Leahy on Blitzer

Some excerpts (via email):

On the lawfulness of the NSA wiretapping program, which Gen. Hayden publicly defends
LEAHY: No, I don't believe it's lawful. I do believe that General Hayden is a very competent, highly intelligence trained officer. And I appreciate that. But this is a question that goes beyond him. It goes to the White House.

On the NSA wiretapping program
LEAHY: And some might question: what does that give us? I mean, it's like drinking from a fire hose. We should be spying on terrorists, not spying on innocent Americans.

If you have hundreds of millions of phone calls you're trying to track a day, what do you get out of it? Remember, this is the same administration that had the information that could have stopped 9/11 from happening. They didn't translate it until September 12.

On the phone companies
BLITZER: So did AT&T, Southern Bell and Verizon -- did they violate the law, violate the privacy of their customers?
LEAHY: I do not find anything in the law that allows them to do this. This is why they're going to be invited to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee and explain under what law they acted.

On the Bush Administration
LEAHY: Every time this administration screws up, whether it's with homeland security, after Katrina, a massive failure even though they spent billions of dollars to make sure that thing wouldn't happen, when they screw up along the border, when they get caught doing illegal surveillance of Americans, they say, well, but 9/11, 9/11.

Well, I'd remind them 9/11 happened on their watch. I think Americans are getting fed up with simply using an excuse for your mistakes and classify everything else so that you can't talk about it.

I want us to be safe. I don't think that this administration is doing it the right way. They screwed up with homeland security. They screwed up with Katrina. I mean, after all, they were told, go catch a 6'6" Arab running around Afghanistan, probably on dialysis, according to the press reports, Osama bin Laden.