It’s the fifteenth round: Lady Liberty is bloodied, out-weighed and old, but her opponent has no heart!
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By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 14, 2008; Page A01
This is the first of two stories adapted from “Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency,” to be published Tuesday by Penguin Press. Original source notes are denoted in [brackets] throughout.
A burst of ferocity stunned the room into silence. No other word for it: The vice president’s attorney was shouting.
“The president doesn’t want this! [1] You are not going to see the opinions. You are out . . . of . . . your . . . lane!”
Five government lawyers had gathered around a small conference table in the Justice Department command center. Four were expected. David S. Addington, counsel to Vice President Cheney, got wind of the meeting and invited himself.
If Addington smelled revolt, he was not far wrong. Unwelcome questions about warrantless domestic surveillance had begun to find their voice.
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On this second Monday in December 2003, Addington’s targets were a pair of would-be auditors from the National Security Agency. He had displeasure to spare for their Justice Department hosts.
Perfect example, right here. A couple of NSA bureaucrats breeze in and ask for the most sensitive documents in the building. And Justice wants to tell them, Help yourselves? This was going to be a very short meeting.
Joel Brenner and Vito Potenza, the two men wilting under Addington’s wrath, had driven 26 miles from Fort Meade, the NSA’s eavesdropping headquarters in Maryland. They were conducting a review of their agency’s two-year-old special surveillance operation. They already knew the really secret stuff [3]: The NSA and other services had been unleashed to turn their machinery inward, collecting signals intelligence inside the United States. What the two men didn’t know was why the Bush administration believed the program was legal.
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Images: (Addington) By Melina Mara–The Washington Post Photo; (sewer rat) (raw sewage water) (Dick’s dungeon) (Addington’s dungeon) (Lady Liberty & Assaulter) golondon.about.com via z.about.com;(Dick sneer) Mark Humphrey/AP Photo via truthdig.com; (sewer rat) ci.berkeley.ca.us; (raw sweage water) earlywarninginc.com;
(Angler) amazon.com; (addington dungeon) itraveluk.co; (cell dungeon) farm4.staticflickr.com;