What most leftists are now claiming is that “warrantless physical searches” are justifiable if there is a terrorist threat, but not warrantless wiretaps. This is outrageous hypocrisy. How can any administration have the “inherent authority”, as Gorelick put it, to forcefully enter and search a suspected terrorist’s home without a warrant and yet not have the authority to tap his phone without a warrant? To argue, as some have, that wiretaps are not justified because they are not physical searches merely emphasises the moral and intellectual degeneracy of the left.

(Lefty journalists have been smart enough to stay away from this particularly ludicrous argument. Even they know that trying to draw a distinction between reading personal documents without a warrant and listening to a telephone conversation would alert readers to their real motivation for inventing groundless charges of illegal conduct by the President).

Gorelick also stated that

Intelligence is often long-range. Its exact targets are more difficult to identify, and its focus is less precise. Information gathering for policy making and prevention rather than prosecution are its primary focus.

You don’t have to be a legal eagle to figure out that this amounts to searches without even a probable cause. In Gorelick’s view suspicion is cause enough. Once again, this defence also justifies warrantless wiretapping — and there is no difference in principle between forcefully entering someone’s home without a warrant in order to read their emails and intercepting those emails on the net. But by some mysterious mental process the preceding facts and the reasoning they gave rise to completely escaped the media’s attention. But then so much does when the target of their malice is President Bush, isn’t that so, Mr Gawenda?

My argument that the logic of Gorelick’s claim that President Clinton had an “inherent authority” to carry out “warrantless physical searches” ineluctably leads to the conclusion that this authority must also include wiretapping is supported by numerous court cases going back many years. (I sought out the cases after I made the deduction).

There was the Fifth Circuit 1974 case of Ivanov v United States (419 U.S. 881), which stated that “warrantless electronic surveillance (is) permitted so long as the primary purpose was to obtain foreign intelligence”. This was further confirmed by the 1980 case of Chagnon v Bell that confirmed presidential authority to conduct warrantless surveillance. Here the DC District Court stated:

Examination of presidential practice in this area lends further support to the District Court’s finding that the Truong tap violated no “clearly established” law. As we suggested earlier, every President since Franklin D. Roosevelt has claimed the “inherent” constitutional power to authorize warrantless surveillance in cases vitally affecting the national security. Furthermore, all Presidents to hold office since Katz was decided have advocated a broad exception to the warrant requirement for surveillance targeted at agents of foreign governments. Indeed, public and congressional recognition of the consistency of such assertions of presidential power….

In English so plain that even a lefty journalist should be able to grasp it, presidents have the constitutional (inherent) authority to attempt to gain foreign intelligence without the use of warrants or any judicial sanction. Irrespective of the courts upholding the President’s “inherent authority” to collect intelligence without warrants, there is the Authorization of the Use of Military Force that Congress passed and which states:

(a) IN GENERAL.— That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Apart from leftists who have long since abandoned reason, the above makes it clear that Congress, regardless of what the liars in the media say, authorised President Bush to use whatever means are necessary to prevent further terrorist attacks on the United States — and those means must include warrantless wiretaps where thought necessary.

If lefty journalists were really honest they would have drawn attention to the fact that in May 1979 President Carter authorised “electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order”. For those whose lefties who have a language problem, this means “warrantless wiretapping”. Carter was entitled to do this because section 1802 of the FISA law says “the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order... to acquire foreign intelligence information…”

Gawenda’s disinformation technique mainly consists of ‘reporting’ only those individuals and ‘facts’ that support his bigoted views while omitting anything that would provide a balanced picture. In other words, he mainly lies by omission. An example of his dishonest is that he only seems to report polls that reflect badly on Bush, as do most journalists.

He reported on a CNN poll that claimed most Americans are divided with over the wiretaps, with 51 per cent opposed to them. What he didn’t report is that when Americans are asked that

In order to reduce the threat of terrorism, would you be willing or not willing to allow government agencies to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of Americans that the government is suspicious of?

Once Americans are informed that the wiretaps are being used to catch terrorists and their collaborators Americans overwhelmingly endorse them. But that’s not what the lying Gawenda would have us believe.

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Gerard Jackson is Brookes’ economics editor

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