Will Senate actually investigate NSA spying on Americans?

The U.S. Senate is investigating allegations by two National Security Agency whistleblowers who have described widespread monitoring of innocuous telephone conversations by the Bush administration's clandestine program.

The reports fill in some details about how the NSA's program works in practice. The two whistleblowers, Adrienne Kinne and David Murfee Faulk, are former military linguists who worked for a secretive NSA operation they say routinely intercepted phone calls of U.S. military officers, American journalists, American aid workers, and others who were calling home from abroad.

The two ex-military employees came forward independently and spoke to ABC News and journalist Jim Bamford for his book on the NSA called The Shadow Factory that's due out next week.

Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Thursday called the allegations "extremely disturbing" and said there would be an investigation.

If the allegations prove true, that would fly in the face of assertions by President Bush that innocent conversations would never be intercepted.

Bush said in December 2005, after The New York Times published its original article on the government's warrantless wiretapping efforts, that the NSA program would "intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. Before we intercept these communications, the government must have information that establishes a clear link to these terrorist networks."

The NSA whistleblowers tell a different story -- including that phone sex conversations were intercepted, recorded, and passed around the office for laughs. "These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones," Kinne told ABC News. Faulk said that he listened in on American troops "calling home to the United States, talking to their spouses, sometimes their girlfriends, sometimes one phone call following another."

A pair of extraordinary articles (#1 and #2) published last month in the Washington Post indicate that Bush was kept ill-informed about much of the program by Vice President Cheney and the vice president's staff.

The articles, by Barton Gellman, were excerpted from his new book called Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. They describe how Cheney's lawyer, David Addington, and the vice president himself defended the surveillance program, overruled concerns from the Justice Department about the legality of the program -- and came within a hairsbreadth of sparking a mass Justice Department resignation that would have put Richard Nixon's Saturday Night massacre to shame.

What is unclear is Sen. Rockefeller's own role in staying mum about the NSA scheme after being briefed on it. So, to one extent or another, were other Democratic politicians, including Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Rockefeller wrote a two-page handwritten letter to Cheney on July 17, 2003 -- over a year before the NSA program became public -- saying he had "concerns" about the surveillance. But Rockefeller never did anything beyond that, such as contacting a lawyer, even though the Senate Intelligence committee is officially charged with "vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States."

That history could make Rockefeller less than enthusiastic about investigating what truly happened, as Salon's Glenn Greenwald has not so delicately suggested.

We've been down this road before
It should be no surprise that when the NSA (or any government agency) receives broad surveillance powers with scant oversight, they end up being used not to nab al-Qaida members, but to eavesdrop on phone sex conversations between a lonely G.I. and a paramour back home. Video surveillance cameras supposedly designed to let cops catch criminals are used for voyeuristic purposes too.

History echoes this point. In decades past, government agencies have subjected hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Americans to unlawful surveillance, illegal wiretaps and warrantless searches. Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., feminists, gay rights leaders, and Catholic priests were spied upon. The FBI used secret files and hidden microphones to blackmail the Kennedy brothers, sway the Supreme Court, and influence presidential elections.

One way that the United States finally put this era behind it in the mid-1970s was to have a Senate committee perform a true independent investigation. It was chaired by Democratic Sen. Frank Church and called the Church Committee. Here are some excerpts from its report:

* The intelligence community engaged in some activities which violated statutory law and the constitutional rights of American citizens.

* Legal issues were often overlooked by many of the intelligence officers who directed these operations.

* On some occasions when agency officials assume, or were told, that a program is illegal, they still permitted it to continue. They justified their conduct in some cases on the ground that the failure of "the enmemy" to play by the rules granted them the right to do likewise, and in other cases on the ground that the "national security" permitted programs that would otherwise be illegal.

* Internal recognition of the illegality or the questionable legality of many of these activities frequently led to a tightening of security rather than to their termination. Partly to avoid exposure and a public "flap," knowledge of these programs was tightly held within the agencies. Special filing procedures were used, and "cover stories" were devised.

* On occasion, intelligence agencies failed to disclose candidly their programs and practices to their own General Counsels, and to Attorneys General, Presidents. and Congress.

* When senior administration officials with a duty to control domestic intelligence activities knew, or had a basis for suspecting, that questionable activities had occurred, they often responded with silence or approval. In certain cases, they were presented with a partial description of a program but did not ask for details, thereby abdicating their responsibility. In other cases, they were fully aware of the nature of the practice and implicitly or explicitly approved it.

