Secret court modified wiretap requests
Intervention may have led Bush to bypass panel

By STEWART M. POWELL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON BUREAU


http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/253334_nsaspying24.html?source=mypi

Saturday, December 24, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Government records show that the administration was
encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal
surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and
order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the
court's approval.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the
26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap
requests from the Bush administration than from the four
previous presidential administrations combined.

The court's repeated intervention in Bush administration wiretap
requests may explain why the president decided to bypass the court nearly
four years ago to launch secret National Security Agency
spying on hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans and foreigners
inside the United States, according to James Bamford, an acknowledged
authority on the supersecret NSA, which intercepts telephone calls,
e-mails, faxes and Internet communications.
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