January 2006

by Marjorie Cohn

Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires - a wiretap requires a court order.

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004, Buffalo, New York.

In an assertion of executive power that rivals the excesses of the McCarthy era of the late 1940's and 1950's, and the dreaded COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program) of the 1950's and 1960's, George W. Bush's National Security Agency has been secretly spying on United States citizens without warrants for the last three years.