Ryan Lizza: Why Won’t Obama Rein in the N.S.A.? : The New Yorker: On December 16, 2005, the Times broke the news about some aspects of the President’s four-pronged surveillance program. After the story appeared, Bush addressed the country to defend the P.S.P., calling it the “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” He claimed that it had been “thoroughly reviewed by the Justice Department and N.S.A.’s top legal officials,” and that N.S.A. analysts “receive extensive training to insure they perform their duties consistent with the letter and intent of the authorization.” Wyden didn’t know whether to be more shocked by the details of the N.S.A. program or by the way he learned about it. “I read about it in the New York Times,” he told me.
The Times had uncovered many details about the two programs that collected the content of e-mails and phone calls, and won a Pulitzer for its investigation, but the two metadata programs run by the N.S.A. were still largely unknown, even to most members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Some details of the metadata programs soon appeared in the Times, in USA Today, and in a story by Seymour Hersh in this magazine. But the Bush Administration never officially confirmed the existence of the programs, which remained secret until this year.