“Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda”: Hillary Clinton Gives Flippant Answer When Pressed On Patriot Act Support

Hillary Clinton attempted to wave off criticism of her post-9/11 votes this week, telling a Columbia University audience that Monday-morning quarterbacking carries its own bias and that relitigating the Patriot Act does little good.

The former secretary of state, who teaches crisis decision-making at Columbia’s Institute of Global Politics, was pressed by a moderator on whether Americans were “served well” by the Patriot Act and the Authorization for Use of Military Force, and on what she remembered about the deliberations.

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“I think what you just heard is such a reminder about how difficult decision-making is in the midst of a crisis,” Clinton said, speaking at a Columbia SIPA Institute of Global Politics panel titled “The 9/11 Attacks 25 Years Later: Lessons Learned, Lessons Forgotten.”

“And that’s the course that the dean and I teach every day, or every week, because hindsight is always perfect.”

“But it’s got as much bias as anything else. And so looking back and saying shoulda, coulda, woulda doesn’t really help us,” the failed presidential candidate added.

Clinton was a freshman senator from New York when hijacked airliners slammed into the World Trade Center towers in her home state. Clinton joined 97 colleagues in voting for the USA Patriot Act that October. Then-Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) was the lone no.

Days earlier, the Senate had cleared the AUMF 98-0. Across the Capitol, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) stood alone as the only member of Congress to vote against it.

That authorization became the legal blank check for roughly two decades of American military adventurism spanning multiple wars in the Middle East and multiple administrations, power lawmakers in both parties have since tried, and failed, to claw back.Gives 

The Patriot Act’s Section 215, the so-called “business records” provision, became the legal foundation for the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of American phone records, a program the public learned about only in 2013 through the Edward Snowden leaks. Congress scaled it back with the USA Freedom Act in 2015. The authority finally lapsed in March 2020.