Sound familiar? Today, though, the senator heading the modern equivalent of that committee is on record opposing legislation to make it more difficult to snoop on Americans overseas, while endorsing retroactive immunity for telephone companies that illegally opened their networks to the NSA. Alas, Jay Rockefeller is no Frank Church.

[Goodbye Helicopter]

Cheney in a hole!

[alegr]

No, he's a Dick!

[fredtheviking]

This is a great article. I think I infer that surveillance program is a failure as it does not seems to be doing what it suppose to do. Failing to find individuals, who are engage in terrorist activities. The only thing this accomplishes is I am no longer going to have phone sex in the middle east and the United States. I hope Europe is still safe.

[whoknowswho]

Having worked in this community the only illegal part was to listen to US Citizens on calls started from the US. If you are listening to an international call on an international line then all is good.

I welcome more of NSA's work. We need agencies like this to help track down the bad guys. If we hamstring these groups then we are setting ourselves up for great failures in the future, where in turn people will once again slam these agencies for not doing enough and not protecting america.

you can't have it both ways.

[Michichael]

The problem with your argument being that the safeguards to protect our privacy do not "hamstring" these agencies. Suspected terrorists and other criminals already could be wiretapped if you could prove suspicion to a judge. In this case, your conversations are being recorded and "passed around the office for laughs"

[jezzur]

I really can't believe that you are able to ignore the obvious 'wrongness' about this kind of snooping on phone sex, if true, regardless of where the call commenced. You seem to have the moral compass of a baboon, and that is being unfair to baboons.

I think it's about time we all agree that law is not the determinant of right and wrong. Sometimes breaking the law is right, sometimes breaking the law is wrong. In most cases if we follow the rule of law without resort to genuine considerations of morality we get a selfish, sneaky, manipulative world, of which you, whoknowswho, appear to be a willing part.

The law is an ass, and it's best not to follow ***** too closely.

[wratbatblue]

I'm ambivalent about this. I don't condone the NSA spying on Americans engaged in innocent conversations. I have good reason to know that 1) it's impossible not to inadvertently stumble upon a call that is outside what the law allows to be intercepted and 2) it's very easy to immediately cease monitoring that call and move on to something within mission scope and 3) if anyone in my offices had dared to monitor this kind of call and then share the details of it and/or joke around about it, I'd have made sure they didn't do it more than once, and 4) NSA employees are prohibited from talking about their missions, even with each other, outside of the secure areas in which business is conducted. There's a reason for that, and it isn't to make sure that the NSA can get away with doing whatever they want to do. Having decided to clear their consciences, I hope these two whistleblowers are prepared to pay the penalty for violating their NDA's. Finally, 5) Really? Phone sex over a satellite link, or any link, from the Middle East? Expect privacy on that kind of call? Really?

[Dalkorian]

I wouldn't use the term "ambivalent", it angers me because it's yet another violation. I'm just used to that from this Constitution shredding terrorist cabal squatting in the White House for the last 7 years.

I had to chuckle and agree with your point 5 though - phone sex over a satellite link into the US from the Middle East and expecting privacy in today's world has got to be the funniest part of this whole mess. Of course, who said they expected privacy? It's just phone sex, no big deal. Maybe they got more turned on thinking someone WAS listening in ...

;-)

[whoknowswho]

How do you know what is or isn't an innocent converstaion? If we put rules on determining this, say, with in two min NSA must decide if it is or isn't an "innocent" call. then what is to stop people from talkign about the kids and family picnic for 2 min and then talk about org an attack from min 3 to 9999.

How do you know that the term "my mother baked a pie today" isn't a go work for some terrorist group? There are so many things that sound like normal "innocent" conversation but aren't that it is impossible to figure out.

so protect america I say, I am not doing anyting wrong on my calls so I don't care if they listen in.

[Dalkorian]

Seek help. That level of paranoia is not healthy or normal. I could kill you by beating you with a baseball bat, so let's outlaw bats. See? Anyone can think up RIDICULOUS scenarios to support any atrocity.

Hitler would have been very proud of you. America is better than that. I hope you learn to be as well. You could start by reading our great Constitution, that same one that your fuhrer bushit has been using for toilet paper for the last 7 years.

[Dr_Zinj]

Cheney, while he may know what the Constitution says, does not agree with, nor abide by, the principles behind it. He should be impeached, fined into bankruptcy, and imprisoned at Gitmo for the rest of his unnatural life.

