Gonzalez Contradicts Bush Line on NSA Spying

I just stumbled upon a quote by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez which is very interesting in light of the justifications Bush's administration has offered for the NSA eavesdropping program. Gonzalez, in explaining to reporters why president Bush decided to establish a secret policy via an executive order instead of going through Congress -- for example proposing amendments to FISA -- Gonzalez replied:

"We've had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be - that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program."

The administration has claimed that with the passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force in 2001, Congress granted him the authority to establish the NSA eavesdropping practice under the authorization to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001... in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." If Bush's administration truly believes that the granting of this power was implicit in the AUMF (i.e. that it was the intention of Congress in passing the bill to authorize the eavesdropping policy), how could they also believe that Congress would have rejected amendments to FISA which would affect the exact same authorization?

If the intentions of the AUMF included authorization for warrantless eavesdropping, then Congress would have been more than willing to legally re-affirm this intention by amendment of FISA. If, on the other hand, Bush's administration was fully aware that Congress would not support such amendment, how could they claim that Congress actually supported the policy via the AUMF?

It seems to me like Bush wasn't counting on his secret program being discovered, and that now the cracks are showing in the flimsy legal justification that was thrown together once he realized he would have to answer for his actions. Bush never wanted the shaky legal grounds of this policy to be tested by Congress or the courts. Why else would he make the program so secretive? Why would he also ban those Congressmen who learned of the program from discussing it with others? Despite Bush's adamant defense of this policy as legal, the more details come out in this scandal, the more it looks like Bush has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.