A Plague on the Nation

Gore Says Bush Broke the Law With Spying
Warrantless Surveillance an Example of 'Indifference' to Constitution, He Charges

By Chris Cillizza
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, January 17, 2006; A03

Former vice president Al Gore accused President Bush of breaking the law by authorizing wiretaps on U.S. citizens without court warrants and called on Congress yesterday to reassert its oversight responsibilities on a "shameful exercise of power" by the White House.

"The president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently," Gore said in a speech at Constitution Hall in Washington. "A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government."

To restore a system of checks and balances to government, Gore proposed appointing a special counsel to look into the domestic surveillance program, developing new whistle-blower protections and not extending the Patriot Act. He urged members of Congress, only one of whom -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) -- was present, to "start acting like the independent and coequal branch of government you're supposed to be."

On the holiday marking the 77th birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Gore drew a parallel between the FBI's eavesdropping on the civil rights leader and the current eavesdropping by the National Security Agency on communications between Americans and what Bush has said are suspected terrorists.

He also sought to cast the domestic surveillance program as simply the latest extension of a "truly breathtaking expansion of executive power" by the Bush administration. Gore said this began when the White House used incorrect intelligence about whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction to justify invading it and has continued through the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal and the debate over whether torture may be used to extract information from detainees.

"The disrespect embodied in these apparent mass violations of the law is part of a larger pattern of seeming indifference to the Constitution that is deeply troubling to Americans in both political parties," Gore said. The Bush administration's actions have "brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution," he added.

While Gore's denunciation of the administration's domestic surveillance program drew cheers from the crowd at the event, sponsored by the Liberty Coalition and the American Constitution Society, national public polling shows that Americans remain divided on the issue.

In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, 51 percent said that "wiretapping of telephone calls and e-mails without court approval" was an acceptable tool for the federal government to use when investigating terrorism. Forty-seven percent said it was an unacceptable for the government to use those methods in order to catch suspected terrorists.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has called Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to testify at a hearing about the eavesdropping program. Specter said Sunday that if Bush broke the law in authorizing wiretaps without going through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to get warrants, he could face impeachment.

"I'm not suggesting remotely that there's any basis" for impeachment, Specter told George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week." "After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution, but the principal remedy, George, under our society is to pay a political price."

Gonzales, appearing on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" last night, said, "The Department of Justice has carefully reviewed this program from its inception, and a determination has been made that the program is lawful." He added that the president not only has the authority, "he has the duty" to protect the United States against another attack.

Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, dismissed Gore's speech as headline-hunting. "Al Gore's incessant need to insert himself in the headline of the day is almost as glaring as his lack of understanding of the threats facing America," Schmitt said.

Gore was supposed to have been introduced, using a video link, by former congressman Robert L. Barr Jr. (R-Ga.) -- a bitter adversary of Gore and President Bill Clinton during the 1990s who now shares Gore's concern over the surveillance program. That strange-bedfellows moment was thwarted by a technological breakdown.

Although Gore devoted the vast majority of his speech to the controversy over domestic spying, he did make time to advocate several policy initiatives he has championed, most notably on global warming and the corrosive influence of television on political discourse. He steered away from any discussion of his future national ambitions, offering only a wry smile in response to a "Gore '08" shout from a man in the crowd.

Cillizza is a staff writer for washingtonpost.com.