Clinton's actions compared to Bush's

The following is from Fox news Sunday. Durbin Rocks!

WALLACE: Senator, let's talk about the NSA wiretap program, though. We all saw that Usama bin Laden tape that came out late this week. If someone from Al Qaeda in Pakistan is calling someone here in the U.S., don't you want to know what they're talking about?

DURBIN: Absolutely. And that's why we created the FISA court. And basically, 20,000 times the president and other administrations have gone before this court and said we want to listen in on that conversation, and they've been given permission in all but about five instances. So they have a legal way to approach it.

Let me read to you what the president said on April 20, 2004 about wiretaps. He said "A wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so." President Bush, April 20, 2004.

This president, every president, has a mechanism, a procedure to follow, to wiretap terrorists and wannabe terrorists. I want them to follow that legal procedure, and when they do, they'll make America safer.

WALLACE: Let me ask you, because there are a lot of national security experts who believe that the FISA court and the law as it was passed, in fact, would not handle the kind of situation we're talking about here of mass surveillance. And let me pick up on what Senator McCain said. If the president were to go in and say look, we need some adjustments, would you -- would the Democratic leadership in the Senate say look, this is too important, national security, we'll give you what you need to live within the law and protect America?

DURBIN: Certainly. That's what happened with the Patriot Act. One of the elements of the Patriot Act...

WALLACE: I know, but now you're fighting the Patriot Act, Senator.

DURBIN: No, no, Chris, don't take this further than it goes. We overwhelmingly support the Patriot Act. There are three or four sections with modifications which passed the Senate, incidentally, on a bipartisan basis, unanimously - three or four sections that we're talking about, and they can be modified and it wouldn't compromise our security.

But we modified FISA under the Patriot Act. The administration came and said we need new tools - just as Senator McCain said earlier, with Blackberries and cell telephones. And we said we'll give you the tools. We want to keep America safe. But what we're saying here, on both sides of the aisle, with Senator Specter calling for hearings and the Democrats standing behind him, we want this president and every president to follow the law. No president is above the law.

WALLACE: But again, specifically, if he came in and asked for reforms, you're saying that the Democratic leadership would give him the power to do what he's doing now?

DURBIN: Well, I don't know what he's doing now because, frankly, it's been reported in many newspapers, but I've never been briefed on it. But if the president came to us and said there are changes in technology, changes in the threat to America, we need to change and modify the law, you bet he would have a Congress ready to work with him. That's exactly the way he should have done this and should have handled it long ago.



WALLACE: Senator, when the Clinton administration authorized the search of Aldrich Ames, the Soviet spy's home and office back in the 1990s, they said the president has the inherent constitutional authority to do so. No Democratic leaders that we could find squawked at that point about what President Clinton was doing.

DURBIN: Well, remember, at that moment in time, the FISA law did not cover physical searches. It only dealt with wiretaps. So what the president did was not violating the FISA law.

WALLACE: No, but he was violating other laws, wasn't he? I mean, here he was authorizing a search without -- a physical search of somebody's home without any court order.

DURBIN: Let me finish, if I might. President Clinton then came to Congress and asked to amend FISA to cover physical searches. In other words, the president was willing to step forward and say let's create a legal standard that will apply to me and every other president so that our administration will follow a law and have court approval even before physical searches.

So the intent and the actions of the Clinton administration are in sharp contrast to what we face with this administration. If the president came forward and said there's a real threat, we need to change the law so that I have the power to deal with it, you can bet Congress would work overtime to get that done.