TPM Muckraker: Tom DeLay Briefed on Warrantless Surveillance in March '04

By Spencer Ackerman - August 15, 2007, 11:26 AM

Here's something that comes to us via very-alert DailyKos diarist drational. The day after Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card ran to John Ashcroft's hospital room to have him overrule acting attorney general James Comey's determination that the administration's warrantless surveillance program was illegal, the White House gave a briefing on the super-secret program to none other than Tom DeLay.

Practically no members of Congress knew about the surveillance. The White House typically limited Congressional notification about the program to the bipartisan political leadership of the House and Senate and the heads of the Congressional intelligence committees -- the so-called Gang of Eight. DeLay, then the top House Republican, has no intelligence experience, and just the day before, at the White House, House Speaker Dennis Hastert received a briefing about the program, making DeLay's presence the next day redundant. The second-ranking House Democrat in 2004, then-whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, didn't receive a similar briefing.