Graduation date: 2008The purpose of this study is to examine the rhetorical efforts of President George W. Bush in defending his administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Specifically, the study attempts to determine the president's underlying motives when he defended the National Security Agency in a December 2005 radio address by applying Kenneth Burke's dramatistic method of pentadic analysis. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the president authorized the NSA to intercept communication between people inside the United States and suspected terrorists abroad without a court order, despite a 1978 law making warrantless wiretapping of U.S. persons a felony. The study includes a brief history of wiretapping in the United States and security policies adopted by the country both before and after the president's speech. In applying Burke's pentad, the study reveals that President Bush's efforts were intended to shift criticism onto other agents and to argue that legal barriers to presidential power are dangerous luxuries in a time of war. The study concludes that the president's aims, as revealed through rhetorical criticism, pose a threat to long-standing democratic norms such as the rule of law.