I'm as perplexed as everyone else in trying to decipher the White House's latest explanation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' seemingly inconsistent statements in his sworn testimony on what was at issue regarding the NSA's Terrorist Surveillance Program when he and Andy Card went to visit former Attorney General John Ashcroft in the hospital in March, 2004.
A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program.
....Mr. Gonzales insisted before the Senate this week that the 2004 dispute did not involve the Terrorist Surveillance Program “confirmed” by President Bush, who has acknowledged eavesdropping without warrants but has never acknowledged the data mining. If the dispute chiefly involved data mining, rather than eavesdropping, Mr. Gonzales’ defenders may maintain that his narrowly crafted answers, while legalistic, were technically correct.
Big Tent Democrat argues that the TSP program and the data-mining program were one and the same -- data mining was part of the TSP program. While there are many data-mining programs run by a host of different agencies, that seems right in this context.
I'd like to examine it from a different angle: Was John Ashcroft ever opposed to data-mining? If not, how could that be the basis of the need to go to the hospital and twist his arm in reauthorizing the NSA's TSP program?
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