Did Google and Yahoo help get government snooping off the ground?

Google and Yahoo -- and the other tech giants stung by the recent news of their participation in government surveillance programs -- are in the midst of a public-relations offensive to steady suddenly wobbly reputations.

They're sounding a commiserating note, insisting they're just as confounded and concerned as many Americans by the reported extent of the feds' reach. And indeed, the New York Times, among others, has reported that the companies resisted government requests for information on their users on at least a few occasions.

But if Google and Yahoo are as frustrated as they sound with the sprawl of the post-9/11 surveillance regime, at least they can say they got front-row seats to its launch. Two months after the 2001 attacks, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Yahoo co-founder David Filo -- along with venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and a handful of other Silicon Valley heavyweights -- jetted to Washington for a meeting at the still-gaping Pentagon.