GOP To Take On Hillary’s 1992 Eavesdropping
October 15th, 2007Gee, this sounds strangely familiar.
From The Hill:
GOP targeting Clinton on phone-call snooping
By Alexander Bolton
October 16, 2007
Republicans plan to seize on an allegation from the 1992 presidential campaign to tarnish Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on the red-hot issue of government surveillance.
Government surveillance will be at the forefront of the political debate this fall as congressional Democrats and President Bush square off over legislation allowing electronic spying on U.S. soil without a warrant.
Republicans are focusing on an allegation in a recent book by two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, which suggests Clinton listened to a secretly recorded conversation between political opponents.
In their book about Clinton’s rise to power, Her Way, Don Van Natta Jr., an investigative reporter at The New York Times, and Jeff Gerth, who spent 30 years as an investigative reporter at the paper, wrote: “Hillary’s defense activities ranged from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She received memos about the status of various press inquiries; she vetted senior campaign aides; and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack.
“The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill,” Gerth and Van Natta wrote in reference to Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton. “Bill’s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions.”
A GOP official said, “Hillary Clinton’s campaign hypocrisy continues to know no bounds. It is rather unbelievable that Clinton would listen in to conversations being conducted by political opponents, but refuse to allow our intelligence agencies to listen in to conversations being conducted by terrorists as they plot and plan to kill us. Team Clinton can expect to see and hear this over and over again over the course of the next year.”
Gerth told The Hill that he learned of the incident in 2006 when he interviewed a former campaign aide present at the tape playing. He has not revealed the aide’s identity. Clinton’s campaign has not disputed any facts reported in the final version of his book, which became public this spring, he said.
“It hasn’t been challenged,” said Gerth. “There hasn’t been one fact in the book that’s been challenged.” …
Several legal experts said it was illegal to intercept cell phone conversations in 1992.
“It’s been clear that since 1986 it was illegal to intercept an individual cell phone call,” said Barry Steinhardt, the director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union.
Clinton has made privacy an issue on the campaign trail. In July, she discussed her privacy bill of rights in a speech to the American Constitution Society. The proposed rights, ensconced in the Protect Act, include the right to sue when privacy rules have been violated; the right to protect phone records; and the right to freeze credit in the event of identity theft.
During the same speech, she addressed the controversy over government surveillance.
“Every president should save those powers for limited, critical situations,” said Clinton, according to a copy of the speech posted on her campaign website. “And when it comes to a regular program of searching for information that touches the privacy of ordinary Americans, those programs need to be monitored and reviewed as set out by Congress in cooperation with the judiciary.
“That is the essence of the compact we have with each other and with our government, and we cannot ignore it.” …
The Gerth and Van Natta book came out in June 8, 2007, more than four months ago.
Would it be immodest to note that nobody said beans about this somewhat buried revelation until after it was featured right here on our little corner of the world?
Here is what we posted on October 3, 2007:
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Hillary Eavesdropped On Phone Calls Of Critics
From “Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” by Jeff Gerth and Don van Natta, Jr., pp 93-4, which describes one of Mrs. Bill Clinton’s roles in the 1992 campaign:
The Defense Team
Hillary’s defense activities ranged from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She received memos about the status of various press inquiries;10 she vetted senior campaign aides;11 and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack. The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill. Bill’s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions.12
A lot had changed since the moment eighteen years earlier when Hillary had been aghast at the suggestion that the Clinton campaign use underhanded means to garner votes in rural Arkansas.
Yet again, Bill Clinton’s chances were being jeopardized by rumors of his womanizing. And yet again, it was up to Hillary to minimize the threat — and if that meant listening to a tape that had been obtained under questionable circumstances, then she would just deal with it.
10. Numerous 1992 campaign memoranda addressed to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
11. David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace (New York: Scribner, 2001), 20.
12. Author interview with former campaign aide present at the tape playing in 2006.
That’s right. Mrs. Bill Clinton listened in on tapes of the private phone calls of critics. She eavesdropped on private citizens in order to try to head off the next “bimbo eruption.” All of which is surely highly illegal.
And mind you these aren’t allegations from the “vast rightwing conspiracy.” This is from the pens of the New York Times reporters and Pulitzer Prize winners Gerth and Van Nata.
Of course this is the same worthy who is now marshaling her surrogates and minions to silence Rush Limbaugh, and anyone else she perceives as standing in the way of her coronation. It is clear she will not stop at anything to achieve power.
This is “her way.”
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Once again S&L leads the way to a better tomorrow.
Meanwhile, just for a lark, let’s remember what Mrs. Clinton had to say upon the resignation of that arch-criminal Alberto Gonzales just last August, at the “Presidential Cancer Forum” (sic):
Hillary on Gonzales Resignation
“Yes, I think we should set a standard that the next Attorney General cares about the rule of law more than he cares about protecting the President.”
She’s beautiful when she’s self-righteous, isn’t she?
Or maybe not “beautiful.” 2 Comments »
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