Opinion ID: 370395
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: title iii and the fourth amendment

Text: 25 Standards for evaluating the legality of this electronic surveillance derive from the Constitution and from Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. 59 The Government has conceded that the Fourth Amendment's ban on Unreasonable searches and seizures applied to national security wiretaps in 1969, 60 but disputes the application of the Amendment's judicial warrant requirement. 61 The Keith Court observed that the definition of 'reasonableness' turns, at least in part, on the more specific commands of the warrant clause, 62 but warrantless searches have been approved in certain carefully defined classes of cases. 63 Thus we must acknowledge that the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement may not always apply, while a reasonableness standard may vary in different situations. 64 In contrast, Title III bans most electronic surveillance and specifies procedures for wiretapping and eavesdropping in particular situations; but the statute expressly does not limit the President's constitutional power to wiretap in national security situations. 65 Although the mandate of the statute is more precise, the reach of the constitutional provision may be seen as greater. 66 26 To gauge the propriety of the Halperin surveillance under the overlapping constitutional and statutory standards, we must review the circumstances of the wiretapping and its connection to reasonable national security concerns. 67 If that connection is remote, or the supposed national security concerns ephemeral, we must remand to the District Court for a determination whether Title III should be applied; where the professed national security issues appear valid, we must still insist on compliance with the Fourth Amendment. We will first consider the applicability of Title III and then examine the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. 27  Title III was designed to limit Government use of electronic surveillance techniques. According to the Supreme Court, the statute and legislative history evince( ) the clear intent to make doubly sure that the statutory authority be used with restraint and only where the circumstances warrant the surreptitious interception of wire and oral communications. 68 This court has observed that (t)he Act's essential purpose    was to combine a limited and carefully articulated grant of power to intercept communications with an elaborate set of safeguards to deter abuse and to expunge its effects in the event that it should occur. 69 28 The statute is straightforward. Section 2511 bans all electronic surveillance not authorized by Title III, with three exceptions not relevant to this case. 70 Surveillance is permitted for investigation of classes of crimes carefully specified in 18 U.S.C. § 2516, 71 so long as stringent procedural requirements are satisfied. 72 The statute provides for civil as well as criminal prosecution of violators, with minimum civil damages set at $100 for each day of violation, plus punitive damages and attorney's fees. 73 A good faith defense is available to Government officials sued under Title III, as we discuss in detail in Part IV of this opinion. 29 The applicability of Title III to the Halperin wiretap hinges on Section 2511(3), which enumerates five national security situations in which surveillance would not be covered by the statute. This provision, as the Keith Court held, is an expression of congressional neutrality on national security surveillances: 30 (N)othing in § 2511(3) was intended to Expand or to Contract or to Define whatever presidential surveillance powers existed in matters affecting the national security.    ( 74 31 Hence, if a surveillance falls under Section 2511(3), it is still subject to constitutional limitations, but not to Title III's requirements and prohibitions. 32 Only one of the five circumstances listed in Section 2511(3) might apply to this case: That nothing in Title III shall limit the constitutional power of the President    to protect national security information against foreign intelligence activities. 75 We face an initial problem in applying this provision to the instant case, since there was never any allegation that the Halperins were directly connected to foreign intelligence activities. Although it is surely possible for vital secrets to be revealed through a leak to the press, both courts and Congress have looked for a direct link between the wiretap target and a foreign interest as a justification for surveillance. 76 In the absence of such a connection, we must closely scrutinize the validity of the national security rationale. 77 33 The District Court declined to apply Title III because of the indisputable difficulties and ambiguities presented by § 2511(3). 34 In view of the confused state of the law and the 30-year history of similar (warrantless national security wiretaps)   , the Court finds that defendants' determination that Title III was inapplicable to the Halperin wiretap was reasonable during the period of surveillance.    ( 78 35 This statement conflates the standards for a good faith defense with the applicability of Title III, 79 and reflects a fundamental misapprehension of the Halperins' position. They argue that the wiretap was not related to national security, and thus was subject to the substantive and procedural terms of Title III. If they are correct in their first contention, the second is incontestable. The 30-year history of warrantless national security wiretaps could not affect the applicability of Title III to non-national security surveillances. Consequently, the proper inquiry for the District Court was whether the surveillance challenged here was a valid national security action. 80 To the extent that it was not, any uncertainty about the meaning of Section 2511(3) at the time of the wiretapping would be relevant only to the question of the defendants' official immunity to suit. As a result, we must reverse the grant of summary judgment on the statutory claim and remand for a determination by the District Court of whether the surveillance was reasonably intended to guard national security data from foreign intelligence agencies. 36 In this framework we see little evidence before us for classifying the surveillance from May 1970 to February 1971 as a national security action not reached by Title III. During those nine months Halperin had no official connection with the Government, and, in fact, had lacked access to much classified information for the preceding year; 81 a continuous, year-long wiretap had revealed no evidence that he was a leaker; and the reports on the wiretap were not sent to Kissinger, the President's National Security Adviser, but to Haldeman, a political and administrative adviser. Moreover, since Halperin had almost no official contact with the National Security Council from September 1969 to May 1970, the national security basis for surveillance during those nine months would seem almost equally attenuated. Finally, plaintiffs have raised questions about the purported national security nexus even at the beginning of the wiretap. Halperin claims that the surveillance was initiated for political reasons stemming from his connection to previous administrations. 