GOP targeting Clinton on phone-call snooping

[babylonsister]

GOP targeting Clinton on phone-call snooping
By Alexander Bolton
October 16, 2007

Republicans plan to seize on an allegation from the 1992 presidential campaign to tarnish Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on the red-hot issue of government surveillance.

Government surveillance will be at the forefront of the political debate this fall as congressional Democrats and President Bush square off over legislation allowing electronic spying on U.S. soil without a warrant.

Republicans are focusing on an allegation in a recent book by two Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, which suggests Clinton listened to a secretly recorded conversation between political opponents.

In their book about Clinton’s rise to power, Her Way, Don Van Natta Jr., an investigative reporter at The New York Times, and Jeff Gerth, who spent 30 years as an investigative reporter at the paper, wrote: “Hillary’s defense activities ranged from the inspirational to the microscopic to the down and dirty. She received memos about the status of various press inquiries; she vetted senior campaign aides; and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack.

“The tape contained discussions of another woman who might surface with allegations about an affair with Bill,” Gerth and Van Natta wrote in reference to Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton. “Bill’s supporters monitored frequencies used by cell phones, and the tape was made during one of those monitoring sessions.”

A GOP official said, “Hillary Clinton’s campaign hypocrisy continues to know no bounds. It is rather unbelievable that Clinton would listen in to conversations being conducted by political opponents, but refuse to allow our intelligence agencies to listen in to conversations being conducted by terrorists as they plot and plan to kill us. Team Clinton can expect to see and hear this over and over again over the course of the next year.”

more...

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gop-targeting-clinton-on-phone-call-snooping-2007-10-16.html

[EST]

1. It must be pretty tough if they are working so hard on this.

I'm betting it's going to get a mighty yawn and a "so...what?"
The only people who trust republicans, these days, to tell the truth-or anything else-are the terminally ignorant and criminally culpable. That and a third category-ethically challenged-pretty much describes the gop.

[Evergreen Emerald]

2. The vast right wing conspirators are working hard on their agenda.

The republican hypocrisy is stunning.

[gratuitous]

3. The GOP seems awfully certain

I wonder how they know this happened for a fact. And while they're straining out this gnat, they continue to swallow the camel of the far more widespread, and definitely more illegal warrantless wiretapping done by their favorite President.

[babylonsister]

4. This tactic could bite them on the ass, because I imagine it will

highlight all their numerous failings that have been documented.

[gratuitous]

5. Oddly enough

A few of the things they've done lately seem to have bitten them in the sit-upon; the whole story of the smear of a 12-year-old accident victim seems to be coming out, and Minority Leader McConnell doesn't fare too well from that.

Are the Republicans losing their power to terrify? I believe Sen. Hutchison from Texas has just announced or is about to announce that she won't run again in 2012 (and might even resign her Senate seat to run for Texas governor in 2010). No, making alarmist noises from the back benches isn't quite as much fun as when you can get the whole country to wet its pants by invoking terror, Terror TERROR.

[ShortnFiery]

6. If there is ANY truth to these allegations, I'm seriously freaked and it could be devastating

for HRC's campaign. :shrug:

[wyldwolf]

7. So the GOP is whining that Clinton got the upper hand?

"She received memos about the status of various press inquiries; she vetted senior campaign aides; and she listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics plotting their next attack."

Translation: "whaaa whaaa! Bill and Hillary spied on us and knew about some smears we were planning! No fair!"