Report: Bush Permitted NSA to Spy in U.S.


NEW YORK - President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States — without getting search warrants — following the Sept. 11 attacks, the New York Times reports.

The presidential order, which Bush signed in 2002, has allowed the agency to monitor the international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States, according to a story posted Thursday on the Times' Web site.

Before the new program began, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders to do so. Under the post-Sept. 11 program, the NSA has eavesdropped, without warrants, on as many 500 people inside the United States at any given time. Overseas, 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time.

The Times said reporters interviewed nearly a dozen current and former administration officials about the program and granted them anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

Government officials credited the new program with uncovering several terrorist plots, including one by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting al-Qaida by planning to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, the report said.

But some NSA officials were so concerned about the legality of the program that they refused to participate, the Times said. Questions about the legality of the program led the administration to temporarily suspend it last year and impose new restrictions.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the group's initial reaction to the disclosure was "shock that the administration has gone so far in violating American civil liberties to the extent where it seems to be a violation of federal law."

Asked about the administration's contention that the eavesdropping has disrupted terrorist attacks, Fredrickson said the ACLU couldn't comment until it seems some evidence. "They've veiled these powers in secrecy so there's no way for Congress or any independent organizations to exercise any oversight."

The Bush administration had briefed congressional leaders about the program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that handles national security issues.

Aides to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, declined to comment Thursday night.

The Times said it delayed publication of the report for a year because the White House said it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. The Times said it omitted information from the story that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists.

Violation of federal law? Sounds like a "high crime or misdemeanor" to me.

IM-PEACH!
IM-PEACH!
IM-PEACH!

I don't know if it is or not but I doubt Congress will pursue the matter.

The boy King can get away with murder this means nothing.

True to form, this headline has disappeared from Yahoo's front page within about 30 minutes of its being posted. You have to make a concerted effort to find this story now, and if you didn't know it was there, you'd never find it at all (which I suppose is exactly the intention). I noticed this phenomenon (of Yahoo removing articles critical of Bush from their front-page headlines area within minutes of being posted) about a year ago, but was told I was crazy by a Bush Apologist who shall remain nameless. Meanwhile, the headline about Bush crowing over the successful Iraqi elections has remained right at the top of the headlines for well over an hour.

This was in the link recommended at the dailykos on this story. Even if Yahoo tries to hide it dailykos has already recommended which is good because it will spread. Here is the New York Times version with a lot more too it.

http://nytimes.com/2005/12/15/politics/15c...agewanted=print

Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say
By JAMES RISEN
and ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 ­- Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval represents a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."

Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight.

According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters. Some of the questions about the agency's new powers led the administration to temporarily suspend the operation last year and impose more restrictions, the officials said.

The Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency can move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to this country, the officials said. Defenders of the program say it has been a critical tool in helping disrupt terrorist plots and prevent attacks inside the United States.

Administration officials are confident that existing safeguards are sufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, the officials say. In some cases, they said, the Justice Department eventually seeks warrants if it wants to expand the eavesdropping to include communications confined within the United States. The officials said the administration had briefed Congressional leaders about the program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that deals with national security issues.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it said the N.S.A. eavesdropped without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time. The list changes as some names are added and others dropped, so the number monitored in this country may have reached into the thousands over the past three years, several officials said. Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time, according to those officials.

Several officials said the eavesdropping program had helped uncover a plot by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker and naturalized citizen who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting Al Qaeda by planning to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches. What appeared to be another Qaeda plot, involving fertilizer bomb attacks on British pubs and train stations, was exposed last year in part through the program, the officials said. But they said most people targeted for N.S.A. monitoring have never been charged with a crime, including an Iranian-American doctor in the South who came under suspicion because of what one official described as dubious ties to Osama bin Laden.

Dealing With a New Threat

The eavesdropping program grew out of concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks that the nation's intelligence agencies were not poised to deal effectively with the new threat of Al Qaeda and that they were handcuffed by legal and bureaucratic restrictions better suited to peacetime than war, according to officials. In response, President Bush significantly eased limits on American intelligence and law enforcement agencies and the military.

But some of the administration's antiterrorism initiatives have provoked an outcry from members of Congress, watchdog groups, immigrants and others who argue that the measures erode protections for civil liberties and intrude on Americans' privacy. Opponents have challenged provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the focus of contentious debate on Capitol Hill this week, that expand domestic surveillance by giving the Federal Bureau of Investigation more power to collect information like library lending lists or Internet use. Military and F.B.I. officials have drawn criticism for monitoring what were largely peaceful antiwar protests. The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security were forced to retreat on plans to use public and private databases to hunt for possible terrorists. And last year, the Supreme Court rejected the administration's claim that those labeled "enemy combatants" were not entitled to judicial review of their open-ended detention.

Mr. Bush's executive order allowing some warrantless eavesdropping on those inside the United States ­ including American citizens, permanent legal residents, tourists and other foreigners ­ is based on classified legal opinions that assert that the president has broad powers to order such searches, derived in part from the September 2001 Congressional resolution authorizing him to wage war on Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, according to the officials familiar with the N.S.A. operation.

The National Security Agency, which is based at Fort Meade, Md., is the nation's largest and most secretive intelligence agency, so intent on remaining out of public view that it has long been nicknamed "No Such Agency.'' It breaks codes and maintains listening posts around the world to eavesdrop on foreign governments, diplomats and trade negotiators as well as drug lords and terrorists. But the agency ordinarily operates under tight restrictions on any spying on Americans, even if they are overseas, or disseminating information about them.

What the agency calls a "special collection program" began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, as it looked for new tools to attack terrorism. The program accelerated in early 2002 after the Central Intelligence Agency started capturing top Qaeda operatives overseas, including Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002. The C.I.A. seized the terrorists' computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, the officials said.

In addition to eavesdropping on those numbers and reading e-mail messages to and from the Qaeda figures, the N.S.A. began monitoring others linked to them, creating an expanding chain. While most of the numbers and addresses were overseas, hundreds were in the United States, the officials said.

Under the agency's longstanding rules, the N.S.A. can target for interception phone calls or e-mail messages on foreign soil, even if the recipients of those communications are in the United States. Usually, though, the government can only target phones and e-mail messages in this country by first obtaining a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which holds its closed sessions at the Justice Department.

Traditionally, the F.B.I., not the N.S.A., seeks such warrants and conducts most domestic eavesdropping. Until the new program began, the N.S.A. typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions in Washington, New York and other cities, and obtained court orders to do so.

Since 2002, the agency has been conducting some warrantless eavesdropping on people in the United States who are linked, even if indirectly, to suspected terrorists through the chain of phone numbers and e-mail addresses, according to several officials who know of the operation. Under the special program, the agency monitors their international communications, the officials said. The agency, for example, can target phone calls from someone in New York to someone in Afghanistan.

Warrants are still required for eavesdropping on entirely domestic-to-domestic communications, those officials say, meaning that calls from that New Yorker to someone in California could not be monitored without first going to the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court.

A White House Briefing

After the special program started, Congressional leaders from both political parties were brought to Vice President Dick Cheney's office in the White House. The leaders, who included the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, learned of the N.S.A. operation from Mr. Cheney, Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force, who was then the agency's director and is now the principal deputy director of national intelligence, and George J. Tenet, then the director of the C.I.A., officials said.

It is not clear how much the members of Congress were told about the presidential order and the eavesdropping program. Some of them declined to comment about the matter, while others did not return phone calls.

Later briefings were held for members of Congress as they assumed leadership roles on the intelligence committees, officials familiar with the program said. After a 2003 briefing, Senator Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who became vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that year, wrote a letter to Mr. Cheney expressing concerns about the program, officials knowledgeable about the letter said. It could not be determined if he received a reply. Mr. Rockefeller declined to comment. Aside from the Congressional leaders, only a small group of people, including several cabinet members and officials at the N.S.A., the C.I.A. and the Justice Department, know of the program.

