Monday’s New York Post ran a story by bureau chief Charles Hurt blaming a delay in NSA surveillance activities to find information about captured soldiers in Iraq on the privacy framework that protects Americans from unfettered surveillance.

The biting story, based on a leak from an administration-friendly source, blames bureaucratic rules for a 10-hour delay in getting permission to set up a wiretap inside American telecom switches to capture Iraqi communications — hours that could have meant the difference between life and death for the soldiers.

Hurt’s piece, relying on a “senior congressional staffer with access to the classified case” is quite compelling, but would be even more so if it weren’t a carefully constructed, politically motivated lie that’s already been discredited.

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