From today’s Washington Post:
When he was asked about the National Security Agency’s controversial domestic surveillance program last Monday [May 8, 2006], 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.”
Of course, perhaps he wasn’t lying. Maybe he really believes that “tens of millions of Americans” (i.e., a euphemism for everyone who didn’t have their phone service with Qwest) really are in league with Al Qaida. Certainly it appears the Bush administration believes that about ABC, The New York Times and the Washington Post.
(More after the break)
Nah.
He’s was lying all right. I sincerely doubt that the the Godfather of all US sponsored Death Squads in Central America and Iraq would have any moral qualms about telling a little lie to the American people. Especially since it is clearly Administration policy to do so:
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.
In doing so, the administration rarely offered any hint that a much broader operation, involving millions of domestic calls, was underway. Even yesterday — after days of congressional furor and extensive media reports — administration officials declined to confirm or deny the existence of the telephone-call program, in part because of court challenges that the government is attempting to derail.
[…]
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.”
It does make you “wonder” what else is going on, doesn’t it. Tricky Dick Nixon would be so proud!
Domestic Surveillance Programs
