Inside Politics
By Greg Pierce
December 20, 2005
Why Bush did it
"In the days since the revelation that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to bypass, in certain cases of suspected al Qaeda activity, the special court set up to provide warrants for national-security wiretaps, the question has come up repeatedly: Why did he do it?" Byron York writes at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).
"At his news conference [yesterday] morning, the president explained that he believed the U.S. government had to 'be able to act fast' to intercept the 'international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda.' 'Al Qaeda was not a conventional enemy,' Bush said. 'This new threat required us to think and act differently.'
"But there's more to the story than that," Mr. York said. "In 2002, when the president made his decision, there was widespread, bipartisan frustration with the slowness and inefficiency of the bureaucracy involved in seeking warrants from the special intelligence court, known as the FISA court. Even later, after the provisions of the Patriot Act had had time to take effect, there were still problems with the FISA court -- problems examined by members of the September 11 Commission -- and questions about whether the court can deal effectively with the fastest-changing cases in the war on terror.
"People familiar with the process say the problem is not so much with the court itself as with the process required to bring a case before the court. 'It takes days, sometimes weeks, to get the application for FISA together,' says one source. 'It's not so much that the court doesn't grant them quickly, it's that it takes a long time to get to the court. Even after the Patriot Act, it's still a very cumbersome process. It is not built for speed, it is not built to be efficient. It is built with an eye to keeping [investigators] in check.' And even though the attorney general has the authority in some cases to undertake surveillance immediately, and then seek an emergency warrant, that process is just as cumbersome as the normal way of doing things."
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