Recommended Reading For Dana Priest

I suggest Charles Babington--that is, the July 10 Babington, who wrote:

[Rep. Peter] Hoekstra's remarks [about failing to be briefed by the Bush Administration] left unclear the nature of the intelligence programs he alluded to in his letter. He did not specify whether they involved domestic surveillance, a contentious area in which newspapers have reported about programs involving warrantless wiretaps, extensive gathering of phone records and monitoring of international bank transactions....Hoekstra also had shown deep interest in an April report by the National Ground Intelligence Center regarding 500 chemical munitions shells that Iranian troops had buried in the 1980s, which were uncovered in 2004....

Not the July 9 Babington, who wrote:

In a sharply worded letter, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee has told President Bush that the administration is angering lawmakers, and possibly violating the law, by giving Congress too little information about domestic surveillance programs.

Which appears to be the template for the July 11 Priest in Rethinking Embattled Tactics In Terror War:

The Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee and other members of Congress have complained about not being briefed on classified surveillance programs and huge unprecedented databases used to monitor domestic and international phone calls, faxes, e-mails and bank transfers.

Maybe Priest has some new information, but that would be excessively charitable. The letter Hoekstra wrote to President Bush doesn't mention the word "surveillance," "domestic surveillance" or "intergalactic surveillance" and as July 10 Babington said, Hoekstra ain't talking. For background, the full Tom Maguire Treatment here; Tom Maguire Lite here.