Some officials familiar with it say they consider warrantless eavesdropping inside the United States to be unlawful and possibly unconstitutional, amounting to an improper search. One government official involved in the operation said he privately complained to a Congressional official about his doubts about the legality of the program. But nothing came of his inquiry. "People just looked the other way because they didn't want to know what was going on," he said.

A senior government official recalled that he was taken aback when he first learned of the operation. "My first reaction was, ‘We're doing what?' " he said. While he said he eventually felt that adequate safeguards were put in place, he added that questions about the program's legitimacy were understandable.

Some of those who object to the operation argue that is unnecessary. By getting warrants through the foreign intelligence court, the N.S.A. and F.B.I. could eavesdrop on people inside the United States who might be tied to terrorist groups without skirting longstanding rules, they say.

The standard of proof required to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is generally considered lower than that required for a criminal warrant ­ intelligence officials only have to show probable cause that someone may be "an agent of a foreign power," which includes international terrorist groups ­ and the secret court has turned down only a small number of requests over the years. In 2004, according to the Justice Department, 1,754 warrants were approved. And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can grant emergency approval for wiretaps within hours, officials say.

Administration officials counter that they sometimes need to move more urgently, the officials said. Those involved in the program also said that the N.S.A.'s eavesdroppers might need to start monitoring large batches of numbers all at once, and that it would be impractical to seek permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court first, according to the officials.

Culture of Caution and Rules

The N.S.A. domestic spying operation has stirred such controversy among some national security officials in part because of the agency's cautious culture and longstanding rules.

Widespread abuses ­ including eavesdropping on Vietnam War protesters and civil rights activists ­ by American intelligence agencies became public in the 1970's and led to passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which imposed strict limits on intelligence gathering on American soil. Among other things, the law required search warrants, approved by the secret F.I.S.A. court, for wiretaps in national security cases. The agency, deeply scarred by the scandals, adopted additional rules that all but ended domestic spying on its part.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, though, the United States intelligence community was criticized for being too risk-averse. The National Security Agency was even cited by the independent 9/11 Commission for adhering to self-imposed rules that were stricter than those set by federal law.

Several senior government officials say that when the special operation first began, there were few controls on it and little formal oversight outside the N.S.A. The agency can choose its eavesdropping targets and does not have to seek approval from Justice Department or other Bush administration officials. Some agency officials wanted nothing to do with the program, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, a former senior Bush administration official said. Before the 2004 election, the official said, some N.S.A. personnel worried that the program might come under scrutiny by Congressional or criminal investigators if Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, was elected president.

In mid-2004, concerns about the program expressed by national security officials, government lawyers and a judge prompted the Bush administration to suspend elements of the program and revamp it.

For the first time, the Justice Department audited the N.S.A. program, several officials said. And to provide more guidance, the Justice Department and the agency expanded and refined a checklist to follow in deciding whether probable cause existed to start monitoring someone's communications, several officials said.

A complaint from Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the federal judge who oversees the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, helped spur the suspension, officials said. The judge questioned whether information obtained under the N.S.A. program was being improperly used as the basis for F.I.S.A. wiretap warrant requests from the Justice Department, according to senior government officials. While not knowing all the details of the exchange, several government lawyers said there appeared to be concerns that the Justice Department, by trying to shield the existence of the N.S.A. program, was in danger of misleading the court about the origins of the information cited to justify the warrants.

One official familiar with the episode said the judge insisted to Justice Department lawyers at one point that any material gathered under the special N.S.A. program not be used in seeking wiretap warrants from her court. Judge Kollar-Kotelly did not return calls for comment.

A related issue arose in a case in which the F.B.I. was monitoring the communications of a terrorist suspect under a F.I.S.A.-approved warrant, even though the National Security Agency was already conducting warrantless eavesdropping. According to officials, F.B.I. surveillance of Mr. Faris, the Brooklyn Bridge plotter, was dropped for a short time because of technical problems. At the time, senior Justice Department officials worried what would happen if the N.S.A. picked up information that needed to be presented in court. The government would then either have to disclose the N.S.A. program or mislead a criminal court about how it had gotten the information.

The Civil Liberties Question

Several national security officials say the powers granted the N.S.A. by President Bush go far beyond the expanded counterterrorism powers granted by Congress under the USA Patriot Act, which is up for renewal. The House on Wednesday approved a plan to reauthorize crucial parts of the law. But final passage has been delayed under the threat of a Senate filibuster because of concerns from both parties over possible intrusions on Americans' civil liberties and privacy.

Under the act, law enforcement and intelligence officials are still required to seek a F.I.S.A. warrant every time they want to eavesdrop within the United States. A recent agreement reached by Republican leaders and the Bush administration would modify the standard for F.B.I. wiretap warrants, requiring, for instance, a description of a specific target. Critics say the bar would remain too low to prevent abuses.

Bush administration officials argue that the civil liberties concerns are unfounded, and they say pointedly that the Patriot Act has not freed the N.S.A. to target Americans. "Nothing could be further from the truth," wrote John Yoo, a former official in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and his co-author in a Wall Street Journal opinion article in December 2003. Mr. Yoo worked on a classified legal opinion on the N.S.A.'s domestic eavesdropping program.

At an April hearing on the Patriot Act renewal, Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., "Can the National Security Agency, the great electronic snooper, spy on the American people?"

"Generally," Mr. Mueller said, "I would say generally, they are not allowed to spy or to gather information on American citizens." President Bush did not ask Congress to include provisions for the N.S.A. domestic surveillance program as part of the Patriot Act and has not sought any other laws to authorize the operation. Bush administration lawyers argued that such new laws were unnecessary, because they believed that the Congressional resolution on the campaign against terrorism provided ample authorization, officials said.

Seeking Congressional approval was also viewed as politically risky because the proposal would be certain to face intense opposition on civil liberties grounds. The administration also feared that by publicly disclosing the existence of the operation, its usefulness in tracking terrorists would end, officials said.

The legal opinions that support the N.S.A. operation remain classified, but they appear to have followed private discussions among senior administration lawyers and other officials about the need to pursue aggressive strategies that once may have been seen as crossing a legal line, according to senior officials who participated in the discussions.

For example, just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Mr. Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer, wrote an internal memorandum that argued that the government might use "electronic surveillance techniques and equipment that are more powerful and sophisticated than those available to law enforcement agencies in order to intercept telephonic communications and observe the movement of persons but without obtaining warrants for such uses."

Mr. Yoo noted that while such actions could raise constitutional issues, in the face of devastating terrorist attacks "the government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties."

The next year, Justice Department lawyers disclosed their thinking on the issue of warrantless wiretaps in national security cases in a little-noticed brief in an unrelated court case. In that 2002 brief, the government said that "the Constitution vests in the President inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority."

Administration officials were also encouraged by a November 2002 appeals court decision in an unrelated matter. The decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which sided with the administration in dismantling a bureaucratic "wall" limiting cooperation between prosecutors and intelligence officers, noted "the president's inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance."

But the same court suggested that national security interests should not be grounds "to jettison the Fourth Amendment requirements" protecting the rights of Americans against undue searches. The dividing line, the court acknowledged, "is a very difficult one to administer."

This adminstration has violated so many laws it is hard to even keep track of it anymore. And we impeached a president for having an affair.

I'm certainly going to be glued to my TV tomorrow watching the Senate. They are supposed to be debating the Patriot Act. This new NSA spying information most certainly will come up quite often in that debate.

December 15, 2005
House Renews Antiterror Law, but Opposition Builds in Senate
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 - The House voted Wednesday to renew the broad antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, but opposition was growing in the Senate, where members of a bipartisan coalition predicted they would block the measure by filibuster when it comes up for consideration on Friday.

Faced with the filibuster threat, the White House sent Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to the Republicans' weekly policy luncheon to assuage concerns that the law does not strike the correct balance between safeguarding civil liberties and protecting national security.

Three Republican senators were already on record as opposing the reauthorization in its current form, and by the time Mr. Gonzales arrived in the Capitol, a fourth - Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska - had joined them, saying he had "many concerns" about the bill.

