Faulty Memory and the 'Clinton Blame Game'

"Our leaders attempt to blame their failures on circumstances beyond their control, on false estimates by unknown, unidentifiable experts who rewrite modern history in an attempt to convince us..." - Ronald Reagan - Announcement of his Candidacy, at the New York Hilton, for 1980's Presidential Election

"Our friends in the other party will never forgive us for our success, and are doing everything in their power to rewrite history." - Ronald Reagan - Gala for His 83rd Birthday, 1994

Well, we are about to enter the 6th year of the Bush Presidency and it seems the 'Clinton Blame Game' continues apace...

Whenever some difficulty arises, it seems the most rabid supporters of the current Administration feel it important to blame it on Clinton. Of course, anyone with sense begins to wonder about that logic, if the Administration's pundits are right that 9/11 changed everything, and if it's been over 4 years since that event? I have to begin to wonder what Bill Clinton ISN'T responsible for and moreover how all these things he did are now impossible to change in what they assert is now a supposedly completely altered post-9/11 world. It's as if somehow the attack on 9/11 both made us more aware of threats we ignored and created a post 9/11 political world akin to a petrified forest, where initatives and reality were constrained by a wholly solidified reality.


It's just impossible for all those assertions to logically hold. In fact, it's logically and intellectually dishonest to continue this way. It's time for this Administration and its supporters to accept responsibility for their own screwups.

In one trenchant example, many are now blogging, in defense of the current President Bush ordering warrantless NSA wiretaps, about how the Carter and Clinton Administrations claimed to have the same legal authority for warrantless wiretaps (funny how they tend to skip the Reagan and Bush 41 Administrations who asserted the same authority - has politics become so partisan that simple intellectual honesty and logical wholeness are impossible? - never mind, I digress) the Bush 43 Administration is exercising. Let's be real. NO Administration ever gives an inch on the issue of Executive Authority (very different from Executive Privilege). They assert the rights to do all kinds of things they know that if they di, would, in practice, get them pilloried.

However, in practice, the distinction between a conroversial and/or questionable authority an Executive asserts, on the one hand, and one on the other, which they actually use, is the difference between the existence of a case or controversy and pure legal theory. In fact, ironically, when the Clinton Administration asked for broader wiretap authority and easier ways to effectuate wiretaps of computer networks, many Republican political leaders were amongst those who fought most adamantly against those attempts. In some instances, the very same Republican leaders are now willing to make George W. Bush an absolute Caesar on anything even tangentially related to the war powers, during the balance of, what they say is, an indeterminate and indefinite War on Terror. How convenient... ..and how hypocritical...

I will herein simply note that, John Yoo, the same individual at the Department of Justice who drafted these assertions of unlimited Presidential authority, is one of only two serious legal scholars of any note who take such an extreme position, the other is Robert Bork, who, no surprise there, wrote a glowing blurb for Yoo's recently published book on Executive Power, nuff said!

If any of the excesses of this Administration or the troops engaged in the fight against terror are ever prosecuted, I suggest strongly that John Yoo should be prosecuted for the most serious of war crimes: for providing those who violated the law with the belief that their actions were not only acceptable but completely legitimate and justified. The President may have signed the orders, the troops may have gone over the edge, but even Colin Powell said that would happen if we accepted John Yoo's arguments as even facially valid. John Yoo is as guilty of conspiracy, violating the law himself, and ethical violations of the Bar's Code of Professional Reponsibility, as ANY attorney who knowingly gives counsel meant to provide legall cover, to a client seeking to break the law. It matters not whether that counsel is simply meant to provide arguable legal cover for the actions of ENRON executives, a common street criminal, or the President. If Dick Cheney is George W. Bush's Alexei Kosygin, and Don Rumsfeld is Bush's Andrei Gromyko, and Paul Wolfowitz is his Andrei Kirilenko, then John Yoo is his Mikhail Suslov (or more darkly, his Hans Fritzsche, to Wolfowitz's Alfred Rosenberg).

