1115.org

In a story about his upcoming trip to the Hill, USA Today has an interesting quote from Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell:

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell heads to Capitol Hill this week seeking to extend the government’s power to read e-mails, listen to telephone calls and carry out other surveillance within the USA in national security cases.
[…]
Before the Senate Homeland Security Committee last week, McConnell appeared to say the temporary warrantless surveillance had helped produce the arrests this month of three Muslim men accused of planning attacks against Americans in Germany. He later issued a statement noting that intelligence in the German case was not collected under the warrantless surveillance authority.

Spokesman Feinstein said McConnell plans a written response to the House Judiciary Committee Democrats. Feinstein said McConnell would not respond to suggestions from Harman and others that he has become a Bush partisan.

In his El Paso Times interview, McConnell said it was he who first suggested to the Bush administration that surveillance law needed updating because “technology had changed.”

“I’m an apolitical figure,” McConnell said.

Lying to Congress to further Bush’s panty-sniffing spy efforts is, according to the man who did it, apolitical.

I’m glad we got that all straightened out, because I’d hate to see what would happen if McConnell decided to let politics get involved.