Illegal wiretaps used against Al Qeada?

I had to read this twice in order to even believe I was reading it.
What part of "trying to kill Americans" don't these people understand?
IF, and I do mean 'if", the wiretaps are shown to be illegal, the real problem is that they're illegal to use against this type of threat, not that they were used.
Make them legal, then!

NY Times
Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.

Trent Duffy, a spokesman for the White House, declined to comment in Crawford, Tex., when asked about a report in The New York Times that the security agency had tapped into some of the country's main telephone arteries to conduct broader data-mining operations in the search for terrorists.

But Mr. Duffy said: "This is a limited program. This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches."

More here