On October 1, 2001, three weeks after the attacks, General Hayden gave his last-ever briefing to the full House intelligence committee. The President cast aside full intelligence committee notification, which has been legally required since 1947, on October 5.

General Hayden spoke, in his briefing, of his "expansive view" of his authority to the conduct electronic surveillance. He was waving about a copy of Reagan-era Executive Order 12333 as "authorization" of this expansive snooping ability.

2. Advise a couple of different Indian tribes they need to get politically connected. Get each tribe to contribute a couple hundred thousand per year, to "sponsor" skyboxes for use of Congressional members and staff, as a good way of doing that.

3. If a tribe is suspicious, tell them all the other tribes are doing it.

4. Checks payable to "Jack Abramoff -- Sports Suite Account."

5. This is great: the Congressmen can use the tribal-paid skybox to hold fundraising parties for themselves.

6. Watch Redskins game from skybox.

7. Make jokes about scheme to watch Redskins game on Indian dime. In emails to them, express this as "we spend a good deal of time discussing the tribe."

Sources: Abramoff documents 70, 71, 72, 73; Washington Post.

As a stroll down memory lane:

On March 2, 2003, the Observer in London published a smoking-gun memo written by a supervisor at the NSA. The memo ordered surveillance of UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of the U.S. battle to win votes in favor of the war against Iraq. The memo is blunt about the purpose of the surveillance: NSA wants the "whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises".

The timing of the disclosure was critical: the memo was only a month old, it was revealed two-and-a-half weeks before the launch of the war.

I went to a party at the office of a local software house a couple weeks ago. The party was very tech boom 1998. They had a disco ball; they had a band; they catered in some good fresh dolmades.

Bear Code is what they call themselves, because the heavy lifting is outsourced to Russians. The Information War Room from James Bamford's Rolling Stone article about Rendon Group: this little company builds it.

Or, well, I think they build it. Not even their own managing partner seems to know for sure. The Information War Room is a mysterious secretive thing, even to its makers.

My complaint was a general one: we claim a distinction between news and opinion, but all news articles these days about the Federal government are really point/counterpoint opinion pieces masquerading as news. "We think this is a very good approach" says a TSA spokesman; "This is absurd" says a guy who used to work for Northwest.

My complaint is the stenography over journalism one. My complaint is that she was emphasizing opinion about the policy, whether it's good or bad, over the facts of what the policy is.

She was confused by my comments. I think she took me for a freeper.