Why Bush decided to bypass court in ordering wiretaps

[kpete]

Why Bush decided to bypass court in ordering wiretaps
Panel of judges modified his requests
Stewart M. Powell, Hearst Newspapers

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Washington -- Government records show that the Bush 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 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 begin secret National Security Agency spying on hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans and foreigners inside the United States, according to James Bamford, an authority on the security agency that intercepts telephone calls, e-mails, faxes and Internet communications.

"They wanted to expand the number of people they were eavesdropping on, and they didn't think they could get the warrants they needed from the court to monitor those people," said Bamford, author of "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" and "The Puzzle Palace: Inside America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization." "The FISA court has shown its displeasure by tinkering with these applications by the Bush administration."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/25/MNGCEGD95C1.DTL

[hlthe2b]

1. oh, I see the Bush apologist (journalists) are out....

what BS

[bullimiami]

2. bush didnt like the law so he broke the law. this is called a crime.

this particular crime is a felony. and this particular felony was comitted perhaps thousands of times.

[baldguy]

3. The FISA court has always been a rubber-stamp for the Administration.

If Bush started having problems complying with outrageously lax standards of FISA - the problem is with Bush, not the court.

[PATRICK]

4. Numerically more but

it was only a few, just enough to signal there would be no blank check and eventual complicity in the worst abuses Bush wanted badly. pretty much how he has treated Congress and the UN without suffering any consequences for lawlessness.

[Enraged_Ape]

5. Well, I'm tired of waiting in line at the DMV for my driver's license

So I'm just going to drive around without one. If/when a cop stops me, I'll tell him to kiss my ass and explain to him the "Bush defense".

Nice try, Stewart Powell and the Hearst Newspapers. What George did is ILLEGAL, period. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. If the little dictator didn't like the law, he should have had it changed. It's not like he hadn't done that before.

Bush circumvented the process because he wanted to do ILLEGAL spying on American citizens for God only knows what nefarious purpose.

[Hubert Flottz]

6. "Why Bush decided to bypass court "

Because the court probably wouldn't have agreed that John Kerry, Al Sharpton, Joe LIEberman, Howard Dean, General Clark and the rest of the democrats in Washington, were "enemies of the state."

[FreedomAngel82]

46. And for all we know

he could've also been spying on other republicans. Maybe if they were going to change their minds or to blackmail them. I wouldn't be surprised if he was spying on Jones, Spector, Hagel and possibly some other highprofile republicans like Frist, DeLay etc.

[me b zola]

58. Add Powell to that list of repugs

Powell came out with a statement saying he thinks it what bush* did was perfectly legal. :eyes:

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

62. Uncle Tom speaks through General Powell's Colon

nm

[Bob3]

63. so exactly what country did Mr Powell think he was defending?

Cause the United States of American sure wasn't it.

And of course hes forgotten the oath he took when becoming an officer:"to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States" Not the country, not the president, not the gop, not even the people, but the constitution. In some ways this is a sad falling. * has the morals of a brain damaged weasel and and the upper class frat boy sense of aggrieved self entitlement "don't dare tell me what I can and can not do - do you know who I am?" so you really can't expect much from him. But Powell was an example of the American dream rising from humble beginnings to head the joint chiefs of staff. The thing of myth really. So for him pretend what * has done is all peachy kean neat truly means he has sold his soul to *.

Sad - you did hope for more.

[disndat]

70. And don't forget - -

Theresa Heinz Kerry, and the whole John Kerry '04 campaign. rumored to be the Bush & gang's prime target.

[baby_bear]

7. The FISA court might have frowned on political monitoring

A letter to the editor in my local paper yesterday suggested that Bush's wiretapping of
either John Kerry or John McCain would not have gone over well, so the court had to be
dispensed with.

Sounds likely to me.

b_b

[Marleyb]

8. because he couldn't get a court order to spy on dissenters

[tsuki]

15. That sounds about right. This paranoid administration would

view dissenters as terra-ists.

[troubleinwinter]

9. Bush has used obscure doctrine to extend power 95 times

He skipped the court because he WANTS TO BE DICTATOR. Period. He does not like courts... they can limit his power.

