NSA plot thickens

In the post below, I referred to two NY Times articles worthy of comment but put off talking about the second one to a later post. The second article begins as follows:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 — A top intelligence official was prepared to brief the House Intelligence Committee about President Bush's domestic eavesdropping program in December but was stopped by the White House chief of staff, the ranking Democrat on the committee said Tuesday.

It goes on to say that Gen. Hayden had been prepared to brief the House committee on the program back in December but was ordered not to by the White House.

It seems pretty clear that Gen. Hayden thought he could conduct this briefing without jeopardizing national security, so why did the White House stop him?

There is also an interesting addenda to this article, which follows:

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 21 (AP) — In a ruling made public on Tuesday, a federal judge said the government must disclose whether it used any information from the domestic eavesdropping program in its case against a man convicted of joining Al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate the president.

The judge, Gerald Bruce Lee, postponed the sentencing of the man, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, at the request of defense lawyers who said they suspected that he was illegally singled out by the eavesdropping program.

In the ruling, Judge Lee gave prosecutors until March 9 to submit a sworn declaration from a government official to say whether any information from the eavesdropping was used in Mr. Abu Ali's case.

This ruling could produce some interesting results. I doubt the government will agree. Then what? Stay tuned.