Read Bruce McCain’s most excellent piece (here) on the other attendant issues on JTTF in Portland and by Dave Lister in the Zero yesterday (here), but I wanted to tell you what noted terrorist prosecutor, Andy McCarthy, says about warrantless wiretaps on the show Tuesday: Nothing much has changed.
“…we have a new administration, and an administration at the federal level and new leadership at the local in the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office that I have a lot more trust in than the prior administration. That’s one reason to take a look at our status of membership in the JTTF.”
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Please note the word “unreasonable.” It is not unreasonable to search the home or tap the phones of a person contacting a terrorist. Really.
Sam Adams says he will confer with the ACLU to determine if he’ll go back to the JTTF. As Bruce McCain pointed out on the program yesterday, the City Attorney hasn’t even been invited to that meeting! So the ACLU takes its place as the chief legal consultant to the city.
As Andy McCarthy puts in his piece (here) in the National Review,
Referring to the feckless cease-and-desist letter the State Department’s Harold Koh sent to Wikileaker Julian Assange, Jonah aptly says[2] in his column today, “When lawyers run your foreign policy, this is what passes for a blistering counterattack.” We have seen this again and again over the years, and it is probably the central theme of my Willful Blindness.[3] I contended there that putting attorneys in charge of national security perfectly suits a government that is too paralyzed to do anything meaningful but knows, politically, that it must appear to do something.
Sam doesn’t know what to do so he’s leaving it up to the lawyers.