[wratbatblue]

Couldn't agree more. But I think it takes more than the two of us to make it happen.

[Dalkorian]

More than the three of us. Unfortunately.

[ddesy]

Oversight is needed, period. This spying doesn't really seem to do any good, and it erodes civil liberties.

[chris_d]

I'm not surprised on two counts. One, that this occurred, and two, that there are still apologists for it. Read some of the comments: "How do you know what is or isn't an innocent converstaion?" Why not just assume everyone is guilty until proven innocent? That's the way we do things in Amerika, right komrade?

It is incredulous to me how the same people who euphemize imperialism as "defending freedom" are so gleeful to see freedom disappear here at home. What a great use of taxpayers' money -- transcribing phone sex!

[Pete Bardo]

whoknowswho, What makes you think that US citizens' rights only apply when they are in this country? That is absurd. Let's take another look back at the 70's and the FBI surveillance of US citizens--it's appropriate given all the Republican talk about Obama's palling around with terrorists. Have we all forgotten that the Weather Underground membership was mostly undercover FBI agents, that FBI agents planned the most violent activities of the time, that the FBI has admitted to doing these things?

How can we possibly think we are in this Iraqi conflict to defend democracy and freedom from terrorists when our own government is little by little, step by step, taking away the individual liberties and freedoms for which we have fought so hard?

"I am not doing anyting wrong on my calls so I don't care if they listen in"--what a total crock. You have everything to worry about. Our surveillance laws are to protect us against wrongful accusation. Maybe your mother didn't bake you a pie--maybe it was a cake. And it won't bother you a bit, I suppose, when the NSA comes knocking on your door because of something innocent you said during a telephone conversation with your neighbor's kid stationed in Iraq.

If anything, those brave men and women--who have accepted GW's lies about the situation as truth--deserve all of the rights and freedoms for which they assume they're fighting.

Get a grip! The terrorists are winning because of people who think like you.

[Jim Hubbard]

Sure. They'll investigate. Just as soon as they stop giving themselves raises during recessions.

[DIVIDEBYZER0]

It is important to understand that not everything is being disclosed to the media. There is a lot more going on here than the simple "surveillance" that is being reported. The unlawful intelligence activities that I have witnessed under Special Access Program (SAP) provisions far exceed anything resembling intelligence gathering or surveillance and have actually jeopardized security (www.larsonmedia.net). Because sources and methods cannot be disclosed in the media, all that is disclosed is "unlawful surveillance". Lets be honest,... if all that were occuring were "surveillance" of terrorism suspects, nobody would care and there would be no tangible damages to the subjects/targets. The core problem as I have witnessed, is that the secrecy and protections afforded to personnel working under SAP provisions are so extensive and absolue, that it creates an environment where the spooks have no disincentive or deterrent to keep them from crossing the line because they know the secrecy of the program will prevent oversight and accountability. I have witnessed intelligence personnel use post 9/11 expanded powers to target innocent American citizens for personal and political reasons that were completely unrelated to foreign intelligence gathering and which were highly illegal. The activities include more than "wiretaps" and involve wireless sensors, "sneak and peeks" used to remove evidence that could be used to prove they exceeded authority and broke the law, include intercepting phone calls made to law enforcement, oversight agencies and legal counsel, have impersonated 411 directory assistance personnel to prevent victims from obtaining phone numbers of their respective or supporting agencies, and have destroyed emails and correspondence addressed to Congressional members which sought to disclose the unlawful intelligence activities. Nobody would care or even know for certain if all they were doing is "monitoring" or "eavesdropping", but the problem is when you give spooks unlimited protection, they will abuse it and this has been proven time and time again. Oversight is necessary to insure that intelligence personnel, just like any other personnel, are performing their duties as intended and not being used for personal or political agenda.

[DMZMarine]

This was a big problem for Americans after the Iraq invasion. Not only did NSA spy on the military but they also spied on Americans making phone calls within the United States. There is a man who retired from the State Department/CIA. he says as a communicator. He used his connections to have people who were against this war in Iraq (he alone decided they were terrorist supporters) having his friends wiretap them with the knowledge of the local Sheriff. This is a moral problem for the Justice Department why? . Because Bush's White House was out of control. I am sure this man now is feigning Alzheimer?s so I am sure he will plead not guilty.

[volterwd]

Protect America by rounding up all the fools who will sacrifice all their freedoms to be protected... you will be very safe in a prison camp.