Tuesday, January 17, 2006
White House Attacks Gore Over NSA Spying Remarks
Former Vice-President Al Gore's description of the NSA warrantless spying program as "illegal" appears to have struck a nerve among the lawbreakers in the White House.
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.
Nothing objectionable here. Crooks always hate it when they are in the process of being brought to justice.
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.
"I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds," McClellan said of Gore.
That's kind of like a captured bank robber telling the police that the same bank had been robbed 10 years before, so today's bank robbery should not be prosecuted.
No sale.
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."
Just because a criminal suspect may have received bad advice from his dodgy mouthpiece, this in no way exculpates the suspect. Look it up.
I can't wait until some of the offenders start getting jumpy and become cooperating witnesses.
It will happen. This crew is made up of chickenshits. When the heat gets turned up, they will be flipping like the pancakes at IHOP.
