SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have informed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that when he appears before them today to defend NSA wiretaps, they will have some pointed questions for him. Indeed, the questions will need to be sharp if the Senators hope to penetrate the obfuscation that has attended this controversy.

Critics of the president’s program fondly quote from a paragraph of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, asserting that FISA (and related provisions of the criminal code), “shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . may be conducted” (emphasis added). Conveniently, they fail to note the clause that opens that very same paragraph: “Nothing contained [in FISA or the criminal law] shall be deemed to affect acquisition by United States Government of foreign intelligence information from international or foreign communications . . . “(emphasis added).