White House Records

The Heretik points us to a White House transcript of remarks made by Bush in April of 2004. He made a comment about "roving wiretaps" and how the procedures for conducting surveillance did not change under the Patriot Act. And the may be true, the Patriot Act did not allow unwarranted surveillance ungoverned by, at least, the FISA court. Of course, Bush's executive paid no attention to what even his vaunted Patriot Act did and did not allow. But that is not what he said a year and half ago:

there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

"Nothing has changed, by the way." This is an especially odd thing for Bush to say, considering that he and various other administration officials and handlers have been repeating, ad nauseum, that everything had changed since 9/11. Given what is now known and admitted, it would appear the the latter statement is indeed the operative one here.

Bush signed his executive secret order in the fall 2001. Even though some in Congress knew of the order, and they would know that Bush had lied when he made this statement, any discussion revolving around the NSA program was verbotten. Which is to say, no one could even call Bush on this lie. What a great system.