Crimes of the Times

[Yonivore]

In General Hayden's outstanding presentation at the National Press Club yesterday, I was most struck by his response to one of the questions regarding the putative harm wrought by the New York Times's disclosure of the NSA surveillance program applicable to al Qaeda-related communications. CNN reporter Justine Redman asked General Hayden how national security was harmed by the Times story revealing the program. General Hayden responded:

Public discussion of how we determine al Qaeda intentions, I just -- I can't see how that can do anything but harm the security of the nation. And I know people say, "Oh, they know they're being monitored." Well, you know, they don't always act like they know they're being monitored. But if you want to shove it in their face constantly, it's bound to have an impact. And so to -- I understand...there are issues here that the American people are deeply concerned with. But constant revelations and speculation and connecting the dots in ways that I find unimaginable, and laying that out there for our enemy to see cannot help but diminish our ability to detect and prevent attacks.

The Weekly Standard has posted an excellent column on the laws that govern the disclosure of the NSA program by the New York Times: "Exposure." It argues that the New York Times should be at considerable risk of criminal prosecution under the espionage laws for its disclosure of the NSA surveillance program. Moreover, the individuals at the Times responsible for its conduct in this matter -- James Risen, Bill Keller, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and others -- are in plain view. No extensive investigation is necessary to identify them. General Hayden's comments bear directly on the point of the column.

The column nevertheless concludes with reference to an episode that bears on the difficulty of holding the Times accountable for the crimes I believe it has committed:

In his autobiography Radical Son, former Ramparts editor David Horowitz recounts an incident involving the magazine's 1972 receipt of a draft article by a pseudonymous National Security Agency employee. Horowitz characterizes his involvement in the publication of the article in Ramparts as "the most shameful or humiliating thing I ever did."

In the article, the NSA employee revealed that the agency had cracked the Soviet intelligence code and could read Soviet electronic communications at will. Deliberating over whether publication of the article might subject the magazine editors to prosecution under the espionage laws, Horowitz consulted prominent Harvard law professor Charles Nesson. (Nesson denies recollection of the conversation recounted by Horowitz.) Nesson was then working as a member of Daniel Ellsberg's defense team in connection with the government's prosecution of Ellsberg for removing copies of the Pentagon Papers and turning them over to the Times -- the incident underlying the Pentagon Papers case itself. Horowitz relates that Nesson advised him that publication of the article would violate the law. In addition to providing certain technical guidance, according to Horowitz, Nesson advised:

To make its case in a court of law, the government would have to establish that we had indeed damaged national security. To do so, it would be necessary to reveal more than the government might want the other side to know. In fact, the legal process would force more information to light than the government would want anybody to know. On balance, there was a good chance that we would not be prosecuted. I had just been given advice by a famous cons utional law professor on how to commit treason and get away with it.

One wonders if the Times relied on similar advice regarding its publication of the NSA surveillance story.

One wonders, indeed.

[ChumpDumper]

Too bad for Bushy -- all he had to do was follow the laws that were in place for just these types of wiretaps. I know that's apparently impossible for him.

[xrayzebra]

Too bad for Bushy -- all he had to do was follow the laws that were in place for just these types of wiretaps. I know that's apparently impossible for him.

He did dummy, know what I N T E R N A T I O N A L means. Not
domestic, I can assure you. We have been monitoring international
traffic for years and will continue to do so. No dimm-o-crap has said
"stop it" yet. Only, well we got to look at this. Yeah, like, well it was
only a head job. No threat to security.

[Yonivore]

Too bad for Bushy -- all he had to do was follow the laws that were in place for just these types of wiretaps. I know that's apparently impossible for him.

General Hayden addressed that as well. Follow the link and read his entire remarks, if you're interested in being fair-minded. The bottom line is that the Attorney General's office has to meet "probable cause" standards in order to get a FISA authorization for a wiretap and, in some cases, only a "reasonable" standard can be achieved.

