"not a single employee of the National Security Agency has addressed a concern about this program to the NSA IG."
Why would they. It's not illegal if it is done at the direction of the POTUS via the AG.
BTW, I hope everyone was aware of how carefully Hayden chose his words.
Bottom line, we're not talking about "eavesdropping." Nobody has time to listen, tape, translate a bunch of damn Arabic. This is time sensitive stuff here, hence the desire to skip going before the FISA court.
We're talking SIGINT (Signals Intelligence).
As Hayden said, NSA was using the same technology/technique as is used to decide where to drop a 500 pound bomb.
It's location, location, location.
Our one party media doesn't know what they are talking about here. As usual. And sadly, neither do a lot of folks on the right.
It's not eavesdropping. It's monitoring. There's a big difference.
Our "media" shows every chance they get how dumb they are, or how misleading they wish to be to the average person.
It drives me up a wall every time one of them says "wiretap" etc.etc.etc.!
Consider this my shout (without the caps)...It's monitoring!!!
'Reason to believe' is perfectly adequate, and constitutional. We are not trying to charge this person(s) in court, we're trying to prevent another hit on our country and it's people.
Remember that our President is supposed to connect the dots?
Great editorial comments, too, Howlin.