An August 16 New York Times article by reporter Patrick Healy on outgoing White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove's August 15 appearance on Rush Limbaugh's nationally syndicated radio show -- headlined “Rove Steps Up His Attacks on Clinton's Candidacy” -- reported that Rove claimed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) “opposed the USA Patriot Act, domestic surveillance programs and other antiterrorism measures.” The Times did not note that Clinton, in fact, voted for both the original USA Patriot Act in 2001 and its reauthorization in 2006. Additionally, in paraphrasing Rove by saying he claimed Clinton opposed “domestic surveillance and other antiterrorism measures,” Healy misrepresented what Rove actually said. Rove falsely accused Clinton of opposing changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would allow U.S. authorities to monitor “the communications of international terrorists who are communicating with other international terrorists”; in reality, what Clinton and other Democrats opposed was a FISA revision that would allow the U.S. to spy on domestic conversations without a warrant.

In his interview with Limbaugh, Rove said:

ROVE: This is like a woman who has opposed the Patriot Act that gave us the tools to defend the homeland. This is a woman who opposes the terrorist surveillance program that allowed us to listen in on the conversations of bad people who are calling into the United States. She opposed the FISA reforms that would allow us to listen into communications and see the communications of international terrorists who are communicating with other international terrorists, even outside the country whose messages simply happened to flow through U.S. telecom networks.

In fact, Clinton voted for the USA Patriot Act in 2001 and for the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act in March 2006 and against a filibuster of that bill, although she supported a filibuster of an earlier version of the bill.

Healy's article did not report that falsehood, nor did it report the falsehood in Rove's assertion -- which the Times paraphrased -- that Clinton “opposed the FISA reforms that would allow us to listen into communications and see the communications of international terrorists who are communicating with other international terrorists, even outside the country whose messages simply happened to flow through U.S. telecom networks.” Clinton, in fact, voted in favor of a version of the bill that would have reversed a reported ruling limiting the administration's ability to intercept certain foreign-to-foreign communications without a warrant. She voted against a much broader bill to amend FISA to give the administration authority to intercept certain domestic-to-foreign communications without a warrant.

The Democratic bill specifically stated that a warrant is not required for foreign-to-foreign contacts regardless of whether they pass through, as Rove said, “U.S. telecom networks.” From the bill that Clinton voted for:

Sec. 105A. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, a court order is not required for the electronic surveillance of the contents of any communication between persons that are not located within the United States for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence information, without respect to whether the communication passes through the United States or the surveillance device is located within the United States.

The Republican version, sponsored by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), passed. That bill, as described by the Times' James Risen in an August 6 article, did not simply allow the government to “see the communications of international terrorists who are communicating with other international terrorists,” but rather it “broadly expanded the government's authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.” From that article:

President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government's authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.

Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government's ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.

They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.

Additionally, although Clinton has stated her opposition to the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program, she has expressed support for wiretapping that complies with the law. Clinton said as much in a July 16, 2006, speech to the American Constitution Society:

Now I believe that the President -- and I mean any President -- must have the ability to pursue terrorists and defend our national security with the best technology at hand. But we have existing law that allows that -- the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or so-called FISA. We have judicial mechanisms in place that this Administration could have used to obtain authority for what it did; we have a system of Congressional oversight and review that this Administration could have used to obtain a legislative solution to these challenges.

Instead, they relied on questionable legal authority and bypassed our system of checks and balances. In the months since NSA's activities have come to light, both the legislative branch and the judiciary have attempted to learn more about the Administration's surveillance programs. In denying Congress and the courts any information, the Administration's refrain has been “Trust us.” They've used it to justify frustrating legislative oversight, denying the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility the clearances they needed to conduct an internal investigation, and just a few days ago we learned they are now invoking the State Secret Exception to shut down any judicial review of their conduct through assertion of that privilege. That's unacceptable; their track record does not warrant our trust.

Rove has previously misrepresented the positions taken by Democrats on surveillance. As Media Matters for America noted, in an address at the Republican National Committee's (RNC) winter 2006 meeting, Rove defended President Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program by making the false claim that “some important Democrats clearly disagree” with the proposition that “if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why.”