Dear God, it's like I'm a kid again.
I didn't grow up in the US; when I was a kid, we didn't have this kind of interviews on TV. For one thing, most of the TV shows they aired was propaganda, and it was so utterly boring most of us didn't bother. The newspapers, on the other hand, carried propaganda along with the news, so you kindda had to read it, too, if you were to know what's happening. The smarter folks could even read between the lines.
This one struck the most sensible chord:
> And what that does is that does not apply to any U.S. person. Has to be a foreign entity.
Entities. Not individuals, not groups, but entities. If you're an American citizen, you're cool. If you're a foreign entity, you're preeeetty much either a ladybug or a human, either way, it's pretty much the same thing.
This was Communist speak for non-Communist (to be fair, it was the twisted kind of Soviet-inspired Communism). We had communist workers and teachers and housewives, but foreign elements. Our country had communist friends but the democratic entities weren't that friendly.
This defensive depersonalization makes it very easy to strip away ethics. Butchering unarmed civilians sounds a lot more horrifying than annihilating non-combatant, but dangerous entities.
> The — because — the — first of all, Charlie, the number of requests are surprisingly small… number one. Number two, folks don’t go with a query unless they’ve got a pretty good suspicion.
This sounds very much like the kind of conversation that, at some point, was taking place between Soviet representatives and representatives of various other subordinated, but somewhat nasty countries of the Soviet block.
It's the kind of stuff that was handed out to us during the talks about the Warszaw pact. Is it true that the Soviet Union has supreme command of all troops and can invade any territory, even that of its allies? Well, no, I mean, it wouldn't be an invasion. It's a trade-off we have do for our freedom: should the Revolution be abandoned in any of the member countries, the allied countries should intervene to restore the right values. That is why the Soviet Union has to have representatives at all levels, must be informed of every decision. It's one of those things we must concede for democracy -- we need to entrust our freedom to people who can protect it. Words like freedom, democracy, values and way of life were freely thrown in -- ours was the land of the brave and free, unlike that of the oppressed working-class friends living in imperialist, totalitarian states.
I shivered a bit when I read this.
Edit: BTW, just to practice my reading-between-the-lines muscle, my guess is that a) FISA hasn't turned down any request yet and b) the requests were summarily "reviewed" and approved, through a short process that should give legal backing. In other words, FISA isn't there to actually review the requests, it's there simply in order to fill in the paperwork that's needed in order to make the whole thing seem legitimate.
In the early days of the regime, we had something similar to this, too. The curious dudes submitted a request to a committee of representatives of the people -- the request was basically a form which said that the following people have highly suspicious activities that can be a threat to the security of our people, to the Revolution and the communist way of life we have so hardly fought for (actual fucking words!) and was recommended to be placed under surveillance. These were signed pretty much in bulk -- the representatives of the people usually signed a big list at the bottom. Later on, this was eventually dropped: complaining about paperwork was useless, and after a few years it became obvious complaining about paperwork was so dangerous that when it was no longer required, no one dared do anything about it.