Bush was denied wiretaps, bypassed them

Bush was denied wiretaps, bypassed them
WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- U.S. President George
Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for
international wiretaps because the court was
challenging him at an unprecedented rate.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress by
Hearst newspapers shows the 26-year-old Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap
requests from the Bush administration than the four
previous presidential administrations combined.

The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps
modified only two search warrant orders out of the
13,102 applications approved over the first 22 years
of the court's operation.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the
5,645 requests for surveillance by the Bush
administration, the report said. A total of 173 of
those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took
place in 2003 and 2004. And, the judges also rejected
or deferred at least six requests for warrants during
those two years -- the first outright rejection of a
wiretap request in the court's history.