I'm sorry, but the first thing I thought this morning was that there was an interesting time delay between the story last week and the phone companies suddenly issuing denials. The only thing I could think of was that must have taken this long to shred the evidence. Apparently I guessed right.

The only thing to hope for is an accountant to sneak copies of the reports out of the building. Not likely, but we can always hope.

Color me naive! Not only are they illegally turning over phone records but their getting PAID for it too!

Regardless of any delegation, if the government promised the telcos they would kill any lawsuit related to it, there is absolutely no reason for them to tell the truth -- they will be protected from any civil or criminal complaint (including shareholder lawsuits). Worse, there's actually a reason for them to deny it, no matter what the truth: not denying it would cause their customers to lose faith in them, and thus hurt their bottom line. It can be argued, then, that if they're protected from any damages from lying, they must lie about it.

Good thing this administration brought integrity back into the White House, eh?

Ah, yes -- we return now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when conservatives lacerated Bill Clinton for splitting hairs and parsing his words VERY carefully when responding to questions about a Lewinsky relationship! ("That depends on what the definition of 'is' is...")

Now we have a plausible scenario explaining denial that any contractual relationship between NSA and the phone companies "exists." That could technically be true, but would nevertheless be utterly false in reality.

One of my favorite lines from the original "Star Trek" TV series was uttered by Mr. Spock:

"A difference that makes no difference IS no difference." How true, how true!

So, let me get this straight. ....the government just told the communication companies it was ok to cook their books on this? More than one of the companies cited are public owned companies. I thought the government was moving to reform companies who were involved in corrupt practice

Who figured that out? Oh what a bunch of crooks we are.NSA= =Gestapo?

1 a : awaiting a chance to entrap : TREACHEROUS b : harmful but enticing : SEDUCTIVE

2 a : having a gradual and cumulative effect : SUBTLE b of a disease : developing so gradually as to be well established before becoming apparent

As soon as this story broke, I called my wireless phone company, Verizon, to bitterly complain. The customer service representative who took my call knew about these charges and did not deny them. He offered to place my comments in a folder in my account. If these charges were not true, I believe he certainly would have tried to set me straight!

Have the republicans finally figures out that if they lie to us all the time, and tell other people to lie to us all the time, then we won't be able to fight them becasue nobody will be able to figure out what it is that we're fighting?

In our slow but steady march towards fascism, the expansion of secrecy from things that really need to be kept secret from enemies to everything the Bush administration says or does is a major tool in protecting the dictatorship.

But we still have a few laws, and one of them is the Freedom of Information Act.

In this case, you can request copies of any directives issued by Negroponte to the telephone companies.

I suppose you might get a response saying that such information was itself classified. But that would be worth knowing, too, wouldn't it?

Doug Wilson

Naples, Florida

Once again, Salon has pulled back the curtain, snuffled out the truffles, poked at the soft underbelly and illuminated the backdoor efforts of this administration to cover up its illegal dealings. Proving how utterly contemptuous of the truth these people are, and how frighteningly adept at finding new and innovative avenues of subterfuge. Imagine if they spent all that creative effort in actually moving the business of this nation ahead.

Do I see conspiracy in almost everything they do? How can you not? The dots are so easy to connect if you come from the perspective of their record to this point on the truth.

The rundown: Start an illegal war entirely at your own whim and in support of your own agenda. Instead of the War in Iraq, pretend it's the War on Terror. Use it as your justification for almost anything you want to do, including the illegal intrusion into the privacy of your own citizens. Use the law to cover your illegal activities by citing the War on Terror. It's a nice, neat and impenetrable circle of twisted logic.

Other presidents have launched wars. The War on Drugs, The War on Illiteracy, The War on Poverty. Like these, the War on Terror is a concept, not a military engagement, and it can't be used to gut the Constitution, bankrupt the country and tarnish its reputation. In all the hand-wringing that's going on in Washington, no one seems to be challenging the core basis of all these illegal dealings and the administration's attempts at lending legal status to the coverups. We have reached a point where Bush can do virtually anything and attribute it to the fact that we are "at war" with terror, putting us in a permanent state of constitutional lockdown.

Why don't we hear anyone saying that we shouldn't even be debating the specifics of these incidents? Why isn't Congress standing up and declaring this apple rotten at its very core? With the debacle in Iraq having been declared a victory over and over again, and with the newly formed government being hailed repeatedly by our fearless leaders as the onset of freedom, isn't the war in Iraq over? So where in any reasonable frame of reference do we stand as a country "at war", With a "wartime President" needing supreme powers?

It is important for all of us to realize that this is not a nation of laws but a nation of memos. Allowing Negroponte to free companies from record-keeping is just another case of the President invoking his Memoranda Rights. This particular memo is based on the "Everything I Needed to Know about Being President I Learned in Kindergarten" principle known as "Chewing Gum On Line." "It is only okay to spy on suspected terrorists if you spy on everyone" is a prime example. In this case, only three companies gave the NSA records when clearly all companies should have been able to. By requiring these companies not to report their records, the President is simply taking the gum away from the chewers and placing it under his desk with the rest of the gum.