I disagree. The concern was almost entirely with another truck-bombing or airliner-hijacking escapade. That's what they were telling the MSM, anyway.
You think Shrub and Big Dick Cheney actually sat around scenarizing sending a SWAT unit, a la the Elian grab, to crash into some woman's house and kitchen and drag her away screaming into the night?
Little of had to do with such snatch and grab. That already existed. What W. Bush did was authorized “front end” things like communications monitoring without warrant, compiling huge databases of personal information, GPS in cell phones, secret courts issuing warrants, etc. It is noteworthy that though the FISA court almost never turned down a warrant request, the intelligence community complained that even having to ask a judge was too bothersome.
(2008) “FBI headquarters officials sought to cover their informal and possibly illegal acquisition of phone records on thousands of Americans from 2003 to 2005 by issuing 11 improper, retroactive “blanket” administrative subpoenas in 2006 to three phone companies that are under contract to the FBI, according to an audit released Thursday.”
Then there was the infamous monitoring of books checked out and computers used in public libraries.
“Sneak and peek” search warrants, which let authorities search a home or business without immediately notifying the target of a probe.
“Under Bush, the attorney general’s guidelines governing FBI operations were overhauled, allowing investigative tactics from the infamous COINTELPRO era, such as infiltrating constitutionally protected ideological groups — on the basis of a secret legal standard that has never been disclosed. And even though the CIA is prohibited from operating within the United States, it has smeared critics and trained local law enforcement in counterproductive profiling techniques.”