Wiretapping Lies Continue, This Time in the NY Post

[sabra]

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/wiretapping-lie.html

Monday's New York Post ran a story by bureau chief Charles Hurt blaming a delay in NSA surveillance activities to find information about captured soldiers in Iraq on the privacy framework that protects Americans from unfettered surveillance.

The biting story, based on a leak from an administration-friendly source, blames bureaucratic rules for a 10-hour delay in getting permission to set up a wiretap inside American telecom switches to capture Iraqi communications -- hours that could have meant the difference between life and death for the soldiers.

Hurt's piece, relying on a "senior congressional staffer with access to the classified case" is quite compelling, but would be even more so if it weren't a carefully constructed, politically motivated lie that's already been discredited.

...

And did it take 10 hours to come up with this so-called "probable cause" and then afterwards get an official in the Justice Department to sign off on an emergency warrant that would let the surveillance start 3 days before an application actually had to be submitted to a acquiescent, secret spying court?

Actually, yes, though a timeline provided by the government shows that most of the delay was due to the Justice Department's own dithering for hours AFTER the NSA notified the Justice Department that it had enough for an emergency order.