White House Accuses Gore of Hypocrisy

White House accused former Vice President Al Gore of hypocrisy Tuesday for his assertion that President Bush broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without court approval.

"If Al Gore is going to be the voice of the Democrats on national security matters, we welcome it," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in a swipe at the Democrat, who lost the 2000 election to Bush only after the Supreme Court intervened.

Gore, in a speech Monday, called for an independent investigation of the administration program that he says broke the law by listening in — without warrants — on Americans suspected of talking with terrorists abroad.

Gore called the program, authorized by President Bush, "a threat to the very structure of our government" and charged that the administration acted without congressional authority and made a "direct assault" on a federal court set up to authorize requests to eavesdrop on Americans.

Meanwhile, two civil liberties groups — the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights — filed federal lawsuits Tuesday seeking to block the eavesdropping program, which they called unconstitutional electronic surveillance of American citizens.

McClellan said the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches, and he cited an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants.

Gore said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should name a special counsel to investigate the program, saying Gonzales had an "obvious conflict of interest" as a member of the Bush Cabinet as well as the nation's top law enforcement officer.

Gonzales, who has agreed to testify publicly at a Senate hearing on the program, defended the surveillance on cable news talk shows Monday night.

"This program has been reviewed carefully by lawyers at the Department of Justice and other agencies," Gonzales said on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." "We firmly believe that this program is perfectly lawful. The president has the legal authority to authorize these kinds of programs."

On CNN's "Larry King Live," Gonzales said Gore's comments were inconsistent with Clinton administration policy.

"It's my understanding that during the Clinton administration there was activity regarding physical searches without warrants," Gonzales said. "I can also say it's my understanding that the deputy attorney general testified before Congress that the president does have the inherent authority under the Constitution to engage in physical searches without a warrant. And so, those would certainly seem to be inconsistent with what the former vice president was saying today."

Gore said there is still much to learn about the domestic surveillance program, but that he already has drawn a conclusion about its legality.

"What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently," he said.

Bush has pointed to a congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program.

Gore, however, contended that Bush failed to convince Congress to support a domestic spying program, so he "secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother."

He said the spying program must be considered along with other administration actions as a constitutional power grab by the president. Gore cited imprisoning American citizens without charges in terrorism cases, mistreatment of prisoners — including torture — and seizure of individuals in foreign countries and delivering them to autocratic regimes "infamous for the cruelty of their techniques."

From astute blogger:

FISKING GORE; EXPOSING GORE'S LIES AND DISTORTIONS
FROM THE GORE TEXT:

(1) "Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger. In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power."

GORE LIES. Here is the truth: Similar claims have been been made before by previous presidents and upheld by the courts; therefore they are NOT unprecedented, or breathtaking.
(2) "As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses."
GORES LIES. Here is the truth (according to the NYTIMES original article): The numbers are NOT HUGE, but miniscule. The original NYTIMES article asserted that as many as 1000 US persons (not all of whom might be CITIZENS) had ONLY their INTERNATIONAL calls to AL QAEDA interecepted. This is 1/300th of 1/tenth of one-percent of the US population; [this figure has been corrected, courtesy of a commenter.]. In addition, Bush DID CONSULT AND INFORM BOTH CONGRESS AND THE FISC. So, it was not unilateral and without regard for Congress or FISA.

(3) "The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program 'without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection.' "

ANOTHER GORE LIE. Here is the truth: The intercepted calls were INTERNATIONAL not domestic; there is a difference. Even the 2nd NYTIMES article on this matter conceded that according to their leakers only a dozen DOMESTIC calls were intertcepted and these were only intercepted by accident. AGAIN: "massive" is a concept that just doesn't apply to the program.
(4) "During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the President went out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place. But surprisingly, the President's soothing statements turned out to be false."
GORE LIES AGAIN. Here is the truth: When Bush was talking about court-ordered wiretaps, he was specifically talking about ROVING WIRETAPS and the PATRIOT ACT. And besides: WHY WOULD THE POTUS LEAK A SECRET OPERATION!?

(5) "At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persisnthtly."
GORE IS LYING. Here is the truth: The NSA intercepts were NOT domestic and were highly targeted and not pervasive. LOOKIT FOLKS: when you go to the airport to catch a flight from JFK to Heathrow in the UK you do NOT go to the DOMESTIC terminal; you go to the INTERNATIONAL terminal. DOMESTIC means ENTIRELY WITHIN THE USA. These intercepts were NOT "ENTIRELY WITHIN THE USA;" hence anyone who calls it "domestic surveillance" is LYING.

(6) "As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws."
That's a LIE. Here's the TRUTH: Bush acted CONSTITUTIONALLY according to Clinton USA Associate AG John Schmidt and liberal constitutional lawyer Cass Sunstein - and many other lawyers who cite NUMEROUS cases, INCLUDING THE SCOTUS. The 1972 SCOTUS KEITH DECISION and subsequent decisions in the FISCR and the FISC and federal district courts have ALL upheld the power of the POTUS, as CiC, to order warrantless collection of signal intelligence within the USA and on US CITIZENS in order to gather intel on FOREIGN powers to aid national security. [Nixon CLAIMED (falsely) that his targets were domestic threats, and that's why the SCOTUS held what he did was unconstitutional.]

(7) "And the disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to millions of Americans in both political parties."
I agree that many people are troubled by this program, but I assert it's because DEMAGOGUES of the Left - like Gore - have blown it WAY OUT OF PROPORTION; for example, this sentence AGAIN refers to the program as "mass violations of the law." This is so hyperbolic it is mendacious.

