Dick Morris: Hillary Sells Out Brooklyn Bridge

By opposing a renewal of the Patriot Act, 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton may have forfeited her carefully crafted image as a defense hawk who could be trusted to guard America's national security as Commander-in-Chief.

In fact, according to Dick Morris, if Hillary and her fellow Democrats had their way, terrorists would have likely been able to carry out a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge - in a rerun of the 9/11 attacks that would have killed thousands of Americans.

Writing in today's New York Post, former top Clinton adviser notes that Mrs. Clinton joined with all but two Senate Democrats in opposing a renewal of the Patriot Act - including the roving wiretap provision that even her husband supported as president.

Back in the '90s, recalls Morris, "the Republican-controlled Congress refused to enact the [wiretap] legislation promptly — and the Clintons excoriated the GOP for dragging its feet on this vital proposal."

"It is particularly galling that Sens. Clinton and Chuck Schumer — whose New York constituents are in the terrorists' bull's-eye — voted to let these vital protections expire," he fumes.

Hillary's constituents will also be much less safe, he says, thanks to the reconstruction of the notorious "wall of separation" that kept intelligence agencies from sharing information with law enforcement - a restriction that the Patriot Act had abolished.

Hillary's supporters would do well to remember, says Morris, how "the wall" made it much more difficult for the FBI to discover that Mohamed Atta and his crew were inside the U.S., plotting to kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11.

Recall how the feds seized "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui a full month before 9/11, "but could not follow up on the leads his laptop would have highlighted because of the pernicious wall" that Democrats like Hillary have now reconstructed.

As a result, the FBI was unable to access the laptop's files, which reportedly contained the names of hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Hillary has also done nothing to rein in the hysteria of her fellow Democrats over President Bush decision to use the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls of suspected terrorists operating inside the U.S.

That's probably because she recalls how the NSA engaged in blanket telecommunications surveillance during the Clinton administration - even without the pretext of the 9/11 attacks.

But Morris reminds that its just that kind of surveillance that probably saved the Brooklyn Bridge - and along with it, the lives of thousands of Mrs. Clinton's constituents.

He writes:

"In 2002, the feds (presumably the NSA) picked up random cellphone chatter using the words 'Brooklyn Bridge' (which apparently didn't translate well into Arabic). They notified the New York Police Department, which flooded the bridge with cops. Then the feds overheard a phone call in which a man said things were 'too hot' on the bridge to pull off an operation.

"Later an interrogation of a terrorist allowed by the Patriot Act led cops to the doorstep of this would-be bridge bomber."

Adds Morris, "his plans would definitely have brought down the bridge, NYPD sources told me."

But shouldn't Bush have obtained a court order before monitoring terrorist conversations - as even some Republican-leaning legal analysts now claim?

"On who?" asks Morris. The NSA "had no idea what it was looking for. It just intercepted random phone calls from people in the United States to those outside — and so heard the allusions to the bridge that tipped them off."

But if Democrats succeed in rolling back Bush's efforts to keep America safe, warns Morris - it's "Bye-bye, bridge."