Now showing on The Washington Post:
Legislation drafted by Justice Department lawyers in 2003 to strengthen the USA Patriot Act would have provided legal backing for several aspects of the administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program. But officials said yesterday that was not the intent.[...]
Some critics of the NSA program said the draft legislation raises questions about recent administration claims that Bush had clear legal authority to order warrantless domestic spying in late 2001 and had no need to go to Congress for explicit approval.
“It’s rather damning to their current view that they didn’t need legislation,” said Timothy H. Edgar, a national security lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Clearly the lawyers at the Justice Department, or some of them, felt that legislation was needed to allow the government to do what it was doing.”
It’s nice to see that at least the Justice Department agrees with me on the idea that if the President needs more effective tools to protect the country, then laws should be changed to authorize it. Doing an end-run on the grounds of “executive privilege” is not the right answer!