This morning on the "Imus in the morning" radio program, Imus interviewed Paul Begala, former political Consultant for Bill Clinton, and the topic of the NSA monitoring came up. With a great deal of faux jocularity, Imus suggested that he always thought his phone companies sold his records and wasn't surprised by the news. Imus then suggested he understood that the program only monitored phone numbers, not content, but he didn't believe anything they say about it anyway. Begala joined in the frivolity with comments that "they can't find a 6' 5" Arab in Pakistan, how is listening to some Grandma's phone calls helping anything." I suppose the idea is that by listening to Grandma's calls, they are diverting resources from the pursuit of bin Laden; Begala later (or possible his later guest, Chris Matthews; there is no transcript available) suggested we need human intelligence, not to monitor phone calls, in order to catch al Qaeda. This is fairly nonsensical since the last few years have revealed how our human Intel has been near non-existent since the Church committee hearings, and I am highly skeptical that Begala doesn't know that this is exactly why we need to monitor phone records to find patterns to further investigate.
Yesterday, I watched a few minutes of Your World with Neil Cavuto while he interviewed Madeline Albright, primarily about Iran's nuclear program. She suggested we should be talking to the Iranians and touted her meetings with Kim Jong-il as a model for the type of engagement she recommended, which , considering the outcome of those meetings, seemed like a poor advertisement for such a stance.
Her suggestion is arguable but a throwaway line which she uttered seemed more interesting to me. At one point Cavuto asked her for her thoughts about the NSA program that was re-leaked in slightly different form yesterday. He wondered if she were concerned about our civil liberties.
In her answer (and I cannot find a transcript on line) she mentioned that she couldn't really comment because she didn't know much about the program and, as if in passing, she added that she was concerned that American's phone calls were being monitored.
In his follow up Cavuto corrected her that only phone numbers were being collated and that no ones messages were being listened to without a warrant. She dismissed his point by repeating that she didn't know much about it but it was worrisome. Again, I don't have exact quotes, but that was the gist of her comments. Her "mistaken" comments caught my attention and lead me to wonder:
Are Albright and Begala ignorant of the NSA program, were they being opportunistic Democratic partisans, or were they knowingly perpetuating a lie?
I did a brief stroll around the blogosphere and visited some of the news organizations. Almost every story recognized that the leaked program could in no way be confused with domestic spying or eavesdropping, as those terms are commonly used. The original story was in USA Today, NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls, and describes the program in these terms:
The government is collecting "external" data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting "internals," a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for "social network analysis," the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.
Captain Ed points out that this is not a new story.
This [The NSA program] sent the nation into hysteria across the entire political spectrum -- a hysteria that should embarrass everyone, since this story hardly tells anyone anything new. This only repeats what James Risen and Eric Lichtblau reported on December 24th of last year in a follow-up to their December 16th revelation of the warrantless surveillance on international calls linked to terrorists. Risen and Lichtblau specifically reported on the data-mining exploits of the NSA at that time:
He goes on to describe the program in some detail and also the civil liberties concerns and trade-offs that the program may involve.
Spook86 at In From the Cold, describes the program with some specifics, in Links and Nodes:
It's one of the most effective tools for tracking terrorists and organized crime. It's called links and nodes analysis, and we've recently learned that the National Security Agency (NSA) has operated a program to support that effort, through phone company data. Predictably, the civil liberties crowd is positively atwitter.
AJ Strata pointed out that this article included a very significant piece of information that terrorists could use to increase their privacy:
So now terrorists know not to communicate to their overseas handlers and to avoid certain services. And they should know much more, which I will not go into in case they don’t. Someone still should go to jail for this.
This is a serious leak of a program that was top secret for some very good reasons; furthermore, the only information collected and manipulated by the sophisticated computer programs at the NSA were phone numbers, not content, not names, addresses, or any other identifying data. A reasonable discussion could be had around these questions but I suspect most of us would take the trade-off of such data mining in exchange for stopping terrorist acts.
