Despite the secrecy of the ongoing domestic surveillance, the White House had Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Gen. Michael Hayden, the nation's No. 2 intelligence official, brief reporters:....(Yes, General Hayden, you remember him? The guy who said they didn't get the retroactive warrants because it involved "paperwork" and "making arguments.")
He and Gonzales said it was essential to bypass the legal requirements to obtain secret court warrants for such operations because they had to move quickly to stop terrorist threats.
But they struggled to explain why the administration could not have relied on FISA provisions that allow surveillance to be conducted and a warrant obtained after the fact in emergencies.
The Bush administration simply cannot answer this one question - if time was of the essence, why didn't they conduct the searches and get the warrants after the fact, something that is allowed under the FISA law? They conducted the searches alright, but they never once sought the retroactive warrants.
They have yet to answer this question, and this is the ONLY QUESTION you need to be immediately focusing on. There is no answer, short of the administration simply wanting to defy the law. It wasn't for expediency, because they could do the search immediately. And if they say it was because they were afraid the court would deny the warrant, that's absurd since the court has refused only 5 to 15 of 19,000 warrants that have been requested.
The only reason the court would refuse a warrant in post-9/11 America is if the warrant were for something outrageous, such as, oh I don't know, spying on an American elected official or an American journalist. It would have to be a pretty outrageous request if the administration were afraid the Potemkin court would turn it down. So aren't you the least bit curious what that request was, and whether it involved YOU?
Come on guys, make us proud, ask an obvious question and stick with it until you get a satisfactory answer. You have your Watergate staring you in the eyes, grab it.
