New scrutiny for Bush’s warrantless-search program

January 11, 2006

The controversy surrounding the administration’s warrantless-search program is percolating along nicely, with several items in the headlines today that move the ball forward.

For example, a 20-year veteran of the NSA acknowledged yesterday that he was a source for the New York Times article that broke the story, and he’s anxious to tell lawmakers what he knows about legally dubious decisions.

[Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency] tells ABC News that some of those secret “black world” operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the National Security Agency in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists.

“The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we’re going to do whatever it takes to get them,” he said.

Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use.

“If you picked the word ‘jihad’ out of a conversation,” Tice said, “the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing.”

While the White House has repeatedly emphasized that this was a “limited” program, Tice told ABC that, if the full range of secret NSA programs is used, the number of Americans who’ve been caught up in the surveillance could be “in the millions.” As Tice put it, “That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum.”

The NSA has already suggested that Tice is “unbalanced” and a disgruntled former employee. Is he? Let’s have some congressional hearings and explore the whole range of issues.

And speaking of hearings…

The Wall Street Journal reported late yesterday that House Dems are planning a Jan. 20 panel to discuss the domestic surveillance program in more detail now that — surprise, surprise — the House Judiciary Committee has ignored Dem requests for a formal hearing.

The Democrats’ star witness: Bruce Fein, former Reagan administration lawyer who has criticized the classified program, in which the National Security Agency did not seek warrants to monitor communications by U.S. citizens said to be in touch with people allegedly linked to international terrorism. […]

Michigan Rep. John Conyers, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, releases Harvard prof Laurence Tribe’s analysis of the administration argument: “The technical legal term for that, I believe, is poppycock,” Tribe writes.

Tribe has the soundbite, but Fein’s criticism, in particular, is significant in light of his conservative bona fides. Fein has even suggested the president’s conduct through the NSA may be “an impeachable offense.”

As for the NSA, it’s engaged in an internal investigation of the program.

The National Security Agency’s inspector general has opened an investigation into eavesdropping without warrants in the United States by the agency authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a letter released late yesterday.

The Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Thomas F. Gimble, wrote that his counterpart at the NSA “is already actively reviewing aspects of that program” and has “considerable expertise in the oversight of electronic surveillance,” according to the letter sent to House Democrats who have requested official investigations of the NSA program.

Gimble’s letter appears to confirm that an internal investigation into the NSA’s domestic eavesdropping program, authorized by Bush in a secret order revealed in recent weeks, is underway.

This is a controversy loaded with investigations, isn’t it? Bush’s DoJ is investigating the leak, the NSA is investigating itself, and in a few weeks, the Senate Judiciary Committee will investigate the whole mess.

Wouldn’t if been nice if he (or anybody) else had come forward before “Abu Al” Gonzales’ confirmation hearings (let alone before the election)?

  • I wonder if the inspector general was “in the know” about the program or not.

    One of the things that astonished me about the NYT piece is the indication there were close to a dozen sources. How does NYT find almost a dozen people to be a source on such a clandestine program that most of congress didn’t know about it? These people had to know each other.

    That’s a lot of sources to risk their careers and freedom. It’ll be ineteresting to see where this all goes. The beans have already been partially spilled. As this plays out, if lies are told – we already know close to 12 people didn’t like what was going on – if there’s a cover-up, I’d expect more leaks.

  • Democracy Now had a lenghty interview with Tice on Jan. 3, 2006. It is worth a read for more background on the circumstance of Tice’s dismissal from the NSA. The ABC interview contains more information on the technical capablities of the NSA, but Tice does not come out and say that these capapbilities were used in the extra-Fisa spying. However, in the Democracy Now interview Tice has the following exchange with the interviewer Amy Goodman,

    AMY GOODMAN: What about the telecoms, the telecommunications corporations working with the Bush administration to open up a back door to eavesdropping, to wiretapping?

    RUSSELL TICE: If that was done and, you know, I use a big “if” here, and, remember, I can’t tell you what I know of how N.S.A. does its business, but I can use the wiggle words like “if” and scenarios that don’t incorporate specifics, but nonetheless, if U.S. gateways and junction points in the United States were used to siphon off information, I would think that the corporate executives of these companies need to be held accountable, as well, because they would certainly also know that what they’re doing is wrong and illegal. And if they have some sort of court order or some sort of paper or something signed from some government official, Congress needs to look at those papers and look at the bottom line and see whose signature is there. And these corporations know that this is illegal, as well. So everyone needs to be held accountable in this mess.