Mr. Hagel signed a letter Wednesday in which opponents say they are concerned about "government fishing expeditions targeting innocent Americans" and demand further restrictions on provisions allowing government searches and access to private and personal information including medical and library records.

The White House has made renewing the antiterrorism law a priority, but time is running short.

The current law, which greatly expanded the government's investigative and surveillance powers in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, is set to expire, and Congress is hoping to adjourn for the year this weekend at the latest.

"The Patriot Act is scheduled to expire at the end of the month, but the terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule," President Bush said Wednesday, in a statement urging the Senate to follow the House's lead. "In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment."

The House passed the bill by a vote of 251 to 174. Forty-four Democrats voted for the bill, and 18 Republicans voted against it. Those Republicans included some of the most conservative members of the House - a sign, critics said, that members of both parties are uneasy about the bill. The critics are calling for a three-month extension of the current law to give both sides time to make changes.

"I think it sends a message that there are people across the political spectrum that think this bill doesn't do what it should, that it doesn't do enough to protect civil liberties," said Senator John E. Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, referring to the House vote.

Mr. Sununu said he did not believe that the Republican leadership could muster the 60 votes required to break a filibuster. The senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, agreed.

"I don't think they have the votes," Mr. Leahy said in an interview on Wednesday, adding: "The recommendation I made to both Republicans and Democrats is just fix the bill. We can do that this week if the White House would cooperate."

But Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, rejected a short-term extension and called for his colleagues to approve the reauthorization, a conference report that was the product of weeks of House-Senate negotiations.

"Today's overwhelming bipartisan vote in the House for the Patriot Act - with the support of 44 Democrats, including members of the House Democratic leadership - shows that we can all unite to make America safer from terrorism while safeguarding our civil rights and civil liberties," Mr. Frist said. "Senate Democrats should follow the lead of their House counterparts."

In setting the vote for Friday, Mr. Frist may be betting that although critics dislike the extension, they dislike the idea of letting the law expire even more.

The vote is also laden with political implications for Democrats, who suffered at the polls in 2002 after defeating legislation to create a Department of Homeland Security. Republican backers of the bill are taking pains to remind Democrats of that, as did Ken Mehlman, the head of the Republican National Committee.

"Voters will react the same way in 2006 if Democrats block the reauthorization of the Patriot Act to appease the hard left," Mr. Mehlman said Wednesday in a statement.

Ever since its adoption in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Patriot Act has drawn vigorous complaints from advocates for civil liberties, who contend that provisions like those allowing the government to obtain a person's library and medical records infringe on basic constitutional rights.

The measure passed by the House makes permanent 14 of 16 provisions that were set to expire, while putting in place additional judicial oversight and safeguards against abuse. The House Republican leadership praised the vote, saying the bill is essential to national security.

"We need to stay tough on terrorism," Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois said in a statement. "This bill ensures that our law enforcement keep the tools they already have in place to root out and prosecute terrorists."

But critics, including the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, argue that the safeguards do not go nearly far enough. "The criticism we had about this legislation previously was because of 9/11, we rushed to judgment on a number of provisions in that bill," Mr. Reid told reporters Wednesday. "We certainly shouldn't do that this time."

Democratic aides say a majority of their caucus supports a filibuster. In addition to Mr. Hagel and Mr. Sununu, two other Republicans, Senators Larry Craig of Idaho and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have said they will vote to block the measure. The four signed on to a letter circulated to senators Wednesday by Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin.

"We still have the opportunity to pass a good reauthorization bill this year," the letter says. "But to do that, we must stop this conference report."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/politics...agewanted=print

Bush Authorized Domestic Spying
Post-9/11 Order Bypassed Special Court

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 16, 2005; A01



President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, despite previous legal prohibitions against such domestic spying, sources with knowledge of the program said last night.

The super-secretive NSA, which has generally been barred from domestic spying except in narrow circumstances involving foreign nationals, has monitored the e-mail, telephone calls and other communications of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people under the program, the New York Times disclosed last night.

The aim of the program was to rapidly monitor the phone calls and other communications of people in the United States believed to have contact with suspected associates of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups overseas, according to two former senior administration officials. Authorities, including a former NSA director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, were worried that vital information could be lost in the time it took to secure a warrant from a special surveillance court, sources said.

But the program's ramifications also prompted concerns from some quarters, including Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, and the presiding judge of the surveillance court, which oversees lawful domestic spying, according to the Times.

The Times said it held off on publishing its story about the NSA program for a year after administration officials said its disclosure would harm national security.

The White House made no comment last night. A senior official reached by telephone said the issue was too sensitive to talk about. None of several press officers responded to telephone or e-mail messages.

Congressional sources familiar with limited aspects of the program would not discuss any classified details but made it clear there were serious questions about the legality of the NSA actions. The sources, who demanded anonymity, said there were conditions under which it would be possible to gather and retain information on Americans if the surveillance were part of an investigation into foreign intelligence.

But those cases are supposed to be minimized. The sources said the actual work of the NSA is so closely held that it is difficult to determine whether it is acting within the law.

The revelations come amid a fierce congressional debate over reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Patriot Act granted the FBI new powers to conduct secret searches and surveillance in the United States.

Most of the powers covered under that law are overseen by a secret court that meets at Justice Department headquarters and must approve applications for wiretaps, searches and other operations. The NSA's operation is outside that court's purview, and according to the Times report, the Justice Department may have sought to limit how much that court was made aware of NSA activities.

Public disclosure of the NSA program also comes at a time of mounting concerns about civil liberties over the domestic intelligence operations of the U.S. military, which have also expanded dramatically after the Sept. 11 attacks.

For more than four years, the NSA tasked other military intelligence agencies to assist its broad-based surveillance effort directed at people inside the country suspected of having terrorist connections, even before Bush signed the 2002 order that authorized the NSA program, according to an informed U.S. official.

The effort, which began within days after the attacks, has consisted partly of monitoring domestic telephone conversations, e-mail and even fax communications of individuals identified by the NSA as having some connection to al Qaeda events or figures, or to potential terrorism-related activities in the United States, the official said.

It has also involved teams of Defense Intelligence Agency personnel stationed in major U.S. cities conducting the type of surveillance typically performed by the FBI: monitoring the movements and activities -- through high-tech equipment -- of individuals and vehicles, the official said.

The involvement of military personnel in such tasks was provoked by grave anxiety among senior intelligence officials after the 2001 suicide attacks that additional terrorist cells were present within U.S. borders and could only be discovered with the military's help, said the official, who had direct knowledge of the events.

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies at George Washington University, said the secret order may amount to the president authorizing criminal activity.

The law governing clandestine surveillance in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, prohibits conducting electronic surveillance not authorized by statute. A government agent can try to avoid prosecution if he can show he was "engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction," according to the law.

"This is as shocking a revelation as we have ever seen from the Bush administration," said Martin, who has been sharply critical of the administration's surveillance and detention policies. "It is, I believe, the first time a president has authorized government agencies to violate a specific criminal prohibition and eavesdrop on Americans."

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said she is "dismayed" by the report.

"It's clear that the administration has been very willing to sacrifice civil liberties in its effort to exercise its authority on terrorism, to the extent that it authorizes criminal activity," Fredrickson said.

The NSA activities were justified by a classified Justice Department legal opinion authored by John C. Yoo, a former deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel who argued that congressional approval of the war on al Qaeda gave broad authority to the president, according to the Times.

That legal argument was similar to another 2002 memo authored primarily by Yoo, which outlined an extremely narrow definition of torture. That opinion, which was signed by another Justice official, was formally disavowed after it was disclosed by the Washington Post.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos would not comment on the report last night.

