VP Gore: Get independent counsel on Bush...

From NY Times:

January 16, 2006
Gore Is Sharply Critical of Bush Policy on Surveillance
By VIKAS BAJAJ

Former Vice President Al Gore said today that recent revelations that the Bush administration monitored domestic telephone conversations without obtaining warrants "virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently."

In an hour-long speech during which he grew animated and frequently raised his voice, Mr. Gore called on the attorney general to appoint a special counsel to investigate the matter and recommended that Congress hold "comprehensive - not just superficial - hearings." He also said telecommunications companies that provided access to their networks to the government should stop doing so.

The speech in Washington was organized by the Liberty Coalition, a civil liberties advocacy group, and the American Constitution Society for Law and Public Policy, a liberal legal group.
"It is this same disrespect for America's Constitution which has now brought our republic to the brink of a dangerous breach in the fabric of the Constitution," Mr. Gore said. "And 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 millions of Americans in both political parties."

In December, The New York Times reported that, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others in the country without obtaining the warrants typically required for domestic surveillance. The revelation of the wiretapping has led to calls for an independent investigation by Democrats, and some Republicans.

Bush administration officials have defended the surveillance and said the president's power to authorize it comes from a Congressional resolution endorsing the war against terrorism enacted soon after the attacks. The administration has launched an investigation into who leaked details of the spying, saying the disclosure threatens national security.

"I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy's thinking, and that's what we're doing," Mr. Bush said earlier this month.

Mr. Gore, who since leaving the political stage in 2001 has recast himself as a professor, entrepreneur and venture capitalist, acknowledged that the threat posed by terrorists remains grave. But he suggested that the Bush administration and its supporters in Congress were being disingenuous in using the threat as a pretext to amass power for the executive branch.

"Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march - when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?" he said. "It is simply an insult those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they."

Mr. Gore frequently invoked Martin Luther King Jr., noting that his activities and communications were being monitored by the F.B.I. during the civil rights struggle, and he quoted former Supreme Court justices and the nation's founding fathers. Mr. Gore, who lost the presidency to Mr. Bush in the disputed 2000 election, has periodically injected himself in the issues of the day in Washington with speeches that have been sharply critical of the president in the last five years.

Mr. Gore was supposed to be introduced by Bob Barr, the former Republican representative from Georgia who works with the American Civil Liberties Union and has criticized the Bush administration's record on civil liberties. But organizers experienced problems with a live satellite feed and could not patch him into the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall in Washington.

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