[Clips] Clinton NSA Eavesdropped on U.S. Calls

[R. A. Hettinga]

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 <http://www.newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/18/221452.shtml>

 Reprinted from NewsMax.com
 Sunday, Dec. 18, 2005 10:10 p.m. EST

 Clinton NSA Eavesdropped on U.S. Calls

  During the 1990's under President Clinton, the National Security Agency
 monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and
 citizens of other countries under a super secret program code-named Echelon.

  On Friday, the New York Times suggested that the Bush administration has
 instituted "a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices"
 when it "secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on
 Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of
 terrorist activity without [obtaining] court-approved warrants."

  But in fact, the NSA had been monitoring private domestic telephone
 conversations on a much larger scale throughout the 1990s - all of it done
 without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks.

  In February 2000, for instance, CBS "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft
 introduced a report on the Clinton-era spy program by noting:

 "If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a
 good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the
 country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance
 Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National Security Agency."

  NSA computers, said Kroft, "capture virtually every electronic
 conversation around the world."

  Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian
 equivalent of the National Security Agency, told "60 Minutes" that the
 agency was monitoring "everything from data transfers to cell phones to
 portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs."

 Mr. Frost detailed activities at one unidentified NSA installation, telling
 "60 Minutes" that agency operators "can listen in to just about anything" -
 while Echelon computers screen phone calls for key words that might
 indicate a terrorist threat.

  The "60 Minutes" report also spotlighted Echelon critic, then-Rep. Bob
 Barr, who complained that the project as it was being implemented under
 Clinton "engages in the interception of literally millions of
 communications involving United States citizens."

 One Echelon operator working in Britain told "60 Minutes" that the NSA had
 even monitored and tape recorded the conversations of the late Sen. Strom
 Thurmond.

  Still, the Times repeatedly insisted on Friday that NSA surveillance under
 Bush had been unprecedented, at one point citing anonymously an alleged
 former national security official who claimed: "This is really a sea
 change. It's almost a mainstay of this country that the NSA only does
 foreign searches."

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 R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
 The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
 "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
 [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
 experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'