Staff writers Dafna Linzer and Peter Baker contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1600021_pf.html

--------------------
Report: Bush Permitted NSA to Spy in U.S.
--------------------


December 16 2005, 3:23 AM PST

NEW YORK -- The National Security Agency has eavesdropped, without warrants, on as many 500 people inside the United States at any given time since 2002, The New York Times reported Friday.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wi...0,1366219.story

Visit latimes.com at http://www.latimes.com

Right you don't have no stinking rights!
Our glorious Boy King, Mr Bubbles controls all of us!
He tells us that to do and when to do it!
What country to invade and what lame ass excuse justifying it!
Who to torture and what lame ass way to ignore it!
Rights! Justice! ha! Don’t bore me with such quaint little words!
We are in a war against the biggest boogy man ever! Alqueda and those good of nothing tree hugging liberal commy terrorists! And in such a war we don't have room for such old thinking!



Ladies and Gents the fallowing was an expert of what was going threw Rummy little head when these questions asked of him.


6 or so years agoe, i use to believe that there was an underlying sence of justice in our country. that we as well as our governemnt even though not perfect did our best to behave ourselve in a civilized manner.
Boy have i been let down!

Now I bet in the next few day Red Joe will come out on Faux news and state that the Mr. Bubbles did nothing wrong and that he should be labled a hero!

Wow, I thought we would have tons of comments about this story.

I heard Bush flushed the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Must be true because nobody seems to remember what they stood for.

I hope you don't object to the edit...

I would still doubt Congress would actively pursue impeachment even if the Democrats gained control of the House.

Democratic Congressional response to this:

"Uh, sir, I'm not sure if this was such a good thing to do. Can we all agree not to do this sort of thing again? Okay. Group hug? Ahhh... now everybody feels better."

Democratic Senatorial Response:

" ".

Check this out!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051216/ap_on_...HNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Bush Won't Discuss Report of NSA Spying

WASHINGTON - President Bush refused to say whether the National Security Agency eavesdropped without warrants on people inside the United States but leaders of Congress condemned the practice on Friday and promised to look into what the administration has done.

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," said Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said there would be hearings early next year and that they would have "a very, very high priority." He wasn't alone in reacting harshly to the report. Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., said the story, first reported in Friday's New York Times, was troubling.
................................................................................
.....................................


"Ahhh Dicky did I mess up again! ah did i did i"

"Shut up Mr. Bubbles and make the monkey noise!"

my favorite part of the artilcle!

Bush played down the importance of the eavesdropping story. "It's not the main story of the day," Bush told Lehrer. "The main story of the day is the Iraqi elections" for parliament which took place on Thursday.

quick dumb ass save your self, use the Iraqi election 9-11 terrorist clause. come on it worked for OJ it can work for your Monkey ass!

That's NOT what I'm hearing.

Senator Feinstein is OUTRAGED!
Senator Byrd is OUTRAGED!

LISTEN TO C-SPAN 2 NOW
LIVE SENATE PROCEEDINGS

http://c-span.org/watch/cspan2_rm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS2

Dianne Feintsein on the Floor of the Senate, claimed that this is a violation of Federal Law!

That means this is impeachable!

Don't worry though, someone here will still trash the Democrats, even though it is Bush who broke the LAW!

This IS an impeachable offense.

Is there a link to Bolton, and to the documents that BushCo wouldn't release for his confirmation hearings?

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/12/16/142620/20

... Hey listen up to your local DJ
You better hear what he's got to say
There's not a problem that I can't fix
Cause I can do it in the mix
And if a man gives you trouble
Get it movin on the double
If you don't it'll trouble your brain
Cause away goes trouble
Down the drain
I said away goes trouble
Down the drain ...

I wouldn't be a bit surprised. I thought at the time that Bolton had gotten info on Joe Wilson through these reports. Here is something that I posted on my CGCS blog in April of this year.

Hearings Eyed In Wake Of Spy Flap


WASHINGTON, Dec. 16, 2005
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(CBS/AP) A key Republican committee chairman put the Bush administration on notice Friday that his panel would hold hearings into a report that the National Security Agency eavesdropped without warrants on people inside the United States.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he would make oversight hearings by his panel next year "a very, very high priority."

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," said Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Other key bipartisan members of Congress also called on the administration to explain and said a congressional investigation may be necessary.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., appeared annoyed that the first he had heard of such a program was through a New York Times story published Friday. He said the report was troubling.

Neither Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nor White House press secretary Scott McClellan, asked about the story earlier Friday, would confirm or deny that the super-secret NSA had spied on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002.

That year, following the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush authorized the NSA to monitor the international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States, the Times reported.

Before the program began, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders for such investigations. Overseas, 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time.

"We need to look into that," McCain told reporters at the White House after a meeting on Iraq with President Bush. "Theoretically, I obviously wouldn't like it. But I don't know the extent of it and I don't know enough about it to really make an informed comment. Ask me again in about a week."

McCain said it's not clear whether a congressional probe is warranted. He said the topic had not come up in the meeting with Bush.

"We should be informed as to exactly what is going on and then find out whether an investigation is called for," he said.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., also said he needed more information.

"Of course I was concerned about the story," said Lieberman, who also attended the White House Iraq meeting. "I'm going to go back to the office and see if I can find out more about it."

Other Democrats were more harsh.

"This is Big Brother run amok," declared Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. "We cannot protect our borders if we cannot protect our ideals." Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., called it a "shocking revelation" that he said "ought to send a chill down the spine of every senator and every American."

Administration officials reacted to the report by asserting that the president has respected the Constitution while striving to protect the American people.

Rice said Bush has "acted lawfully in every step that he has taken." And CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reported McClellan said Bush "is going to remain fully committed to upholding our Constitution and protect the civil liberties of the American people. And he has done both."

The report surfaced in an untimely fashion as the administration and its GOP allies on Capitol Hill were fighting to save provisions of the expiring USA Patriot Act that they believe are key tools in the fight against terrorism.

The Times said reporters interviewed nearly a dozen current and former administration officials about the program and granted them anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

Government officials credited the new program with uncovering several terrorist plots, including one by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting al Qaeda by planning to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, the report said.

Faris' lawyer, David B. Smith, said on Friday the news puzzled him because none of the evidence against Faris appeared to have come from surveillance, other than officials eavesdropping on his cell phone calls while he was in FBI custody.

Some NSA officials were so concerned about the legality of the program that they refused to participate, the Times said. Questions about the legality of the program led the administration to temporarily suspend it last year and impose new restrictions.

Asked about this on NBC's "Today" show, Rice said, "I'm not going to comment on intelligence matters."

"We're finding out that the president has possibly authorized the breaking of the law so that our government can eavesdrop on American citizens?" Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, told CBS Radio News. "We're still trying to process it, but it's truly amazing."

"This is sort of a centerpiece of our Constitution that we have the Fourth Amendment to prevent unreasonable search and seizures. The government is supposed to go through a process when it wants to use surveillance, particularly on an American citizen," Fredrickson added.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon said it was reviewing its use of a classified database of information about suspicious people and activity inside the United States after a report by NBC News said the database listed activities of anti-war groups that were not a security threat to Pentagon property or personnel.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said that while it appears that some information may have been left in the database longer than it should have been, it was not clear yet whether mistakes were made. A written statement issued by the department implied, but did not explicitly acknowledge, that some information had been handled improperly.

The administration had briefed congressional leaders about the NSA program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that handles national security issues.

An aide to West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS News the senator will not comment on the program today. Aides to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte declined to comment Thursday night.

The Times said it delayed publication of the report for a year because the White House said it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. The Times said it omitted information from the story that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists.



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/16/...in1132556.shtml

This is from Salon magazine.

How long did the Times hold its news?

As we noted earlier today, the New York Times is out with a story in which it says the Bush administration has been monitoring -- without warrants -- telephone calls and e-mail messages originated in the United States. What we didn't mention, and should have, is this snippet from the piece: "The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting."

Our question: When did the White House make its request, and what does "a year" mean? The Times is awfully light on details here, leaving itself open for speculation from the left as to whether the Times sat on the story through last year's presidential election. At the same time, the right is free to speculate about the Times' decision to run the story now, just as the Senate was about to take up and -- as it turns out -- vote down the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act.

