"Informed and Not Consulted"
The Administration likes to stress that congressional leaders were briefed about the new program from the start. But some of them object that they were told about it under ground rules that made it impossible for them to mount any opposition. Daschle tells TIME that he, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Dick Gephardt, then House minority leader, were briefed in early 2002 by Cheney. There was a second briefing in 2004. "A couple of us expressed our concerns," Daschle says. "But the information we were given was more technical and less substantive. We were told we were being informed and not consulted." Within the intelligence community, officials knew that legal justifications for the spying were subject to challenge. At the NSA, says a former senior intelligence official, "there was apprehension, uncertainty in the minds of many about whether or not the President did have that constitutional or statutory authority."
Tom Daschle says that when the briefings on the NSA domestic spying issue were given, they were told by the Administration that this is what they were doing, not whether or not it should be done, or how to go about it.
And, as if that wasn't enough, the people at tne NSA knew there was a problem with this, and there was a question as to whether or not the President had the authority to do it in the first place.
In light of all this, it makes the statements coming out of the White House, and from Bush defenders, ring very, very hollow. The people whose jobs it is to keep the government from acting in an illegal manner, have said that they did not support Bush's program, yet the White House went ahead. The President of the United States took an oath to protect and defend the Consitution, yet he violated some of its basic tennants.
Why is this man still President of the United States?
Thanks to Joe @ Americablog for the link.
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