Did the NSA program consist of normal wire taps which would have been approved by FISA if Bush hadn't been determined to place himself above the law ?

update: no

I don't understand these paragraphs in the New York Times

But many questions remain about the secret program, including some Mr. Aid said were raised pointedly by his contacts at the agency:

[snip]

After all, officials who have been granted anonymity in describing the program because it is classified say the agency's recent domestic eavesdropping is focused on a limited group of people. Americans come to the program's attention only if they have received a call or e-mail message from a person overseas who is already suspected to be a member of certain terrorist groups or linked somehow to a member of such groups. And the agency still gets a warrant to intercept their calls or e-mail messages to other people in the United States.

Now does "recent domestic eavesdropping" refer to "the program" in which communications of U.S. persons were intercepted without a warrant ? Or does "recent domestic eavesdropping" refer to warranted taps of communications that do not cross the border ? I think that the sentence could have been written "After all, officials who have been granted anonymity in describing the program because it is classified say the program is focused on a limited group of people" and a stylistic aversion to repetiting a phrase created confusion. This is a rule of Italian style rigidly followed by Italian Newspapers which are almost incomprehensible as a result.

I have always thought that it is idiotic, since clarity is more important than elegance. I will assume that this is what happened. The alternative is that the article is deliberately misleading switching suddenly from one topic to another without making the shift clear.

Now if "the program" involved a limited number of people whose possible link to al Qaueda could be described after the intercept, I see no reason not to go to the FISA court. The defence of the Bush administration depends on the idea that they are using some new technique not envisioned in current laws and unguessed by al Qaeda so they can't have a debate in congress about it without tipping al Qaeda off. The logic of this defence is that to bypass FISA without a compelling reason would be not only a crime but a mistake.

I don't see why an idiotic decision to break the law for no good reason is considered unlikely. This is the administration of the guy who was totally stumped when asked to name a limit on his authority.