U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would have Americans believe that, after years of asserting that national security depended upon the administration's ability to tap terror suspects' phone lines without waiting for the slow Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to OK the spying, the court suddenly became capable of instantly approving such wiretaps the very same week Democrats took control of Congress.

Is the administration trying to lose its last remaining shreds of credibility?

In a letter to Sens. Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter, Gonzales asserted that on Jan. 10 a FISA judge issued an order authorizing the government to intercept the international communications of anyone suspected of being "a member or agent of al-Qaida or an associated terrorist organization." As a result, the administration will not renew the Terrorist Surveillance Program, up for reauthorization in a month and a half, which allowed it to intercept the communications of terror suspects without a court warrant.

What about terror suspects who are not members or agents of terrorist organizations associated with al-Qaida? What about the President's constitutional authority, which Gonzales had asserted for so long, to spy on terror suspects without a direct court order?

The administration is backing out of a program and a constitutional argument it previously labeled essential to national security. It is doing so in such a way as to make its previous assertions appear entirely disingenuous.

More than the WMD claims, more than the "Mission Accomplished" banner, more than anything else in the past six years, this change of course undermines the President's credibility and authority. Retreating from a program that until now he has claimed was absolutely essential to stopping terrorist attacks on U.S. soil is either an inexcusable dereliction of duty, or a tacit admission that his previous claim was utter baloney.

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