John Yarmuth: “There is some other history we haven't talked about tonight yet, and that is the background of this controversy. Because…”

“There is some other history we haven't talked about tonight yet, and that is the background of this controversy. Because what we fail to remember as we debate this issue, and obviously I think we want to deal with this prospectively, we want to make sure that this country has the power, the government has the power and authority and tools it needs to provide legitimate security for this country. But this program started right after September 11, 2001, and continued for 4 years before it was exposed by the New York Times. So this was a longstanding violation of the law, a deliberate avoidance of the law by the administration. They could at any time after 9/11 have come to Congress and said, we want some additional authority. But they didn't do that. They knew that it would be tough. Even a Republican Congress at that time might have looked askance at requests to do warrantless wiretapping, so they just did it by themselves for 4 years. Then, when it was uncovered, this Congress under Republican leadership rushed to pass the Protect America Act, a stop-gap measure because, obviously, it was embarrassing and they needed to do that. But this is a longstanding deliberate ignoring of the law, and this is something that it doesn't matter whether the government sanctioned it; if companies did it and violated the law, as I said at the outset of my remarks standing right behind you, Mr. Kagen, the words described in that dais, justice.…”