In this Washington Times article, Charles Hunt claims “One of the most famous examples of warrantless searches in recent years was the investigation of CIA official Aldrich H. Ames, who ultimately pleaded guilty to spying for the former Soviet Union. That case was largely built upon secret searches of Ames’ home and office in 1993, conducted without federal warrants.”

Judd at Think Progress debunks the Hunt article here, but doesn’t mention Ames specifically.

Hunt provides no documentation that the search of Ames’s office and home were without warrants. But this document from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence begins,

On February 21, 1994, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested a 52-year old employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Aldrich Hazen Ames, outside his Arlington, Virginia residence, on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of Russia and the former Soviet Union. According to the affidavit supporting the arrest warrant, these activities had begun in April 1985, and continued to the time of the arrest. Ames’s wife, Maria del Rosario Casas Ames, was arrested inside the residence on the same charges shortly after her husband was taken into custody. …

… The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (hereinafter “the Committee”) received its initial briefing regarding the case on the day the arrests were publicly announced. The facts contained in the affidavit supporting the arrest and search warrants were summarized by representatives of the FBI.

Later in the document we learn —

Under applicable Attorney General guidelines, this meant that the FBI was able to seek authority under pertinent laws and Justice Department guidelines to employ a full array of investigative techniques against Ames. For instance, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued orders authorizing electronic surveillance of Ames’s office and residence.

This is a long and sometimes vague document, and maybe I missed it, but I don’t see “warrantless searches” in there anywhere. I found other documents regarding Ames linked on this Department of Justice page, but I didn’t find mention of the searches in them.

I’m not sure who initiated the story that Ames’s house and office were searched without warrants, but it may have started with Republican attorney Victoria Toensing during a call-in to CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. Today a number of rightie commenters and bloggers repeat this story as gospel. So far, I have seen no documentation whatsoever. Maybe there is such documentation, but so far it has remained uncited. The claim that Clinton ordered warrantless physical searches of Ames’s house and office is just repeated on rightie sites as gospel truth.

Much of today’s confusion regarding FISA during the Clinton Administration stems from the fact that FISA regulations were changed after the Ames searches and arrests —

When Gorelick testified before the House Intelligence Committee in 1994 that the president had the “inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches,” FISA did not apply to physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes, as Media Matters for America has noted. A year later, Congress — with Clinton’s support — amended FISA to require court orders for physical searches. The Clinton administration thereafter never argued that any “inherent authority” pre-empted the new warrant requirements for physical searches under FISA.

The Bush administration, on the other hand, has argued that it had the authority to authorize the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on domestic communications without warrants, despite FISA’s clear restrictions on warrantless electronic eavesdropping.

Toensing’s use of the Aldrich Ames case is similarly misleading. The joint CIA/FBI investigation of Ames, a CIA analyst ultimately convicted of espionage, also took place prior to the 1995 FISA amendment requiring warrants for physical searches. Therefore, when the Clinton administration ordered investigators to go “into Aldrich Ames’s house without a warrant,” they did not — as Toensing argued — “carry out their authority” to bypass the FISA requirements, because FISA did not cover such searches.

And, the SSCI document says that electronic searches complied with FISA. The Media Matters article linked above provides other documentation of compliance with FISA.

Of the physical searches, the only ones mentioned in the SSCI document are:

On June 25, 1993, the FBI conducted a search of Ames’s office at the CIA. Approximately 144 classified documents were located in his work area, most of which did not relate to his official duties. …

Do the feds need a search warrant to search other feds? I honestly don’t know.

…On September 15,1993, a search of Ames’s trash disclosed a torn note in Ames’s handwriting which appeared to relate to a clandestine meeting planned for Bogota, Colombia on October 1, 1993. …

… On October 6, 1993, a search of Ames’s trash turned up a typewriter or printer ribbon which contained two documents which Ames appeared to have prepared in 1992. Among other things, these documents discussed CIA personnel, access to classified information, and classified operational matters.

I believe I learned from Law & Order that you don’t need a warrant to search trash if it’s out on the curb to be picked up.

On October 9, 1993, FBI agents conducted a search of Ames’s residence in Arlington. Among other things, this search yielded (1) a typewriter ribbon which contained a note Ames had written to his KGB contact regarding a meeting in Caracas, Venezuela in October 1992; (2) a computer document which identified a mailbox at 37th and R Streets in Washington, D.C. as a signal site, and (3) a series of computer documents regarding Ames’s relationship with the KGB. These computer documents included information on clandestine communications, classified CIA operations, classified CIA human assets, and information regarding the payments previously made to Ames. …

… The searches of Ames’s office and residence conducted after the arrests yielded additional evidence of his relationship with the KGB and, since 1991, with its successor intelligence service, the SVR.

It may be the October 9 search that righties are claiming was conducted without a warrant, but it’s not clear from the SSCI document that there was no warrant. The document just says the FBI “was able to seek authority under pertinent laws and Justice Department guidelines to employ a full array of investigative techniques against Ames,” whatever that means.

By October 1993 the FBI had been watching Ames for a long time, and there was copious evidence he was up to something. So, surely, the FBI could have obtained a warrant. If it didn’t — far from a verified fact, IMO — I believe that was wrong.

I have noticed that righties of late like to argue that if Bill Clinton did so-and-so, then it’s OK if Bush does it. That argument doesn’t work for me — if it’s wrong, it’s wrong, no matter who does it — but it’s wonderfully persuasive to righties. Very odd.

Also: “Where’s the Outrage?“