1115.org

The NYT is reporting that the dramatic hospital-bed drama in 2004 starring John Ashcroft, Jim Comey and Buttercheeks was about the data-mining component of the NSA’s terrorist surveillance program rather than the warrantless wiretapping component.

Mr. Gonzales insisted before the Senate this week that the 2004 dispute did not involve the Terrorist Surveillance Program “confirmed” by President Bush, who has acknowledged eavesdropping without warrants but has never acknowledged the data mining.

If the dispute chiefly involved data mining, rather than eavesdropping, Mr. Gonzales’ defenders may maintain that his narrowly crafted answers, while legalistic, were technically correct.

Democratic lawmakers are neither impressed nor amused by the technical validity of Buttercheeks’ legal parsing.

“I’ve had the opportunity to review the classified matters at issue here, and I believe that his testimony was misleading at best,” said Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, joining three other Democrats in calling Thursday for a perjury investigation of Mr. Gonzales.

“This has gone on long enough,” Mr. Feingold said. “It is time for a special counsel to investigate whether criminal charges should be brought.”

The senators’ comments, along with those of other members of Congress briefed on the program, suggested that they considered the eavesdropping and data mining so closely tied that they were part of a single program. Both activities, which ordinarily require warrants, were started without court approval as the Bush administration intensified counterterrorism efforts soon after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Apparently, issues other than the NSA data-mining program also played a supporting role in the hospital bed drama, but no one’s giving up any details yet:

A half-dozen officials and former officials (speaking) on the condition of anonymity … said the 2004 dispute involved other issues in addition to the data mining, but would not provide details. They would not say whether the differences were over how the databases were searched or how the resulting information was used.