Court Opinion

ID: 9475303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:23:25.895054+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:38.480164
License: Public Domain

*1327KOELSCH, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The court’s opinion misses the initial and dispositive issue. We are not concerned in this matter with the question of whether or not there was electronic surveillance — that is admitted.
Instead the initial question, and the first hurdle to cross, is the question whether the United States is responsible for or chargeable with the admitted wiretaps. Only if the answer is “yes” does 18 U.S.C. § 3504 and the burden it imposes, come into operation. Because the answer is “no,” I suggest, that the lengthy discussion of 18 U.S.C. § 3504 and the exposition of the many cases dealing with the burden and scope, at best, “puts the cart before the horse” and answers questions, which in my estimation, we should never reach at all.
In this matter the United States did not admit that it had anything to do with the wiretap. Had it done so, then, and only then, would it have been confronted with the burden of answering under section 3504 and required to negate the effect as required by the old doctrine of confession and avoidance.
Thus to start out as the majority does with the postulate that “[t]he issue in this appeal is whether Boggs’s testimony satisfied the government’s burden of demonstrating that the electronic surveillance was lawful” is to prematurely assume the major premise upon which the opinion rests and brush aside an insurmountable road block.
This record I submit, manifests the soundness of the district judge’s factual determination. Upon appraising the witness Boggs’s testimony following the hearing, he declared “[t]he uncontroverted testimony reveals that the Thai wiretap was conducted solely by the Thai authorities with no involvement or suggestion of U.S. agents.”1
Why then should we be concerned with the quality of the Thai act.
The order should be affirmed.

. An exposition of Boggs’s testimony would serve no useful purpose. Suffice to say, in milieu, Boggs’s statements on matters material were persuasively corroborated.