Brite Hume:"...a lot of people like to wring their hands and pretend that the bad old days are back"

[sabra]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,287273,00.html

Q: Do you think that the Bush administration's warrantless wiretap program out of the NSA is arguably different than what the CIA was doing at the time?

HUME: Well, first of all, they really didn't have a warrantless wiretap program. What they had was they had a surveillance program, which from time to time involved conversations with people inside this country where there were no warrants. But that program is now gone, it's been folded into the overall operation they do in concert with that FISA court.

So, no I don't think that is very different. After all, there's no doubt about what the intention of this administration has been with the surveillance that they've done, and that is they are trying to catch Al Qaeda operatives.

With too much of what happened during the Nixon administration was they were trying to do things for their domestic political protection. I wouldn't say that was necessarily true of this particular operation, which was a CIA operation, but a lot of the other stuff that they did was — this whole business with the enemies list and breaking into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and all that. They had guys that didn't have anything to do with the CIA or who were not affiliated with the CIA, in the person of E. Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, who were part of that so-called plumbers unit that started out as an operation intended to plug leaks but ended up being used for other purposes.

I broke the story about ITT in the Nixon adminsitration which caused a big controversy on Capitol Hill and later the reopening of the nomination hearing of Richard Kleindienst to be the attorney general and they used the plumbers to spirit the witness out of town.

There was a lot of domestic stuff going on that was pretty irregular then that was purely political. This atmosphere now is pretty dumb, a lot of people like to wring their hands and pretend that the bad old days are back but I don't think it's even remotely comparable.

[rfranklin]

1. Yes, Britt, and we all know that Cheney is an honorable man...

who would never use warrantless spying to be used for political purposes.

[Ganja Ninja]

2. "I don't think it's even remotely comparable."

It's not it's worse.

[AndreaCG]

3. And turning Brown V Board of Ed on its head

isn't turning back time either.

[Atman]

4. A noted Bush ass-kisser chimes in. I'm convinced, Britt!

:eyes:

.

[PassingFair]

5. How the HELL does HE know the extent of what they are doing?

Is HE a member of the cabinet?

WTF?

*ucking media TOADY!

[librechik]

6. Yeah--he knows cuz Bushy told him it was legal

and of course he believes everything he is told by the Right People. No need to check thaqt fact. Besides, they fired all the fact checkers in the first corporate downsizing at Fox News.

[lazer47]

7. Yea right, and the Easter Bunny and Goldilocks and Santa Clause

are going to have a "three way" on Faux Noise

[Beelzebud]

8. Of course he's referring to the right-wing in the 90's, right?