I hate to say it, but, I told you so…

Just the other day, when I was writing about the case of Jewel v. NSA (and responding to the Columbia Journalism Review’s criticism that no one was covering this important case about warrantless wiretapping), I remarked that while everyone’s been up in arms about the Obama administration’s claiming the case should be dismissed because it would reveal “state secrets” — the same argument the Justice Department has made repeatedly in previous cases alleging illegal wiretapping and abusive interrogation programs — no one seemed to notice that the Jewel case charges that the wiretapping program is still going on.

Here’s a quote from the government’s brief asking the federal court to dismiss the case:

Plaintiffs in this action allege that the Government, through the National Security Agency (“NSA”), is undertaking an “illegal and unconstitutional dragnet communications surveillance in concert with major telecommunications companies,” and that NSA has indiscriminately intercepted the content of communications, as well as the communications records, of millions of ordinary Americans.

Interestingly, nowhere in its brief does the government deny that.  It just argues vehemently that the court should dismiss the case.

So should we really be all that surprised that, as James Risen and Eric Lichtblau report in The New York Times today, the charges may turn out to be true?

As Spencer’s already mentioned, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) and the Senate Intelligence Committee today promised to investigate. They might want to call the Electronic Frontier Foundation and their clients in the Jewel case as witnesses.