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Bill Clinton: Sandy Berger Confirmed 1990s Wiretapping was Legal
Ex-president Bill Clinton said Friday that "to the best of my knowledge," his administration always sought a court warrant before wiretapping terrorist suspects who might have been preparing to attack America. And he double-checked with disgraced former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, just to make sure his recollection was accurate. "To the best of my knowledge, all of the wiretaps we did were conducted in accord with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act," Clinton told WCBS News Radio 880 in New York. "I called my former National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, about this," Clinton revealed. "And he said, you know, they would ask me and I would approve probably two to five wiretaps a week to the [FISA] court."
Story Continues Below "And as far as I know," Clinton said, "they approved them all. If they turned any down, it would just be one or two." The former president said he "actually liked" operating within the restrictions of the FISA law. "I actually liked it because none of us are immune from error," he told WCBS. "And if, for example, we wiretapped a conversation of a totally innocent person, you would not want that conversation to be used in some other way, for some other reason. "So I never had any problem with it," Clinton insisted. Asked if he thought President Bush's terrorist surveillance program was both legal and constitutional, Clinton replied: "I haven't researched it enough to know." "You know, the last cases on this that were relevant were probably Lincoln's suspension or the writ of habeas corpus and two cases around the Civil War called Ex-parte Yeager and Ex-parte McArdle," he explained. "You can go back and read those cases but there has not been a great deal of litigation that goes directly to the inherent authority of the president. "But for me," Clinton continued, "the statute never presented a problem. As far as I know we always followed the statute. I don't think we ever went outside it. And it seems to me that I haven't seen any indication that it would have been an impediment here." Clinton reiterated: "To the best of my knowledge, we never went outside [the law]. If we did, I don't know about it."
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Inside Cover Stories
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