Bush Authorized Pre-9/11 NSA Program

The ubiquitous 9/11 excuse won't wash in this case—from Jason Leopold via Truthout: 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. In other words, the President was breaking the law well before the resolution he's currently using as a flimsy excuse was even considered.