This morning, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales participated in a debate at Georgetown University's law school on the NSA's international surveillance program. Gonzales did an excellent job of spelling out the reasons why the program is not only necessary, but legal. You can read Gonzales' prepared text here; what follows are some key excerpts:

A word of caution here. This remains a highly classified program. It remains an important tool in protecting America. So my remarks today speak only to those activities confirmed publicly by the President, and not to other purported activities described in press reports. These press accounts are in almost every case, in one way or another, misinformed, confusing, or wrong.

No surprise there.

I’ve noticed that through all of the noise on this topic, very few have asked that the terrorist surveillance program be stopped. The American people are, however, asking two important questions: Is this program necessary? And is it lawful? The answer to each is yes.

This is a very important point: very few of the progam's liberal critics are actually willing to take responsibility for calling for the termination of the NSA international surveillance program. They know what would happen if the program were in fact terminated, and an attack ensued.

The conflict against al Qaeda is, in fundamental respects, a war of information. We cannot build walls thick enough, fences high enough, or systems strong enough to keep our enemies out of our open and welcoming country. Instead, as the bipartisan 9/11 and WMD Commissions have urged, we must understand better who they are and what they’re doing – we have to collect more dots, if you will, before we can “connect the dots.” This program to surveil al Qaeda is a necessary weapon as we fight to detect and prevent another attack before it happens.

Didn't that "collect the dots" theme originate on the internet? I think so.

[F]rom the outset, the Justice Department thoroughly examined this program against al Qaeda, and concluded that the President is acting within his power in authorizing it. These activities are lawful. The Justice Department is not alone in reaching that conclusion. Career lawyers at the NSA and the NSA’s Inspector General have been intimately involved in reviewing the program and ensuring its legality.

The terrorist surveillance program is firmly grounded in the President’s cons utional authorities.

It has long been recognized that the President’s cons utional powers include the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance aimed at detecting and preventing armed attacks on the United States. Presidents have uniformly relied on their inherent power to gather foreign intelligence for reasons both diplomatic and military, and the federal courts have consistently upheld this longstanding practice.

If this is the case in ordinary times, it is even more so in the present cir stances of our armed conflict with al Qaeda and its allies.

As I've said many times, I think this is the key point that must be made again and again. It is supported by at least five federal appellate court decisions. How many such decisions are there on the other side? Zero.

The President’s authority to take military action—including the use of communications intelligence targeted at the enemy—does not come merely from his inherent cons utional powers. It comes directly from Congress as well.

He goes on to discuss the Authorization for the Use of Military Force and the Hamdi decision. Then, Gonzales supplied some historical perspective:

[A]s long as electronic communications have existed, the United States has conducted surveillance of those communications during wartime—all without judicial warrant. In the Civil War, for example, telegraph wiretapping was common, and provided important intelligence for both sides. In World War I, President Wilson ordered the interception of all cable communications between the United States and Europe; he inferred the authority to do so from the Cons ution and from a general congressional authorization to use military force that did not mention anything about such surveillance. So too in World War II; the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt authorized the interception of all communications traffic into and out of the United States. The terrorist surveillance program, of course, is far more focused, since it involves only the interception of international communications that are linked to al Qaeda or its allies.

Gonzales continues with the best discussion of FISA I've seen by an administration spokesman:

Some contend that even if the President has cons utional authority to engage in the surveillance of our enemy in a time of war, that authority has been constrained by Congress with the passage in 1978 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

For purposes of this discussion, because I cannot discuss operational details, I'm going to assume here that intercepts of al Qaeda communications under the terrorist surveillance program fall within the definition of “electronic surveillance” in FISA.

Interesting. As I've said before, I assume that this must be true, or else the administration would make the point that FISA has no application to the international surveillance in question. Even saying that much, however, could tip the terrorists off as to what categories of communications are being intercepted and whether the NSA is using facilities located abroad or in the U.S., distinctions on which FISA's definition of "electronic surveillance" can turn.

The FISA Court of Review, the special court of appeals charged with hearing appeals of decisions by the FISA court, stated in 2002 that, quote, “[w]e take for granted that the President does have that [inherent] authority” and, “assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s cons utional power.” We do not have to decide whether, when we are at war and there is a vital need for the terrorist surveillance program, FISA uncons utionally encroaches – or places an uncons utional constraint upon – the President's Article II powers. We can avoid that tough question because Congress gave the President the Force Resolution, and that statute removes any possible tension between what Congress said in 1978 in FISA and the President's cons utional authority today.

