Opinion: U.S. spy agency almost wiretapped a congressman, without a warrant

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The New York Times is reporting this morning that the Justice Department has reined in the National Security Agency for ‘over-collection’ of domestic communications of Americans. The problem: Telephone and e-mail intercepts exceeded new limits that Congress imposed last year.

With the new Obama administration and Democrats in Congress watching for signs of intrusion in the privacy of U.S. citizens, the NSA pulled back, blaming ‘technical problems’ for its overzealous tapping of phone records since then. The agency says it’s hard to tell the domestic messages from the overseas ones.

But the bigger news, it seems to us, buried deep in the piece, is that a senior FBI agent recently charged that the NSA, during the Bush administration, considered wiretapping a member of Congress without a warrant. The reason: The congressman -- part of a delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 -- was in contact with an extremist already on the agency’s watch list.

Apparently the idea was nixed when agency officials decided it might not be a great idea to spy on a member of Congress, particularly without court oversight.

So far no one’s saying who the congressman is.

--- Johanna Neuman

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