Spies Left Out in the Cold by Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 3:00 a.m. 13.Dec.1999 PST It's enough to spook any spy. Congress plans to hold hearings next year that will, for the first time in a quarter century, investigate whether the National Security Agency is too zealous for our own good. Much has changed since those hearings in 1975. Instead of being a place so secretive that the Department of Justice once abandoned a key prosecution rather than reveal the National Security Agency's existence in court, "the Fort" has become enmeshed in popular culture. Techno-thrillers like Enemy of the State, Mercury Rising, Sneakers, and even cut-rate TV series like UPN's 7 Days regularly depict NSA officials -- to their chagrin -- as eavesdrop-happy Nixonites. But one thing has remained the same. The agency is barred from spying inside the United States and is supposed to snoop only on international communications. Through a system reportedly named Echelon, it distributes reports on its findings to the US government and its foreign allies. Do those findings include intercepted email messages and faxes sent by Americans to Americans? Maybe, and that's what's causing all the fuss. News articles on Echelon have captured the zeitgeist of the moment, spurred along by PR stunts like "Jam Echelon" day. Newsweek reported this week that the NSA is going to "help the FBI track terrorists and criminals in the United States." (The agency denied it.) A 6 December New Yorker article also wondered about the future of Fort George Meade. That future could look a lot like the past: congressional action that, in the end, doesn't amount to much. For this article, Wired News reviewed the original documents and transcripts from the Church committee hearings that took place in the Watergate-emboldened Senate in 1975. The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities published its final report in April 1976. It wasn't an easy process. NSA defenders tried their best to kick the public out of the hearing room and hold the sessions behind closed doors. "I believe the release of communications intelligence information can cause harm to the national security," complained Senator Barry Goldwater, a Republican who voted against disclosing information on illicit NSA surveillance procedures and refused to sign the final report. "The public's right to know must be responsibly weighed against the impact of release on the public's right to be secure.... Disclosures could severely cripple or even destroy the vital capabilities of this indispensible safeguard to our nation's security," said another senator. But Democratic Senator Frank Church and his allies on the committee prevailed, and disclosed enough information to give any Americans the privacy jitters. Among the findings: Shamrock: In 1945, the NSA's predecessor coerced Western Union, RCA, and ITT Communications to turn over telegraph traffic to the Feds. The project was codenamed Shamrock. "Cooperation may be expected for the complete intercept coverage of this material," an internal agency memo said. James Earl Ray: When the Feds wanted to find the suspect in the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, they turned to the NSA. Frank Raven, chief of the G Group, received a direct order in May 1968 to place Ray's name on the watch list. It turned up nothing and Ray was eventually nabbed in London, Raven said when interviewed for the book The Puzzle Palace. At another point the FBI demanded complete NSA surveillance of all Quakers, in the mistaken belief that the group was shipping food to Vietnam. Huston plan: Tom Charles Huston, an aide to H.R. Haldeman, organized a meeting in June 1970 between Nixon and his agency chiefs, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Defense Intelligence Agency. According to the Nixon papers, the president wanted to collected intelligence about "revolutionary activism." The presidential directive that came out of that meeting ordered the NSA to expand its surveillance and evaluate "domestic intelligence." Peace activists: At the Pentagon's request, the NSA monitored the communications of '60s peace activists. The order came from the military unit responsible for quelling "civil disturbances," which wanted to know if foreign agents were "controlling or attempting to control or influence activities of US 'peace' groups and 'black power' orgs." An internal NSA memo creating the Minaret project said it would focus on people involved in "anti-war movements/demonstrations." [...] Second half of article available at: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,33026,00.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------
