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Matter-eater Man said:
In response to G-man's speed argument...Bush might have had a point, except for one tiny little detail he refused to discuss at his press conference: namely, the fact that current law is so lax that he is already permitted to get a search warrant 72 hours after surveillance is conducted.



However, as noted in my earlier post:

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the G-man said:even though the attorney general has the authority in some cases to undertake surveillance immediately, and then seek an emergency warrant, that process is just as cumbersome as the normal way of doing things.



The NR piece I cited before also noted:

    There were other reasons for the president to act, as well.

    it appears that he was trying to shake the bureaucracy into action. The September 11 Commission report pointed to a deeply entrenched it's-not-my-job mentality within the National Security Agency that led the organization to shy away from aggressive antiterrorism surveillance.

    While the NSA had the technical capability to report on communications with suspected terrorist facilities in the Middle East, the NSA did not seek FISA Court warrants to collect communications between individuals in the United States and foreign countries, because it believed that this was an FBI role. It also did not want to be viewed as targeting persons in the United States and possibly violating laws that governed NSA's collection of foreign intelligence. An almost obsessive protection of sources and methods by the NSA, and its focus on foreign intelligence, and its avoidance of anything domestic would...be important elements in the story of 9/11.

    Bush's order, it appears, was an attempt to change that situation.