Bolton Testimony Revealed Domestic Spying

[annabanana]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/010206Z.shtml

Bolton Testimony Revealed Domestic Spying
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report

Monday 02 January 2006

This past spring, an explosive nugget of information slipped out during the confirmation hearings of John Bolton - nominated by President Bush to be the United States Ambassador to the United Nations - that in hindsight should have blown the lid off Bush's four-year-old clandestine spy program involving the National Security Agency.

At the hearing in late April, Bolton, a former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, told Congress that since 2001 he had asked the NSA on 10 different occasions to reveal to him the identities of American citizens who were caught in the NSA's raw intelligence reports in what appears to be a routine circumventing of the rules governing eavesdropping on the American public.

It turned out that Bolton was just one of many government officials who learned the identities of Americans caught in the NSA intercepts. The State Department asked the NSA to unmask the identities of American citizens 500 times since May 2001.

Newsweek revealed earlier this year that the NSA disclosed to senior White House officials and other policymakers at federal agencies the names of as many as 10,000 American citizens the agency obtained while eavesdropping on foreigners. The Americans weren't involved in any sort of terrorist activity, nor did they pose any sort of threat to national security, but had simply been named while the NSA was conducting wiretaps.

(more at link)

[PDittie]

1. Is it fascism yet?

Yes, I believe it is.

[troubleinwinter]

2. Yup. But Bolton looks like the tip of a big iceberg.

"....the NSA disclosed to senior White House officials and other policymakers at federal agencies the names of as many as 10,000 American citizens."