Glenn Greenwald: FISA Ruling: A Case Study in 8 Years of Lying and Ignorance

Ever since The New York Times, on December 16, 2005, first reported that President Bush ordered spying on Americans without the warrants required by FISA, the clear illegality that was unveiled -- FISA said that X was a felony and Bush admitted to doing X -- was continuously obscured by a combination of deceit on the part of Bush followers and ignorance, sloth and confusion on the part of the media. Beginning within the first days of the controversy, Bush followers who literally had no idea what they were talking about offered factually false claims and even distorted quotations from the statute to justify what was done. Today is a perfect example illustrating how completely misinformed and/or deliberately deceitful right-wing advocates inject blatant falsehoods into these debates.

Earlier today, The New York Times' Eric Lichtblau (one of the NYT reporters who originally broke the NSA story yet often mindlessly recites false Bush claims even on this issue) wrote a story which reported that the FISA Court of Review had issued a decision "validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a specific court order." From start to finish, Lichtblau's description of the ruling was muddled and contradictory, even nonsensical in some places.