We put the question of timing to Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, whose names appear at the top of the story. Lichtblau's response: "I'm afraid we're referring all calls to Catherine Mathis in corporate PR." So we put the question to Mathis' office, which faxed us a long statement from Times editor Bill Keller in response. It doesn't answer the question of timing -- Mathis said she'd look into that and get back to us -- but here's what it does say about the delay in publishing more generally:

"We start with the premise that a newspaper's job is to publish information that is a matter of public interest. Clearly a secret policy reversal that gives an American intelligence agency discretion to monitor communications within the country is a matter of public interest. From the outset, the question was not why we would publish it, but why we would not.

"A year ago, when this information first became known to Times reporters, the administration argued strongly that writing about this eavesdropping program would give terrorists clues about the vulnerability of their communications and would deprive the government of an effective tool for the protection of the country's security. Officials also assured senior editors of the Times that a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that the program raised no legal questions. As we have done before in rare instances when faced with a convincing national security argument, we agreed not to publish at that time.

"We also continued reporting, and in the ensuing months two things happened that changed our thinking.

"First, we developed a fuller picture of the concerns and misgivings that had been expressed during the life of the program. It is not our place to pass judgment on the legal or civil liberties questions involved in such a program, but it became clear those questions loomed larger within the government than we had previously understood.

"Second, in the course of subsequent reporting we satisfied ourselves that we could write about this program -- withholding a number of technical details -- in a way that would not expose any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record. The fact that the government eavesdrops on those suspected of terrorist connections is well-known. The fact that the NSA can legally monitor communications within the United States with a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is also public information. What is new is that the N.S.A. has for the past three years had the authority to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States without a warrant. It is that expansion of authority -- not the need for a robust anti-terror intelligence operation -- that prompted debate within the government, and that is the subject of the article."

We'll post more when we hear more from the Times.

-- Tim Grieve

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/index.html

‘‘They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Another story that the media sat on, which could have changed the outcome of the 2004 election.

NRNS

Larry Johnson thinks so!!! from post on TPM...at least as it relates to Bolton




Spying on Americans and John Bolton

By Larry Johnson

The revelation that the National Security Agency was allowed to conduct non-FISA intercepts of American citizens should bring last summer's hearing on John Bolton's nomination to the United Nations back into focus. As Legal times noted in September of this year, "During the confirmation hearings of John Bolton as the U.S. representative to the United Nations, it came to light that the NSA had freely revealed intercepted conversations of U.S. citizens to Bolton while he served at the State Department. . . . More generally, Newsweek reports that from January 2004 to May 2005, the NSA supplied intercepts and names of 10,000 U.S. citizens to policy-makers at many departments, other U.S. intelligence services, and law enforcement agencies."
We still don't know who he was looking at and what information was contained in those intercepts. More importantly, were they legally obtained? In light of the latest revelation, we have another possible explanation why the Bush Administration fought so strenuously to keep those intercepts secret and out of the hearing. Snooping without judicial review is wrong and must be punished.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/12/16/142620/20

Here are excerpts from today's WH Press Briefing. The questions started off with civil liberties issues and ended with civil liberties issues.

Q Scott, Senator Specter says that the Judiciary Committee is going to make it a high priority to look into this report that the President authorized the NSA to eavesdrop without warrant on people in the United States. And he says that there is no doubt that this is inappropriate. How do you respond to his characterization of what happened?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we have a responsibility to work with Congress to do all we can, within the law, to protect the American people. And that means preventing attacks and saving lives. And the President made a commitment that he would do everything within his power and within the law to prevent attacks and save lives. He renewed that commitment more than ever after September 11th. He also made a commitment that we would remain firmly committed to protecting the civil liberties of Americans and upholding our Constitution. He is doing both.

We are continuing to do all we can to save lives. That is the President's number one priority. We are sitting here talking about waging the war on terrorism. And the President is going to continue to act to protect the American people, but he'll do so within our laws. And in terms of these issues, there is congressional oversight of intelligence activities, and we will continue to work with members of Congress on those matters.

Q Will the Judiciary Committee be part of that oversight, or is that just the Intelligence Committees?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'd just say we would continue to work with members of Congress on these matters. This is about protecting the American people.

Q Will you cooperate with Senator Specter as the Judiciary Committee looks into this?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not sure there's any request that's been made of us at this point.

Q Is it your position that legal authority is required --

MR. McCLELLAN: Terry should turn off his phone.

Q -- for any surveillance of U.S. citizens by the NSA?

MR. McCLELLAN: A couple of things. One, I'm aware of the reports that were in the papers this morning.

Q I hope so.

MR. McCLELLAN: This relates to intelligence activities and ongoing intelligence operations that are aimed at saving lives. And there's a reason why we don't get into discussing ongoing intelligence activities, because it could compromise our efforts to prevent attacks from happening. We are doing all we can to disrupt plots and prevent attacks from happening. And it could telegraph to the enemy what we are doing. The enemy wants to know exactly what we are doing to go after them and prevent attacks from happening. And we don't want to do anything to compromise sources and methods.

Q Right, but all I asked you was whether it's your position that it always requires a court order for surveillance of U.S. citizens.

MR. McCLELLAN: What it's getting into -- again, let me reiterate. The President is firmly committed to upholding our Constitution and protecting people's civil liberties. That is something he has always kept in mind as we have moved forward from the attacks of September 11th, to do everything within our power to prevent attacks from happening. It's very important to him. We are meeting both those priorities. Those are two important priorities.

Now in terms of talking about the National Security Agency or matters like that, that would be getting into talking about ongoing intelligence activities. And they're classified for a reason, because they go to the issue of sources and methods and protecting the American people. And because they're classified, I'm not able to get into discussing those issues from this podium.

Q Let me follow with one other question. Is it your position that the congressional authorization for war against al Qaeda in 2001 allows the President to take some steps to collect intelligence?

MR. McCLELLAN: I just told you why I'm not going to get into discussing ongoing intelligence activities.

Q You mean you cannot say whether it's lawful to spy on Americans or not?

MR. McCLELLAN: We have a Constitution and we have laws.

Q We're not asking for any details. We're asking you --

MR. McCLELLAN: That's why I'm making a broad statement to let you know that we --

Q It is broad. Is it legal to spy on Americans?

MR. McCLELLAN: We have a Constitution and we have laws in place, and we follow those --

Q You say you are abiding by the law?

MR. McCLELLAN: Absolutely. And there's congressional oversight of intelligence activities, there's other oversight of intelligence activities.

Q Why do you have to have secret orders then?

MR. McCLELLAN: Does anybody have a question? Go ahead.

Q And how many secret orders have been issued by this President?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think the American people appreciate what we do to work within the law to prevent attacks from happening. The Patriot Act is being debated right now.

Q It's never been within the law to spy on Americans.

MR. McCLELLAN: The Patriot Act is something that members of the Senate are debating right now. The House has already acted on it. And the House, in a strong bipartisan fashion, renewed these vital tools for our law enforcement intelligence officers to protect the American people. This law has helped prevent attacks from happening by breaking up terrorist cells in parts of the United States.

And while the Senate didn't pass the vote that they were looking to do right now, their -- the leadership is committed to moving forward on this. They're still in -- there's some more time this year. We urge them to get this done now and pass that legislation. The President has made it very clear that he is not interested in signing any short-term renewal. The terrorist threats will not expire at the end of this year. They won't expire in three months. We need to move forward and pass this critical legislation.

Carl, do you have something?

Q Yes. To what extent is the administration confident that it has maintained communications with the necessary committees and jurisdiction on the Hill so that they're not going to claim that they're kept in the dark on this? Is there -- are you prepared to assert from the podium today that there is the necessary communication with the Hill so that their oversight remains intact?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes. We stay in contact with members of Congress -- the appropriate members of Congress who are responsible for these matters on intelligence activities.

Q To the extent that there has been --

MR. McCLELLAN: I noticed that report pointed something like that out within it.