Scholar says Bush has used obscure doctrine to extend power 95 times

Raw Story | September 30 2005
By Jennifer Van Bergen

The Bush administration has been using an extreme version of an obscure doctrine called the Unitary Executive Theory to justify executive actions that far exceed past presidents' power, RAW STORY has learned.

<snip>

According to Dr. Christopher Kelley, a professor in the Department of Political Sciences at Miami University, as of April 2005, President Bush had used the doctrine 95 times when signing legislation into law, issuing an executive order, or responding to a congressional resolution.

<snip>

The doctrine is being used by the Bush Administration, however, to claim the authority to decide what is and what is not the law in areas that some legal experts view as suspect. Michael A. Froomkin, professor at University of Miami Law School, told RAW STORY that some of Bush’s applications of the doctrine are “highly dubious.”

<snip>

According to Froomkin, a problem arises when the president views himself as completely above the law or is so secretive that no checks and balances can work. The greatest danger is when Congress doesn’t adequately assert itself, he asserts.

http://www.infowars.com/articles/ps/bush_obscure_doctrine_extend_power.htm

[FreedomAngel82]

47. This is why

they want the SCOTUS to be purely rightwing. They want it so they will vote in their favor etc. Forget the Constitution.

[Cooley Hurd]

10. No K&R for this tripe...

(Apologies to kpete - I am glad you posted this, as it shows media whoredom at its whoriest)...

The slant of the story is that Crusader Chimpo was picked on by the mean ol' FISA courts, so he had no choice BUT to bypass them.:grr:

[ColonelTom]

35. RTFA *carefully* before you flame it...

... it's not an apology piece. It's also not an Op-Ed piece, so you shouldn't expect it to say "Bush lied! Impeach him!" The article tries to make sense, by looking closely at the FISA court numbers, of why the Bush Administration would bypass a court from which it was seemingly so easy to gain approval. It also exposes Atty. Gen. Gonzales' explanation as, at a minimum, a lie of omission (not mentioning the Administration's problems with modification/rejection of wiretap requests).

[JuneInJax]

53. Right on - It's not * apologist

It's a pretty daming article, as I read it - and I read for a living! Especially this paragraph:
"Bamford, 59, a Vietnam-era Navy veteran, likens the Bush administration's domestic surveillance without court approval to Nixon-era abuses of intelligence agencies."

The San Fransicso Chronicle is a definitely liberal paper (check out Mark Morford!), but they're not going to put opinion in the news reports, as is the case with any decent newspaper. The report gives *'s crappy reason and explanation for bypassing the court and lets the reader decide whether it's a valid or good-enough reason.

(And we know it isn't.)
:)
Moni
(edit to correct paper's name)

[KansDem]

68. I believe Bamford was the first to expose "Operation Northwoods."

...publically, in his "Body of Secrets." Using FOIA to research his book, he discovered how the Pentagon wanted to terrorize Americans in order to provoke a war with Cuba. This was secret stuff for 40 years.

I wouldn't necessarily refer to him as a "Bush apologist."

[proud2BlibKansan]

11. Key point:

"they didn't think they could get the warrants they needed from the court to monitor those people"

You gotta wonder WHY they thought the warrants would be denied. hmmm :eyes:

[unblock]

12. i'm starting to use the "how would you feel if president hillary" argument

to anyone apologist for shrub's evil behavior, just say, "how would you like it if president hillary clinton did that? would you want her to have the same powers?"

just imagine those banana republicans that frothed at the mouth over janet reno and the "jackbooted thugs" if they would like to see president hillary clinton have the power to wiretap ANYONE, bypassing the secret court set up by federal law, with only the justification that hillary is the commander-in-chief and declares that the wiretap might benefit national security.

[Maraya1969]

13. All that eavesdropping and they couldn't stop 9/11? And then

he blames it on someone leaking his listening to Bin Laden.

This guy can't get out of Washington fast enough for me.