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin. - Ronald Reagan

(note to John Yoo - your book is being DEEPLY discounted by booksellers - guess it will be in the discount bin at bookstores soon)

But, back to our story in chief...

I think it is well nigh time that we factually clarify the record on electronic spying by the Clinton Administration, as many of the current occupant of the White House's online supporters say that Clinton was engaging in the same activities and no-one ever complained. As they say in sports, "let's go to the video tape."

I went back to the archives for some relevant articles, showing EXACTLY the opposite, about opposition to the Clinton White House & DOJ on these matters, from what the Bush sycophants have. People WERE yelling and screaming then, but computer networks simply weren't yet considered by everyone as ubiquitous enough for it to be mainstream news (the vast majority of people in the US were still on dial-up, if on the 'Net at all).

However, you can see in these articles, that various organizations like: the ACLU, EPIC, EFF, the House and Senate Republican leadership, CPSR, and other groups were fighting the Clinton Administration in it's policies and attempts to expand and make easier government wiretapping (I should probably point out that, in addition to serving on a State Cabinet-level interagency task force on information privacy, and the NSA review group I mentioned in an earlier blogpost, I was a very early member of EFF, as well as a charter member of EPIC and CPSR).

But, I won't tell you what to think, please take a few moments to read the articles for yourself and come to your own conclusions about history. That's what is nice about having primary sources available. Every reader can make up their own minds. As I now invite you to do...

March 1998
Telcos Tussle with Feds over Surveillance
Janet Reno threatened Telephone Carriers with court action if they do not build surveillance features the FBI wants into their systems. Senator Pat Leahy and EPIC were arguing the FBI was going to far.

May 1998
Senators Introduce E-Privacy Bill
Please note that then-Senator John Ashcroft (later the Bush Administration Attorney General) was a prime sponsor and is quoted in the article. Republicans and others fought the Clinton Administration on e-snooping.

January 2000
Clinton Aides fight for Cybersecurity Bill
A bill, I shall note, Dick Armey and Republican House leadership opposed because of privacy and commerce concerns.

July 2000
White House Submits Wiretap Law Revisions

ACLU Wants Congress to Block FBI e-snoops

FBI Demos Carnivore
I should point out that many in the press and blogs (especially supporters of the White House on this NSA mess) are confusing Echelon with Carnivore. Carnivore was the domestic program. Echelon is operated with the United Kingdom and other European Union member/partners. Echelon is much more intrusive, given the lack of warrant oversight exercised upon its operation when compared to Carnivore.

Let's get history right before we start attacking or defending people based upon our independent recollection of it.

Just to round out the day, here's a few more links on these topics which may be of interest.

Since some of the President's supporters on this issue have alleged a conspiracy by the NY Times to ruin passage of the Patriot Act, by releasing info on the NSA's warrantless wiretapping, how about some potential conspiratorial motives on the side of the WH in nominating Alito? Alito Urged Wiretap Immunity

How about a little exposé on the Pentagon spying on peace groups, including Quakers "for Chrissake" (no pun intended), in actions that may have violated specific law prohibiting such domestic spying by the Pentagon? Pentagon to review spy files after NBC report

Then there's news from NBC News that the NSA has not only been gathering info from wiretaps, but that they have been actively breaking into the computers of US persons (basically US citizens, legal residents, and corporations operating or domiciled in the US) without warrants. Not Your Father's NSA

But, I'll close with the NY Times again, who I know many neo-cons and members of the religious right-wing will once again accuse of treason, for a new article showing that the NSA's warrantless operations are MUCH broader than the White House has admitted. In other words the White House explicitly downplayed the scope of these efforts. That's called "lying" (whether a particular lie is justified or not does not change it to something other than a lie).
Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report

"It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, 'We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.' This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man... .. The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing." - Ronald Reagan - A Time for Choosing