(1)
And lo: that which was impossible these thirteen months past is magically made possible. Hallelujah! Glory be to George!

For the last thirteen months, the administration had consistently advanced two major objections to proposals that the government should conform to the law and submit the NSA program to the oversight of the FISA court. One, requiring the NSA to obtain warrants from the FISA court would sacrifice the Speed and Agility that was necessary in order to Protect America. (Never mind the fact that the government had 72 hours after commencing surveillance to obtain a FISA warrant, a fact that made the speed and agility argument self-evidently false.) Two, the NSA program currently operated under a “reasonable basis” standard; bringing it under the purview of the FISA would change that to a “probable cause” standard, which would severely hamper and fundamentally undermine, nay cripple, the Effort to keep America Safe.

Somebody must have been despatched to the Hogwart School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by the Bush administration, and quickly brought up to speed.

Because suddenly the FISA court has been invested with all necessary speed and agility. And even more magically, the distinction between “reasonable basis” and “probable cause” has – poof – ceased to matter.

Lest anyone doubt any of this – since it clearly does strain the suspension-of-disbelief machinery of most people – the good General hastened to make it all unambiguously clear during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. No one should worry that FISA oversight of the NSA program would hamper our National Security efforts one bit. America would be “no less safe” than before (said the General).

“Rah, rah, rah!” said the people, of course. Hallelujah! Glory be to Gonzo! Glory be to George!

(2)
In his letter to the leading lights of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wrote:

The Intelligence Committees have been briefed on the highly classified details of these orders.

Funny how a Republican member of the House committee flatly disagrees with what the Attorney General has formally stated in writing to the Senate Committee:

The administration said it had briefed the full House and Senate Intelligence Committees in closed sessions on its decision.

But Representative Heather A. Wilson, Republican of New Mexico, who serves on the Intelligence committee, disputed that, and some Congressional aides said staff members were briefed Friday without lawmakers present.

Hadn’t they already played this “we’ve briefed everyone” game one too many times before? Don’t they know that Heather Wilson is not exactly a huge fan of the NSA program’s unconstitutional aspects, and is not at all shy about expressing herself on the matter? Ms. Wilson decided to issue a small reminder, just in case:

Ms. Wilson, who has scrutinized the program for the last year, said she believed the new approach relied on a blanket, “programmatic” approval of the president’s surveillance program, rather than approval of individual warrants.

Administration officials “have convinced a single judge in a secret session, in a nonadversarial session, to issue a court order to cover the president’s terrorism surveillance program,” Ms. Wilson said in a telephone interview. She said Congress needed to investigate further to determine how the program is run.

There are all kinds of questions at this point about exactly how much meaningful oversight the FISA court will provide under the new arrangement. Ms. Wilson has produced the most categorical statement of any that I have seen so far from a member of Congress that there will, in fact, be no meaningful oversight. I wonder what is hurting the White House more, the fact that this blunt criticism comes from a Republican, or the exquisite irony that the White House can hardly argue she has no idea what she’s talking about, because according to them she has been fully briefed on the new arrangement.

(3)
Gonzales spent almost all his time before the committee as we have come to expect—stonewalling every question, and giving away practically nothing by way of new information. But he did let slip something that is far from reassuring:

Gonzales later added that the warrants go “above and beyond what we normally find in a FISA order to ensure that any information that shouldn’t be collected is destroyed in an appropriate way.”

In other words, the operational philosophy of the new improved NSA-warrantless-wiretapping-with-oversight program is to collect information first and worry later about how much of it is legal under the carte blanche dispensed to the program by the (so far anonymous) beneficent FISA judge.

Sounds like President Bush may actually have told the truth yesterday:

Bush on Thursday denied there had been any change in the program, other than to receive a court’s blessing of it.

“The courts yesterday said I did have the authority,” the president said in an interview with Tribune Broadcasting. “That’s important. And the reason it’s important that they verify the legalities of the program is it means it’s going to extend, make it extend beyond my presidency. This is a really important tool for future presidents to have.”

“Nothing has changed in the program except the court has said we’ve analyzed it and it’s a legitimate way to protect the country.”

It does indeed seem to be the same old big bad NSA program, except that now it’s decked out in a set of grandmother night-clothes.* It’s best we don’t speculate about what happened to the grandmother who had been wearing those clothes, because that information is classified, in any case. But don’t worry, the appropriate congessional committees have been fully briefed. So just do your patriotic duty, and look the other way.

* Which presumably answers yesterday’s question, namely why General Gonzales was at such pains to persuade us that the big bad NSA program had been killed forever by the handsome woodcutter.