ALL THE PRESIDENT’S LIES….Eric Lichtblau, in an excerpt from his upcoming book, Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice, tells the story of how the White House tried to kill his reporting of the NSA eavesdropping story in late 2004:
For more than an hour, we told Bush’s aides what we knew about the wiretapping program, and they in turn told us why it would do grave harm to national security to let anyone else in on the secret. Consider the financial damage to the phone carriers that took part in the program, one official implored. If the terrorists knew about the wiretapping program, it would be rendered useless and would have to be shut down immediately, another official urged: “It’s all the marbles.”….There was never any serious legal debate within the administration about the legality of the program, Bush’s advisers insisted. The Justice Department had always signed off on its legality, as required by the president. The few lawmakers who were briefed on the program never voiced any concerns. From the beginning, there were tight controls in place to guard against abuse. The program would be rendered so ineffective if disclosed that it would have to be shut down immediately.
[The story was killed, but a year later they brought it up again with their editors.]
We went back to old sources and tried new ones. Our reporting brought into sharper focus what had already started to become clear a year earlier: The concerns about the program — in both its legal underpinnings and its operations — reached the highest levels of the Bush administration. There were deep concerns within the administration that the president had authorized what amounted to an illegal usurpation of power. The image of a united front we’d been presented a year earlier in meetings with the administration — with unflinching support for the program and its legality — was largely a facade. The administration, it seemed clear to me, had lied to us.
Read the whole thing.
