Spying for "useful" information

I want to point you to two converging memes on Bush's NSA spying program which, frankly, didn't hit home for me until recently.

To start with, Thomas Powers floated this idea in his review of James Risen's new book (via American Samizdat):

[F]ar from saving "thousands of lives," as claimed by Vice President Dick Cheney in December 2005, the NSA program never led investigators to a genuine terrorist not already under suspicion, nor did it help them to expose any dangerous plots. So why did the administration continue this lumbering effort for three years? Outsiders sometimes find it tempting to dismiss such wheel-spinning as bureaucratic silliness, but I believe that the Judiciary Committee will find, if it is willing to persist, that within the large pointless program there exists a small, sharply focused program that delivers something the White House really wants. This it will never confess willingly.

Now what could that "sharply focused program" be aiming at? Paul Craig Roberts (via Arthur Silber) has a hunch:

Having eliminated internal opposition, the Bush administration is now using blackmail obtained through illegal spying on American citizens to silence the media and the opposition party.

Before flinching at my assertion of blackmail, ask yourself why President Bush refuses to obey the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The purpose of the FISA court is to ensure that administrations do not spy for partisan political reasons. The warrant requirement is to ensure that a panel of independent federal judges hears a legitimate reason for the spying, thus protecting a president from the temptation to abuse the powers of government. The only reason for the Bush administration to evade the court is that the Bush administration had no legitimate reasons for its spying. This should be obvious even to a naif.

Let me also remind you that when the Bush administration unleashed the NSA against the UN Security Council prior to the war, they were probably doing it for similar reasons: blackmailing individual members.

So I wouldn't put this beyond the Bushies, by any means. This is about the only thing that makes sense when you think about why Gonzales and co. are so adamant that getting a FISA warrant is unnecessary. They're trying to get at "useful" information, and you can bet your bottom dollar that it has nothing to do with the threat of terrorism.