Spy Briefings Failed to Meet Legal Test, Lawmakers Say

[kentuck]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/politics/21intel.html

<snip>
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - The limited oral briefings provided by the White House to a handful of lawmakers about the domestic eavesdropping program may not have fulfilled a legal requirement under the National Security Act that calls for such reports to be in written form, Congressional officials from both parties said on Tuesday

<snip>
All told, no more than 14 members of Congress have been briefed about the program since it took effect in 2001, the Congressional officials said. Now lawmakers from both parties are debating whether those members-only briefings provided a sufficient basis for oversight of an activity that is only now coming under intense Congressional scrutiny.

"You can't have the administration and a select number of members alter the law," Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who heads the Judiciary Committee, said this week. "It can't be done."

<snip>
Among other Democrats said by Congressional officials to have received at least one briefing were Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the former Senate Democratic leader; Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the former House Democratic leader; and Representative Jane Harman of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Among Republicans, the group included Senator Bill Frist, the Republican leader; Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the former Republican leader; Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee; and Porter J. Goss, the current director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

...more

[Canuckistanian]

1. Well, the stage is set now

A clear breach of the law, which rises to the level of an impeachable crime and is not mitigated by claims of congressional consent.

And now.... we wait.