However, here are some other comments that were made yesterday [the emphasis is mine-SW]:
From The Raw Story:
"We need to know if terrorists are plotting to attack us," said (Jane) Harman (D-CA), Ranking Member on the House Intelligence Committee. "But we must never retreat from the principle that every intercept requires a warrant based on probable cause. Since some in the Administration claim the FISA process is antiquated, this bill puts the burden on them to request additional resources."
Congressman (John) Conyers (D-MI) added, "This legislation could not be more timely. Today's USA Today article made clear that the Administration's eavesdropping is larger than anyone imagined and sweeps in the activities of millions of innocent Americans. If this Congress does not rein in the President and his Administration now, there is no telling how far it will go."
Democrats reacted angrily to the USA Today article and its description of the program's vast size, including an assertion by one unnamed source that its goal was the creation of a database of every phone call ever made within the United States' borders.
"Are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with Al Qaeda?" Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the committee's ranking minority member, asked angrily.
James Rosen, McClatchy Newspapers:
"The idea of collecting millions or thousands of phone numbers - how does that fit into following the enemy?" Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, told Fox News.
Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, held up a copy of USA Today during a meeting of the panel.
"Shame on us for being so far behind, and being so willing to rubber-stamp anything this administration does," Leahy said. "The Republican-controlled Congress refuses to ask questions, and so we have to pick up the paper to find out what is going on."
....
Journalism advocates said disclosure of the domestic phone surveillance could further harm reporters' ability to obtain information on sensitive subjects, such as the Washington Post articles that received the Pulitzer Prize this year for revealing the CIA's use of secret overseas prisons.
"I'm sure that among the interesting patterns (the government is) looking for, they've identified some reporters, and they're looking for patterns of who they've been talking to," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "That is horrifying."
Rep. Edward Markey (news, bio, voting record) of Massachusetts, ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee's telecommunications and internet panel, had a different view: "The NSA stands for Now Spying on Americans."
I am troubled by a pattern of exaggeration and vilification that almost seems orchestrated. It is as if there has been a persistent effort made, primarily by Democrats but with the assistance of various Republicans and the media, to obfuscate or frame the debate in such a way that the worst possible explanation is suggested as the primary explanation. Furthermore, the language used explicitly clouds the issues in terms of the goal of the program, the technical aspects of the program, and the extent of the program. The impression is left that the Bush Administration is spying on Americans; they are going after reporters; they are labeling millions of Americans as suspects. It almost seems as if the complaints are arising from a different country in a different time period. Any day now we should start seeing stories about plumbers and enemies lists; this is disturbing.
Anyone who understands what the program involves would have a hard time reconciling the extreme reactions with the actual program. I suspect some of the Congressional commenters are merely ignorant. After all, assuming he has received even a minimal description of the program, Lindsey Graham does not do much for my estimation of his intellectual prowess with his comment. Yet I believe that people like Jane Harman, Paul Begala, and Madeline Albright know better. Conyers doesn't care what the facts are; he has wanted to impeach Nixon, excuse me, Bush since 2000.
The thoughtless comments, and the damage to our national security, performed by these "servants of the people" are excellent exhibits for why such programs demand secrecy. Select Congressional leaders were in the loop on the programs, there was no warrant-less spying on random Americans (our intelligence people do not have the time or energy for such time wasters; they are trying to catch al Qaeda and friends before another atrocity takes place) and the misleading descriptions of the program made by such people makes the important debate about the risk-benefit analysis of such programs infinitely more difficult. The opportunistic, ignorant, or duplicitous comments about the program cast no glory on those who take part in such attempts to mislead the American people.
As if to prove the point, John Hinderaker at Power Line notes this juxtaposition of another timely story with the NSA leak:
As I noted earlier, the report by Great Britain's Intelligence and Security Committee on last July's London subway bombings offers a stark lesson. Shortly before the subway attack, there was a flurry of telephone calls between two of the bombers and one or more telephones in Pakistan. The two terrorists had come under suspicion, but the phone conversations were not intercepted. Had they been, it seems highly likely that the terrorist attack could have been prevented.
We intercept international phone calls between suspected terrorists; the U.K. doesn't--or not enough of them, anyway. Their subway was bombed; ours haven't been. To the NSA, I say: Keep up the good work.
Thus, my question: Are these people ignorant, opportunistic, or duplicitous?
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