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And Webster means nothing when talking about law. Read the law to see what it defines, which is interception of any communications, whether oral or data over wire, radio, fibre, etc.

I read the Code and I read the question and answer from the Hardball transcript.

MEESE: It‘s not really spying on Americans, it‘s intercepting international communications dealing with terrorists at the present time, or enemies in those days, in which, on occasion, some—one of the links would be to telephones within the United States, but it‘s not wiretapping. It‘s not bugging. The news media is almost totally getting it wrong.

MATTHEWS: But why—what‘s the difference if I‘m on the phone with somebody in Saudi Arabia and I‘m being tapped?

MEESE: Well you‘re not being tapped. The tapping is a particular technique of connecting into the wires of a particular phone or into—plugging into a particular wireless phone. This is intercepting communications that are going overseas. There‘s a lot of technology to it that I can‘t go into right now.

MATTHEWS: But it‘s still eavesdropping, isn‘t it?

MEESE: It is surveillance. It‘s surveillance, under certain circumstances and it‘s justifiable in a wartime situation or in—when you‘re dealing with enemies of the country.

I do not see anything remotely Clintonesque in the responses. Matthews implied that the interception of a signal from an overseas transmission is the same as tapping someone's phone, and it simply is not.

If you are saying that the two practices are governed by the same Code, then, you are correct. I don't think anyone has disagreed on that point.

On your claim that Meese's answer was on the order of "it depend on what the definition of 'is' is", then you are quite simply wrong. Meese stated quite simply and correctly that it is surveillance.

If your phone is tapped, then every call is monitored. All of your calls. Your discussion of your wife's doctor visit, your call to your mom, your business calls, your chats with friends. If a signal from an international line is monitored, then only calls going overseas are monitored, and those are from random sources. It's like the difference between a cop tailing you all day taking pictures of everywhere you go, and the camera on the red light taking pictures of the random cars that run the light.