NSA Whistleblower: Wiretaps Were Combined With Credit
Card
http://www.truthout.org/012309S
NSA whistleblower Russell Tice was back on Keith Olbermann's MSNBC
program Thursday evening to expand on his Wednesday revelations that
the National Security Agency spied on individual U.S. journalists,
entire U.S. news agencies as well as "tens of thousands" of other
Americans.
Tice said on Wednesday that the NSA had vacuumed in all domestic
communications of Americans, including, faxes, phone calls and
network
traffic.
Today Tice said that the spy agency also combined information
from
phone wiretaps with data that was mined from credit card and other
financial records. He said information of tens of thousands of U.S.
citizens is now in digital databases warehoused at the NSA.
"This [information] could sit there for ten years and then
potentially it marries up with something else and ten years from now
they get put on a no-fly list and they, of course, won't have a clue
why," Tice said.
Part I
Part II
In most cases, the person would have no discernible link to
terrorist organizations that would justify the initial data mining or
their inclusion in the database.
"This is garnered from algorithms that have been put together to
try to just dream-up scenarios that might be information that is
associated with how a terrorist could operate," Tice said. "And once
that information gets to the NSA, and they start to put it through
the
filters there ... and they start looking for word-recognition, if
someone just talked about the daily news and mentioned something
about
the Middle East they could easily be brought to the forefront of
having that little flag put by their name that says 'potential
terrorist'."
The revelation that the NSA was involved in data mining isn't
new.
The infamous 2004 hospital showdown between then-White House Counsel
Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General James Comey over the
legality of a government surveillance program involved the data
mining
of massive databases, according to a 2007 New York Times article.
But there was always a slight possibility, despite the suspicions
of many critics, that the NSA's data mining involved only people who
were legitimately suspected of connections to terrorists overseas, as
the Bush Administration staunchly maintained about its domestic phone
wiretapping program.
"There's no spying on Americans," former Director of National
Intelligence Mike McConnell insisted to the New Yorker last year.
But Tice's assertions this week contradict these claims.
With regard to the surveillance of journalists, Tice wouldn't
disclose the names of the specific reporters or media outlets he
targeted when he worked as an analyst for the NSA but said in the
part
of the program he covered, "everyone was collected."
"They sucked in everybody and at some point they may have cherry-
picked from what they had, but I wasn't aware of who got cherry-
picked
out of the big pot," he said.
The purpose, he was told, was to eliminate journalists from
possible suspicion so that the NSA could focus on those who merited
further surveillance. But Tice said on Wednesday that the data on
journalists was collected round-the-clock, year-round, suggesting
there was never an intent to eliminate anyone from the surveillance.
New York Times reporter James Risen, who co-authored that paper's
2005 story on the warrantless wiretapping program with colleague Eric
Lichtblau, suspects he could have been among those monitored, because
Bush Administration officials obtained copies of his phone records,
which they showed to a federal grand jury. The grand jury is
investigating leaked information that appeared in Risen's 2006 book
"State of War" about a CIA program, codenamed Operation Merlin, to
infiltrate and destabilize Iran's nuclear program. Risen doesn't know
if his records were obtained by the FBI with a legitimate warrant or
through the NSA program that Tice described.
Risen told Olbermann that the NSA program to monitor journalists
was likely intended to be used to ferret out and intimidate possible
sources "to have a chilling effect on potential whistleblowers in the
government to make them realize that there's a Big Brother out there
that will get them if they step out of line."
Who else might have been among those targeted by the NSA?
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) said, in a separate
interview, that he could very well have been targeted, too.
Rockefeller was speaking to MSNBC host Chris Matthews and gave a
cryptic reply when Matthews asked him what he thought about Tice's
spying allegations.
"I'm quite prepared to believe it," Rockefeller said. "I mean, I
think they went after anybody they could get. Including me."
Matthews replied, "They didn't eavesdrop on you, did they
Senator?"
"No," Rockefeller said shaking his head, "and they sent me no
letters."
If Rockefeller were among those who were spied on, it would be
very ironic, since he was instrumental in helping the Bush
administration obtain retroactive immunity for the telecommunications
companies that are accused of aiding the Administration in its
warrantless surveillance program.
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