This is the Kato Daily Podcast for Friday, May 9, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

Warrantless wiretapping was part of the new kind of war described by President Bush

in the wake of the September 11th attacks.

Eric Lischblow in his new book, Bush's law provides a timeline of how the administration

set out to streamline its anti-terrorism activities in the face of constitutional constraints.

Police Bla won a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story of the National Security Agency's

wiretapping program, we spoke April 23rd.

One of the major themes that I try and lay out in my book is this concept of really an

omnipotent presidency that after 9-11 we saw a view that was espoused by certainly

by Dick Cheney and his aides and also at the Justice Department by John Yu, who at the time 9-11 was really a deputy

with very little power who within a few months was writing opinions that would have historic implications,

laying out the President's wartime powers and the assertion that as Commander-in-chief under Article II of the Constitution

that the President, when it came to matters of matters of surveillance, matters of

interrogation, and other tactics in the war on terror had virtually unchecked

authority in the war on terror and I think this will be seen as one of the

one of the defining traits of the presidency. Who is John you?

John you was a deputy in the Justice Department's office of legal counsel

and at the time of 9-11 he was one of the few people in that office who had any real experience in dealing with matters of international law and wartime authority.

And the Vice President's office and also the Pentagon turned to him in the days and weeks

after 9-11 to write a series of what have now become very controversial opinions asserting

the president's wartime powers.

Those were secret classified opinions at the time.

...