I agree with that last point, but I also think it is vital to insist that Congress has no power to restrict the President's cons utional authority, any more than the President can detract from Congress's cons utional powers by issuing an executive order.

Gonzales makes several cogent points about FISA; I haven't seen this one before:

You may have heard about the provision of FISA that allows the President to conduct warrantless surveillance for 15 days following a declaration of war. That provision shows that Congress knew that warrantless surveillance would be essential in wartime. But no one could reasonably suggest that all such critical military surveillance in a time of war would end after only 15 days.

Instead, the legislative history of this provision makes it clear that Congress elected NOT TO DECIDE how surveillance might need to be conducted in the event of a particular armed conflict. Congress expected that it would revisit the issue in light of events and likely would enact a special authorization during that 15-day period. That is exactly what happened three days after the attacks of 9/11, when Congress passed the Force Resolution, permitting the President to exercise “all necessary and appropriate” incidents of military force.

Thus, it is simply not the case that Congress in 1978 anticipated all the ways that the President might need to act in times of armed conflict to protect the United States. FISA, by its own terms, was not intended to be the last word on these critical issues.

Gonzales makes the familiar argument that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force cons utes an "authoriz[ation] by statute" that makes the current wartime surveillance an exception to FISA. He goes on to address the 72-hour emergency provision of FISA, on which leftists have put so much weight:

Some have pointed to the provision in FISA that allows for so-called “emergency authorizations” of surveillance for 72 hours without a court order. There’s a serious misconception about these emergency authorizations. People should know that we do not approve emergency authorizations without knowing that we will receive court approval within 72 hours. FISA requires the Attorney General to determine IN ADVANCE that a FISA application for that particular intercept will be fully supported and will be approved by the court before an emergency authorization may be granted. That review process can take precious time.

Thus, to initiate surveillance under a FISA emergency authorization, it is not enough to rely on the best judgment of our intelligence officers alone. Those intelligence officers would have to get the sign-off of lawyers at the NSA that all provisions of FISA have been satisfied, then lawyers in the Department of Justice would have to be similarly satisfied, and finally as Attorney General, I would have to be satisfied that the search meets the requirements of FISA. And we would have to be prepared to follow up with a full FISA application within the 72 hours.

A typical FISA application involves a substantial process in its own right: The work of several lawyers; the preparation of a legal brief and supporting declarations; the approval of a Cabinet-level officer; a certification from the National Security Adviser, the Director of the FBI, or another designated Senate-confirmed officer; and, finally, of course, the approval of an Article III judge.

So the FISA "emergency" process would require days, at a minimum, and perhaps weeks, to complete; and it must be completed before surveillance can begin. Thinking about this reminded me of the fact that the NSA actually picked up two electronic communications on September 10, 2001, which countless liberal web sites have pointed to as evidence of malfeasance or worse on the part of the administration. Here is how General Michael Hayden described those two intercepts in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee:

There is one other area in our pre-September 11th performance that has attracted a great deal of public attention. In the hours just prior to the attacks, NSA did obtain two pieces of information suggesting that individuals with terrorist connections believed something significant would happen on September 11th. This information did not specifically indicate an attack would take place on that day. It did not contain any details on the time, place, or nature of what might happen. It also contained no suggestion of airplanes being used as weapons. Because of the processing involved, we were unable to report the information until September 12th.

Now, consider this. What would happen if the President had not authorized the international surveillance program after September 11, and instead had relied solely on FISA, and the following events were to take place: the NSA obtains information that an al Qaeda operative overseas is planning a nuclear attack in conjunction with a cell inside the United States. The NSA decides to intercept all communications between the overseas al Qaeda operative and individuals located inside the U.S.; but first, it must obtain multiple layers of approval from lawyers and assemble all of the information needed to complete a FISA application. It begins that process, but the next day, while NSA is still working on getting the necessary approvals, a nuclear device levels much of Washington, D.C.

