Bush Defends Spy Program

NYT reports President Bush continued on Sunday to defend both the legality and the necessity of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program,

And he emphisized the secret nature of the program, and how the NYT releasing the story to try to affect book sales of one of its reporters, or to try to stop renewal of the Patriot Act is despicable. I hope the next attack in New York is on the NYT building.

and he denied that he misled the public last year when he insisted that any government wiretap required a court order.

One does not reveal the details of a classified project just because someone asks a question.

"I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy's thinking, and that's what we're doing," Mr. Bush told reporters in San Antonio as he visited wounded soldiers at the Brooke Army Medical Center.

He is right, and thank God we have a president that does as much as Bush does to try to protect us.

"They attacked us before, they'll attack us again if they can," he said. "And we're going to do everything we can to stop them."

He is absolutely right.

Mr. Bush's strong defense of the N.S.A. program, which he authorized in 2002 to allow some domestic eavesdropping without court warrants, came as a leading Democratic lawmaker called on the administration to make available current and former high-level officials to explain the evolution of the secret program.

Their questions will be answered, but in closed session, and if the NYT prints anything that is said in closed session, I hope they will arrest the reporters and editors, and press them to reveal which legislators leaked the information. The McCain amendment on torture applies to prisoners taken overseas? Does it apply to newspaper reporters printing classified information, and the legislators that leak that information.

Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has already pledged to make hearings into the program one of his highest priorities.

They better be closed session hearings, and they better come after the Supreme Court nominee hearings, or we may be looking for a new committee chairman.