Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice

In the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush declared that the struggle against terrorism would be nothing less than a war‑a new kind of war that would require new tactics, new government powers, and a new mindset. In a new book, Bush’s Law, Eric Lichtblau argues that counterterrorism officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency were asked to play roles they had never played before. To facilitate these new roles, legal restrictions were set aside, or disregarded, as administration officials sanctioned new intelligence and law enforcement programs. As a reporter for the New York Times, Lichtblau helped to break the story on the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, for which he was later awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.