John Cornyn: “since the New York Times revealed the existence of a classified program whereby the National Security Agency was…”

“since the New York Times revealed the existence of a classified program whereby the National Security Agency was conducting intelligence operations on al-Qaida and terrorist- related operatives here in the United States and overseas, there has been a lot of reaction to that revelation. First of all, we know the New York Times had been sitting on that story for approximately a year, and then for some unstated reason decided to release the story the day we were supposed to vote on the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. As a result of a variety of circumstances, but I believe in part that story, we find ourselves in the very strange position of not having reauthorized the PATRIOT Act and having the PATRIOT Act expire--16 provisions of it at least--on December 31, 2005. There are some who said when they heard about the National Security Agency's surveillance of foreign terrorist suspects that this was an illegal usurpation of congressional authority by the President, or otherwise improper. Others have asked questions about the propriety of the program.…”