Posted on 06/03/2002 11:19:19 PM PDT by kattracks
When Hillary Rodham Clinton succeeds George W. Bush as the 44th president of the United States, as former top White House strategist Dick Morris predicts, will she abuse the FBI's expanded surveillance powers that were announced by Attorney General John Ashcroft last week?
That scenario - a newly empowered domestic intelligence agency placed at the disposal of a ruthless politician with a long track record of digging dirt to use against her opponents - remains the most persuasive argument against allowing the FBI to freely snoop in mosques, temples, churches, public libraries and on the Internet.
But a better question might be what did the regulations that Ashcroft lifted last week do to keep co-president Hillary Rodham Clinton in line, back when she had the old defanged FBI at her disposal?
The answer? Nothing.
It was under the pre-Ashcroft regime of Hillary appointee Janet Reno that the old straitjacketed FBI somehow managed to ship 1,100 FBI files over to the Clinton White House. Once there, Hillary's handpicked White House security chief, Craig Livingstone, pored through them while her ex-Rose Law partner Bill Kennedy uploaded tidbits into his computer.
Of course, that was a "bureaucratic snafu," not an abuse of power, we were told by prosecutors years later.
After fired Travel Office chief Billy Dale had his FBI file placed at Mrs. Clinton's disposal, he suddenly found himself subject to a tax audit by the agency run by her old college roomie, Margaret Milner Richardson. Another unfortunate coincidence, investigators later explained.
Dale's audit would be the first of many similar IRS coincidences, with a multitude of Clinton scandal witness finding themselves similarly targeted. Paula Jones, Bill Clinton's most prominent accuser, even saw details from her confidential tax return turn up in the column of a Clinton-friendly reporter, the late Lars Erik Nelson.
Neither were the pre-Ashcroft investigative restrictions enough to protect fellow Clinton accusers Gennifer Flowers, Juanita Broaddrick, Liz Ward Gracen - not to mention a myriad of conservative groups, all of whom eventually found themselves in the IRS's crosshairs.
Another such victim of coincidence was Linda Tripp, better known to the media as "the bad whistle-blower." Somehow the manacled FBI managed to leak details from Tripp's confidential FBI file - one of the 1,100 that had snafued their way over to the White House - to yet another Clinton-friendly reporter. Ooops!
All this happened during the good old days, when the public was supposedly protected from the kind of FBI abuses civil libertarians are warning about now.
The truth is, when the American people turn over extraordinarily powerful agencies like the FBI to people with a clear record of abusing power, they shouldn't be surprised to learn that all the bureaucratic restrictions in the world don't make any difference.
The real danger isn't the FBI's new powers in the hands of good people. It's the lack of accountability in both the media and the courts for those responsible for orchestrating the bureau's old abuses.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Clinton Scandals
Sen. Hillary Clinton
War on Terrorism
If she ever gets to be President and is not restrained by the public, then she would ride rough shod over anything she wanted to in any event. She must never be elected to the Presidency.
With the media and thus the uninformed masses and the courts on Hitlery's side, now that's a scary thought.
This is my biggest fear concerning all these new regulations and statutes. No one seems capable of looking twenty years down the line and pondering if this is still a good idea. We musn't let terrorism destroy our country by eliminating all the very rights we hold dear. Can you imagine what Reno and the Clinton's could have done with these new powers at their disposal? I shudder to think.
Hah!, by the time her first year ended she would have given away everything to special liberal interest groups, other DemoncRATS,NOW, China, NATO, UN,Mexico, etc. There would be NO country left.
What idiots!
Hadn't thought of that. Kind of puts our nation between a rock and a hard place. Can't deal with foreign terrorists without the powers and can't deal with Hillary with them.
Be afraid, be very afraid!
The terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York brought back memories of the hijacking of a Southern Airways DC-9 in November 1972. The three Americans who hijacked the plane after a stopover in Birmingham, Alabama, threatened to force the pilots to crash the plane into the Oak Ridge facilities. (One of the hijackers had worked at Oak Ridge.) They demanded $10 million “ransom.” Promised $2 million, they forced the pilots to fly to Havana, where the plane landed safely. (Frank Munger, Knoxville News-Sentinel, 9/14/01; Duncan Mansfield, Associated Press, 9/19/01)
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IMO they are not better or worse than the ones who flew the planes into the WTC. They are still terrorist. Arm the pilots, hire more Marshalls, arm the cabin crew but stop using it as a means to pass more laws to further inflict more limitations upon those who are not terrorist.
I jes don't want nobody fergettin'.
Amen!
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