Alito Defended Officials From Wiretap Suits
Posted on December 23, 2005
In the usual twisting of the forked tounge, the liberals are taking the whole wiretapping thing and riding it like there is no tommorow.
WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito defended the right of government officials to order domestic wiretaps for national security when he worked at the Reagan Justice Department, an echo of President Bush’s rationale for spying on U.S. residents in the war on terror.
Then an assistant to the solicitor general, Alito wrote a 1984 memo that provided insights on his views of government powers and legal recourse — seen now through the prism of Bush’s actions — as well as clues to the judge’s understanding of how the Supreme Court operates.
The National Archives released the memo and scores of other documents related to Alito on Friday; the Associated Press had requested the material under the Freedom of Information Act. The memo comes as Bush is under fire for secretly ordering domestic spying of suspected terrorists without a warrant.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Monday he would ask Alito about the president’s authority at confirmation hearings beginning Jan. 9. The memo’s release Friday prompted committee Democrats to signal that they will press the conservative jurist about executive powers.
The memo dealt with whether government officials should have blanket protection from lawsuits when authorizing wiretaps. “I do not question that the attorney general should have this immunity,” Alito wrote. “But for tactical reasons, I would not raise the issue here.”
Despite Alito’s warning that the government would lose, the Reagan administration took the fight to the Supreme Court in the case of whether Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, could be sued for authorizing a warrantless domestic wiretap to gather information about a suspected terrorist plot.
Michelle Malkin unspins the spin.
But contrary to the spin, Alito has never defended warrantless domestic spying. He did say that Nixon Administration officials who ordered illegal wiretaps should be given immunity from civil lawsuits since the illegality of the wiretaps was not established at the time they were ordered. One can agree or disagree, but to characterize Alito’s position as supporting “the right of government officials to order domestic wiretaps” is a reckless distortion.
The Alito memo, which most MSM outlets don’t bother to link to, can be downloaded from the National Archives web site here.
Macsmind wonders if it was all a set up.
Truth is that I not buying the simple “coincidence” here.
The documents might have been released today, but their contents were known as early as last month by certain senatorial staffers who had ‘indications’ of their content, thus they specifically asked for their release, this according to sources I’ve spoken with today.
The question now is whether or not if the leak to the NY times has been nothing more than an orchestrated torpedo to sink Alito’s nomination next year.
Blogs for Bush has all the facts.
» Filed Under News, Supreme Court, War On Terror
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What people continue to fail to bring up is one important distiction in all of the rhetoric that is flying around regarding this issue;
There is a vast difference between “residents” of the U.S. and “CITIZENS” of the U.S.
Interesting post.
I’m very skeptical about all of the liberal “concern” about wire taps. If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear. I wonder if a lot of their concern about “privacy” stems from a fear of having their illegal activities discovered.
Don’t worry about it. They are losing on all fronts and are on a fishing expedition. That’s all it is.