interrogation techniques, why would you think that limits anything if the executive branch can ignore it by asserting its inherent authority?"

Translated by El Rushbo, this is tantamount to, "He's just gone out and done whatever he wants anyway. He's violating all these laws; he's not getting warrants; he's doing whatever he wants to do. The man's power mad! He's out of his mind!" But eleven years ago, when Bill Clinton was making the exact same assertion, Gorelick didn't appear to have a problem with it. Just like the media didn't and congressional Democrats didn't, because, as has been observed here and elsewhere on many an occasion, for the Left partisan politics is a religious bloodfeud in which what you are, not what you do, defines you as "good" or "evil". You can guess where Clinton and Bush the Younger fit into this equation.

And it wasn't just those two who shared the same position on warrantless searches for foreign intelligence gathering. So did Bush41. So did Ronald Reagan, who in 1981 signed Executive Order 12333 providing for such warrantless searches directed against "a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power." So did Jimmy Carter:

"This 'without court order,' was so clear that even President Carter, a Democrat not known for his vigilance in the war on terror, issued an executive order on May 23rd, 1979, stating, 'pursuant to Section 102(a)(1) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the attorney general is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order.'" [emphasis added]

This sort of thing has been going on, legally, for over a quarter of a century, spanning five presidential administrations. It has never been more necessary and vital to national security than the past four years. But because Democrats are so crazed in their obsession with destroying George W. Bush and seizing back power, all they can see it as is another propaganda weapon, even if countless American civilians have to be re-exposed to terrorist slaughter as a result.

As an aside, you may be wondering why Clinton was so vehement in "asserting his inherent authority" when it is a matter of record that he didn't want any part of fighting a war against Islamic fundamentalists. Limbaugh, as is his knack, connected the dots on that question this morning:

So, I know, how does this square with Gorelick creating the wall later on? Well, the wall had multiple purposes and one of the things it was to do was shield some of the illegal campaign contributions that might just happen to be flowing in from foreign countries. What have we swerved into here? (Gasp!)

So we can't spy on Johnny Chung. We can't spy on whoever else it was that ended up funneling all of those travelers checks and other things to the Clinton campaign. But, you see, bottom line here is: there was no real national security threat then that the Clinton people were looking at. This is a smoke screen. This is a smoke screen to cover up their own activities so that we couldn't connect the dots to find out about their illegal campaign contributions.

Or, to put it more concisely, "Clinton lied, people died." And his party is determined to wade through a river of their countrymen's blood, if necessary, to get back the power that has eluded them ever since.

One can only imagine how Osama bin Laden, assuming he's still drawing breath, must be roaring with laughter at the latest spectacle James Risen and the New York Times has unleashed. If I were he, I'd start taking bets on how long it will be before the Americans destroy each other, saving al Qaeda the trouble.

Wouldn't be as much fun that way, but I guess a man can only take so many heavenly virgins.

Just ask Cigar Man....