Kos fib watch: Kos, AMERICAblog blame Bush for apparent Clinton snooping

Can we stop covering up about how bad Clinton ALSO was on civil liberties, and an itchy trigger finger?

DailyKos and AMERICAblog both try to finger Bush for wanting to start up warrantless domestic telephone spying by the National Security Agency before Sept. 11, 2001. However, the NSA program was geared up in the summer of 2000.

I quote Aravosis:

Bush reportedly decided to spy on your phone records BEFORE September 11 (header)

This is important because, if true, it negates Bush's entire argument that the spying was needed to fight the war on terror. There was no war on terror before September 11, so why did Bush reportedly decide to start the process enabling him to illegally spy on Americans?

Uhh, John… Markos… just one TINY problem. The program from which this originated was geared up in 2000. Uhh, lemme see, who was president then? Could it be pseudoliberal Slick Willie?

From the Bloomberg story:

The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court. …

The NSA initiative, code-named “Pioneer Groundbreaker,” asked AT&T unit AT&T Solutions to build exclusively for NSA use a network operations center which duplicated AT&T's Bedminster, New Jersey facility, the court papers claimed. That plan was abandoned in favor of the NSA acquiring the monitoring technology itself, plaintiffs' lawyers Bruce Afran said.

The NSA says on its website that in June 2000, the agency was seeking bids for a project to “modernize and improve its information technology infrastructure.” The plan, which included the privatization of its “non-mission related” systems support, was said to be part of Project Groundbreaker.

(Plaintiffs’ lawyer Carl) Mayer said the Pioneer project is “a different component” of that initiative.
Mayer and Afran said an unnamed former employee of the AT&T unit provided them with evidence that the NSA approached the carrier with the proposed plan. Afran said he has seen the worker's log book and independently confirmed the source's participation in the project. He declined to identify the employee.

So, June, 2000 is well before Inauguration Day of Jan. 20, 2001, correct?

Besides, simple math would tell you that exactly seven months before Sept. 11, 2001 would be less than a month after the inauguration, even if the official request came out of Bush’s NSA, not Clinton’s. All top NSA staff at that time would be holdovers from the Clinton Administration. The idea clearly originated there.