Russel Tice on NSA

[Eugen Leitl]

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1491889

Jan 10, 2006 . Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security
Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet.

For 20 years, Tice worked in the shadows as he helped the United States spy on
other people's conversations around the world.

"I specialized in what's called special access programs," Tice said of his
job. "We called them 'black world' programs and operations."

But now, Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret "black world"
operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the
law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing
in these programs run by the Defense Department and the NSA in the post-9/11
efforts to go after terrorists.

"The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we're going to do whatever
it takes to get them," he said.

Tracking Calls

Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and
international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in
New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use.

"If you picked the word 'jihad' out of a conversation," Tice said, "the
technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out
of the system for processing."

According to Tice, intelligence analysts use the information to develop graphs
that resemble spiderwebs linking one suspect's phone number to hundreds or
even thousands more.

Tice Admits Being a Source for The New York Times

President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to
eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite
warrants.

But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping
by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs
is used.

"That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know,
placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that
vacuum," Tice said.

The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping
without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC
News that he was a source for the Times' reporters. But Tice maintains that
his conscience is clear.

"As far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified,
I'm not worried," he said. "We need to clean up the intelligence community.
We've had abuses, and they need to be addressed."

The NSA revoked Tice's security clearance in May of last year based on what it
called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk
and says that's the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers.
Today the NSA said it had "no information to provide."

ABC News' Vic Walter and Avni Patel contributed to this report.

--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]