Role of Telecom Firms in Wiretaps Is Confirmed
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has confirmed for the first time that American telecommunications companies played a crucial role in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after asserting for more than a year that any role played by them was a “state secret.”
The acknowledgment was in an unusual interview that Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, gave last week to The El Paso Times in which he disclosed details on classified intelligence issues that the administration has long insisted would harm national security if discussed publicly.
Mr. McConnell made the remarks apparently in an effort to bolster support for the broadened wiretapping authority that Congress approved this month, even as Democrats are threatening to rework the legislation because they say it gives the executive branch too much power. It is vital, he said, for Congress to give retroactive legal immunity to the companies that assisted in the program to help prevent them from facing bankruptcy because of lawsuits over it.
“Under the president’s program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us, because if you’re going to get access, you’ve got to have a partner,” Mr. McConnell said in the interview, a transcript of which was posted by The El Paso Times on Wednesday.
AT&T and several other major carriers are being sued over their reported role in the program, which permitted eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of Americans suspected of terrorism ties. The administration has sought to shut down the lawsuits by invoking the state-secrets privilege, refusing even to confirm whether the companies helped conduct the wiretaps.
Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is heading up the lawsuit against AT&T, said her group might ask the appeals court to consider Mr. McConnell’s comments in deciding whether the state-secrets argument should be thrown out.
“They’ve really undermined their own case,” Ms. Cohn said.
Mr. McConnell said those suits were a driving force in the administration’s efforts to include in this month’s wiretapping legislation immunity for telecommunications partners. “If you play out the suits at the value they’re claimed,” he said, “it would bankrupt these companies.”
Congress agreed to give immunity to telecommunications partners in the measure , but refused to make it retroactive.
Mr. McConnell, who took over as the country’s top intelligence official in February, warned that the public discussion generated by the Congressional debate over the wiretapping bill threatened national security because it would alert terrorists to American surveillance methods.
“Now part of this is a classified world,” he said in the interview. “The fact we’re doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die.”.
Asked whether he was saying the news media coverage and the public debate in Congress meant that “some Americans are going to die,” he replied: “That’s what I mean. Because we have made it so public.”
Mr. McConnell, though, put new information on the public record in the interview, on Aug. 14 while in Texas for a border conference.
Mr. McConnell said, for instance, that the number of people inside the United States who were wiretapped through court-approved warrants totaled “100 or less” but on the “foreign side, it’s in the thousands.” The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves national security wiretaps, told Congress it approved 2,181 eavesdropping warrants last year. The court and the administration have not been willing to break out how many Americans were in those orders.
Mr. McConnell did not make clear the time frame for his estimate, nor was it clear whether he was referring to the security agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, which was brought under the oversight of the intelligence court in January. Officials in his office refused to clarify what he meant.
Mr. McConnell also offered the administration’s first public discussion about a classified series of rulings by the intelligence court that he said had restricted the agency’s ability to collect foreign intelligence.
He said one judge this year gave broad approval for the agency’s eavesdropping program. But another judge, he said, ruled in the spring that the administration would have to obtain a warrant for any “foreign to foreign” communications that passed through an American telecommunications center.
The administration obtained a stay of that ruling until May 31, he disclosed, but after that date he intelligence officials had “significantly less capability” to track foreign communications. The ruling sent the administration “in the wrong direction,” he added.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has petitioned the intelligence court to make public its secret wiretapping rulings, expressed frustration on Thursday with the timing of Mr. McConnell’s comments.
“If this ostensibly sensitive information can be released now, why could it not be released two months ago, when the public and Congress desperately needed it?” asked Jameel Jaffer, director of the group’s national security project.
Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, said the interview “was quite striking because he was disclosing more detail than has appeared anywhere in the public domain.”
“If we’re to believe that Americans will die from discussing these things,” Mr. Aftergood said, “then he is complicit in that. It’s an unseemly argument. He’s basically saying that democracy is going to kill Americans.”
