But a roving wiretap means -- it was primarily used for drug lords. A guy, a pretty intelligence drug lord would have a phone, and in old days they could just get a tap on that phone. So guess what he'd do? He'd get him another phone, particularly with the advent of the cell phones.
George W. Bush
Buffalo, New York
April 20, 2004
The above quote is from the official transcript of that speech, posted on the White House's web site:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040420-2.html"...a pretty intelligence drug lord..."
"He'd get him another phone..."
Fifty years from now they're going to look at this decade as if they were looking at the dark ages. They're going to see the lack of intelligence and the poor communications skills evident in the man who oversaw the fall of a once-great empire, and wonder what kind of widespread mental illness made it all possible. For example, he also said, in the same speech,
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."He made the speech before the 2004 election. Apparently, he's not only changed his mind about the sanctity of our constitutional guarantees, he's changed his mind retroactively, because he was authorizing illegal wiretaps before he even made the speech.