(From the diaries -- Plutonium Page.)
It seems like just yesterday that George W. Bush said of his domestic spying program:
So it's a program that's limited, and you brought up something that I want to stress, and that is, is that these calls are not intercepted within the country. They are from outside the country to in the country, or vice versa.
Apparently he didn't stress it enough. From today's New York Times:
A surveillance program approved by President Bush to conduct eavesdropping without warrants has captured what are purely domestic communications in some cases, despite a requirement by the White House that one end of the intercepted conversations take place on foreign soil, officials say.
But don't worry...after all, Bush did say that:
I just want to assure the American people that...we're guarding your civil liberties. And we're guarding the civil liberties by monitoring the program on a regular basis.
George, you're doing a heckuva job.
In case you are wondering how many times domestic calls were monitored, well, keep wondering:
Officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified, would not discuss the number of accidental intercepts, but the total is thought to represent a very small fraction of the total number of wiretaps that Mr. Bush has authorized without getting warrants.
Thought to be? They don't know? Consider what Scott McClellan said during yesterday's White House press briefing:
And remember, there are important safeguards and oversight measures that are in place for this program. The President talked about those just the other day. Every 45 days or so it is carefully reviewed; it must have the approval of top legal officials from the Attorney General to the White House Counsel. The activities that are conducted under this authorization are thoroughly reviewed by the Department of Justice and by the National Security Agency legal officials, including the General Counsel and the Inspector General.
Wow, all of those "safeguards" and still the secret, illegal plan didn't work.
And this latest revelation certainly makes Attorney General Gonzales and General Michael Hayden look ridiculous...during their press briefing yesterday morning, Gonzales said:
"People are running around saying that the United States is somehow spying on American citizens calling their neighbors," he said. "Very, very important to understand that one party to the communication has to be outside the United States."
And from General Hayden:
"The authorization given to N.S.A. by the president requires that one end of these communications has to be outside the United States," General Hayden answered. "I can assure you, by the physics of the intercept, by how we actually conduct our activities, that one end of these communications are always outside the United States."
Did the President mislead the Attorney General of the United States or was Gonzales lying? And to General Hayden, the same question.
Again, we don't know how many times purely domestic calls were intercepted. The administration isn't telling...what do we know?
In all, officials say the program has been used to eavesdrop on as many as 500 people at any one time, with the total number of people reaching perhaps into the thousands in the last three years.
Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Who knows?