Word: wiretap
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...trust." Kleindienst outlined the procedures involved in authorizing a tap: Hoover must submit a request in writing, which is then reviewed by Mitchell. The signatures of both are required before the FBI can cut into a line. Kleindienst added that for the agency to take the initiative on wiretapping is also unlikely: "I just can't picture an FBI agent out splicing wires someplace at 3 o'clock in the morning, risking observation for an illegal wiretap...
After years of confusion over the legalities of electronic eavesdropping, Congress attempted to set rules in the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968. Law-enforcement agencies were permitted to wiretap in ordinary criminal cases, provided they first obtained a court-approved warrant. Under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, such warrants require "probable cause"-proof that officials are probing with specific evidence of a crime, not just trying to trap possible wrongdoers. The 1968 law, though, did not limit the President's power "to obtain foreign intelligence information deemed essential to the security of the United States...
...that it can be quite ingenious. Witness the Mitchell Doctrine, as one of the department's rules governing wire-tapping has come to be known: the Mitchell Doctrine holds that when the Attorney General decides that tapping someone's phone is vital to national security, he can authorize a wiretap without getting the approval of a court. Quite simply, the doctrine states that the Attorney General can overlook the Fourth Amendment when he judges it necessary...
...Mitchell Doctrine was revealed to the world in 1969, when defense attorneys for the Chicago 8 requested that the government reveal how much evidence it had gotten in the case by means of wiretapping. Attorney General Mitchell responded by submitting a lengthy memorandum to Judge Hoffman in which he argued that the government was entitled to bug any person intending to "attack and subvert the government by unlawful means"-without obtaining a warrant. In such cases, the need to protect the national security was of greater importance than the Fourth Amendment's general requirement that the government obtain a warrant...
...Attorney General John Mitchell argues that without obtaining a court order he can authorize wiretaps on "dangerous" domestic groups; he also claims that the evidence thus obtained can be used in court. "The contention of the Attorney General is in error," ruled U.S. District Judge Damon Keith in Detroit last week. "Such power held by one individual was never contemplated by the framers of our Constitution and cannot be tolerated today." It was a rare victory for William Kunstler, who represents three White Panthers accused of conspiracy to bomb a CIA office in Ann Arbor, Mich. In ruling the wiretap...