Wiretapping program sparked legal concerns within hours of its adoption.

In a new book entitled “Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice,” NYT journalist Eric Lichtblau writes that the warrantless wiretapping set off legal concerns inside the Bush administration almost immediately after being implemented in October 2001. Inside the FBI, “technicians stumbled onto the N.S.A.’s program accidentally within 12 hours of its inception, setting off what officials described as a brief firestorm of anxiety among senior officials. … ‘What’s going on here? Is this legal?’ one F.B.I. official asked after learning of the N.S.A. operation on American soil.”