I really wanted to go longer without writing about political stuff. Heck I didn’t want to post again today at all. Thanks to Mark Evanier though, I discovered this U.S. News and World Report article on possible warrantless physical searches and feel compelled to pass it along for all of you to read (even if you skip over everything else I’ve written here). I had heard about this a few days ago, but hadn’t read the article and was really really hoping it was just crazy liberal hysteria. That hope is fading.
The article does not present any proof that illegal unconstitutional searches have been conducted, but it does say, citing two anonymous government officials, that the subject was first brought up by the administration after 9/11. It also presents circumstantial evidence that exactly that sort of impeachable action has occurred:
At least one defense attorney representing a subject of a terrorism investigation believes he was the target of warrantless clandestine searches. On Sept. 23, 2005–nearly three months before the Times broke the NSA story–Thomas Nelson wrote to U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut in Oregon that in the previous nine months, “I and others have seen strong indications that my office and my home have been the target of clandestine searches.” In an interview, Nelson said he believes that the searches resulted from the fact that FBI agents accidentally gave his client classified documents and were trying to retrieve them. Nelson’s client is Soliman al-Buthe, codirector of a now defunct charity named al-Haramain, who was indicted in 2004 for illegally taking charitable donations out of the country. The feds also froze the charity’s assets, alleging ties to Osama bin Laden. The documents that were given to him, Nelson says, may prove that al-Buthe was the target of the NSA surveillance program.
The searches, if they occurred, were anything but deft. Late at night on two occasions, Nelson’s colleague Jonathan Norling noticed a heavyset, middle-aged, non-Hispanic white man claiming to be a member of an otherwise all-Hispanic cleaning crew, wearing an apron and a badge and toting a vacuum. But, says Norling, “it was clear the vacuum was not moving.” Three months later, the same man, waving a brillo pad, spent some time trying to open Nelson’s locked office door, Norling says. Nelson’s wife and son, meanwhile, repeatedly called their home security company asking why their alarm system seemed to keep malfunctioning. The company could find no fault with the system.
I don’t use the “i” word lightly and certainly don’t think enough evidence has come out to give it serious consideration (enough exists, I think, for censure though). From the article it appears that if such searches aren’t occurring, we may have FBI Director Robert Mueller to thank, as he seems to realize that all of the Constitution is still in effect, not just Article II.
While the wiretapping may have some Constitutional grey area in which to float, physical searches do not. No ambiguity exists in the Fourth Amendment on that point. As concerned as I was before, it is as nothing next to my new level of concern.