How Government Really Works I

Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy discussing the James Risen Book on NSA eavesdropping -. The background is that DOJ issued a memo apparently conceding that the program violated FISA, but Kerr's not sure. He raises the possibility that the DOJ public affairs shop did the document without thoroughly understanding the issues:

"That is, the DOJ memo may have been written by people who knew less about the monitoring program than we now know thanks to Risen's book. (This may seem odd to you if you have never worked in the federal government; my guess is that it will seem less odd to those who have.) "

Yes, outsiders to an institution believe that knowledge is like blood in the body--it's everywhere, so what anyone in the institution knows everyone knows. Makes it easy to demonize.