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President Clinton cannot be remolded into a "bad guy" very easily, but he did tread on the Constitution many times during his Presidency.
"President Clinton is apparently seeking to free his administration from any potential judicial interference with its wiretapping plans. There is a problem, of course, with the power that the president desires: it is precisely the sort of unchecked power that the Fourth Amendment's warrant clause was designed to curb."
According to a 1995 report by the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts
Janet Reno also made a public comment about her new surveillance capability. Something to the effect that, "J. Edgar Hoover would never contemplate what we can do today"
sorry, I can't find that particular citation.
The Clinton administration claims that it can bypass the warrant clause for "national security" purposes. In July 1994 Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." According to Gorelick, the president (or his attorney general) need only satisfy himself that an American is working in conjunction with a foreign power before a search can take place.
R. Jeffrey Smith, "Administration Backing No-Warrant Spy Searches," Washington Post, July 15, 1994,p. A19
I think we have been moving away from our Constitutional protections for some time now, this was not a Bill Clinton original idea by any stretch. Whether Bill Clinton knowingly broke down those protections, or was valiantly pursuing crime and his government attorneys fouled up, remains to be argued.
The real bad guy here is George W. Bush, but I must pose, is this why there will be no prosecutions? just how many Presidents would be dragged into a hearing over this? or will it end up like Abu Ghraib, where a handful of yeoman get pilloried and the real culprits get to write their memoirs?
