leak, they call this a Leak??? last time there was a leak like this... Noah built hiself a boat!!!
Posted on 12/15/2005 5:27:25 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Something similar here...
NBC News leaks secret 400-page Defense Department document.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1539878/posts
The real story here, IMHO is why is NBC or the NYT etc. are allowed to get away with leaking SECRET Defense Department documents?.
ROTFL
I wasn't trying to email my husband overseas, he was here, my son was in London.
My son narrowly missed being caught in the first bombings because he over slept. The second time he was returning to London on the day of the bombings. The first time I awoke at exactly the time of the bombings and turned on my computer to the alert and reached my son on the cell phone before he even knew what had happened. I had to tell him to just go back to his apt and wait. The second time my cell phone was out of commission and I couldn't get through to my husband after I mentioned the London bombings.
Good.
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.
--
granted anonymity? by who? The NY slimes.
get over it , folks, we are at war.
Exactly........President Bush did exactly the RIGHT thing. The only people upset about this are clueless A-hole troublemakers who have something to hide.
Well, the next "sky is falling" subject for the Dumbs to try to impeach Bush is now officially on the table.
Good for my president...
The most telling item in the full article is that the White House worked with the NYTimes to eliminate specific things that might help the terrorists know how or what we were listening to.
A question: Are any foreign governments doing this to our citizens today? Of course they are - I have no doubts that Russia, China, Israel and others have major listening projects like this, perhaps centered in Washington DC and NYC. And I suspect that the USA does the same in major capitals also.
The best that will come out of this revelation is that there will be more FISA applications. If this program is restricted, perhaps we will hire someone else to do it for us.
Also, this could be an impeachment issue...
So when is an independent counsel with unlimited funds going to be appointed to prosecute these leakers?
Apparently there are traitors afoot in D.C. in every conceivable corner. It's beginning to look like a concerted effort.
Just yesterday on CSPAN, they had a "hearing" with employees of the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department, all talking about how bad the Bush appointees in that division are and whining, mind you, that he actually APPOINTED people to tell them, the career people, what to do.
Of course a Democrat president would never do something to infringe on civil rights during a time of war. Sure, FDR rounded up all the Japanese-Americans and stuck them in concentration camps until the war was over, but I'll bet he never intercepted their cell phone calls.
It has been fairly well known for several years now that the CIA is packed with career Democrats who are at war with Bush. If the Republicans had any balls they would pass a law giving Bush the power to completely clean house.
The big flap made over the "leaking" of non-covert Valerie Plame VS a dozen government officials leaking classified information during war time to reporters....Now, tell me, which of these smacks of treason?
The NYTimes is out to get this President any way it can.
They're dispicable. Guess these liberals don't understand that if our enemies take over our country, the newspapers and libs with money will be the first to go.
leak, they call this a Leak??? last time there was a leak like this... Noah built hiself a boat!!!
Wow another story from a unamed Whitehouse official... Trust but Verify...
This is complete BS. If this had been done by a democrat president everyone would be up in arms. Bush is wrong. Liberties out the window, all in the name of security. You can rationalize anything you want in the name of security. The jack boots are just trying to find terrorists, after all.
seems to me that the only thing they are doing is eavesdropping on email and phones that originate from the US to an overseas location or vice versa - it is like a virtual wiretap on the overseas number without tipping off the locals
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.