This first one is about as expected. I'm disappointed in Gingrich for being so conciliatory, and not pointing out (as the person from the ACLU did) that there's no evidence whatsoever that such expanded governmental powers would have done anything to stop the TWA (possible) bombing - and evidence that it would do nothing whatsoever to stop events like the Olympic bombing.
Clinton calls for expanded measures against terrorism
_(c) Copyright 1996 Nando.net_
New York Times
NEW ORLEANS -- Spurred by the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics, President Clinton Sunday called on Congress to pass expanded measures against terrorism -- including new federal wiretapping authority -- that were dropped from the anti-terrorism bill passed last spring.
Clinton called on the congressional leadership from both parties to join him and the director of the FBI, Louis J. Freeh, at the White House on Monday to discuss additional steps the government might take to combat terrorism. Speaker Newt Gingrich expressed willingness to consider such measures and said he believed some agreement could be worked out.
[...]
Clinton originally proposed such markers, and expanded authority to let the FBI wiretap suspected terrorists or groups who are moving from place to place, after the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, but the measures were among those that fell out of the final bill. In an unusual alliance, civil liberties groups and advocates of gun rights joined forces to argue that the wiretapping expansion, in particular, would violate constitutional rights of privacy and free association.
[...]
Speaking Sunday morning on the NBC News program, "Meet the Press," Gingrich said there was "a possibility" of reaching an agreement on both issues, given the bombing in Atlanta and the suspicions that a bomb may have brought down Trans World Airlines Flight 800.
He said that he thought Congress should "re-approach" the issue of wiretapping, and that questions concerning the chemical markers were "going to be negotiated." The Olympic bomb, he said, "shows you why people are looking at that particular solution."
"I believe that the more there is terrorism, the more pressure we're under to find systematic ways to solve it," said Gingrich, who had opposed the proposals on chemical markers and wiretapping when the administration made them.
[...]
Clinton said the Group of 7 industrialized nations will meet on the issue of terrorism in a few weeks. Announced at the summit of the group in Lyons, France, last month, the meeting is intended to promote international cooperation among police and intelligence agencies, traditionally reluctant to share information, even among allies.
[...]
In an interview Sunday, Schumer said that law-enforcement agencies needed to be able to obtain telephone records of both incoming and outgoing calls of suspects in international terrorism cases; to monitor communications over digital networks, to keep up with criminals who may activate a new cellular phone every few days, and otherwise to stay abreast of the communications revolution.
Schumer said Gingrich was among those who "did everything they could to weaken the bill" the first time it was passed. "Any time the NRA or any of these far right groups sneezed, they jumped," he said.
Gingrich suggested Sunday that he favored an approach that would allow monitoring of a suspect's calls across any number of telephones, but said that should not mean that any phone that happened to be used by a suspect could be monitored when other people were using it.
Ever since the TWA flight went down shortly after its departure from John F. Kennedy Airport on July 17, FBI agents have been using the attendant publicity to press the case for broader wiretapping authority. The chief FBI officer on the scene of the disaster, James Kallstrom, has repeated this plea.
But there continues to be some resistance to some of these ideas in Congress.
"We're not prepared to extend wiretapping," said Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, in an interview on the CNN program Evans & Novak on Saturday. "There was a judgment made in the Congress that we're prepared to give up that bit of security for that bit of freedom. And I think that's a wise judgment."
Laura W. Murphy, the director of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the FBI was using terrorism to bolster its arguments for techniques that it really wants to use in more typical criminal cases.
"The idea that these roving wiretaps are going to lead to new developments in our ability to fight terrorism is a big myth," she said.
She said that only a minute fraction of wiretaps involve crimes of terrorism, and that the new types of wiretaps the FBI seeks are more invasive and more likely to track innocent parties than the old kinds.
This one is the promised positive one on Clinton.
Centura
OLYMPIC IRAQI WEIGHTLIFTER WHO CARRIED FLAG DEFECTS TO UNITED STATES
Copyright © 1996 Nando.net Copyright © 1996 The Associated Press
Ahmed said Iraqi officials had told the country's delegation to turn their heads away from President Clinton while marching in the opening ceremony because Clinton and former President Bush "wanted to destroy Iraq."
"Everybody else in our group looked away from President Clinton. They were not men. But I turned my head and looked at him and I could not believe my eyes. He was standing and applauding for us," the Times quoted Ahmed as saying. "I know that if the games were in Iraq, Saddam Hussein would not clap for the U.S."
And in this one, Clinton (like other politicians) gets angry at the thought that they might have to take some of that responsibility that they all keep talking about. (My suggestion is to remove sovreign immunity and allow wrongfully prosecuted persons to sue officials for their court and other costs. It would certainly decrease prosecutions to the absolute minimum.) -Allen
Avis
CLINTON'S TEMPER FLARES WHEN NEWS CONFERENCE STRAYS
Copyright © 1996 Nando.net Copyright © 1996 Reuter Information Service
WASHINGTON (Aug 1, 1996 2:00 p.m. EDT) - President Clinton displayed a fiery temper Thursday when at a news conference on the economy he was asked about the White House travel office controversy and past drug abuse by some staff members.
[...]
"There are a lot of people who were never charged with anything, much less offering to plead guilty to anything, who have been dragooned and pulled up and had thousands and tens of thousands of dollars of legal expenses, who were completely innocent, but have been subject to abject harassment.
"Are we going to pay their legal expenses, too. Are we going to pay the legal expenses of every person in America who is ever acquitted of an offense?" Clinton asked heatedly.