"And I repeat limited"

The Bush administration has pushed the limits of the English language this past week in an attempt to defend the Attorney General from accusations that he lied and perjured himself before Congress. And in doing so, it revealed just how deceitful it has been over the last year and a half.

When the existence of the NSA program was first reported in mid-December of 2005, the administration confirmed its existence and mounted a rigorous defense of its legality and propriety. In order to allay fears, the administration and its surrogates repeatedly stressed how limited in scope the program was.

George W. Bush, December 19, 2005:

"First, I want to make clear to the people listening that this program is limited in nature to those that are known al Qaeda ties and/or affiliates. That's important. So it's a program that's limited."

George W. Bush, January 2, 2006:

"This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America, and I repeat limited."

Alberto Gonzales, January 16, 2006:

"[P]eople need to understand that this is a very targeted and limited program that the president has authorized."

Scott McClellan, January 22, 2006:

"This is a critical tool that helps us save lives and prevent attacks. It is limited and targeted to Al Qaeda communications, with the focus being on detection and prevention."

David Rivkin & Lee Casey, NY Times op-ed, December 27, 2005:

Overall, this surveillance program is fully within the president's legal authority, is limited in scope (involving communications to or from overseas related to the war against Al Qaeda), and is subject to stringent presidential review.

Now, of course, we learn that the only thing that was limited was the disclosure itself. Here's what DNI Mike McConnell said in his letter to Senator Specter on Tuesday:

Shortly after 9/11, the President authorized the National Security Agency to undertake various intelligence activities designed to protect the United States from further terrorist attack. A number of these intelligence activities were authorized in one order, which was reauthorized by the President approximately every 45 days, with certain modifications. . . .

One particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more, was publicly acknowledged by the President and described in December 2005, following an unauthorized disclosure. The particular aspect of these activities that the President publicly described was limited to the targeting for interception without a court order of international communications of al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist organizations coming into or going out of the United States.

Gonzales said essentially the same thing in his letter to Patrick Leahy.

So let's recap. In December 2005, the New York Times reported that the NSA had been conducting a vast surveillance program that included the warrantless interception of communications of people within the United States. The Bush administration responded by confirming the existence of the program but defended it by, among other things, constantly emphasizing how limited in scope the program was. But it turns out that the administration simply disclosed "one particular aspect" of the overall program and pretended that that's all there was. In other words, they arbitrarily carved out one limited aspect of the program and then defended it by pointing out how limited it was. It doesn't get much more Orwellian than that, folks.