Wide Net

And the trickle trickle of lies and coverups begins to flow:

A surveillance program approved by President Bush to conduct eavesdropping without warrants has captured what are purely domestic communications in some cases, despite a requirement by the White House that one end of the intercepted conversations take place on foreign soil, officials say.

The officials say the National Security Agency's interception of a small number of communications between people within the United States was apparently accidental, and was caused by technical glitches at the National Security Agency in determining whether a communication was in fact "international."

First it was "We absolutely aren't spying on any domestic-only communications." Now it's "Yeah, we spied on a couple, but it was an accident. And we're only spying on those with known links to terrorism." By next week, Bush will be at a podium saying "Let me say something to Butch Washington of Dover, Delaware. Tammy isn't coming back! You're friend Mike's tired of hearing about it, and quite frankly, so am I! It's OVER! I've got better things to do than to listen to you go on and on about some girl you dated for 6 weeks! Why do you think I'm on vacation in Crawford all the time, I've got a three-month backlog! By the way, Ed James from Missoula, your mother's sorry about the vase. She didn't know you painted the house blue and it doesn't match now..."


UPDATE: As this article goes on, it makes clear that these assurances about where calls begin and end aren't even really possible:

National security and telecommunications experts said that even if the N.S.A. seeks to adhere closely to the rules that Mr. Bush has set, the logistics of the program may make it difficult to ensure that the rules are being followed.

With roaming cellphones, internationally routed e-mail, and voice-over Internet technology, "it's often tough to find out where a call started and ended," said Robert Morris, a former senior scientist at the N.S.A. who is retired. "The N.S.A. is good at it, but it's difficult even for them. Where a call actually came from is often a mystery."

And those are actually the President's restrictions on the policy. He can't even stop breaking his OWN laws.