Washington Post on additional NSA eavesdropping

Gonzales Seeks to Clarify Testimony on Spying
Extent of Eavesdropping May Go Beyond NSA Work

By Charles Babington and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, March 1, 2006; Page A08

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.

(The rest of the article can be read here.)

TM comments:

It was clear from Gonzales' testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee -- as I commented on MPR at the time -- that the administration was using a bait-and-switch approach on the Terrorist Surveillance Program. They obviously carved out a portion of a much broader program, gave it a special name, and answered all questions about domestic surveillance by narrowly referring to "this program" or the TSP. The intent was to mislead without actually lying... that is, without making a standalone statement that clearly contradicted the facts.

Gonzales is now 'fessing up to misleading the Congress, probably because other members of the administration have testified in closed session about the broader program, and he has likely received some heated letters from angry senators who now know the full story.