Some MSM reports are giving the appearance that US Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito supports Federal officials performing warrantless domestic wiretaps. A review of the actual memo in question proves that once again those MSM news sources are offering a skewed impression of the facts.

Here is what one MSM report mentions:

What is true is that he was working with the Reagan Justice Department to defend government officials from civil lawsuits regarding their actions taken while working on behalf of the government. What is not true are claims that he was supporting the use of domestic wiretaps.

You can read the actual memo here.

The memo is not at all about Samuel Alito offering an opinion on the matter of his view of domestic wiretaps. It is about his thoughts on government officials being sued in civil court for actions they perform as a government official.

I think this quote from the memo sums it up best:

That was Samuel Alito’s real position on the matter. Not one of support for domestic wiretaps, but simply defending those who may not have been clear on the rules, from civil lawsuits. Also he mentions that absolute immunity should be granted because of their roles within the US Government. It was not like they were doing this outside of their government work. It was part of that work and the details of what was “legal” had not been clarified at the time they committed the acts.

Later court rulings determined that Mr. Mitchell and others were not entitled to absolute immunity, but where given protection from the lawsuits because the rules were not clear then. So they were basically given a form of “qualified immunity”. Which was one of the points made by Mr. Alito.

Those wiretaps happened before the FISA court existed and Samuel Alito points out how the FISA court actually helped to resolve some of the issues they had been fighting. Interesting how the MSM does not cite this quote in any of their reports!

I also want to point out, that some are trying to claim that this whole matter with Mr. Alito is similar to President Bush’s use of an executive order for wiretaps. The wiretaps issued during the Nixon era are nothing like those issued by President Bush. Here are the reasons why:

• President Bush ordered warrantless wiretaps after an actual terrorist attack, that was performed by foreign terrorists.

  The Nixon era wiretaps were made because of a potential domestic terror attack and the desire to find the source of leaks. (The MSM says nothing about the portions of the memo that are related to Nixon trying to find the source of leaks. The memo is about a series of cases, not just a single case.)

• President Bush’s executive order for wiretaps was only for calls involving terrorist operatives making/receiving calls from outside of the USA. No calls between 2 US cities were included in the order and any calls involving 2 US cities were cleared by the FISA court.

  The Nixon era wiretaps were for domestic calls between 2 US cities or the same city. And no FISA court existed at that time.

• President Bush was facing unprecedented issues with the FISA court.

  As mentioned, no FISA court existed during the Nixon era. And courts have ruled that people like Mr. Mitchell cannot be sued in civil court, because the rules for wiretaps were not clear at that time.

Those are the facts, minus the spin. Mr. Alito did not advocate wiretaps. His memo was about related civil lawsuits, not the actual legality of the wiretaps. And the wiretaps in the Alito memo are nothing like those carried out by the Bush Administration.