    This inability to to state specifically what the NSA had done would explain the ambigutity in the ABC interview. It of course all comes down to Tice’s credibility and as CB says Congressional hearing could resolve that question. Clearly, Tice would not object to appearing before Congress. He states repeated in his Democracy Now interview that it is up to Congress to look into the matter. He has also contacted Congress.

    AMY GOODMAN: Has Congress responded to your letter offering to testify as a former employee of the National Security Agency?

    RUSSELL TICE: Not yet. Of course, the holidays – you know, we just had the holidays here, so everybody is out of town. I can’t condemn Congress too much yet, because I faxed it out on, I do believe, the 18th of December, and we’re just getting into the new year.

    AMY GOODMAN: And who did you send it to?

    RUSSELL TICE: I sent it to the chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, the SSCI and the HPSCI.

    He has not heard back. He attributes this to the Holidays. I think the better explaination is that his letter was sent the the Republican Chairs of the Senate and House Intelligence Committtees. Let’s hope that Snarl’n’ Arlen calls Tice because I doubt that he will ever hear from the Intellegence Committee Chairs.

  • That’s just stupid. How often does a jihadist actually say the word “jihad” over the telephone, especially when they’re a secret sleeper cell planning an attack? The main people who would use any outright words like that are likely to not be terrorists; while the terrorists are more likely to talk in veiled language and code words to describe everything. Words that might be deciphered by someone listening in, but which would probably not be programmed into a search program. And so we’d be far more likely to listen to innocent conversations than bad ones.

    BTW, I thought we already knew about this stuff, and I’ve been assuming that it happened all the time. Not just on international calls, but all calls. And is there any reason that the rationalizations that the Bushies give for this wouldn’t permit such a thing?

  • How many free passes does the White House get on calling somebody disgruntled? I mean if they are this lousy on how they are treating their employees, maybe they shouldn’t be there.

  • How often does a jihadist actually say the word “jihad” over the telephone, especially when they’re a secret sleeper cell planning an attack?

    I have a number of friends that work at Navy funded lab on a University campus. Many of them do classified research. They can talk about their work in general terms, but can not reveal specific numbers. This leads me to a possible explanation for Tice’s citing Jihad as an example of a key word.

    The NSA may be more sophisticated on these matters than Tice has let on. They may be aware of the exact types of phrases used by terrorists to try to avoid detection. If that is the case revealing what those phrases are would be aiding the terrorists and Tice doesn’t want to help the terrorists.

    Speculation? Yes. But again let me state that I agree with CB, let congress sort this out.

  • Doctor Biobrain, I’m pretty sure Tice not saying the system is limited to listening for the word “jihad” but making the example that the system is capable of listening for and selecting calls by specific criteria.

  • The Bush Administration can be accused of many crimes and misdemeanors, but the NSA spy program Tice alludes to is ECHELON, and it has been around since at least the Reagan administration. The Bush wiretap scandal pales in comparison to ECHELON. I’m surprised no one in the MSM has been talking about it (that I’ve seen).

    http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html

  • Addison, I just looked at the link you’ve posted. I does a very good job of describing ECHELON and giving a short history of the illegal use of NSA. You are right that the technology that Tice has described is in essence ECHELON, with the exception of the network diagram he describes.

    The author of the link which is dated 1999/2000 breathlessly suggests that ECHELON has been use for domestic spying without any evidence. Tice, an insider, is obliquely telling us that ECHELON is part of the Bush extra-FISA spying. This is the reason his revelation is so stunning.

    There may be more to the Bush extra-FISA story than the domestic use of ECHELON. One indication that this is so is Jay Rockefeller’s in ability to respond to the Vice-President about the program, after a top secret briefing, because of, at least in part, the lack of technological skills. Presumably as chair and now ranking member of the Intelligence Committee he has been fully briefed on ECHELON. Therefore he would not have had this reaction if ECHELON were the only component of the extra-FISA spying. This of course is speculation on my part.

    I think that the best course for the loyal opposition in the matter of extra-FISA spying should not automatically assume the worst case scenario. Should the worst case scenario turn out not to be true the Bush gang can say that what they did wasn’t really all that bad, even thought it is clear by his own admissions that he broke the law.

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