[ClintonTyree]

57. Precisely........

they didn't pay attention to the intelligence they DID have, they didn't follow up on Clinton's warnings that Bin Laden was THE number one threat to America. No, their hatred for everything "Clinton" put them so far behind on the intelligence curve that something was bound to happen.
King George then decided that any oversight into his "intelligence" gathering, foreign or domestic, was too cumbersome, too confining even though FISA's oversight was damned near a rubber stamp for everything previous Presidents had wanted. But then came 9/11 and with it that despicable mantra, "but 9/11 changed everything". 9/11 did not change the Constitution. Bush's lust for absolute power "changed everything".

[Higans]

14. Bush was worried that the FISA court wouldn't let him spy on everyone.

[librechik]

16. Just a few FISA requests out of 19,000 stopped: guess which one

My guess: Moussaui's computer. It was famously turned down. But details are still classified. I know it was stopped at the FBI level. What's your guess? Can we find out?

[Spinzonner]

20. No, the FBI lawyers wouldn't take the request by field agents

to the court. The FBI screwed that one up all by themselves

[bpilgrim]

17. in short, they wanted to spy on everyone and the law said no

so they decided to break the law

peace

[Akbar]

18. I'm Relieved

I was worried that we had a guy in the White House who broke the law just because he could. It's nice to know that he broke the law because it got in his way. At least he had a reason.

[savemefromdumbya]

19. Bush is not getting away with this - see to it Harry!

no President is going to bypass the system right?

[flordehinojos]

21. bush is a paranoid warmonger who is afraid of his own shadow...

just like his grandpa prescott was paranoid that someone was going to shoot him for being a whistle blower about (something or other that i cannot remember) and kept a handgun at arms reach all the time.

bush is paranoid about the fact that he knows that he has more blood on his hands than any other modern dictator since hitler...

bush is afraid of his own shadow.

[emald]

22. if shrub gets his way with this

if there is no accounting for this crime then we, as a country, are done. Maybe it's already too late; all * has to do is push the atomic button and declare martial law, start a draft and call dissenters "evil doers". Already our country is doing ghastly things in the name of freedom. How many people spent Christmas under a black hood being nearly drowned in our name? Who knows? An unspeakable evil has stolen the US and made itself a war machine to subjugate the world. Who would have thought?

[jrflorida]

36. This administration is why the Second Amendment exists

An unspeakable evil has taken hold in the U.S., thats certainly true. I find it amazing that people seem to think this country founded on such grand ideas and having come so far over a few hundred years would be immune to the same evils that have ruined countless countries before us. There is a reason the Second Amendment exists. It is to allow the citizens of this country to defend themselves from that evil if it rises here. It is not meant to preserve the right of our national guards and police to bear arms, they need no protection since they are the government. Its the people themselves that need the protection. If our government becomes our oppressor it is in our hands to take action against it. I promote no such thing right now. I believe shame will in the end bring this administration down. But I do believe it is very tenuous. A few more election cycles and they will have enough people in place to secure victory through legal means. I am progressive in every sense but this one. Many that live around me are the same. They love their guns. They may not understand the reason as I do, but they vote on it just like I will. Ill vote on the right to own guns, to include so called assault weapons unless otherwise trumped by the right to control reproductive rights. I'm pro-choice and pro-gun. I believe in not only the right of citizens to bear arms but the duty to recognize its significance in our existence. Our founders knew one thing, that they did not create a perfect nation. They knew only that they had tried to create a perfect nation and they knew that the same tools they used to overthrow tyranny may be required by future citizens of this great nation. Owning weapons is not simply a matter of putting food on the table. Hopefully it would never be required. Weapons (and I'm not talking about just hunting rifles), are our last defense against those that have risen and those that may rise in our future. Its true that weapons in the hands of criminals cost lives, but those few lives lost are nothing compared to what could happen if responsible law abiding people were not allowed to own them. You don't need to agree with me right this second, but you might ponder it for a while and consider the power and evil of this administration. It isn't over, and if it ever is it could still happen again.

[Skittles]

38. it's f***ing sad

voting on f***ing GUNS

[jrflorida]

40. Daisies aren't going to stop them

I believe strongly in the right to bear arms because I understand the significance and I understand that evil can rise here...and now I've seen it. There are many people that will vote on this issue alone. If I am presented with a candfidate that will remove my right to protect this country from itself and a candidate that will not remove my right then I will vote on f***ing GUNS.

