Via Power line, New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau appears to have asserted something in his wiretapping story today that just isn’t supported by his own reporting, much less a transcript of the hearing. In the second paragraph of the story, Lichtblau wrote:

In a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges who served on the panel also voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president’s constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order. They also suggested that the program could imperil criminal prosecutions that grew out of the wiretaps.

The only reporting I can find in Lichtblau’s story to back up this assertion is contained in the next paragraph, where he writes:

Judge Harold A. Baker, a sitting federal judge in Illinois who served on the intelligence court until last year, said the president was bound by the law “like everyone else.” If a law like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is duly enacted by Congress and considered constitutional, Judge Baker said, “the president ignores it at the president’s peril.”

It only takes one look at the transcript to see how Lichtblau has changed the meaning of this quote by taking it out of context. At the time, Baker was on the receiving end of an aggressive line of questioning from Democrat Sen. Diane Feinstein. Here’s the relevant passage:

FEINSTEIN: Thank you very much. Now, I want to clear something up. Judge Kornblum spoke about Congress’ power to pass laws to allow the president to carry out domestic electronic surveillance. And we know that FISA is the exclusive means of so doing. Is such a law, that provides both the authority and the rules for carrying out that authority — are those rules then binding on the president?
[U.S. District Judge Allan] KORNBLUM: No president has ever agreed to that.
When the FISA statute was passed in 1978, it was not perfect harmony. The intelligence agencies were very reluctant to get involved in going to court. That reluctance changed over a short period of time, two or three years, when they realized they could do so much more than they’d ever done before without…
FEINSTEIN: What do you think, as a judge?
KORNBLUM: I think — as a magistrate judge, not a district judge — that a president would be remiss in exercising his constitutional authority to say that, “I surrender all of my power to a statute.” And, frankly, I doubt that Congress in a statute can take away the president’s authority — not his inherent authority but his necessary and — I forget the constitutional — his necessary and proper authority.
FEINSTEIN: I’d like to go down the line, if I could, Judge, please. Judge Baker?
[U.S. District Judge Harold] BAKER: Well, I’m going to pass to my colleagues, since I answered before. I don’t believe a president would surrender his power, either.
FEINSTEIN: So you don’t believe a president would be bound by the rules and regulations of a statute. Is that what you’re saying?
BAKER: No, I don’t believe that. A president…
FEINSTEIN: That’s my question.
BAKER: No, I thought you were talking about the decision