Phone companies deny involvement in NSA spy program at the same time we hear there's a secret Bush memo directing them to lie about their involvement

I'd read yesterday on another blog (can't find the link now), and just had it confirmed by a second source today, that's there's a memo out there from the Bush administration, an "Executive Memorandum" dated May 5th of this year, that grants the phone companies participating in the NSA domestic spying scandal the right to publicly deny their involvement.

All I have to say about that is, isn't it interesting that it took BellSouth and Verizon days and days and days to finally put out a "denial" of their involvement in this program (and AT&T has YET to deny their involvement)? Why wouldn't you deny it immediately if it weren't true? Not to mention, all three companies were contacted by USA Today BEFORE the story ran, and they refused to deny their involvement even then. That means it's been quite a long time that they knew about this story, but only now they're claiming they weren't involved.

If a phone company were innocent, and a reporter accused them of massively violating the privacy of their customers - a charge worthy of brand-death in corporate land - you'd think any company so wrongly charged would immediately tell the reporter "that is flat out wrong, we did no such thing!"

Didn't happen.

And now, far too late that we find out some of the companies are apparently claiming they weren't involved (though their claims are with very precise technical legal language that makes one wonder if they're not debating the definition of "is"), we also hear from multiple sources that there's a presidential memo giving the phone companies permission to lie about their reported involvement.

Very interesting.

If there were a privacy group worth their salt out there, they'd have launched a massive campaign against AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth - yesterday.