[Skittles]

44. LOL, even if you're voting for FASCISM

I don't know any Democrats who would TAKE AWAY YOUR F***ING GUNS - they just want ACCOUNTABILITY....please do not respond; I live in Texas and despise gun nuts

[FreedomAngel82]

49. Oh yes

And there aren't other ways to protect yourself. :eyes: What a dork. George Bush is doing something worse than taking your gun. He's taking your future. Say hello fascism!

[Pachamama]

52. Jr....I'd be a lot more worried about this administration and the neo-con

led GOP'ers taking away your guns than any Democrat. I'm a Dem, and I love every single one of the constitutional amendments and let me tell you, I agree with you about the 2nd Amendment and its importance...I can also tell you that I'm far more worried about this administration and all of our rights, than ever in my life. If you really "vote for your effing guns", than I seriously suggest you stop voting against your own interests if you voted for the current administration and any GOP'er.

[FreedomAngel82]

48. Oh yeah

I'm going to go and get my gun right now. :sarcasm:

[Amonester]

61. Guns are gettin' old, these days, and not effective enough...

I suggest you people start piling up some White Phosphorus instead.
Now THAT's much better...



(Just kiddin') ;)

[flyarm]

55. well its pretty stupid of rethugs to count on rethugs to protect their

right to ownership of guns when * is the first president in history to take guns away from them..yes * took guns away from US citzens in lousiana..and the gulf states!!

not one dem has ever taken guns from american citizens..* did!

fly

[stepnw1f]

65. Take Your Fear Mongering Elsewhere

We get enough from mainstream media. Who do you think funded terrorist organizations in the past? Chickens now come home to roost, but people like yourself want to give the very same people even more power and control over "We the People". Guns... lolololol. You working for the gun industry or what? Profiting on the war on terra? Sickening... that's treason!

[blueeyedpupil]

23. Tony Trupiano will be guest hosting the Ed Schultz show all this week

Tony Trupiano, Democratic candidate for Michigan's 11th Congressional District will be guest hosting America's number one Progressive talk show, Ed Schultz, Monday December 26 to Friday December 30. The show broadcasts from 3pm to 6pm.

Tony has arranged a great week of guests and topics.

Monday the Honorable Democratic Representative John Conyers Jr. will be one of Tony's guests. Rep Conyers has most recently introduced the motion to censure bush and Cheney:
Ranking House Judiciary Democrat Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has introduced a motion to censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney for providing misleading information to Congress in advance of the Iraq war, failing to respond to written questions and potential violations of international law, /a] has learned.
Rep. Conyers is a great Democratic representative, always in the fight for all of our rights. He should be a great and interesting guest.

for details of where to hear this show or how to stream it live go to my home page at http://bloggingwithblue.blogspot.com/

[Lindacooks]

24. In other words, they knew what they were doing was illegal.

Typical Repuke.

[Protagoras]

25. Yep that's what Kings do

they pretend that the other noble's or parlament's opinions matter, but in the end they do whatever the hell they want.

And in this case it wasn't just Congress and the Judiciary...it was also the constitution. Bush believes he's entitled to rule...not lead, rule. As long as everyone agrees with him he's fine. When they don' then screw them (or it).

The man must be impeached and imprisoned for the good of the country and the good of the world. If he wins on this one he won't even have the pretense of limits controlling him.

[Higans]

31. Agreed

[FreedomAngel82]

50. Hi Higans!

I haven't seen you around so wanted to say hi. Is that you protesting? :hi:

[pinto]

26. a couple of key paragraphs here shed some light, imo:

the FISA Court was in the way...

<snip>

The judges modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications that were approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation. In 20 of the first 21 annual reports on the court's activities up to 1999, the Justice Department told Congress that "no orders were entered (by the FISA court) which modified or denied the requested authority" submitted by the government.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004, the most recent years for which public records are available.

