Negroponte Had Denied Domestic Call Monitoring

[cal04]

Administration Won't Comment on NSA Logs

When he was asked about the National Security Agency's controversial domestic surveillance program last Monday, U.S. intelligence chief John D. Negroponte objected to the question and said the government was "absolutely not" monitoring domestic calls without warrants. "I wouldn't call it domestic spying," he told reporters. "This is about international terrorism and telephone calls between people thought to be working for international terrorism and people here in the United States."

Three days later, USA Today divulged details of the NSA's effort to log a majority of the telephone calls made within the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- amassing the domestic call records of tens of millions of U.S. households and businesses in an attempt to sift them for clues about terrorist threats. To many lawmakers and civil liberties advocates, the revelation seemed to fly in the face of months of public statements and assurances from President Bush and his aides, who repeatedly sought to characterize the NSA's effort as a narrowly tailored "terrorist surveillance program" that had little impact on regular Americans.

But, as illustrated by Negroponte's remarks last week, administration officials have been punctilious in discussing the NSA program over the past five months, parsing their words with care and limiting comments to the portion of the program that had been confirmed by the president in December.

(snip)
Caroline Fredrickson, Washington legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the administration has purposely misled Congress and the public about the scope and character of the NSA's domestic intelligence activities. She pointed to comments in January by Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, Bush's nominee for CIA director, who said the NSA program "is not a driftnet" over U.S. communities. "Clearly they actually were using a net; a vacuum cleaner might be a better way to put it," Fredrickson said yesterday. "I think it is misleading what they've said, even if you might not characterize it as lying in every instance. There are far too many times where they basically play it way too cute . . . and it just makes you wonder what else is out there."

more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/14/AR2006051400762.html

[Julius Civitatus]

1. LIAR!!!! - Fire the bastard!! -- He should step down immediately

[EFerrari]

2. And he was never in Central America either. Scum. n/t

[marmar]

3. And we should believe that bloodthirsty vampire?

:yoiks:

[Kagemusha]

4. He'll just hold this isn't 'monitoring'.

Public opinion may not care, but he'll skate on the legalities.

[sam sarrha]

5. he has denied being the Butcher of Guatemala, murdering over 80,000

so what else is new

[Orsino]

6. Databasing call records is *not* the same as...

..."monitoring" calls.

[Mithras61]

12. Exactly... this is more like a...

trap & trace or pen register than a wire tap...


Crappy argument for allowing it to go on, but that's how they'll slime out of it.

[MountainLaurel]

7. Lying Mother *%#@er!

Not particularly surprising considering who he's working for as well as his personal history with war crimes, but dayum.

[ShortnFiery]

8. Fire his ass NOW! :( n/t

[0007]

9. What a guy!



[0007]

11. What were they thinking when they confirmed this asshole?

[gratuitous]

10. Well, if the perp wouldn't call it "domestic spying" . . .

Then it must not be domestic spying. And the killer didn't "murder" anyone; he just assisted in the cessation of their life functions, something that was going to happen someday in any case. Why is everyone so up in arms about this?