NSA/Phone Spying Update: The Spy Program Began Right After Bush Was Inaugurated

Andrew Harris for Bloomberg reports that The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court. “The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. “This undermines that assertion.'' --- Bush was inaugurated January 20, 2001. The seventh month prior to September is February. And just one month prior to his inauguration, December 18, 2000, Bush declared: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."