Vice President Dick Cheney explained the details of warrantless wiretapping in an appearance on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on February 7, 2006. ” ‘It’s not domestic surveillance… The requirements for this authorization to be utilized are that one end of the communication had to be outside the United States, and one end of the communication has to involve reason to believe that it’s al Qaeda-related or affiliated or part of the al Qaeda network. Now, those are two very important and very clear-cut criteria, and for this presidential authorization to be used in this way, those two conditions have to be met.’ ”
– Stephen F. Hayes, Cheney, Page 492