© 2007 The New York Times
“Mr. McConnell, who took over as the country’s top intelligence official in February, warned that the public discussion generated by the Congressional debate over the wiretapping bill threatened national security because it would alert terrorists to American surveillance methods.
“Now part of this is a classified world,” he said in the interview. “The fact we’re doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die.”.
Asked whether he was saying the news media coverage and the public debate in Congress meant that “some Americans are going to die,” he replied: “That’s what I mean. Because we have made it so public.”
These are treehouse spies — bathetic fools and sociopaths who think that if they give anything away, the other boy gang will know where they are, when EVERYONE knows that they’re doing it, aand if you don’t let them torture your little sister or your dog, then bad bad things will be done to you by the OTHER gang . . .
Where’s a grown-up country that one might join?
If everyone used the word “bomb” in telephone conversations and in email, we just might overwhelm the system and render it useless.
“The fact we’re doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die.”.
Yes, I imagine the administration will be publically lynched when the full details get out that the Bushis have benn using this to spy on their domestic political enemies, and to provide inside business information to their corporate owners.
Lawsuits over this? Are we kidding ourselves? How about criminal indictments and charges against all who politically conspired to put the boot on the throat of the U.S. Consitution and public law? Come on! Enough of this stupid game playing “executive and/or privilage this or that!” This is plain and simple subversion of U.S. law and yet another step in the strategy to overthrow public government. I suppose that alleged Department of Justice with that “fox in the hen house” Alberto Gonzales will levy the charges against all the dark suited players in government and commerce. How pathetic for all of us who really love and believe in democracy.
WTF? How about The UNWARRANTED WIRETAPS Bush has IMPEACHABLY ADMITTED, AND DEFIANTLY CONTINUED, TO ILLEGALLY and unConstitutionally conduct before and since December 17, 2005?!
“AT&T and several other major carriers are being sued over their reported role in the program, which permitted eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of Americans suspected of terrorism ties. The administration has sought to shut down the lawsuits by invoking the state-secrets privilege, refusing even to confirm whether the companies helped conduct the wiretaps.”
As I recall, deferred and non-prosecution agreements were created to limit or eliminate corporate liability. In fact, advocates have argued that since a corporation is not a living being and can’t think, it can’t be guilty of any crime. However, the executives who do have a mind to think and make decisions for the corporation can be convicted of crimes as we have seen in the case of Enron and other high-profile cases.
Don’t you find it interesting that there is no mention of the roles top executives played within these corporate structures involved in domestic wiretapping “without” court approval? Did these corporations have incompetent legal departments or were they promised the moon?
Is anyone really convinced that this Administration is concerned about these corporations going bankrupt or could there be other reasons for invoking “state secrets”?
Perhaps, after the dust settles from the Class Actions, the telephone companies will be owned by We-The-People. Then we can set our own rates and rules.
Vic Anderson, first of all, you have to prove he did such a thing and second of all he is the dictator so even if he did do it….he can!
The last few years have been pure insanity.
I do not for 1 second believe that hundreds of Americans and thousands of others were monitored.
I think it is more likely millions were run through a data mining program and the result cost several billion dollars. The resultant output could possibly be the numbers above consisting entirely of a political enemies list.
Remember the entire purpose of Bu$h the inferior’s regime is political control. Every agency is packed with political hacks and easily manipulated weak minded ass kissers.
As the village dummy says, “Duh, No Sh** Sherlock.
teh program realy got a foothold under the Democrtic president Clinton and one of the very first things Bush did when elected was go to Spain, Isrtael and Austrialia to cemtn the wire tapping agreements Bill And Al Gore had begun.
To get around the Domestic wiretap Clinoton made agreements with British Spanish and Aussie, Japan, to listen in on US citizen phone calls.
Hell over half odf Americans phone billing services was done through an Israeli firm awho also did the FBI phone system theat seen their numbers leaked out,.
teh internet has been monitored for over 20 years now and began under Bush SR.
