On March 11, 2004, President “Bush decided to reauthorize the NSA [National Security Agency] [warrantless surveillance] program in spite of the view by his own Justice Department that it was not legal. It had not been legal from the start, but Bush and [NSA Director Michael] Hayden had at least taken comfort from the fact that the attorney general [John Ashcroft] would put his stamp of approval on it every forty-five days. Now they didn’t even have that. Worse, they were on notice that they were breaking the law.”
– James Bamford, The Shadow Factory, Page 284