A Congress in the dark cannot fulfill functions

[struggle4progress]

Monday, January 23, 2006

... What is true is this: The White House authorized the super-secret National Security Agency to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of people inside this country. (They had to be communicating with people outside our borders.) The NSA was able to do its snooping without first getting the OK from a judge - even from a member of the secret court that was established to approve such wiretaps. The NSA, in fact, could spy as it saw fit without any oversight whatsoever.

While all this was going on, 527 members of Congress were told not one single thing about the program. The White House did see fit to inform the so-called gang of eight - the Republican and Democratic leaders of each house along with the ranking members of the intelligence committees.

But there is good reason to believe that what they were told was anything but the whole story ...

http://www.masslive.com/editorials/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1137833519225080.xml&coll=1