NSA ECHELON Revisited

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Bush was denied wiretaps, bypassed them

U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate.

Defense Lawyers in Terror Cases Plan Challenges Over Spy Efforts

Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.

Listening In and Naming Names

In 1978, congressional investigations revealed that the NSA had spied on civilian anti-war protesters during Vietnam. The response was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. To prevent future abuses, the act drew a line between foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement. The NSA was free to spy abroad, but when its agents wanted to wiretap in the United States, they had to ask a secret FISA court for a warrant.

Church Committee Report on the Huston Plan

"For years and years and years I have approved opening mail and other similar operations, but no. It is becoming more and more dangerous and we are apt to get caught. I am not opposed to doing this. I'm not opposed to continuing the burglaries and the opening of mail and other similar activities, providing somebody higher than myself approves of it. . . . I no longer want to accept the sole responsibility -- the Attorney General or some high ranking person in the White House -- then I will carry out their decision. But I'm not going to accept the responsibility myself anymore, even though I've done it for many years. "

- J. Edgar Hoover, quoted by William Sullivan

Bush Presses Editors on Security

Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, would not confirm the meeting with Bush before publishing reporter Dana Priest's Nov. 2 article disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe used to interrogate terror suspects. Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, would not confirm that he, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman had an Oval Office sit-down with the president on Dec. 5, 11 days before reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that Bush had authorized eavesdropping on Americans and others within the United States without court orders.But the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. The White House had no comment.

Times And Post Should Have Disclosed Meeting with Bush on Controversial Stories

Word that members of the Bush administration met with editors of two major newspapers in an effort to stop the publication of news articles in recent weeks drew little surprise from veteran Washington journalists, who said such White House pressure has appeared during past decades.What concerned some, however, was that The New York Times and The Washington Post did not disclose those meetings when they eventually published the articles involved.

New counter intelligence operation directed at Arabs, Muslims and South East Asians

Dr. Bazian, an American of Palestinian origin, graphically explained how the community has been affected by the arrests, raids or search warrants against the Muslim, Arab and South Asian individuals, groups and organizations. In the hour long speech at the UC Berkeley campus, he also exposed the media frenzy created by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security by pre-arranging media coverage of these arrests, raids or search warrants.According to Dr. Bazian, the current infiltration program - under the premise of securing America from the sleeper cells - has a two fold goal: one, arrest those who might express support to Ben Laden; and second, which is more important these days, focusing on the pro-Palestinian sentiments among the targeted communities. However, he added, the overwhelming majority of cases after 9/11 have to do more with the Palestinian issue rather than Osama Ben Laden.

Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax Set Free

Why is it not bigger news that those infamous Iraqi female scientists once routinely referred to in the media as “Dr. Germ” and “Mrs. Anthrax” have been quietly released from imprisonment in Iraq without any charges being brought by their U.S. captors? Don’t the newspapers and TV networks that all but pre-convicted them of crimes against humanity owe them—and us—the courtesy of an explanation for the sudden presumption of their innocence?After all, it was to stop these mad leaders of Saddam Hussein’s allegedly booming weapons-of-mass-destruction programs that the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003. We were told at the time by the White House that the U.N. inspectors scouring the country were being blocked by lying officials and scientists, themselves complicit in breaking U.N. sanctions, and so we wouldn’t get the truth until we could interrogate them as prisoners.

US as Belligerent Occupant

On 19 March 2003 President Bush Jr. commenced his criminal war against Iraq by ordering a so-called decapitation strike against the President of Iraq in violation of a 48-hour ultimatum he had given publicly to the Iraqi President and his sons to leave the country. This duplicitous behavior violated the customary international laws of war set forth in the 1907 Hague Convention on the Opening of Hostilities to which the United States is still a contracting party, as evidenced by paragraphs 20, 21, 22, and 23 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956). Furthermore, President Bush Jr.'s attempt to assassinate the President of Iraq was an international crime in its own right. Of course the Bush Jr. administration's war of aggression against Iraq constituted a Crime against Peace as defined by the Nuremberg Charter (1945), the Nuremberg Judgment (1946), and the Nuremberg Principles (1950) as well as by paragraph 498 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956).