9/11 didn't change everything on NSA spying

Jason Leopold is reporting this bombshell. Read the whole thing.

The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.

The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups......

What had long been understood to be protocol in the event that the NSA spied on average Americans was that the agency would black out the identities of those individuals or immediately destroy the information.

But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law.

And here's the link for the declassified document(warning .pdf).

So, a quick read tells me that the Bush administration was overstepping the law in this area from almost day one. I think this also completely disproves the argument that this program is the only thing preventing another 9/11. After all, it didn't prevent the first one.

It also lays to rest the "war president" defense of extraordinary powers vested in the commander in chief in times of war. If he was utilizing these powers prior to 9/11, there was no war within which to claim these powers.

Also, the second support that the Bush admin has offered, that somehow the Afghanistan resolution authorized these programs, similarly wouldn't apply.

So, this could be huge. Under what authorization or arguments does the Bush administration possibly think this was legal prior to 9/11. I wonder if the starting date is one of the "classified details" that Al Gonzales won't disclose at next months Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.

Also, this has a familiar echo back to the Bolton confirmation hearings where we learned that Bolton had requested and had been given some of the names from the American side of some recorded international phone conversations.

(Lastly, Jason, I know you come by from time to time, so I would offer this: In this NSA case, you're treading in some pretty deep waters. I know this one is declassified, but I don't think they're messing around with the leakers on this thing, so be careful. I will start the legal defense fund, but I really don't want to have to. As always, anything I can do, man - Mike)