Q To the extent that there has been "shock and dismay" already expressed on the floor of the U.S. Senate this morning, does that run contrary to your understanding of some of the communications that would allow them their oversight jurisdiction?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, let me, again, just repeat that the Congress does have an important oversight role. We stay in touch with them on intelligence activities. We all share the responsibility of doing our part to prevent attacks and save lives, and we will continue to work with members of Congress on those efforts

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20051216-1.html

Bush Won't Discuss Report of NSA Spying
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer

President Bush refused to say whether the National Security Agency eavesdropped without warrants on people inside the United States but leaders of Congress condemned the practice on Friday and promised to look into what the administration has done.

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," said Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said there would be hearings early next year and that they would have "a very, very high priority." He wasn't alone in reacting harshly to the report. Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., said the story, first reported in Friday's New York Times, was troubling.

Bush said in an interview that "we do not discuss ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country. And the reason why is that there's an enemy that lurks, that would like to know exactly what we're trying to do to stop them.

"I will make this point," Bush said. "That whatever I do to protect the American people — and I have an obligation to do so — that we will uphold the law, and decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people."

The president spoke in an interview to be aired Friday evening on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer."

Bush played down the importance of the eavesdropping story. "It's not the main story of the day," Bush told Lehrer. "The main story of the day is the Iraqi elections" for parliament which took place on Thursday.

Neither Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nor White House press secretary Scott McClellan would confirm or deny the report which said the super-secret NSA had spied on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002 in this country.

That year, following the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush authorized the NSA to monitor the international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds — perhaps thousands — of people inside the United States, the Times reported.

McClellan said the White House has received no requests for information from lawmakers because of the report. "Congress does have an important oversight role," he said.

Before the program began, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders for such investigations. Overseas, 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time.

"This is Big Brother run amok," declared Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., called it a "shocking revelation" that "ought to send a chill down the spine of every senator and every American."

Administration officials reacted to the report by asserting that the president has respected the Constitution while striving to protect the American people.

Rice said Bush has "acted lawfully in every step that he has taken." And McClellan said Bush "is going to remain fully committed to upholding our Constitution and protect the civil liberties of the American people. And he has done both."

The report surfaced as the administration and its GOP allies on Capitol Hill were fighting to save provisions of the expiring USA Patriot Act that they believe are key tools in the fight against terrorism. An attempt to rescue the approach favored by the White House and Republicans failed on a procedural vote Friday morning.

The Times said reporters interviewed nearly a dozen current and former administration officials about the program and granted them anonymity because of the classified nature of the program.

Government officials credited the new program with uncovering several terrorist plots, including one by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting al-Qaida by planning to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, the report said.

Some NSA officials were so concerned about the legality of the program that they refused to participate, the Times said. Questions about the legality of the program led the administration to temporarily suspend it last year and impose new restrictions.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused to confirm that the NSA eavesdrops on Americans or whether he played any role, in his previous job as White House counsel, in providing legal justification for the program.

Gonzales said Bush is waging an aggressive fight against terrorism, but one that is "consistent with the Constitution."

But he said generally that the government has an intense need for information in the struggle. "Winning the war on terrorism requires winning the war of information We are dealing with a patient, diabolical enemy who wants to harm America," Gonzales said at a news conference at the Justice Department on child prostitution arrests.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the group was shocked by the disclosure.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon said it was reviewing its use of a classified database of information about suspicious people and activity inside the United States after a report by NBC News said the database listed activities of anti-war groups that were not a security threat to Pentagon property or personnel.

The administration had briefed congressional leaders about the NSA program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that handles national security issues.

The Times said it delayed publication of the report for a year because the White House said it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. The Times said it omitted information from the story that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists.



Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


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http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411366/640786

Scandal emerges over US wire taps


Dec 17, 2005

President George W. Bush refused to discuss a report that he secretly authorized a US agency to eavesdrop on people in America but said everything he does to protect the public against terrorism is within the law.

The New York Times said Bush signed a secret presidential order after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to allow the National Security Agency to track the international telephone calls and emails of hundreds of people without the court approval normally required for domestic spying.

The report added to critics' concerns that the White House violated civil rights while pursuing the war on terrorism it declared after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Bush and other administration officials declined to comment specifically on the report, but said he stayed within the law while acting to protect people from further attacks.

"We do not discuss ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country, and the reason why is that there's an enemy that lurks, that would like to know exactly what we're trying to do to stop them," Bush said.

"I will make this point. That whatever I do to protect the American people, and I have an obligation to do so, that we will uphold the law, and decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people," he said.

He was speaking in an interview with with PBS's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" to be broadcast later on Friday.

The Times said the 2002 directive to the NSA marked a major shift in US intelligence-gathering and led some officials to question whether the strategy violated constitutional limits on legal searches.

The NSA, based at Fort Meade, Maryland, is authorized to monitor communications on foreign soil.

An NSA spokesperson declined to comment on the report.

Concern from civil liberties advocates

Americans have been wary of domestic monitoring by intelligence agencies since it was learned in the 1970s that the Pentagon spied on civil rights and anti-Vietnam War groups. That led to legislation imposing strict limits on intelligence gathering inside the United States.

The Bush administration has faced criticism over a range of rights issues in its declared war on terrorism, including its treatment of detainees.

On Friday, a group of senators calling for increased protection of civil liberties blocked renewal by Congress of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law passed soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. It expanded the federal government's authority to share information, conduct secret searches and obtain private records.

Civil liberties advocates condemned what they viewed as illegal and unconstitutional NSA activities.

"The administration is claiming extraordinary presidential powers at the expense of civil liberties and is putting the president above the law," Caroline Fredrickson, Washington legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

John Negroponte, US director of national intelligence, has said in interviews that the country is safer now partly due to more integration of international and domestic espionage.

A Democratic congressional official involved in intelligence oversight said, "The lesson we learned from 9/11 - more than how the intelligence was organized, more than information-sharing - was that we had been doing an abysmal job of learning what terrorists might be doing inside our own country."

He added, "But as part of the process of overseeing intelligence, I hope whatever we're doing, we're doing in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations."

The New York Times cited some officials as saying questions about the NSA's new powers led the administration to suspend the operation last year and impose more restrictions.

It said the administration informed the leaders of the Senate and House intelligence committees about the program. But other lawmakers said on Friday there was a need for greater disclosure to Congress.

"We need to look into that," remarked Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who said he had heard only media reports about the NSA program. "We should be informed as to exactly what's going on, and then find out whether an investigation is called for. All we have is initial reports."


Source: Reuters

Bush Approved Eavesdropping, Official Says
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON - President Bush has personally authorized a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States more than three dozen times since October 2001, a senior intelligence official said Friday night.

The disclosure follows angry demands by lawmakers earlier in the day for congressional inquiries into whether the monitoring by the highly secretive National Security Agency violated civil liberties.

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," declared Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He promised hearings early next year.

Bush on Friday refused to discuss whether he had authorized such domestic spying without obtaining warrants from a court, saying that to comment would tie his hands in fighting terrorists.

In a broad defense of the program put forward hours later, however, a senior intelligence official told The Associated Press that the eavesdropping was narrowly designed to go after possible terrorist threats in the United States.

The official said that, since October 2001, the program has been renewed more than three dozen times. Each time, the White House counsel and the attorney general certified the lawfulness of the program, the official said. Bush then signed the authorizations.

During the reviews, government officials have also provided a fresh assessment of the terrorist threat, showing that there is a catastrophic risk to the country or government, the official said.

"Only if those conditions apply do we even begin to think about this," he said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the intelligence operation.

"The president has authorized NSA to fully use its resources — let me underscore this now — consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution to defend the United States and its citizens," the official said, adding that congressional leaders have also been briefed more than a dozen times.

Senior administration officials asserted the president would do everything in his power to protect the American people while safeguarding civil liberties.

"I will make this point," Bush said in an interview with "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." "That whatever I do to protect the American people — and I have an obligation to do so — that we will uphold the law, and decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people."