82 He points to letters from Senator Goldwater to President Nixon and to Attorney General Mitchell recommending his ouster, 83 as well as to Kissinger's apparent request on June 4, 1969 that the surveillance be continued to establish a pattern of innocence. 84 These events suggest, Halperin argues, that he was initially targeted for surveillance in order to bolster within the Nixon Administration the political credibility of Kissinger's staff appointments. 37 On remand the District Court must address all of these contentions. Title III will apply to any period during which the wiretap did not involve the primary purpose of protecting national security information against foreign intelligence activities. Where the parties have posed genuine issues of material fact, the court will have to undertake an evidentiary inquiry. Summary proceedings should be limited to those instances where the record before the court indicates no such issue. 85 B 38 Throughout the 21 months of the Halperin wiretap the defendants in this case were under an obligation to comply with both the reasonableness and the warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment. The District Court found that at some point during the surveillance the wiretap 39 developed into a dragnet which lacked temporal and spatial limitation. It represent(ed) the antithesis of the particular, precise, and discriminate procedures required by the Supreme Court in numerous Fourth Amendment cases.    ( 86 40 Although we agree that the surveillance did not satisfy the reasonableness standard, we must remand for consideration both of the warrant question and of When the wiretap became unreasonable. In addition, we cannot affirm the award of $1 nominal damages for the constitutional violations established here. 41 1. When the Supreme Court first applied the warrant provision of the Fourth Amendment to wiretapping in 1967, it expressly reserved the question of prior judicial approval of national security surveillances. 87 In Keith, however, the Court found that a warrant was necessary before a domestic target deemed a threat to national security could be wiretapped, and in Zweibon I this court ruled that a warrant was needed to wiretap a domestic group that may be concerned with foreign affairs but that is not the agent of or acting in collaboration with a foreign power   . 88 At the root of these decisions was the conviction that prior judicial approval of wiretapping for national security matters, absent exigent circumstances, falls within the competence of the judiciary, 89 poses no additional threat to national security, 90 and provides a valuable check on Executive discretion. 91 42 For the reasons articulated in our opinion today in Zweibon v. Mitchell (Zweibon III), 92 we conclude that a warrant was required for the Halperin wiretap in May 1969. The reasoning of both Keith and Zweibon I, which dealt with wiretaps initiated during the same period, applies with equal force to this situation, and there is no basis for limiting those cases to prospective effect. The District Court in the instant case (a)ssum(ed) Arguendo  that defendants were not subject to the warrant requirement, although it is not clear from that opinion whether the assumption was based on retroactivity considerations or defendants' possible immunity from suit. 93 In any event, such an assumption for purposes of argument is no substitute for a specific holding by the District Court. Of course, the defendants may be able to make out an immunity defense by arguing that due to uncertainty in the law on the warrant requirement there were reasonable grounds in 1969 for their failure to acquire a warrant, and that they did not act in bad faith. 94 This is a distinct question, however, from whether the Fourth Amendment mandated a warrant. 43 2. As we discussed above, we believe that Title III most likely should apply to at least part of the period of the Halperin surveillance. Nevertheless, for any period during which the District Court concludes that the surveillance was genuinely based on national security concerns, the wiretap might still have violated the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness standard. 95 The duration or conduct of the surveillance might well be deemed to have been unreasonable in view of the likely product of the wiretap, especially after the initial period. In that event, the trial court would have to establish the time span of that constitutional violation in order to determine damages. 96 44 3. Damage suits for the vindication of individual rights date from the eighteenth century in England, 97 and have been widely recognized in our courts. 98 The Supreme Court stated in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, (D)amages have been regarded as the ordinary remedy for an invasion of personal interests in liberty. 99 The instant suit is squarely within this tradition, and the Halperins are entitled to recover money damages for any injuries (they have) suffered as a result of the    violation of the (Fourth) Amendment. 100 45 Even if a constitutional violation inflicts only intangible injury, compensation is still appropriate. In Paton v. LaPrade the Third Circuit enumerated many of the intangible injuries that might have been suffered by a student unreasonably investigated by the FBI: stigmatization, invasion of privacy, interference with personality development, and interference with her freedom of association through the decision of others to shun her. 101 This approach has been followed by other circuits in suits alleging constitutional violations by state officials under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1976). 102 46 Due to the plaintiffs' reliance on a presumption of injury in requesting a damage award, the District Court concluded that there was no demonstrable injury. 103 We think that conclusion neglected the possibility that plaintiffs might show loss due to emotional distress and mental anguish, traditional bases for tort recovery. Such harm might be demonstrated through direct testimony of the plaintiffs or might be inferred from the circumstances, 104 and if established would surely entitle the Halperins to more than nominal recovery. This court has held that in cases involving constitutional rights, compensation should not be approached in a niggardly spirit. It is in the public interest that there be a reasonably spacious approach to a fair compensatory award for denial or curtailment of the right   . 105 Specifying such damages will always be difficult, but they must be at least an amount which will assure (the plaintiff) that (personal) rights are not lightly to be disregarded and that they can be truly vindicated in the courts. 106