NY Times Approves of ‘Illegal’ Spying Under Clinton
The good folks at Newsmax are right on the money as usual with their reporting that the NY Times have a double standard when it comes to the ‘illegal wiretapping’. Here’s what the article says:
Last month, when the New York Times revealed to the world that the Bush administration had a top secret National Security Agency program that monitored communications between al Qaeda terrorists and their U.S.-based agents, it strongly condemned the operation as a dangerous and possibly illegal invasion of privacy. However, the Old Gray Lady wasn’t nearly as upset over a much broader surveillance program under the Clinton administration, which routinely monitored millions of phone calls between U.S. citizens without a court ordered warrant. In fact, the paper called the blanket invasion of privacy a “necessity”, even though it was carried out without the justification provided by the 9/11 attacks.
This isn’t surprising or stunning in the least when you consider that the NY Times thinks of the Clintons as honest, trustworthy people because they sympathize with the Clintons’ politics whereas they despise President Bush because they see him almost as the Devil incarnate, untrustworthy in all his ways.
I’d suggest that this is how the vast majority of the people in the Agenda Media view the comparison between President Bush and President Clinton. I’d also suggest that this thinking extends to other issues, too.
How glowingly did the oft-discredited Paul Krugman speak glowingly of President Clinton’s plan for partial privitization of Social Security vs. how disparagingly he spoke of President Bush’s plan? Don’t think that this double standard isn’t part of a bigger strategy to discredit the Bush administation.
One last thing about the NY Times characterization of Clinton’s wiretapping: The NYT called it a “necessity”. Since the time of their article in 1999, we had 9/11, which destroyed buildings in their city. Don’t they think that it’s kinda important that we detect communications between AQ’s HQ in Afghanistan and implanted sleeper cells here in the US so that further attacks can be thwarted? After all, you’d think that warrantless wiretaps in wartime would be far more important and justified than they’d be in ‘peacetime’.
This is simply a case of the NYT’s double standard being exposed as the actions of a Bush-hating member of the Agenda Media.
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRing
January 13th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Former President Clinton said Thursday that he never ordered wiretaps of American citizens without obtaining a court order, as President Bush has acknowledged he has done.
Clinton, in an interview broadcast Thursday on the ABC News program ”Nightline,” said his administration either received court approval before authorizing a wiretap or went to court within three days after to get permission, as required by law.
”We either went there and asked for the approval or, if there was an emergency and we had to do it beforehand, then we filed within three days afterward and gave them a chance to second guess it,” Clinton told ABC. link
The issue of spying isn’t at issue here since anyone who’s paid attention for the last twenty years knows that presidents have access to this. The issue is one of circumventing the rule of law.