The surveillance, disclosed in Friday's New York Times, is said to allow the agency to monitor international calls and e-mail messages of people inside the United States. But the paper said the agency would still seek warrants to snoop on purely domestic communications — for example, Americans' calls between New York and California.

"I want to know precisely what they did," Specter said. "How NSA utilized their technical equipment, whose conversations they overheard, how many conversations they overheard, what they did with the material, what purported justification there was."

Sen. Russ Feingold (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., a member of the Judiciary Committee, said, "This shocking revelation ought to send a chill down the spine of every American."

Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush chief of staff Andrew Card went to the Capitol Friday to meet with congressional leaders and the top members of the intelligence committees, who are often briefed on spy agencies' most classified programs. Members and their aides would not discuss the subject of the closed sessions.

The intelligence official would not provide details on the operations or examples of success stories. He said senior national security officials are trying to fix problems raised by the Sept. 11 commission, which found that two of the suicide hijackers were communicating from San Diego with al-Qaida operatives overseas.

"We didn't know who they were until it was too late," the official said.

Some intelligence experts who believe in broad presidential power argued that Bush would have the authority to order these searches without warrants under the Constitution.

In a case unrelated to the NSA's domestic eavesdropping, the administration has argued that the president has vast authority to order intelligence surveillance without warrants "of foreign powers or their agents."

"Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority," the Justice Department said in a 2002 legal filing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.

Other intelligence veterans found difficulty with the program in light of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed after the intelligence community came under fire for spying on Americans. That law gives government — with approval from a secretive U.S. court — the authority to conduct covert wiretaps and surveillance of suspected terrorists and spies.

In a written statement, NSA spokesman Don Weber said the agency would not provide any information on the reported surveillance program. "We do not discuss actual or alleged operational issues," he said.

Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, former NSA general counsel, said it was troubling that such a change would have been made by executive order, even if it turns out to be within the law.

Parker, who has no direct knowledge of the program, said the effect could be corrosive. "There are programs that do push the edge, and would be appropriate, but will be thrown out," she said.

Prior to 9/11, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance activities to foreign embassies and missions — and obtained court orders for such investigations. Much of its work was overseas, where thousands of people with suspected terrorist ties or other valuable intelligence may be monitored.

The report surfaced as the administration and its GOP allies on Capitol Hill were fighting to save provisions of the expiring USA Patriot Act that they believe are key tools in the fight against terrorism. An attempt to rescue the approach favored by the White House and Republicans failed on a procedural vote.

Spy agency disruption reaches Fort Meade
America's "ear" on terrorism war wracked by poor morale, management failures

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

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April 12, 2005—Up to now, little has been reported on how the Bush administration's disastrous intelligence policies have affected the super secret National Security Agency (NSA).

According to NSA insiders, the chief U.S. signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection agency has been wracked by much of the same internal feuding, senior management failures, and external political pressure that have plagued other U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geo-spatial Intelligence Agency, and National Reconnaissance Office.

NSA insiders lay blame for the problems at NSA's Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters squarely on the shoulders of agency director Air Force General Michael V. Hayden and his small coterie of close advisers, a few of whom have no substantive intelligence background. Hayden has been NSA director since March 1999, the longest tour for any NSA director. Not only did the White House extend Hayden's NSA tour, but also nominated him to be the first deputy director of National Intelligence, where he will serve under John Negroponte.

Hayden's reign at NSA has been marked by the emaciation of the career civilian corps through forced retirements and resignations, outsourcing of government positions to contractors, intimidation, forced psychiatric and psychological examinations for "problem" employees, increased work loads for shift personnel with no personnel augmentation, unreasonable personal searches by security personnel, and withholding salary increases for career personnel. A number of NSA employees are suffering from stress and fatigue and that is adversely affecting their job performance.

One of the most pervasive operational problems at NSA stems from the fact that when newly trained civilian and military linguists, analysts, and other operational personnel arrive at NSA for duty and are integrated into various operational work centers, they are soon quickly transferred to Iraq. This puts an inordinate workload on the career civilian NSA personnel.

In other cases, critical experienced employees have been forced out of NSA because of policy differences, especially those related to the war against Iraq. One linguist who was fluent in 14 languages, including Arabic, Russian, Japanese, Hindi, Chinese, Modern Greek, and Spanish was forced into retirement over policy differences with NSA senior management. NSA concocted trumped up charges against the linguist. Another analyst, who worked closely with the CIA's satellite imagery division on Iraq and other hot spots, was repeatedly harassed by NSA's Stasi-like security personnel. In other cases, experienced NSA employees who don't fit the mold have been charged with infractions as ludicrous as stalking, gun running, and personality disorders.

When Hayden first began his civilian shake up at NSA in 2000, career professionals described it as an "internal coup." For many longtime NSA employees, the writing was on the wall and it was not a pleasant message. However, to the outsider, Hayden has represented a "kinder and gentler" NSA director. During the filming of the movie thriller about NSA, "Enemy of the State," Hayden invited lead star Will Smith to tour the National Security Operations Center (NSOC). Members of the film crew were allowed to buy NSA curios and souvenirs from the agency's gift shop. In addition, Hayden has thrown NSA's doors open to 60 Minutes, Nightline, and other news media. However, to NSA career employees, Hayden's iron fist tactics have earned him the nickname "Hitler Hayden."

Hayden also seems more concerned about public relations than NSA's mission. NSA insiders cite the presence of two female analysts in the Denial and Deception (called "D and D" in NSA parlance) branch of the NSOC who do nothing but scan the media for any stories about NSA, positive and negative. Their jobs are duplicated in Hayden's General Counsel's office.

Career NSA personnel claim that their most senior member, Deputy Director of NSA William B. Black, Jr., shows little interest in their plight. One long-time NSAer said Black often nods off at Hayden's staff meetings. In 2000, Black, a retired NSA employee with 38 years of service, was rehired by Hayden from Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to be his deputy. Hayden's selection of Black from outside the agency was considered a slap in the faces of those line NSA officers who would have been normally considered next in line for promotion to the much-coveted post. That slight began to severely affect agency morale a little over a year before the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

After 9-11 and subsequent revelations that NSA had intercepted two Arabic language phone calls on September 10, 2001, ("Tomorrow is zero hour" and "The match is about to begin") that indicated an imminent attack by al Qaeda but failed to translate and analyze them in a timely manner to be effective, Hayden was looking for scapegoats. According to NSA insiders, he found one in Maureen A. Baginski, the director of NSA's Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) Directorate. According to the NSA insiders, Baginski, a 27-year NSA veteran and Russian and Spanish linguist, was set up for a fall by Hayden and his team. In 2003, Baginski was named executive assistant director of the FBI for Intelligence.

Another Hayden project, "Groundbreaker," the outsourcing of NSA functions to contractors, has also been used by Hayden's advisers to assign blame for the 911 failures at NSA.

However, the career NSA operational personnel may be getting squeezed not so much for policy differences but because of what they know about the lies of the Bush administration. In addition to the obvious lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), many personnel are well aware that what occurred on the morning of 9-11 was not exactly what was reported by the White House.

For example, George W. Bush spoke of the heroic actions of the passengers and crew aboard United Flight 93 over rural Pennsylvania on the morning of 9-11. However, NSA personnel on duty at the NSOC that morning have a very different perspective. Before Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, NSA operations personnel clearly heard on the intercom system monitoring military and civilian communications that the "fighters are engaged" with the doomed United aircraft. NSOC personnel were then quickly dismissed from the tactical area of the NSOC where the intercom system was located leaving only a few senior personnel in place. NSA personnel are well aware that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld did not "misspeak" when, addressing U.S. troops in Baghdad during Christmas last year, said, "the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania." They believe the White House concocted the "passengers-bring-down-plane" story for propaganda value.

