WaPo:"Extent of eavesdropping may go beyond NSA work"

Alberto Gonzales is "clarifying" backtracking on his testimony about domestic spying:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appeared to suggest yesterday that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December.

In a letter yesterday to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration's original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago.

At that appearance, Gonzales confined his comments to the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, saying that President Bush had authorized it "and that is all that he has authorized."

But in yesterday's letter, Gonzales, citing that quote, wrote: "I did not and could not address . . . any other classified intelligence activities." Using the administration's term for the recently disclosed operation, he continued, "I was confining my remarks to the Terrorist Surveillance Program as described by the President, the legality of which was the subject" of the Feb. 6 hearing.[WaPo]

Constitutional scholars are taking this evolving, nuanced wording as a hint that there likely other kinds of domestic spying that the president hasn't told us about.

Comments

[gordo]

I wonder why the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were so adamant about not putting Gonzales under oath? You don't suppose they anticipated that he would lie, do you?

[ahem]

Constitutional scholars are taking this evolving, nuanced wording as a hint that there likely other kinds of domestic spying that the president hasn't told us about.

Although you didn't need to be a constitutional scholar to tell that Abu G was being very, very careful during his appearance to limit his statements to 'the program whose existence has been publicised', or somesuch. Dianne Feinstein was one of those to suggest possible other programs, as was Chuck Schumer.

This is the tip of the iceberg.

[NoBuddy]

EFF has been saying for a while that the spying likely hasn't been confined to the program as described by the president.