Secret court modified wiretap requests; may have caused Bush to ignore them]

["David Farber" <dave () farber net>]

Maybe they were proitecting our constitution?  djf
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Secret court modified wiretap requests; may have caused Bush to
ignore them From:    "Jim Warren" <jwarren () well com>
Date:    Tue, December 27, 2005 1:10 pm
To:      "Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>
         "Declan McCullagh" <declan () well com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Secret court modified wiretap requests
Intervention may have led Bush to bypass panel

By STEWART M. POWELL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON BUREAU


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/253334_nsaspying24.html?source=mypi

Saturday, December 24, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Government records show that the administration was 
encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal
surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel  and
order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the
court's approval.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the 
26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more  wiretap
requests from the Bush administration than from the four
previous presidential administrations combined.

The court's repeated intervention in Bush administration wiretap
requests may explain why the president decided to bypass the court  nearly
four years ago to launch secret National Security Agency
spying on hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans and foreigners 
inside the United States, according to James Bamford, an acknowledged 
authority on the supersecret NSA, which intercepts telephone calls, 
e-mails, faxes and Internet communications.

...<big snip>...



[But the important thing is that the President didn't lie about
having sex in the White House.  Unlike this little transgression
involving warrantless searches or hundreds of citizens, THAT would be 
worthy of impeachment.  Sorta makes ya wonder about the meaning of 
"conservative"; doesn't it?  --jim]





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