Suppose that disaster had happened a year ago. How do you think the surviving Democrats would have responded? Do you think they would have praised the administration for refusing to go outside the bounds of FISA's procedures? Or do you think they would have denounced President Bush and his administration as the most irresponsible, feckless and ineffective officials to control the executive branch since James Buchanan?

I think the latter. And you know what? They would have had a point.

All of this got me thinking about the hearings the Senate plans to hold regarding the NSA intercept program. It is worth considering why no real inquiry regarding the program occurred when the administration first advised congressional leaders about it. The reason, I think, is that few adults in their right mind would want to en ber the government's right to listen to al Qaeda's conversations with people in the U.S., and only a politician suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome would want to make the government's right to do so a political issue.

Why did the landscape change when the New York Times reported the program? Because at that point the matter was out of the hands of politicians who are both "adult" and not politically deranged. The clamor resulting from the combination of MSM denizens and lefty bloggers invoking the specter of "King George III," embittered blowhard politicians, and old bull Senators obsessed with their prerogatives meant that hearings would have to occur.

But the hearing that matters is already occuring in the form of presentations like General Hayden's, Attorney General Gonzalez's, and President Bush's. And the public's take is the same as that of the Democrats whom the administration briefed at the inception of the program -- few adults in their right mind would want to en ber the government's right to listen to al Qaeda's conversations with people in the U.S.

[ChumpDumper]

Sorry, I haven't read anything that even implies that these wiretaps couldn't have been executed under the provisions of FISA. I'm not saying don't wiretap, just accept the oversight that doesn't make you even appear to be cir venting the law.

Claiming that the AG must know the outcome of a hearing before it happens is completely ridiculous. Why have a hearing in the first place? It's obvious that the AG doesn't know the outcome of every request because a couple have been denied.

If the administration's claim is that they can ignore any and all oversight if they feel the goal is important, where will they stop? Who could tell them to stop?

Not you.

[FromWayDowntown]

Basically, because were not sure we have enough evidence to support a warrant, we'll skip over the warrant requirement and make a novel argument that this program is just part and parcel of the authority vested in the President by the congressional declaration. We'll also distinguish this instance from others by arguing that the surveillance contemplated is somehow beyond the scope of the Cons ution. And I can devise a hypothetical to say that people should be thankful that we have such a resourceful President in office.

[Oh, Gee!!]

Breaking News: The law-breaking president's attorney says the president did not break the law.

OMG!!! Imagine that.

[boutons_]

Breaking News: General sucks his commander's-in-chief .

head's pre-2000 agenda was to expand the Exec's powers way beyond Cons utional limits.

Starting a bogus war was a means to that end.

NSA is on an illegal fishing expedition.

[mookie2001]

^ I agree

[boutons_]

SA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance

Fruit of Eavesdropping Was Processed and Cross-Checked With Databases

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 1, 2006; A08

Information captured by the National Security Agency's secret eavesdropping on communications between the United States and overseas has been passed on to other government agencies, which cross-check the information with tips and information collected in other databases, current and former administration officials said.

The NSA has turned such information over to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and to other government en ies, said three current and former senior administration officials, although it could not be determined which agencies received what types of information. Information from intercepts -- which typically includes records of telephone or e-mail communications -- would be made available by request to agencies that are allowed to have it, including the FBI, DIA, CIA and Department of Homeland Security, one former official said.

At least one of those organizations, the DIA, has used NSA information as the basis for carrying out surveillance of people in the country suspected of posing a threat, according to two sources. A DIA spokesman said the agency does not conduct such domestic surveillance but would not comment further. Spokesmen for the FBI, the CIA and the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, declined to comment on the use of NSA data.

Since the revelation last month that President Bush had authorized the NSA to intercept communications inside the United States, public concern has focused primarily on the legality of the NSA eavesdropping. Less attention has been paid to, and little is known about, how the NSA's information may have been used by other government agencies to investigate American citizens or to cross-check with other databases. In the 1960s and 1970s, the military used NSA intercepts to maintain files on U.S. peace activists, revelations of which prompted Congress to restrict the NSA from intercepting communications of Americans.

