I missed the bigger story on my last post on this, because I did not pay enough attention to the time line, but this is BIG. The NSA illegal wiretapping was not a part of “post 911 thinking”, because it was not post 911!!!!

Simply put, this program was being put in place in February of 2001, this was about a month after Bush entered office, and when by all available evidence, Bush and His Evil Minions^™
had no concern with, nor even an inkling about the nature of the terrorist threat.

They were looking at Saddam, or at a resurgent Russia (Cheney-Rumsfeld the former, Condi the latter). As such, they had no reason for expanded wiretap powers.

[former Qwest CEO Joe] Nacchio’s account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.

There are only two possible reasons for this:

• A mindless pro-surveillance mindset in the administration combined with an opportunistic bureaucracy in the state security apparatus.
• A desire to engage in surveillance on political opponents.

My guess would be that it was a little bit of both. These are seriously bad people.