Warrant requests rejected

The judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said last week that Bush authorized surveillance of overseas communications by U.S.-based terror suspects because the FISA court's approval process was too cumbersome. But Gonzales did not mention any difficulties obtaining FISA court approval for wiretaps sought by the administration or the secret court's increasing tendency to modify Bush administration requests for wiretaps.

<end snip>

so Bushco ignored the Court, as is their MO - illegally - and they have set about constructing an elaborate "Commander-in-Chief loophole" for breaking domestic law.

I don't think this is as much an apology piece as it may seem. The info that the FISA Court intervened, modified and denied some of the Administration's petitions - and I bet they were doozies, filed at the 72 hour deadline they refuse to acknowledge - has the smell of the simple truth. FISA was in the way. Bush said fuck 'em...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/25/MNGCEGD95C1.DTL

[WhereIsMyFreedom]

54. A key thing to note

is that there were at most 6 modifications before Bush started breaking the law and bypassing the courts. Most of those 179 took place in 2003 and 2004. Another failed excuse.

[Bob3]

64. Modified 179 out of 5,646 - that's 3.1%

that's not rejected that's modified. They rejected 6 - barely more than one tenth of one percent. So they decided to by pass the system?

Of course one is curious just how many times they bypassed the court - I've heard a lot of estimates but no number. Still they can't have been that inconvenienced by the court - all those other taps went ahead without a problem.

One thing that could have lead to the modifications is that given the * administration basic incompetence it's possible some or even most of the modified warrants were simply modified to correct basic mistakes made by * and his cronies.

[pinto]

67. Yeah, not many, but I think they take any challenge to their use of power

as a major obstacle...

[Evergreen Emerald]

27. "unprecedented second-guessing "

My guess is the FISA court was met with unprecedented merit-less search requests from the Bush administration.

[demgrrrll]

28. I would love to see the warrants that they rejected. From what I read

they rejected very few requests,only a very small percentage of 20,000 requests. Come on, how much more obvious does this have to get!

[TheGunslinger]

29. There can be no doubt now that this admin. shit on the Constitution

Impeachment must start NOW!

[Kansas Wyatt]

33. 'It's just a fucking piece of paper!' - George W. Bush

Regardless of how George W. Bush really feels about the Constitution. The ultimate question regarding his spying on people in the U.S. without a court order, is why would Bush violate the law when he did not need to. After all, if Bush had a possible threat to this nation, he could have just done it and followed up with the paperwork days later.

One has to ask themselves, why Bush would break the law, when he did not have to and could have followed up later with the paperwork. What other possible reason could there be, that Bush would break the law and not give a shit about the consequences?

There is no record of who Bush targeted, how many were targeted, no oversight at all of the surveillance, and no way for anyone to know if this was done for political reasons or revenge on opponents, nor is there any guarantee that it was not done for that purpose.

Sorry, but there is only one explanation for why George W. Bush broke the law and soiled the Constitution, and it does not have anything to do with national security.

Everyone involved in George W. Bush's spy scandal, must be hooked to 5 polygraph machines simultaneously and injected with Sodium Pentothal as they profess to only using it for national security only. While they are there, let's see what else they lied about to the American People, especially regarding the 2004 Election. Then, we can impeach their asses anyway for violating the law and Constitution.

[jrflorida]

39. Unnamed sources

Your subject uses a supposed quote from Bush that appeared in capitol hill blue recently. A quote from unnamed sources. A quote that has not been proven and should not be repeated unless it is found true. A quote that I hope will somehow have named sources behind it because it would lead directly to Bush's downfall. Until then you are wrong to repeat it. Beyond that you are onmly slightly incorrect in your post in your choice of truth techniques. Sodium Pentathol is beneath this administration. They deserve nothing less than water torture. They seem to think it works so well they won't have a problem with it.

[FreedomAngel82]

51. Actions speak louder than words

[Catherine Vincent]

30. I swear Bush is Damien the Omen.

No matter what this criminal does he will always have his protectors and apologists attempting to come out and help him.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

32. Go ahead...Rob the bank.

We'll make it legal later... :eyes:

[Bolo Boffin]

34. This is CRAP - the modifications began AFTER the bypass

Check the numbers:

FISA has approved at least 18,740 applications for electronic surveillance since 1979 (records are available only up until 2004). 13,102 were approved over the first 22 years, and only two warrant applications were ever modified.