Today's NSA intercepts yield two broad categories of information, said a former administration official familiar with the program: "content," which would include transcripts of a phone call or e-mail, and "non-content," which would be records showing, for example, who in the United States was called by, or was calling, a number in another country thought to have a connection to a terrorist group. At the same time, NSA tries to limit identifying the names of Americans involved.

( obviously, they don't try too damn hard )

"NSA can make either type of information available to other [intelligence] agencies where relevant, but with appropriate masking of its origin," meaning that the source of the information and method of getting it would be concealed, the former official said.

( it doesn't take much imagination to see the NSA/FBI giving info to the RNC and Karl Rove )

Agencies that get the information can use it to conduct "data mining," or looking for patterns or matches with other databases that they maintain, which may or may not be specifically geared toward detecting terrorism threats, he said. "They are seeking to separate the known from the unknown, relationships or associations," he added.

The NSA would sometimes monitor telephones, e-mails or fax communications in cases where individuals in the United States -- and sometimes people they contacted -- were linked to an alleged foreign terrorist group, officials have said. The NSA, officials said, limited its decisions to follow-up with more electronic surveillance on an individual to those cases where there was some apparent link to terrorist sources.

But other agencies, one former official said, have used phone numbers or other records obtained from NSA in combination with wide-ranging databases to look for links and associations. "What data sets are included is a policy decision [made by individual agencies] when they involve other than terrorist links," he said.

DIA personnel stationed inside the United States went further on occasion, conducting physical surveillance of people or vehicles identified as a result of NSA intercepts, said two sources familiar with the operations, although the DIA said it does not conduct such activities.

The military personnel -- some of whose findings were reported to the Northern Command in Colorado -- were employed as part of the Pentagon's growing post-Sept. 11, 2001, domestic intelligence activity based on the need to protect Defense Department facilities and personnel from terrorist attacks, the sources said.

Northcom was set up in October 2002 to conduct operations to deter, prevent and defeat terrorist threats in the United States and its territories. The command runs two fusion centers that receive and analyze intelligence gathered by other government agencies.

Those Northcom centers conduct data mining, where information received from the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, state and local police, and the Pentagon's Talon system are cross-checked to see if patterns develop that could indicate terrorist activities.

Talon is a system that civilian and military personnel use to report su ious activities around military installations. Information from these reports is fed into a database known as the Joint Protection Enterprise Network, which is managed, as is the Talon system, by the Counterintelligence Field Activity, the newest Defense Department intelligence agency to focus primarily on counterterrorism. The database is shared with intelligence and law enforcement agencies and was found last month to have contained information about peace activists and others protesting the Iraq war that appeared to have no bearing on terrorism.

Military officials acknowledged that such information should have been purged after 90 days and that the Talon system was being reviewed.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, deputy director for national intelligence and former head of NSA, told reporters last month that the interception of communications to the United States allegedly connected to terrorists was, in almost every case, of short duration. He also said that when the NSA creates intelligence reports based on information it collects, it minimizes the number of Americans whose iden ies are disclosed, doing so only when necessary.

"The same minimalizationist standards apply across the board, including for this program," he said of the domestic eavesdropping effort. "To make this very clear -- U.S. iden ies are minimized in all of NSA's activities, unless, of course, the U.S. iden y is essential to understand the inherent intelligence value of the intelligence report." Hayden did not address the question of how long government agencies would archive or handle information from the NSA.

Today's controversy over the domestic NSA intercepts echoes events of more than three decades ago. Beginning in the late 1960s, the NSA was asked initially by the Johnson White House and later by the Army, the Secret Service, and the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs to intercept messages to or from the United States. Members of Congress were not informed of the program, code-named Minaret in one phase.

The initial purpose was to "help determine the existence of foreign influence" on "civil disturbances occurring throughout the nation," threats to the president and other issues, Gen. Lew Allen Jr., then director of NSA, told a Select Senate Committee headed by then-Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) in 1975.

Allen, in comments similar to recent Bush administration statements, said collecting communications involving American citizens was approved legally, by two attorneys general. He also said that the Minaret intercepts discovered "a major foreign terrorist act planned in a large city" and prevented "an assassination attempt on a prominent U.S. figure abroad."