Morale at NSA has plummeted from repeated cover-ups of serious breaches of security by senior officials. While rank-and-file employees are subjected to abusive psychological and psychiatric evaluations for disagreeing with summary intelligence reports provided to outside users or "consumers" and even for more mundane matters, others are given a pass. Ironically, one of the psychiatrists used by NSA to evaluate problem or disgruntled employees was recently found by police to be growing marijuana at his home in Crofton, Maryland.

In another case, after suggestive photos of a female Air Force captain, who was an aide to Hayden, were found on a pornographic website under the title Captain amErika. NSA security did nothing to discipline or seriously investigate the officer in question. The website was apparently set up by the Air Force officer's ex-husband. After NSA took legal action, the original website was taken down. The NSA contended it was concerned about the website because it contained the names of NSA field stations, including the Bad Aibling intercept station in Germany. However, a group of non-commissioned officers who object to the double standards for conduct imposed on enlisted personnel and officers have re-created much of the original Captain amErika website at www.captainamerika.us. The web administrator is based in South Bend, Indiana. The site continues to refer to Bad Aibling and the NSA communications intercept system known as "Echelon," contains the original pornographic material, and makes severe allegations about General Hayden's personal conduct. The website claims the officer known as Captain amErika has been promoted to major and is on the fast track for early promotion to lieutenant colonel.

There have been other sexual related scandals at NSA that resulted in little or no action being taken against the offenders. In 1999, a senior NSA officer, on assignment overseas, was arrested by police in his hotel room while filming a sex video with a child. The officer was forced to retire but became an NSA contractor in Florida making two to three times his NSA salary. In a more recent incident, an NSA SIGINT operator who was monitoring a targeted person's Internet activity involving access to child pornography web sites, lifted the NSA security filters to look at the pornography for himself, a violation of NSA operational procedures.

The recently-released 600-page report of the Presidential Commission on WMD intelligence failures in Iraq, co-chaired by Republican Judge Laurence Silberman and former Democratic Senator Charles Robb, concluded that there was no evidence that the Bush administration pressured U.S. intelligence agencies to "cook" or "cherry pick" the intelligence needed to justify the war against Iraq. Rather than focus on the pressure exerted on agencies by Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and other neoconservative officials in the National Security Council, Pentagon, and State Department, the report blamed the intelligence agencies for providing "worthless or misleading" information on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to senior Bush policymakers. Silberman, a key player in the Iran-Contra cover-up scandal while a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, told Bush at the White House briefing in which the final report was submitted, "We did not see any evidence of false intelligence being injected by any policymaker into the intelligence community."

What is happening at NSA is also occurring at the CIA and other agencies. A senior CIA official is suing the CIA for being fired last August for refusing to falsify CIA reports on Iraqi WMD in order to justify the White House's pre-emptive attack. As with the senior Arabic and Russian linguist at NSA, the CIA officer was falsely investigated for personal improprieties in retaliation for his refusal to cook intelligence for the White House. In the case of the CIA officer, the CIA's investigation was predicated on alleged financial and sexual misconduct.

The WMD Intelligence Commission's report failed to look at the underlying causes of U.S. intelligence failures: mismanagement and corruption at senior levels. That incompetence and malfeasance continues at the NSA, CIA, and other intelligence agencies. George Tenet, someone who was as damaging to CIA morale as Hayden has been for NSA's, resigned as CIA director and then was given a medal by President Bush. His successor, Porter Goss, has carried out a top-down purge directed by the neo-conservatives in the administration. Hayden, who has allowed morale at NSA to sink to an all-time low, has been promoted to the Directorate of National Intelligence as deputy.

By its failure to assign blame to the very top officials of the U.S. intelligence community and its continued harassment of career intelligence professionals, the Bush administration continues to send the message that it is okay to lie, cheat, and engage in inappropriate behavior. To challenge the administration, however, will result in firings, early retirements, harassment, and investigations on sham charges.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the author of the forthcoming book "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops & Brass Plates." He was assigned to the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration.

http://www.onlinejournal.org/Special_Repor...1205madsen.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=100...gMsvUY&refer=us

Rice Denies U.S. Broke Law Amid Report Bush Authorized Spying

Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today defended President George W. Bush against reports he authorized spying on American citizens and foreign nationals in the U.S. following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The New York Times reported that Bush in 2002 secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without the court-approved warrants that are required for domestic spying. The international phone calls and e-mail messages of hundreds, possibly thousands, of people have been monitored without warrants to find numbers linked to al-Qaeda, the paper said.

Rice, interviewed on NBC's ``Today'' show, said ``the president has been very clear that he would not order people to do things that are illegal.'' She declined to comment directly on the New York Times report.

The presidential order Bush signed represents a change in responsibilities for the NSA, which traditionally monitors actions in foreign countries, the Times said.

The paper said it interviewed nearly a dozen current and former administration officials about the program and granted them anonymity because the information was classified. The officials said the administration is confident that existing safeguards protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, the Times said.

The Bush administration briefed Congressional leaders about the program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Court, the secret court in Washington that handles national security issues, the paper said.

`A Heavy Responsibility'

Rice today said Bush has a responsibility to adhere to the rules of the Constitution when making intelligence decisions and has protected Americans' civil liberties.

``The kind of attack that we experienced on Sept. 11, that means that the president has a heavy responsibility'' to ``protect and defend Americans,'' Rice said. ``But he did it always -- anything that he did -- legally and within his constitutional responsibility.''

The Times said it held off publishing its report for a year because the administration said that could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. Some information that administration officials could be useful to terrorists was omitted, the paper said.

I'd be looking for a special to be done by 60 minutes or Nightline (although Koppel is no longer at Nightline). I bet they are none too happy that their team was given a snow job to throw them off the track.

Bush can't hide behind his bureaucracy this time. We have confirmation that Bush PERSONALLY OK'd this. Check out my other thread.

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...showtopic=45285

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/New_York_Tim..._held_1215.html

New York Times admits it held domestic spying story for a full year

RAW STORY

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On the second page of a report which reveals the White House engaged in warrantless domestic spying, the New York Times reveals that it held the story for a full year at the request of the Bush Administration, RAW STORY can reveal.

The Times also reveals that senior members of Congress from both parties knew about Bush's decision to spy on Americans who were making international calls or emails, without warrants.

Further, the Times notes that they have omitted information in the article they did write, agreeing with the Bush Administration that the information could be useful for terrorists. Excerpts from the Times' article follow.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it said the N.S.A. eavesdropped without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time. The list changes as some names are added and others dropped, so the number monitored in this country may have reached into the thousands over the past three years, several officials said. Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time, according to those officials.

Several officials said the eavesdropping program had helped uncover a plot by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker and naturalized citizen who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting Al Qaeda by planning to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches. What appeared to be another Qaeda plot, involving fertilizer bomb attacks on British pubs and train stations, was exposed last year in part through the program, the officials said. But they said most people targeted for N.S.A. monitoring have never been charged with a crime, including an Iranian-American doctor in the South who came under suspicion because of what one official described as dubious ties to Osama bin Laden.

This is an excerpt where Brooks & Shields talk about the NSA story and the President's interview with Lehrer.

JIM LEHRER: Now, to the analysis of all of this, of Shields and Brooks-- syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.

First on the NSA surveillance story, first what is your reaction to the story itself and how do you react to the president's reaction?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, when you open the paper I work at the paper but didn't see it until I opened the paper, and your eyes pop out.

And the president's reaction is not going to fly. If you are not getting warrants, the burden of proof is on you to say why. I'm perfectly willing to accept that maybe there is a good reason why they had to go around the warrant system. But you got to tell me why.

And you got to tell me why, given that there has been this torture debate where they didn't seem to want to defend that. They just bluntly said we need it but then they never could tell you why.

You know, this is the administration's problem on many of these issues. They want to put up a firm wall, secretly the smart people in the administration know they're going to have to give in and give an explanation, eventually they will cave. Why don't they do it right away?

JIM LEHRER: What do you think, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I thought, first of all, the interview the president basically confirmed the story in the New York Times by not denying it and not addressing it and not