Month: May 2006

Still whistleblowing: When we last left former National Security Agency office Russell Tice on Jan. 20, I wasn’t so sure he was not going to be found in a dumpster with a whole in his head or, worse yet, never found. But he’s back, just when CIA director-nominee Gen. Michael Hayden and the board of directors of Bushco really don’t want to see him.

Tice was sacked last May because, he said, he tried to draw attention within the NSA to illegal activities related to the clandestine gathering of information on U.S. citizens. The NSA said it let him go because a government psychologist said he was just north of Lunatic Lane at Paranoia Place.

Well, Russ is back and still on the attack, according to the following (edited) report from the “National Journal”:

Tice said Thursday he plans to tell Senate staffers next week that unlawful activity occurred at the agency under the supervision of Gen. Michael Hayden beyond what has been publicly reported, while hinting that it might have involved the illegal use of space-based satellites and systems to spy on U.S. citizens [note that news reports often refer to Hayden as a expert in “technical intelligence,” which refers to using surveillance equipment, as opposed to “human intelligence,” which is what we really need more of at the CIA].

‘The only purpose of the [NSA’s] activities is to preserve the security and the liberty of the American people.’
— Gen. Michael Hayden

Tice, who worked on “special access programs,” has wanted to meet in a closed session with members of Congress and their staff since President Bush announced in December that he had secretly authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without a court order. In an interview late Thursday, Tice said the Senate Armed Services Committee asked him to meet next week in a secure facility on Capitol Hill [due to the classified nature of his information].

Tice said one of his co-workers personally informed Hayden that illegal and unconstitutional activity was occurring. The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to hold Hayden’s confirmation hearing next week.

“I think the people I talk to next week are going to be shocked when I tell them what I have to tell them. It’s pretty hard to believe,” Tice said.

Tice said his information is different from the Terrorist Surveillance Program that Bush acknowledged in December and from news accounts this week that the NSA has been secretly
collecting phone call records of millions of Americans.

According to an unclassified resume, Tice was a specialist in space operations systems, command and control warfare, advanced technology and all-source collection analysis. During an 18-year career, he worked on some of the most secretive programs in the government.

Tice was fired last May after the NSA ordered him to undergo psychological evaluations and psychologists diagnosed him as being paranoid. Tice claimed the order to undergo psychological evaluations was retaliation. He said he saw an independent psychologist who found no evidence that he has a mental disorder.

Hayden, on Capitol Hill today visiting with lawmakers, defended the secret surveillance programs he oversaw while head of the NSA as lawful and designed to “preserve the security and the liberty of the American people.”

“Everything that the agency has done has been lawful. It’s been briefed to the appropriate members of Congress,” Hayden told reporters. “The only purpose of the agency’s activities is to preserve the security and the liberty of the American people. And I think we’ve done that.”

So the question remains the same as it was in January — is Tice just a disgruntled former employee or crazy or a concerned citizen who wants to expose our gubmint’s nasty big secrets? Maybe we’ll find out more next week, if Tice doesn’t get run over by a bus.

One for the Annals of GOP Hypocrisy:

The former prosecutor who negotiated the deal that kept President Bill Clinton from being indicted in the probe of his sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky has been charged with stalking an ex-girlfriend, a law enforcement official said.

Robert Ray surrendered to cops last night after Manhattan resident Tracy Loughlin, 40, filed a complaint.

“She tried to end it four months ago, but he kept calling her, sending her e-mails and showing up at places he knew she would be,” the official said.

Ray, 46, was charged with fourth-degree stalking, given a desk-appearance ticket and freed.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

— Aristotle (384-322 BCE), Greek philosopher

Loss leader:

President Bush’s job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll. Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29 percent think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job as president, down from 35 percent in April and significantly lower than 43 percent in January. Approval ratings for Congress overall also sank, and now stand at 18 percent.

Roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults say “things in the country are going in the right direction,” while 69 percent say “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.” This has been the trend since January, when 33 percent said the nation was heading in the right direction.

Bush Lied about Scope of Domestic Spying And Then Shut Down Investigation into Unconstitutional Program

On the same day that we learn that President Bush’s National Security Administration (NSA) has engaged all the major U.S. telecoms except one — Qwest — in data mining of millions of phone records for U.S. citizens, we also learn that the administration has closed down an investigation into the NSA by refusing to give investigators the required clearances:

“We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey’s office shared the letter with The Associated Press.

With the revelation that President Bush has spied on millions of U.S. citizens, we can add another lie to the mile-high pile of half- and un-true public statements by George W. Bush:

I authorized a terrorist surveillance program to detect and intercept al Qaeda communications involving someone here in the United States. This is a targeted program to intercept communications in which intelligence professionals have reason to believe that at least one person is a member or agent of al Qaeda or a related terrorist organization. The program applies only to international communications. In other words, one end of the communication must be outside the United States.

The objective of al Qaeda is to subvert and destroy the United States. With today’s revelations, we see that Osama bin Ladin has played President Bush for the fool that he is — manipulating Bush’s native aristocratic tendencies, goading him toward fascism and thus the subversion of American laws, as well as American ideals, including restrictions that bar the government from interfering in the personal business of its citizens.

Fortunately for President Bush, the country is in a malaise brought on by outrage fatigue over the incessant revelations of the incompetence of his administration. A normal president would have been tarred and feathered and run out of town by now.