Overall, Allen said that 1,200 Americans citizens' calls were intercepted over six years, and that about 1,900 reports were issued in three areas of terrorism. As the Church hearings later showed, the Army expanded the NSA collection and had units around the country gather names and license plates of those attending antiwar rallies and demonstrations. That, in turn, led to creation of files on these individuals within Army intelligence units. At one point a Senate Judiciary subcommittee showed the Army had amassed about 18,000 names. In response, Congress in 1978 passed the Foreign Intelligence Security Act, which limited NSA interception of calls from overseas to U.S. citizens or those involving American citizens traveling abroad.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

========================

The NSA, FBI, CIA were totally asleep at the wheel in 2000/2002, failing to use whatever tools they had, and are directly responsible for 9/11 as are dubya/ head for failing to heed the warnings of summer 2001.

[boutons_]

F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show.

F.B.I. officials said Monday that their investigators had no interest in monitoring political or social activities and that any investigations that touched on advocacy groups were driven by evidence of criminal or violent activity at public protests and in other settings.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public en ies in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.

But the do ents, coming after the Bush administration's confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without warrants in fighting terrorism, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.

One F.B.I. do ent indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another do ent talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The do ents, provided to The New York Times over the past week, came as part of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. For more than a year, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking access to information in F.B.I. files on about 150 protest and social groups that it says may have been improperly monitored.

The F.B.I. had previously turned over a small number of do ents on antiwar groups, showing the agency's interest in investigating possible anarchist or violent links in connection with antiwar protests and demonstrations in advance of the 2004 political conventions. And earlier this month, the A.C.L.U.'s Colorado chapter released similar do ents involving, among other things, people protesting logging practices at a lumber industry gathering in 2002.

The latest batch of do ents, parts of which the A.C.L.U. plans to release publicly on Tuesday, totals more than 2,300 pages and centers on references in internal files to a handful of groups, including PETA, the environmental group Greenpeace and the Catholic Workers group, which promotes antipoverty efforts and social causes.

Many of the investigative do ents turned over by the bureau are heavily edited, making it difficult or impossible to determine the full context of the references and why the F.B.I. may have been discussing events like a PETA protest. F.B.I. officials say many of the references may be much more benign than they seem to civil rights advocates, adding that the do ents offer an incomplete and sometimes misleading snapshot of the bureau's activities.

"Just being referenced in an F.B.I. file is not tantamount to being the subject of an investigation," said John Miller, a spokesman for the bureau.

"The F.B.I. does not target individuals or organizations for investigation based on their political beliefs," Mr. Miller said. "Everything we do is carefully promulgated by federal law, Justice Department guidelines and the F.B.I.'s own rules."

( whew! We can all sleep better tonight! )

A.C.L.U officials said the latest batch of do ents released by the F.B.I. indicated the agency's interest in a broader array of activist and protest groups than they had previously thought. In light of other recent disclosures about domestic surveillance activities by the National Security Agency and military intelligence units, the A.C.L.U. said the do ents reflected a pattern of overreaching by the Bush administration.

"It's clear that this administration has engaged every possible agency, from the Pentagon to N.S.A. to the F.B.I., to engage in spying on Americans," said Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the A.C.L.U.

"You look at these do ents," Ms. Beeson said, "and you think, wow, we have really returned to the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when you see in F.B.I. files that they're talking about a group like the Catholic Workers league as having a communist ideology."

The do ents indicate that in some cases, the F.B.I. has used employees, interns and other confidential informants within groups like PETA and Greenpeace to develop leads on potential criminal activity and has downloaded material from the groups' Web sites, in addition to monitoring their protests.

In the case of Greenpeace, which is known for highly publicized acts of civil disobedience like the boarding of cargo ships to unfurl protest banners, the files indicate that the F.B.I. investigated possible financial ties between its members and militant groups like the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front.

These networks, which have no declared leaders and are only loosely organized, have been described by the F.B.I. in Congressional testimony as "extremist special interest groups" whose cells engage in violent or other illegal acts, making them "a serious domestic terrorist threat."

In testimony last year, John E. Lewis, deputy assistant director of the counterterrorism division, said the F.B.I. estimated that in the past 10 years such groups had engaged in more than 1,000 criminal acts causing more than $100 million in damage.

