overhead photography captured by the National Reconnaissance Office's fleet of military satellites. According to David H. Burpee, the NGA's director of public affairs, the agency operates under strict oversight rules that ban it from collecting imagery over the United States without a formal request from a "lead" domestic agency coordinating efforts during a disaster. In the case of Katrina, the NGA's assistance was requested by the Federal Emergency Management Administration. In a statement to Salon, Burpee said that the NGA collects intelligence "in accordance with Constitutional law, federal law, and executive policies such as Executive Order 12333." (That order, signed in 1981 by President Reagan, includes a mandate for federal agencies to cooperate with the CIA and other intelligence agencies.) Any questions involving domestic operations would have tobe directed to the lead agency requesting NGA support, Burpee added.

It is unclear how the latest changes to FISA might affect other intelligence agencies besides the NSA. But the zeal with which McConnell and Bush pursued the new legislation unbridling the NSA -- which could presumably tap the NGA for assistance with operations at home, just as it does in the war zones -- raises stark questions about the administration's intentions with domestic intelligence.

A close look at the NSA programs suggests that the Bush administration is casting the widest net possible. To date, President Bush and administration officials have acknowledged only a narrow aspect of domestic spying -- referred to as the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- which they admitted, in the wake of media reports, included the warrantless