Anatomy Of An Op (po) (UPDATED)

Wonder who discovered the 2004 video of President Bush assuring his audience that when the U.S. decides to seek wiretapes, it gets FISA approval?

Duncan Blank, the curmudgeon known as Atrios, did so at 8:42 a.m.

On Tuesday morning, the DNC web team came across the quote during a routine search of the White House website. Others at the DNC also discovered it on Atrios's blog.

At 12:08 p.m., the DNCposted it to the DNC's blog.

The DNC keeps video of every televised Bush speech; the Bush utterance was quickly cross-checked.

As the communication office prepared a press release and DNC chairman Howard Dean crafted a statement, DNC officials distributed the quote via e-mail to reporters in Washington.

Within hours, CNN and MSNBC had played the clip. The Hotline noted it on this blog. NBC Nightly News devoted an entire segment to it.

Two things are clear: the RNC probably envies the DNC for their quick work. And that the same quotation would probably have been found by others, eventually. (And truthfully, we can't be certain that these television networks didn't independently find the quote, although we didn't hear about it until the DNC issued its early afternoon press release.) Still, when news cycles turn over rapidly, quickness counts. And more swing voters get their news from NBC Nightly News than from any other evening news program. So score one for the DNC.

Incidentally, The White House told NBC that Bush was speaking specifically about FISA warrants authorized by the Patriot Act. After the jump, we've pasted the full excerpt from Bush's speech so you can judge for yourself. [MARC AMBINDER]

President Bush:

So the first thing I want you to think about is, when you hear Patriot Act, is that we changed the law and the bureaucratic mind-set to allow for the sharing of information. It's vital. And others will describe what that means.

Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

But a roving wiretap means -- it was primarily used for drug lords. A guy, a pretty intelligence drug lord would have a phone, and in old days they could just get a tap on that phone. So guess what he'd do? He'd get him another phone, particularly with the advent of the cell phones. And so he'd start changing cell phones, which made it hard for our DEA types to listen, to run down these guys polluting our streets. And that changed, the law changed on -- roving wiretaps were available for chasing down drug lords. They weren't available for chasing down terrorists, see? And that didn't make any sense in the post-9/11 era. If we couldn't use a tool that we're using against mobsters on terrorists, something needed to happen.

The Patriot Act changed that. So with court order, law enforcement officials can now use what's called roving wiretaps, which will prevent a terrorist from switching cell phones in order to get a message out to one of his buddies.

Thirdly, to give you an example of what we're talking about, there's something called delayed notification warrants. Those are very important. I see some people, first responders nodding their heads about what they mean. These are a common tool used to catch mobsters. In other words, it allows people to collect data before everybody is aware of what's going on. It requires a court order. It requires protection under the law. We couldn't use these against terrorists, but we could use against gangs.

We had real problems chasing paper -- following paper trails of people. The law was just such that we could run down a problem for a crooked businessman; we couldn't use the same tools necessary to chase down a terrorist. That doesn't make any sense. And sometimes the use of paper trails and paper will lead local first responders and local officials to a potential terrorist. We're going to have every tool, is what I'm telling you, available for our people who I expect to do their job, and you expect to do their jobs.

We had tough penalties for drug traffickers; we didn't have as tough a penalty for terrorists. That didn't make any sense. The true threat to the 21st century is the fact somebody is trying to come back into our country and hurt us. And we ought to be able to at least send a signal through law that says we're going to treat you equally as tough as we do mobsters and drug lords.

There's other things we need to do. We need administrative subpoenas in the law. This was not a part of the recent Patriot Act. By the way, the reason I bring up the Patriot Act, it's set to expire next year. I'm starting a campaign to make it clear to members of Congress it shouldn't expire. It shouldn't expire, for the security of our country. (Applause.)

Administrative subpoenas mean it is -- speeds up the process whereby people can gain information to go after terrorists. Administrative subpoenas I guess is kind of an ominous sounding word, but it is, to put everybody's mind at ease about administrative subpoenas -- we use them to catch crooked doctors today. It's a tool for people to chase down medical fraud. And it certainly makes sense to me that if we're using it as a tool to chase medical fraud cases, we certainly ought to use it as a tool to chase potential terrorists.

I'll tell you another interesting part of the law that needs to be changed. Judges need greater authority to deny bail to terrorists. Judges have that authority in many cases like -- again, I keep citing drug offenses, but the Congress got tough on drug offenders a while ago and gave judges leeway to deny bail. They don't have that same authority to deny bail to terrorists now. I've got to tell you, it doesn't make any sense to me that it is very conceivable that we haul in somebody who is dangerous to America and then they are able to spring bail and out they go.

It's hard to assure the American people that we've given tools to law enforcement that they need if somebody has gone through all the work to chase down a potential terrorist, and they haul them in front of a court and they pay bail, and it adios. It just doesn't make any sense.