Earlier this week, the Rocky Mountain News broke word that Joseph P. Nacchio, the former CEO of Qwest, has accused the National Security Agency of retaliating against his company because he refused to cooperate with a domestic-spying scheme.

The WaPo moved the ball forward today, with a solid front-page piece. The key point to take away from the story, however, is the timing.

Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.

It's almost as if the Bush gang, almost immediately after taking office, began a legally-dubious power grab that included warrantless-domestic spying.

I suppose some of the president's allies might be tempted to spin this as encouraging. If the administration was pressuring telecoms as far back as Feb. 2001, the president and his team were taking the terrorist threat seriously long before 9/11.

This might be more persuasive if, six months after the NSA allegedly leaned on Qwest, the president didn't blow off a certain Presidential Daily Briefing, telling his CIA briefer, "All right. You've covered your ass, now."