13,102 divided by 22 is an average of 596 a year.

"Since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5645 requests...by the Bush Administration."

5645 divided by 4 is 1411 a year. That's quite a spike in requests.

And according to the article, 173 of those were in 2003 and 2004. Only six were modified before.

And six requests were also rejected or deferred during those two years - "the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history".

When did the avoidance of FISA begin? Right after September 11, 2001. However, the reticience of the FISA court to approve warrants without modification began much later, as the numbers show. These number cannot be used to exonerate Bush. The difficulties with the court begin after his bypass. They can't be the cause of the bypass.

Nice try, apologists. Do over.

[ColonelTom]

41. Article raises a lot of questions

When did the avoidance of FISA begin? Right after September 11, 2001. However, the reticience of the FISA court to approve warrants without modification began much later, as the numbers show. These number cannot be used to exonerate Bush. The difficulties with the court begin after his bypass. They can't be the cause of the bypass.

Nice try, apologists. Do over.

This doesn't make the article wrong. It does, however, mean that there may be more we can glean from the pattern of FISA requests and decisions than earlier articles showed by the 1978-present aggregate data. Why bother sending a significantly increased number of requests to the FISA courts in the post-9/11 period if you've concluded that FISA warrants aren't necessary? What's different about those applications? Are the warrantless wiretaps primarily of the purely-domestic variety (U.S. to U.S. communications)? Are they clearly not related to "terrorism" investigations? I hope, and suspect, we'll see a lot of follow-up on these issues in the days and weeks to come.

[jazzjunkysue]

37. "Ahh don't need no stinkin' warrants!" ""Cause this is MY united states of

WHATEVER!"

What does the W in GW B** stand for? Yet.

[TahitiNut]

42. So, even with unauthorized wiretaps, FISA approved nearly 90% MORE ...

... surveillance warrants annually for the Bushoilini Regime than average in the 22 previous years? Just how much more surveillance of American citizens is being done?

Do the math.
"13,102 applications ... were approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation."
"since 2001, ... 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration."

That's an annual rate that's 89.6% greater than the first 22 years!

It doesn't even count the warrantless surveillance they've done since 2001!

Fuckers! :grr:

[DallasNE]

43. John Yoo Is The Michael Brown Of Constitutional Law

Is there any wonder then why things are such a terrible mess. Why would anybody listen to Yoo. Even a bad lawyer will quote cases and passages to support a given legal point. But not John Yoo. How is it that lightweights like Brown and Yoo float to the top in the Bush administration.

[FreedomAngel82]

45. He was purely spying on political opponents

I was listening to Malloy's show from December 22nd and he told how Daschle wrote a report in the Washington Post about the whole spying ordeal and how he didn't know about it. Someone Emailed in and told how they noticed the day that Bush wanted to spy on people certain people, including Daschle, got anthrax (and Daschle was one who stud up and said "no" to Bush). The judge resigning in protest and to testify against Bush was very telling to me. If he was doing something in the name of security he would've gone to the NSA/FISA and shown them what he got and they would've let him. It's probably worse than Nixon.

[The Backlash Cometh]

56. "possibly thousands." Oh, my God.

The next time we see a picture that defines "rolling disclosure" it will involve someone in the Bush Administration.

[DallasNE]

59. That's Likely Conservative

If the telecom companies provided access to the switches used to interchange communications with foreign telecom companies it would mean that every single overseas communication was tapped. Over a 4 year period, that would probably mean several hundred thousand different Americans, including even so-called secure communications.

[ComerPerro]

60. Either that, or they were spying on Political opponents

and therefore knew they wouldn't be able to get approval for that...

[Hyernel]

66. Bypassing oversight is common with the Bushco

[bush_is_wacko]

69. What was the REASON FISA had to modify and/or reject these

wiretaps. FISA had to have had a reason. The fact that they granted nearly 100% of all previous requests MEANS something. If they were resisting THIS administration they had reason to believe he was crossing the line.