Archive for the 'NSA Scandal' Category

As an editor at the Los Angeles Times, Dean Baquet killed a story about the National Security Agency colluding with ATT to intercept the communications of American citizens without a warrant. He did so at the request of John Negroponte and Michael Hayden, who were then serving as Director of National Intelligence and Director of the NSA (Baquet has issued a pro forma denial that he was responding to government pressure, but admits speaking with Negroponte and Hayden about the matter).

Since then Baquet has been moving up in the newspaper industry, and is currently the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, the newspaper that initially broke the NSA warrantless wiretapping story. Up until now, the Times has pursued the story more aggressively than any other mainstream outlet. But by hiring Baquet, the paper signaled that it is no longer interested in fulfilling its duty to inform the public about this story.

When I was growing up, I believed two things about the New York Times. I believed that it covered the news from a moderately liberal perspective, and I believed that the paper doggedly pursued the facts, wherever those facts might lead. I no longer believe that either of these notions was ever true.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts

From Raw Story:

Although the scope of surveillance conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act remains shrouded in secrecy, newly disclosed documents show the costs one company charges the government to eavesdrop on customers.

Comcast, which is among the nation’s largest telecommunication companies, charges $1,000 to install a FISA wiretap and $750 for each additional month authorities want to keep an eye on suspects, according to the company’s Handbook for Law Enforcement. Secrecy News obtained the document and published it Monday.

“I was actually surprised that this was such a routine transaction that it would have a set fee,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy.

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Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) tells us about his priorities

When are the Democrats going to stop caving in? They have a majority in congress, their positions are popular with voters, and the standard bearer for the opposition has the support of only a quarter of the American people. So why do they continue to give in whenever they’re pushed by Republicans? The answer is money. For a case study on how it works, have a look at the Senate debate on warrantless wiretapping.

Last summer, congress voted to temporarily allow warrantless wiretapping of any phone calls to or from locations outside the US. That authority will expire in February, so the Bush administration has been pushing congress to make the new rules permanent. In addition, the president wants to immunize telecom companies from prosecution and from lawsuits for any crimes that the may have committed in connection with the president’s previous wiretapping activities.

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From the Washington Post:

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Plaintiff’s attorneys in the case of McMurray v. Verizon Communications Inc. claim that the National Security Agency asked AT&T to help set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the attacks of 9/11/01. In Court papers filed June 23, the attorneys claim that the site was to be part of a project code-named “pioneer groundbreaker”, but that the NSA later decided to acquire the monitoring technology itself, rather than relying on AT&T to help set up a facility.

If true, the timing of the NSA’s actions would belie the Bush administration’s contention that the NSA decided to engage in domestic wiretapping in response to the 9/11 attacks.

A recent article in USA Today, partly retracted, aroused suspicions that AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth had turned over phone records to the NSA. Spokesmen for AT&T and Verizon refused to confirm or deny a relationship with the NSA, but Jeff Battcher, a spokesman for BellSouth, categorically denied any involvement in extralegal NSA activity:

“We never turned over any records to the NSA,” he said in a telephone interview. “We’ve been clear all along that they’ve never contacted us. Nobody in our company has ever had any contact with the NSA.”

This July 4, let’s celebrate the 4th Amendment, while we still can.

General Hayden testifies as his dark master, Intelligence Director John Negroponte, looks on

During senate hearings on the nomination of Michael Hayden to the post of CIA Director, General Hayden has been trying to perpetuate the myth that the 9/11 attacks were not prevented only because our intelligence services weren’t engaging in aggressive domestic spying.

Hayden has an interest in perpetuating this myth, since he was the National Security Agency director while the NSA set up and ran programs to look for calling patterns in the phone records of Americans and to tap phone calls without obtaining warrants. Larry Beinhart demonstrates that this isn’t true, giving a detailed account of a spectacularly botched opportunity to stop one of the 9/11 attacks:

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Some people are just too trusting

Reverend Mykeru has some comments for people who are just now turning against the Bush administration over the issue of the NSA data mining scandal:

But maybe, just maybe, they went too far this time. Attacking a country for no fucking reason? Not too far. Secret prisons? Not too too far. Torture? Nope, not far enough either, but start noting the telephone calls good, upstanding Americans make to their bookies, their mistresses, the nice lady who makes them dress up all frilly and smacks their ass with a paddle for $300 an hour or their crystal meth dealers, and they exclaim “Jesus Christ” like the whole thing just leapt right in front of them from their peripheral vision and said “boo”.

Suckers.

The Reverend’s commentary goes on for about two pages, and it’s both thoughtful and funny. Well worth your time.

ACLU ad (which I run gratis, ’cause I’m such a great guy)

Baxpress has been collecting links to news coverage of the developing National Security Agency scandal.

Just after the Justice Department announced that it would stop investigating the NSA’s activities, USA Today found that the NSA is keeping a huge database of information on Americans’ calling patterns. The database could be analyzed using a variety of tools to find relationships between individuals and potential terror cells — or between individuals and groups like the Earth Liberation Front or SOA Watch.

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The NSA wiretapping will not be investigated

From CNN:

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax Wednesday to Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey of New York saying it was closing its inquiry because without clearance it could not examine department lawyers’ role in the program.

“We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey’s office shared the letter with The Associated Press.

Jarrett wrote that beginning in January his office has made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. Those requests were denied Tuesday.

“Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation,” Jarrett wrote.

The bottom line is, we won’t be able to find out the extent to which this program was abused unless a Democratic majority is elected in either the House or Senate in November. Liberal Avenger has more.

Hayden: More Goldfinger than Bond

President Bush named Deputy Director of National Intelligence Michael Hayden to be the next CIA Director. Hadley was director of the National Security Agency when the the NSA was caught wiretapping American citizens without a warrant.

For several reasons, Hayden faces a tough confirmation battle in the senate. Concerns center around Hayden’s part in the wiretapping scandal, but there are also questions about naming a current Air Force general to lead the CIA.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) said that “We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi echoed the complaint:

There’s a power struggle going on between the Department of Defense and the entire rest of the intelligence community, so I don’t see how you have a four-star general heading up the C.I.A.

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