GOP targeting Clinton on phone-call snooping
By Alexander Bolton October 16, 2007
Republicans plan to seize on an allegation from the 1992 presidential
campaign to
tarnish Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on the red-hot issue of
government
surveillance.
Government surveillance will be at the forefront of the political debate
this fall as
congressional Democrats and President Bush square off over legislation
allowing
electronic spying on U.S. soil without a warrant.
Republicans are focusing on an allegation in a recent book by two Pulitzer
Prize-winning re****ters, which suggests Clinton listened to a secretly
recorded
conversation between political opponents.
In their book about Clinton’s rise to power, Her Way, Don Van Natta Jr.,
an
investigative re****ter at The New York Times, and Jeff Gerth, who spent 30
years as
an investigative re****ter at the paper, wrote: “Hillary’s defense
activities ranged
from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She
received memos
about the status of various press inquiries; she vetted senior campaign
aides; and
she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of
Clinton
critics plotting their next attack.
“The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with
allegations
about an affair with Bill,” Gerth and Van Natta wrote in reference to
Clinton’s
husband, former President Bill Clinton. “Bill’s sup****ters monitored
frequencies used
by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring
sessions.”
A GOP official said, “Hillary Clinton’s campaign hypocrisy continues to
know no
bounds. It is rather unbelievable that Clinton would listen in to
conversations being
conducted by political opponents, but refuse to allow our intelligence
agencies to
listen in to conversations being conducted by terrorists as they plot and
plan to
kill us. Team Clinton can expect to see and hear this over and over again
over the
course of the next year.”
Gerth told The Hill that he learned of the incident in 2006 when he
interviewed a
former campaign aide present at the tape playing. He has not revealed the
aide’s
identity. Clinton’s campaign has not disputed any facts re****ted in the
final version
of his book, which became public this spring, he said.
“It hasn’t been challenged,” said Gerth. “There hasn’t been one fact in
the book
that’s been challenged.”
Clinton’s spokesman panned the book but declined to discuss the allegation
that
Clinton had reviewed secretly recorded calls. “We don’t comment on books
that are
utter and complete failures,” said Clinton’s press secretary, Philippe
Reines.
Her Way’s Amazon.com sales rank is 43,016.
Several legal experts said it was illegal to intercept cell phone
conversations in
1992.
“It’s been clear that since 1986 it was illegal to intercept an individual
cell phone
call,” said Barry Steinhardt, the director of the technology and liberty
program at
the American Civil Liberties Union.
In 1986, Congress broadened wiretapping law to prohibit the interception
of
electronic communications, as well as the use or disclosure of intercepted
electronic
communications. Two court cases have since cited that action in ruling the
interception of cell phone communications illegal: Bartnicki v. Vopper,
2001, and
Company v. United States, 2003.
Clinton has made privacy an issue on the campaign trail. In July, she
discussed her
privacy bill of rights in a speech to the American Constitution Society.
The proposed
rights, ensconced in the Protect Act, include the right to sue when
privacy rules
have been violated; the right to protect phone records; and the right to
freeze
credit in the event of identity theft.
During the same speech, she addressed the controversy over government
surveillance.
“Every president should save those powers for limited, critical
situations,” said
Clinton, according to a copy of the speech posted on her campaign website.
“And when
it comes to a regular program of searching for information that touches
the privacy
of ordinary Americans, those programs need to be monitored and reviewed as
set out by
Congress in cooperation with the judiciary.
“That is the essence of the compact we have with each other and with our
government,
and we cannot ignore it.”
In August, Clinton voted against an emergency law that tem****arily
expanded the
government’s power to conduct surveillance on American soil without a
warrant. The
bill was criticized for being overly broad and sidelining the role of a
special court
set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Senate’s other
Democratic
presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.), Chris Dodd (Conn.),
and Joseph
Biden (Del.), also voted against the bill.
Clinton’s chief political strategist, Mark Penn, became embroiled recently
in a
controversy over intercepted electronic communications. Mitchell Markel, a
former
vice president at Penn’s firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland, filed a lawsuit
against Penn
accusing him of intercepting e-mail. Markel claimed that the firm
illegally monitored
messages sent from his BlackBerry after he joined another company.
Markel dropped the suit in July after reaching a settlement with Penn,
Schoen &
Berland.
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