The significance of the Administration's June, 2002 statements about FISA
Glenn Greenwald
(last 4 paragraphs, read it all at:
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/01/significance-of-administrations-june.html..................
....... The Administration scrambled for a full month to explain why they had to eavesdrop outside of the very permissive FISA scheme, to explain why they eavesdropped with no judicial oversight even though the law makes it a criminal offense to do so. We had been fed nothing but incoherent gibberish about the need for "speed and agility" in this "different war."
Now we finally heard an explanation from the Administration as to why they supposedly had to eavesdrop in violation of FISA -- because FISA supposedly was too rigid to allow the eavesdropping they wanted to do -- and that explanation is clearly false, as proven by the Administration's own statements and conduct at the time.
Leaving aside the always-paramount fact that the Administration has no right in our system of government to simply violate laws when it claims it has a good reason to break the law – and that principle, from start to finish, is what this scandal is about – the fact that the Administration is disseminating patently false explanations for why it violated the law does also leave the quite pressing and still unanswered question:
What is the real reason the Administration chose to eavesdrop in violation of FISA -- i.e., in secret and with no oversight -- rather than within FISA and with oversight? There is still no viable answer to that question from the Administration.