E&P: White House Won't Confirm or Deny It Tried to Stop 'USA Today' Story

White House Won't Confirm or Deny It Tried to Stop 'USA Today' Story
By E&P Staff
Published: May 11, 2006

NEW YORK At a press briefing this afternoon aboard Air Force On en route to Mississippi, a White House spokeswoman refused to confirm or deny that the president had tried to halt today's USA Today bombshell report on the National Security Agency collecting records of tens of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls.

The spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said she would not comment when a reporter posed that question, and declined again on a followup.

A USA Today spokesman told E&P he would check to see if the White House approached the newspaper before publication.

President Bush this morning did not take issue with the USA Today story, but did not deny it either. Earlier, the White House did try to halt the groundbreaking New York Times article on NSA domestic spying.

In a very brief encounter with reporters on Capitol Hill today, Hayden ducked a question about the legal authority under which the NSA call-tracking program was carried out. "All I would want to say is that everything that NSA does is lawful and very carefully done, and that the appropriate members of the Congress -- House and Senate -- are briefed on all NSA activities, and I think I'd just leave it at that," he said, according to The Washington Post....

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002501487

Jeez...what a twit.

1) NSA adheres to the standards set out in the law

2) No matter what the law says, it's legal when the NSA does it.

he's the Decider and the Executioner....
and soon to be Impeached and Convicted

but I have a feeling Stupid will find another Pentagon neocon who will be approved.

This is a disaster. The military was NEVER meant to be in charge of the CIA with good reason.