Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency employee who lost his job and says it was in retaliation for whistleblowing, said Tuesday that he was one of the sources for New York Times reporting on the NSA’s special surveillance program.
You might recall I spoke about Tice three weeks ago, when he said he wanted to testify before Congressional intelligence committees about intelligence abuses at NSA and DIA. Now he has revealed on ABC’s World News Tonight that he was one of “over a dozen” sources who contributed to the Times reporting on NSA’s surveillance of certain Americans believed to be linked to terrorist groups.
“Thou shalt not spy on American persons without a court order from FISA,” said Tice, referring to directives which govern signals intelligence collection.
“As far as I’m concerned, as long as I don’t say anything that’s classified, I’m not worried,” he told ABC. “We need to clean up the intelligence community. We’ve had abuses, and they need to be addressed.”
Tice has formally requested closed-door Congressional hearings with the House and Senate intelligence committees to inform them of what he knows about illegal intelligence activities. NSA responded by throwing up bureaucratic obstacles. (PDF)
Tice said that the President’s program, as it’s come to be called, could have swept up the communications of millions of Americans, rather than the “limited” program the President has defended.
“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,” Tice told ABC News.
The NSA’s inspector general has opened an investigation into the program to determine if it was conducted legally.
“Insane,” says Stephen VanDyke.
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Theresa Ankenman
Jan 11, 2006
Someday maybe American citizens will start wanting to be happy again like our Constitution declares instead of wanting to be “important.” Or to put it differently, Your need to be a public hero is interfering with my need to be the private citizen of a country that Constitutionally provides for “the common defense”.
nightquill
Jan 12, 2006
Joel Brenner sings:
I am the very thorough NSA Inspector General.
My interest in your privacy is flimsy and ephemeral.
My new investigation of the spying that I ratified
Will only end when all the perpetrators are beatified.
And while my probe is going on, I’ll tell you from my podium
That any other prober should be treated with opprobrium.
And anyone who’d like to duck a question with agility
Can say that any comment would impede my probe’s utility.
And so, since both my counterparts at Justice and the Pentagon
Eschew responsibility, and Congress won’t prevent a con,
I’m hoping your attention span is flimsy and ephemeral:
I am a very thorough NSA Inspector General!
Benjamin Geiger
Jan 13, 2006
nightquill: Whoa. Good “Modern Major General” parodies are hard to write (the scansion has to be *perfect*) but I think you pulled it off. And it’s funny, to boot.
Theresa: The Preamble is explanatory, but not binding. (It explains what the rest of the document is trying to do.) The Amendments, however, *are* binding… notable ones include the fourth (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”) and the fifth (“No person shall [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…”).
Besides, where would we be if the colonists had responded to Patrick Henry that way? “Forget this ‘liberty’ crap, England is keeping us safe!”
Feb 14, 2006
National security whistleblower hearings begin - Homeland Security or Homeland Stupidity
May 15, 2006
Tice will talk - Homeland Stupidity