Administration misled the FISA court for warrants

The Washington Post reports that the administration has used NSA wiretaps to provide probable cause when seeking warrants from the FISA court and may have neglected to include the source when getting the warrants. In addition, the presiding judges hid the NSA wiretapping program from the rest of the FISA court. According to the sources, twice in the past four years, "a top Justice Department lawyer warned the presiding judge of a secret surveillance court [the FISA court] that information overheard in President Bush's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to obtain wiretap warrants in the court". This would add to the penalties under the FISA law to include a conspiracy charge that the administration had used an illegal (and no courts have ruled that this specific program was legal and constitutional) method to obtain information presented before the FISA court. The article notes that "Both judges expressed concern to senior officials that the president's program, if ever made public and challenged in court, ran a significant risk of being declared unconstitutional". The judges on the FISA court were appointed by then-Chief Justice Rehnquist and were "generally veteran jurists with a pro-government bent " (italics added). These judges would have had little objections to requests for genuinely terrorism-related wiretaps. Between 1979 and 204, the court approved 18,748 requests and only rejected five. This article suggests a more sinister reason for the wiretaps. They may have been taken in a racially-determined fashion against Arab Americans or even against political enemies. We do not know why they were deemed to be too sensitive or the court too reluctant, and Attorney General Gonzales' testimony does not illuminate at all. We have only to assume the worst since the administration has insisted upon stonewalling any Congressional or judicial oversight on the matter. Until they come clean, the suspicions will continue to grow.