The Second Program

Laura Rozen is absolutely right:

Why were FBI director Mueller and the FBI so involved in Comey’s decision-thinking on the NSA warrantless domestic spying program? Was this about a separate component of the program, that involved the FBI spying without warrants on Americans? Not just the NSA?

This would certainly get Gonzales off the hook for lying to Congress, although the Justice Department refused to retract his sworn testimony today. But it would be much worse. A purely domestic spying program run by the FBI would almost certainly be put to the use of spying on Americans, and for who knows what purpose. Digby has a clue:

How over-the-top must this have been for staunch Republican John Ashcroft to have risen from his ICU bed to argue against it and the entire top echelon of the DOJ were preparing to resign? These are not ordinary times and the law enforcement community has not been particularly squeamish about stretching the Bill of Rights. None of those people are bleeding heart liberals or candidates for the presidency of the ACLU. For them to be this adamant, it must have been something completely beyond the pale.

My suspicion has always been that there was some part of this program --- or an entirely different program --- that included spying on political opponents. Even spying on peace marchers and Greenpeace types wouldn't seem to me to be of such a substantial departure from the agreed upon post 9/11 framework that it would cause such a reaction from the top brass, nor would it be so important to the president that he would send Gonzales and Card into the ICU to get Ashcroft to sign off on it while he was high on drugs.

Unbelievably, there's going to be 20 more months of this unless a bunch of defenders of the Constitution suddenly pop up.

UPDATE: Apparently Fred Hiatt is all scratching his head and wondering why this "Enzo the Baker" story with Ashcroft and Gonzales and Andy Card is only coming out now. Actually, it was out a year and a half ago, and you never reported on it, Fred. You were too busy defending Bush, ignoring violations of the law, and bashing Democrats. Greenwald has more.