Admin Lied to Suppress Warrantless Wiretap Story

In a revealing Slate article published last night, NY Times reporter Eric Lichtblau exposes new details of the lengths the Bush Administration went to in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to stop the Times from publishing Risen and Lichtblau's Pulitzer Prize-winning expose of the the Bush Administration's illegal Warrantless Wiretapping program.

The Slate article outlines the Government's strategy to hide the truth: Lies, threats, and similar to the publication of the "Pentagon Papers", a failed Nixon-era attempt to use the courts to stop the presses.

The details of the illegal Warrantless Wiretapping Program have been covered before, and the original Risen Licthblau article is critical reading.  In the Slate article, Lichtblau notes the original reporting was done in Fall 2004, but suppressed by Times editors:

Still, the editors were not persuaded we had enough for a story—not enough, at least, to outweigh the White House's strenuous arguments that running the piece would cripple a vital and perfectly legal national-security program.

Risen and Licthblau accepted their editor's decision but revisited the story a year later; In December 2005, Lichtblau and the Times editors were invited to the White House for Arm twisting:

On that December [2005] afternoon in the White House, the gathered officials attacked on several fronts. There was never any serious legal debate within the administration about the legality of the program, Bush's advisers insisted. The Justice Department had always signed off on its legality, as required by the president. The few lawmakers who were briefed on the program never voiced any concerns. From the beginning, there were tight controls in place to guard against abuse. The program would be rendered so ineffective if disclosed that it would have to be shut down immediately.

THE LIES
These were, of course, all lies:

"perfectly legal":
See the sworn congressional testimony of former Acting Attorney General, James Comey:

COMEY: Well, a key fact is that they went ahead and did it without -- the program was reauthorized without my signature and without the Department of Justice. And so I believed that I couldn't stay...

SPECTER: Was the program reauthorized without the requisite certification by the attorney general or acting attorney general?

COMEY: Yes.

SPECTER: So it went forward illegally.

"never voiced any concerns":
See Rockefeller's July 2003 letter to Cheney.

"there were tight controls in place to guard against abuse":
See the USA Today article on the massive NSA database and "tight controls".

"The program would be rendered so ineffective if disclosed that it would have to be shut down immediatell.":
See the August 2007 Protect America Act.  The Administration simply convinced congress to legalize the illegal program.  It is only in the past months that congressional Democrats have grown bold enough to say no to the Administration's disregard of the Constitution.

THE THREATS
In addition to the Administration's Lies, there were the Bush Administration's trademark threats as well:

"The enemy," one official warned, "is inside the gates." The clichés did their work; the message was unmistakable: If the New York Times went ahead and published this story, we would share the blame for the next terrorist attack.

THE INJUNCTION
And finally, the threat of injunction:

The administration, I was told, had considered seeking a Pentagon Papers-type injunction to block publication of the story. The tidbit was a bombshell. Few episodes in the history of the Times—or, for that matter, in all of journalism—had left as indelible a mark as the courtroom battle over the Pentagon Papers, and now we were learning that the Bush White House had dusted off a Nixon-era relic to consider coming after us again. The editors in New York had already decided they would probably print the story in the newspaper for that Friday, Dec. 16, 2005, but when word of the Pentagon Papers tip reached them, they decided they would also post it on the Internet the night before.

SUMMARY
In the aftermath of 9/11, Newspapers were easily heeled by references to National Security; Coupled with lies, the Bush Administration was able to delay publication of the Warrantless Wiretapping story for over a year; this kept the story hidden during the 2004 elections.  Whether earlier publication would have made a difference in the 2004 elections is unknown.  We do know that the December 15, 2005 publication of the Risen and Lichtblau article marked a turning point in post-9/11 journalism:
The long, free ride was over.

The US Attorney scandal pried open the walls of Bushco Malfeasance in the DOJ, and allowed Comey to testify about Warrantless Wiretapping.  The illegality of the Program and Gonzales' probable perjury about it is undoubtedly a central cause for Gonzales' resignation.

And finally we see Democrats standing up to this lying, sneaking, corrupt administration in the fight over FISA.  Ultimately, it seems, the truth prevails.