Gore launches attack on Bush over wiretapping

Former vice president Al Gore launched an attack on the White House on Jan. 16 for authorizing wiretaps without court oversight, and accused President Bush of repeatedly breaking the law. The strongly worded speech makes Gore the most prominent political figure in the US to weigh in on the wiretapping scandal. Gore, who lost the 2000 election to Bush following the intervention of the Supreme Court, also went further than other Democratic critics in accusing the president of wrongdoing. Gore said that the decision to bypass the courts was part of a pattern of behavior from the Bush administration of "indifference" to the constitution. "We still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently," Gore said in a speech delivered to mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day. "A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government," he said. Since the 2000 presidential elections, Gore has occasionally used his peculiar position in US politics–he was defeated by Bush despite winning more votes–to advance an agenda that is more liberal than the Democratic party leadership. He has been a far more outspoken critic of the Iraq war than most senior Democrats. In the speech, Gore also called for an independent counsel to investigate the secret wiretap program. He ranked the operation with other controversial decisions by the administration in the "war on terror," including its holding of "enemy combatants" indefinitely without trial, and its justification of harsh interrogation techniques. "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," he said. Bush insists that he acted within the law and that Congress implicitly authorized the eavesdropping when it allowed the use of force in response to the 9/11 terror attacks. However, the broadside from Gore increases the pressure on the White House to offer a fuller explanation of its decisions. The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to hold hearings next month into the legality of the NSA eavesdropping, and the Republican chairman, Arlen Specter, has indicated that he is skeptical of the Bush administration's assertions that it acted within the law.