Here’s the trad press follow-up on McConnell’s long interview yesterday in The El Paso Times.
A regional paper (the Globe) and the PST Los Angeles Times. Nothing today from either Pravda on the Potomac or Izvestia on the Hudson. But then, what did we expect?
Yesterday, the very well paid, insured, and seemingly credulous Eric Lichtblau repeated McConnell’s line that the warrantless surveillance program was “surgical”:
McConnell also sought to rebut claims that the legislation approved by Congress amounted to, in his words, “massive data-mining.” The N.S.A.’s interception of communications is “surgical,” he said, and the number of court warrants approved for interceptions involving people inside the United States totaled “100 or less.” He did not give a time frame for that number, but he said the bulk of the intercepts occur overseas.
Jeebus, can’t we at least get a “he said”/”she said” here? Call the EFF! Call the ACLU! Call … Well, Patrick Leahy, maybe?
This when any fool—in fact, this fool—who’s been following the story knows and can easily show that the program is not “surgical” but massive.
From Wapo:
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(Remember how I said yesterday that if the Post didn’t put Walter Pincus on this one, they were in the tank?)
Greg Miller in the the LA Times propagates McConnell’s “surgical” lie as well:
There’s a sense that we’re doing massive data mining,” McConnell said, according to a transcript released by the El Paso newspaper. “In fact, what we’re doing is surgical. A telephone number is surgical. So, if you know what number, you can select it out.”
Gawd help us all. And Lichtblau, who works with Risen is one of the good ones.
NOTE Wired has a funny article doing to math on how many cube monkeys are doing the paperwork if McConnell’s “200 hours per warrant” number is reality-based. Basically, it comes out to a legal department. Sounds about right, to me. It’s only the Fourth Amendment we’re talking about, here.
UPDATE Even Froomkin misses this one. Quotes Lichtblau. Sigh.
Front page
Waiting for Pincus?
Whenever you see the Pincus byline, consider the possibility that his ties to the intelligence community constrain him. Sometimes, he finds himself used to bury the news, as well as the careers of fellow reporters.
It could be that the Washington Post has less control over Pincus than do the entities that feed him information. It could be that both the Post and Pincus are in the tank on this one. I always cry when I try to peel this onion.
As McConnell said, at least
As McConnell said, at least the program saved untold thousands from being killed in the Germany attacks………..ack