What a difference three little decades make


Jimmy Carter has a short memory
Charles Hurt lays it out in the Washington Times.

"Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision -- we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Mr. Carter said Monday in Nevada when his son Jack announced his Senate campaign.

"And no one knows how many innocent Americans have had their privacy violated under this secret act," he said.

The next day at Mrs. King's high-profile funeral, Mr. Carter evoked a comparison to the Bush policy when referring to the "secret government wiretapping" of civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
    
But in 1977, Mr. Carter and his attorney general, Griffin B. Bell, authorized warrantless electronic surveillance used in the conviction of two men for spying on behalf of Vietnam.
    
The men, Truong Dinh Hung and Ronald Louis Humphrey, challenged their espionage convictions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which unanimously ruled that the warrantless searches did not violate the men's rights.
    
In its opinion, the court said the executive branch has the "inherent authority" to wiretap enemies such as terror plotters and is excused from obtaining warrants when surveillance is "conducted 'primarily' for foreign intelligence reasons."

I think the wiretapping without a warrant was wrong then and I think it is wrong today. But what is bothering me more is that the Democrats assume a sanctimonious pose despite their past behavior.

Oh, by the way, the Attorney General who authorized the King wiretaps?

Robert F. Kennedy.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - February 13, 2006 at 04:24 AM  Tag


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