When the F.B.I. investigates evidence of possible violence or criminal disruptions at protests and other events, those investigations are routinely handled by agents within the bureau's counterterrorism division.

But the groups mentioned in the newly disclosed F.B.I. files questioned both the propriety of characterizing such investigations as related to "terrorism" and the necessity of diverting counterterrorism personnel from more pressing investigations.

"The fact that we're even mentioned in the F.B.I. files in connection with terrorism is really troubling," said Tom Wetterer, general counsel for Greenpeace. "There's no property damage or physical injury caused in our activities, and under any definition of terrorism, we'd take issue with that."

Jeff Kerr, general counsel for PETA, rejected the suggestion in some F.B.I. files that the animal rights group had financial ties to militant groups, and said he, too, was troubled by his group's inclusion in the files.

"It's shocking and it's outrageous," Mr. Kerr said. "And to me, it's an abuse of power by the F.B.I. when groups like Greenpeace and PETA are basically being punished for their social activism."

* Copyright 2005 the New York Times Company

[spurster]

God eavedrops all the time. What's the matter with Bush doing it?

[xrayzebra]

boutons, what we do without you! It is nice to have someone with so much
hate. You must hate going out each morning. With the black helicopters
circling and the little black figure moving just behind you.

And just think those peace loving people quoted in your article. Green Peace and
PETA. You couldn't ask for a nicer group, other than the bunch that like to burn
down new housing.

[Yonivore]

Sorry, I haven't read anything that even implies that these wiretaps couldn't have been executed under the provisions of FISA.

QUESTION: General Hayden, the FISA law says that the NSA can do intercepts as long as you go to the court within 72 hours to get a warrant. I understood you to say that you are aggressively using FISA but selectively doing so. Why are you not able to go to FISA as the law requires in all cases? And if the law is outdated, why haven't you asked Congress to update it?

GEN. HAYDEN: Lots of questions contained there. Let me try them one at a time. First of all, I need to get a statement of fact out here, all right? NSA cannot -- under the FISA statute, NSA cannot put someone on coverage and go ahead and play for 72 hours while it gets a note saying it was okay. All right? The attorney general is the one who approves emergency FISA coverage, and the attorney general's standard for approving FISA coverage is a body of evidence equal to that which he would present to the court. So
it's not like you can throw it on for 72 hours.

I've talked in other cir stances -- I've talked this morning -- about how we've made very aggressive use of FISA. If you look at NSA reporting under this program -- you know, without giving you the X or Y axis on the graph -- NSA reporting under this program has been substantial but consistent. This is NSA counterterrorism reporting. Substantial but consistent. NSA reporting under FISA has gone like that. FISA has been a remarkably successful tool. We use it very aggressively.

In the instances where this program applies, FISA does not give us the operational effect that the authorities that the president has given us give us. Look. I can't -- and I understand it's going to be an incomplete answer, and I can't give you all the fine print as to why, but let me just kind of reverse the answer just a bit. If FISA worked just as well, why wouldn't I use FISA? To save typing? No. There is an operational impact here, and I have two paths in front of me, both of them lawful, one FISA, one the presidential -- the president's authorization. And we go down this path because our operational judgment is it is much more effective. So we do it for that reason. I think I've got -- I think I've covered all the ones you raised.

QUESTION: Quick follow-up. Are you saying that the sheer volume of warrantless eavesdropping has made FISA inoperative?

GEN. HAYDEN: No. I'm saying that the characteristics we need to do what this program's designed to do -- to detect and prevent -- make FISA a less useful tool. It's a wonderful tool, it's done wonderful things for the nation in terms of fighting the war on terror, but in this particular challenge, this particular aspect -- detect and prevent attacks -- what we're doing now is operationally more relevant, operationally more effective.

Now you have. Do some research and debunk this...if you can. Most Americans like the idea this President is eavesdropping on al Qaeda and those they're talking to in the U.S.

It's a losing issue with Democrats so, keep it up. I particularly like the who "impeachment" angle.

[Yonivore]

SA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance

Good!

F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show

Great!