“What was frequently overlooked amid the..."

“What was frequently overlooked amid the ensuing controversy was that the executive branch apparently carried out even more invasive activities, but we never got any answers about those.  When asked whether they had engaged in domestic wiretapping or carried out warrantless searches of people’s homes or correspondence, officials have responded with carefully worded assurances that these things were not done under the program then under discussion - i.e., the Terrorist Surveillance Program.  But were these things being done pursuant to some other program?  No answer.  

When the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2006, for example, he dealt with questions about whether the administration had engaged in warrantless wiretapping of purely domestic calls.  “Not under the program in which I’m testifying,” came the reply.  Such activity, the attorney general said, was “beyond the bound of the program which I’m testifying about today.”

We do know that for some period of time between September 11, 2001, and March 2004, the executive branch was engaged in a kind of surveillance that was so at odds with American law that then Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Deputy Attorney General James Comey threatened to resign if it continued.  What exactly was the executive branch up to that caused so much dissent even among its own loyalists? Who was victimized during this time?  Why are we not hearing the answers - or even the questions?” -Pages 113 & 114 of The Revolution, A Manifesto