Local police have used compliant meida talk show host for years as monitors for un-american thoughts.
One of the most famous but littel discussed outside of old militia and constituonalist groupings was the notable ART BEll Show ,; where when a militia member doper or Constituionalist called in theri number was given tothe FBI and Art had to move away for awhile just for that reason.
this is nothing new and has been ongoing since days of House of Un-American Activitys.
Not only that demos and Repub party faithfull knew of it erh whole time.
Got any more Duh Articles/
Wire tapping new?
Every monetary transaction made is noted by the US Security concerns.
the Banks did not end the governemtn p[rogam of automaticly red falging an ourt of ordinary transaction by itss depositors.
If you tried to make an out of ordingary fiancial transaction via the web every financial instituion records and reports it.
Where did all fiancial and evesdropping go money flow go through, The twin Towers.
Industry (surveillance) + Government = fascism
What committed terrorist or revolutionary would be so stupid as to use corporate controlled communications for sensitive messages? I think Shane is on to something.
For the last two weeks someone or something has been interfering with my ability to participate on this site. My posts are not immediately posted, but filtered, most never making it on the threads they were intended for. Don’t know what is going on, and has given me much angst the last several days. Many here mistakenly believe that with the internet we can change the world. Maybe, unless they decide to shut it down, which is a very real possibility.
I have struggled, for most of my adult life, with the question of: do I remain within the system and the community of civilized men in trying to accomplish progressive change, or do I cross over the edge and become an agent of destruction in order to bring the system down. I have considered many tactics and efforts that would accomplish those ends, and I won’t recite them for fear they may be enacted.
If I had indeed crossed over that threshold, my name would never once have appeared here, no letters to my local newspaper and to elected representatives would have been written, would not have marched in Washington, I would not have made myself a nuisance to friends and relatives, and I would smile blandly and passively at all those still in the thrall of the American myth. I would have become in fact a mole, apparently passive, unconcerned, apolitical, and agreeable.
So, the international telecoms will enjoy the same legal immunity that US gun manufactures already do. I can’t think of any more deserving candidates.
bomb
massive catastrophe
massive loss of life
explosions
washington dc
bush
airplanes
If everyone used the word “bomb” in telephone conversations and in email, we just might overwhelm the system and render it useless.
loved it.
Wouldn’t Congress, giving retroactive immunity to corporations that co-conspired with the government in a felony, be guilty of aiding and abetting a felony?
Or, if corporations can’t be found guilty of anything because they are not ‘people’, how could a corporation’s distribution of money in an election campaign come under the protection of ‘freedom of speech’?
Or, why would dollars be considered people, while corporations would not? Are people dollars, if dollars are people?
America has become very confusing.
starislon2 August 25th, 2007 5:41 pm
“Wouldn’t Congress, giving retroactive immunity to corporations that co-conspired with the government in a felony, be guilty of aiding and abetting a felony?”
In a constitutional government where the “rule of law” hasn’t been replaced by the “rule of money”, I would think your aiding and abetting theory would follow.
“Or, if corporations can’t be found guilty of anything because they are not ‘people’, how could a corporation’s distribution of money in an election campaign come under the protection of ‘freedom of speech’?”
R. Mokhiber and R Weissman explain this as “Defending the Double Standard”. In 1886 the U.S. Supreme Court held that, under the Constitution, “a private corporation was a ‘natural person’, entitled to all the rights and privileges of a human being.”
However, unlike a human being or natural born person who would be prosecuted for criminal behavior, corporations are not considered human or natural persons under these circumstances but are seen as “legal fictions”, incapable of thinking.
Enter: The Double Standard - where corporations enjoy the privileges and protections granted under the Constitution’s First Amendment of “free speech” in addition to all the others. It’s a little odd that corporations are ‘natural persons’ capable of thinking when it distributes campaign contributions but are non-thinkers in the criminal law arena. Strange…..don’t you think???