Note this is well before 9/11, yet the official story by the administration is that it received no notification of any national threat, while in stealth it began comprehensive spying on American citizens, to which the telecom companies objected upon legal grounds as contrary to their obligations to protect consumer rights even from government demands.

Further consider that the government could have issued "warrants" for such if it indeed had any "probable cause" with specific evidence to justify it. The fact that Bush government did not issue warrants, or attempt to get them, proves it was trying to circumvent the law, and the Constitution, to spy on Americans secretly, in order to do so in stealth.

Such a secret pattern by government, before 9/11, could be regarded as evidence of secrecy and providing for its own security, not against foreign terrorists, but from the American people at large, whom its surveillance plans desired to freely sift through.