(8) "... the President has also declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen that he alone determines to be a threat to our nation, and that, notwithstanding his American citizenship, the person imprisoned has no right to talk with a lawyer-even to argue that the President or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person. The President claims that he can imprison American citizens indefinitely for the rest of their lives without an arrest warrant, without notifying them about what charges have been filed against them, and without informing their families that they have been imprisoned. At the same time, the Executive Branch has claimed a previously unrecognized authority to mistreat prisoners in its custody in ways that plainly constitute torture in a pattern that has now been documented in U.S. facilities located in several countries around the world."
These are just more distortions and hyperbole from Gore. The truth is that the SCOTUS has held that the POTUS can designate as US citizen an enemy combatant. Enemy combatants - like POW's - can be held until the the end of the hostilities. And neither the POTUS or any other part of the executive branch has ever condoned torture. Whenever and wherever torture, or even less harmful acts, such as degradation, were discovered the perps have been punished. As for RENDITION of dangerous terrorists to SECRET PRISONS outside the USA, where another nation takes custody (and maybe treats them more harshly than we would) - BEGAN UNDER THE CLINTON-GORE ADMINSTRATION. It is highly disengenuous for Gore to critique Bush for using tools invented by him and Clinton.

(9) "... after appearing to support legislation sponsored by John McCain to stop the continuation of torture, the President declared in the act of signing the bill that he reserved the right not to comply with it."
GORE IS DISTORTING AGAIN. here's the truth: This is standard and common POTUS "signing-talk" - and Clinton did the same thing as he signed numerous bills - including the INTELLIGENCE WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTION ACT in 1998. AGAIN: Gore is trying to make Bush seem SINGULARLY evil, when in fact what Bush is asserting about POTUS powers has been asserted by VIRTUALLY EVERY SINGLE PRESIDENT.

(10) "There have of course been other periods of American history when the Executive Branch claimed new powers that were later seen as excessive and mistaken. Our second president, John Adams, passed the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts and sought to silence and imprison critics and political opponents. When his successor, Thomas Jefferson, eliminated the abuses he said: "[The essential principles of our Government] form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation... [S]hould we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety."

Our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Some of the worst abuses prior to those of the current administration were committed by President Wilson during and after WWI with the notorious Red Scare and Palmer Raids. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII marked a low point for the respect of individual rights at the hands of the executive. And, during the Vietnam War, the notorious COINTELPRO program was part and parcel of the abuses experienced by Dr. King and thousands of others."

WELL WELL WELL: GORE TELLS THE TRUTH! What Gore fails to see is the OBVIOUS: That EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE PREVIOUS PRESIDENTIAL ACTS WAS A GREATER "POTUS POWER GRAB" THAN ANYTHING BUSH HAS DONE. Yet, Gore still idolizes FDR and Lincoln, for example. And rightly so. What each of these Presidents they did during wartime was justified and constitutional (except for the GREATEST one of them all, LINCOLN!). [As for Cointelpro: it was held to be focused on domestic threats and therefore not within the powers of the POTUS as CiC (who can independently order surveillance of FOREIGN threats).]

Gore and all the other BDS afflicted politicians should STOP LYING AND DISTORTING or just shut up.

[NOTE: There are a few sane critics of the president's NSA intercept program who have voiced legitimate concerns about the scope of the program and whether there were enough safeguards to ensure that the scope was limited, but Gore is OBVIOUSLY NOT one of them.

I want to remind you all that when the FISC orders SECRET electronic surveillance on a US citizens it is up to the USA AG (and his agencies) or ther CIA's IG or the NSA's IG to make sure (through self-policing) that the order is correctly adhered to. The very same procedures and oversight were in effect for this program too - so there was never any GREATER threat that THIS SECRET program would abused than any other FISC ordered surveillance. Thinking there could, or would be, is illogical.]

Al Gore Arrogates to Himself Power to Ignore His Past

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free.

"Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on "large volumes of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the United States." The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch this massive eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that would permit such domestic intelligence collection."

"At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently."
Al Gore
January 16, 2005
AL GORE SAYS BUSH ACTS AS IF HE IS THE KING, THE ALL-POWERFUL EXECUTIVE,
VIDEO HERE

Another, "He played on our fears!" moment from Al Gore today.

Democrat Al Gore, pictured in 2005, President George W. Bush's rival in the 2000 presidential election, accused him of breaking the law by authorizing a domestic spying program.(AFP/File/Roslan Rahman)

Yet, back in the 1990's Here is what Al Gore and his boss Bill Clinton thought about warrantless searches when they were in office:

"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 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."

Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, provides for such warrantless searches directed against "a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power"...

...Gorelick signaled that the administration would go along a congressional decision to place such searches under the court — if, as she testified, it "does not restrict the president's ability to collect foreign intelligence necessary for the national security." In the end, Congress placed the searches under the FISA court, but the Clinton administration did not back down from its contention that the president had the authority to act when necessary.
John Schmidt, who served as associate attorney general in the Clinton Justice department, wrote in the Chicago Tribune (via Byron York at the National Review) that:

"We cannot eliminate the need for extraordinary action in the kind of unforeseen circumstances presented by Sept. 11," Schmidt continues. "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."
Bill Clinton expanded the use of warrantless searches in 1994:

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.
On December 20th Glenn Reynolds noted this CATO Institute Report published back in 1997:

The Clinton administration has repeatedly attempted to play down the significance of the warrant clause. In fact, President Clinton has asserted the power to conduct warrantless searches, warrantless drug testing of public school students, and warrantless wiretapping...

...The Clinton administration claims that it can bypass the warrant clause for "national security" purposes. In July 1994 Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." [51] According to Gorelick, the president (or his attorney general) need only satisfy himself that an American is working in conjunction with a foreign power before a search can take place.

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