Angler Quotes

“It was one thing to say the president's politically appointed lawyers green-lighted domestic surveillance. It was another to claim a go-ahead from career civil servants, unbeholden to the White House.”
― Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

“If Brenner and Potenza had replied with the auditor-equivalent of 'you're not the boss of me,' they would have been right. The two men could have pressed their document request and told the big, loud man from the White House to get out of their way. But that kind of thing did not happen often to an emissary of the vice president, Addington least of all.”
― Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

“The NSA's lawyer and inspector general made sure the agency carried out its orders to the letter. What they could not do was judge for themselves that the orders were legal.”
― Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

“Meawhile, Goldsmith had been studying the special surveillance program with growing unease. Addington's behavior with the NSA auditors was 'a wake-up call for me,' Goldsmith said, warning him that he had better look even more closely. Cheney and Addington, Goldsmith came to believe, manipulated the legal advice they sought. 'They were geniuses at this,' Goldsmith said. 'They could divide up all these problems in the bureaucracy, ask different people to decide things in their lanes, control the facts they gave them, and then put the answers together to get the result they want.”
― Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

“Hardly anyone in the intelligence field believed the next administration would climb as far out on a legal limb as this one had.”
― Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

“Participants in the Tuesday-afternoon meeting, including some of Cheney's recruits, left the room shaken. Mueller worked for the attorney general, and the FBI's central mission was to 'uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States.' Hayden's neck, and his agency, were on the line. The NSA director believed in the program, believed he was doing the right thing. But keep on going when the Justice Department said no?”
― Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

“It was possible to construct a case, one Bush administration lawyer said, in which the high-ranking officials who planned and authorized the program were engaged in a criminal conspiracy.”
― Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency