The Volokh Conspiracy - <i>All the President's Men</i> for an Age of Terror":

Jeffrey Rosen has a very positive review of Eric Lichtblau's new book,Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice in today's NYT. Among other things, Lichtblau writes of the "titanic battle" between the Times and the Bush Administration over his and James Risen's investigative reporting about the administration's domestic surveillance efforts.

In a series of meetings that lasted 14 months, beginning weeks before the 2004 presidential elections, President Bush and 10 senior advisers made personal appeals to The Times not to run the article. In mid-December 2004 the editors initially decided not to run it because of concerns about national security.

But in the fall of 2005 Mr. Risen told the editors that he was thinking of including the story in his own forthcoming book, and they began to reconsider. It was now clear, Mr. Lichtblau writes, that the administration had lied to The Times in describing the scope of the program and in claiming that administration lawyers unanimously supported it. Mr. Lichtblau's reporting revealed that there were deep divisions about the program's legality at the highest levels of the administration. And when Mr. Lichtblau learned that administration officials had discussed seeking an injunction against The Times, just as President Richard M. Nixon had tried to enjoin the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the Nixonian tactic helped seal The Times's decision to publish the article and to post it first on the Web, so that the presses literally couldn't be stopped.

Mr. Lichtblau argues that the administration's national security arguments were overblown. The government had already pledged to eavesdrop on Al Qaeda, he notes. Therefore it wasn't news to anyone that it was making good on the pledge; the news was that it was refusing to get court orders to do so, despite President Bush's public claims to the contrary.

Rosen thinks Lichtblau should have engaged the more serious arguments against disclosure, such as those made by Jack Goldsmith, more seriously. Yet he still makes this sound like an exciting and interesting book.

	[Jonathan Adler, April 3, 2008 at 8:51pm] Trackbacks All the President's Men for an Age of Terror": Jeffrey Rosen has a very positive review of Eric Lichtblau's new book,Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice in today's NYT. Among other things, Lichtblau writes of the "titanic battle" between the Times and the Bush Administration over his and James Risen's investigative reporting about the administration's domestic surveillance efforts. In a series of meetings that lasted 14 months, beginning weeks before the 2004 presidential elections, President Bush and 10 senior advisers made personal appeals to The Times not to run the article. In mid-December 2004 the editors initially decided not to run it because of concerns about national security. But in the fall of 2005 Mr. Risen told the editors that he was thinking of including the story in his own forthcoming book, and they began to reconsider. It was now clear, Mr. Lichtblau writes, that the administration had lied to The Times in describing the scope of the program and in claiming that administration lawyers unanimously supported it. Mr. Lichtblau's reporting revealed that there were deep divisions about the program's legality at the highest levels of the administration. And when Mr. Lichtblau learned that administration officials had discussed seeking an injunction against The Times, just as President Richard M. Nixon had tried to enjoin the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the Nixonian tactic helped seal The Times's decision to publish the article and to post it first on the Web, so that the presses literally couldn't be stopped. Mr. Lichtblau argues that the administration's national security arguments were overblown. The government had already pledged to eavesdrop on Al Qaeda, he notes. Therefore it wasn't news to anyone that it was making good on the pledge; the news was that it was refusing to get court orders to do so, despite President Bush's public claims to the contrary. Rosen thinks Lichtblau should have engaged the more serious arguments against disclosure, such as those made by Jack Goldsmith, more seriously. Yet he still makes this sound like an exciting and interesting book.