Gonzales' recanted testimony: did Bush follow legal advice into pervasive spying on his political enemies?

i have become accustomed to robert parry being a week to ten days behind the news curve and, consequently, did not look to him for immediate commentary on breaking news... over the past few weeks, however, that has changed... witness this piece on yesterday's story of alberto gonzales' "corrected" testimony...

Correcting misleading testimony to Congress, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has signaled that George W. Bush’s warrantless surveillance of Americans went beyond the known eavesdropping on communications to suspected terrorists overseas.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 28, Gonzales recanted testimony he gave on Feb. 6 when he declared that Bush had only authorized a narrowly constructed warrantless wiretapping program by the National Security Agency against Americans in touch with foreign terror suspects.

[...]

In his testimony, Gonzales argued that the congressional use-of-force authorization, combined with the President’s Commander-in-Chief power in the Constitution, permitted Bush to approve a wiretapping program for communications between Americans and terror suspects operating outside the United States.

[...]

A logical suspicion is that the administration is blocking a thorough examination of the wiretapping program because it might show that Bush followed the legal advice on his unlimited powers into pervasive spying of his political enemies.

my very strong hunch is that the number of things this administration is hiding that we don't even have a clue about would immediately cause our collective heads to explode...

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