The proponents of NSA snooping are getting their drawers twisted, some calling Echelon Clinton's baby, with Drudge and Limbaugh and other wing-nuts linking to a CBS 60 Minutes cursory report, and others of the war lovers disavowing it, while the WSJ cheers for what it does do not understand, ignorantly accusing others of misunderstanding. Duncan Campbell wrote a long report on Echelon for EPIC in June 2000 which the "privacy" org refused to publish, claiming NSA does not spy on Americans. We asked EPIC in January 2005 for permission to publish the report but never got an answer. Here it is, entitled "Signals Intelligence and Human Rights - the ECHELON report:" http://cryptome.org/sigint-hr-dc.htm Campbell carefully reviews all technical, political and legal aspects of Echelon and NSA's global interception programs, and there is meat there for all sides of the current superficial spitting contest -- WSJ and the NYT and WashPo could learn from Campbell. He cites 70s eavesdropping reports from all of them which seem to have been ignored in the shallow recent accounts. Campbell's principal conclusion is that NSA and its backers have lied consistently about what it is doing, from the Church Committee hearings in the 70s on through 2000, and likely have lied since then as a matter of policy, lied to Congress, lied to the public, and perhaps lied to its backers so polished and encrusted is its concealment. Porter Goss, along with Bob Barr, both CIA dudes, tried to pry open NSA's box in the late 90s and had no luck due to the blind faith that NSA could do no wrong, or at least could do no wrong in the eyes of overseers. To be sure, what NSA siphons about US corporate, governmental and political corruption could silence the most frightened of WSJ-adoring malfeasors, a trick learned from Hoover. Don't spy in the US, too much villany in the homeland of winner take all markets. What NSA has on the Times, WashPo and WSJ top dogs would be wondrous to read.