New York Times: “For years, intelligence officials have tried to debunk what they called a popular myth about the National Security Agency: that its electronic net routinely sweeps up information about millions of Americans…. But since the disclosures last week showing that the agency does indeed routinely collect data on the phone calls of millions of Americans, Obama administration officials have struggled to explain what now appear to have been misleading past statements.”

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post notes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) chastised lawmakers who claimed they were in the dark about the programs: “For senators to complain that ‘I didn’t know this was happening,’ we’ve had many, many meetings that have been both classified and unclassified that members have been invited to.”

Wonk Wire: Can we trust the NSA with our secrets?

“U.S. intelligence operatives covertly sabotaged a prominent al-Qaeda online magazine last month in an apparent attempt to sow confusion among the group’s followers,” the Washington Post reports.

“The operation succeeded, at least temporarily, in thwarting publication of the latest issue of Inspire, the English-language magazine distributed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. When it appeared online, the text on the second page was garbled and the following 20 pages were blank. The sabotaged version was quickly removed from the online forum that hosted it, said independent analysts who track Islamist militant Web sites.”

John Avlon notes that what connects the unruly and still-evolving scandals distracting the White House — ranging from the IRS to AP to Verizon — “is a portrait of an increasingly out-of-control federal bureaucracy that moves with an unaccountable borg-mind of its own. “

“This is the leviathan that libertarians and conservatives have warned about in sometimes overheated, hyperpartisan terms. The problem predates President Obama–government has been growing more or less consistently since the founding of the Republic, but especially since the New Deal, outpacing the growth of population. Now the complexities and temptations that come with new technology have hatched scandals that move almost on autopilot: leak investigations are announced and the gears of secret government churn on their own, often under the constitutional imperative of national security, sometimes leading to conditions contrary to the chief executive’s wishes and vision.”

Pew Research: “A majority of Americans – 56% – say the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program tracking the telephone records of millions of Americans is an acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism, though a substantial minority – 41% – say it is unacceptable. And while the public is more evenly divided over the government’s monitoring of email and other online activities to prevent possible terrorism, these views are largely unchanged since 2002, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”

“I don’t look at this as being a whistleblower. I think it’s an act of treason.”

— Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), quoted by The Hill, on the man who leaked information on National Security Agency surveillance programs.