"When reports of the government's extensive surveillance program surfaced in December 2005, Mr. Klein realized that he was a witness to (and unwitting participant in) a massive effort that had the effect, if not the purpose, of violating the rights of millions of Americans."

Klein's lawyer also explained that Klein repaired and maintained fiber optic cables that carry Internet data from all over the world through an AT&T central switch in San Francisco.

"What he observed - that the signal carrying the Internet data over the fiber optic cables was "split" such that an exact copy of the data was redirected to the National Security Agency - had been the topic of public discussion months before he went public with his observations," court document state. The filings were part of an attempt to lift the seal from Klein's full statements, which would likely reveal even more detail.

Intelligence leaders and the White House claim the NSA has always operated within the law and that its surveillance programs are crucial for maintaining national security. They have argued military and state secrets privileges should allow them to keep the details of surveillance under wraps and that presidential war powers allow the surveillance.

A statement released on the non-partisan Center for Democracy & Technology Web site this week, tackles those arguments and claims that the surveillance appears to be illegal no matter how it was done.

"If the program involved real-time interception, it probably violated both the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the statute on interception of call detail information in criminal cases," the center's analysis claims. "Both statutes require a court order for interception of information about calling patterns, even if the content of the communication is not collected."

The CDT claims FISA defines "content" in broad terms, including not only the substance of communications but also information that the communication occurred. The group also claims that even non-content information requires a "pen register." The CDT cites two federal laws prohibiting the NSA from retrieving stored information, without obtaining prior judicial approval.

Section 222 of Title 47 of the United States Code requires telecommunications carriers to protect confidentiality of proprietary information relating to carrier services. Section 2702 of Title 18 in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act prohibits electronic communications service providers from knowingly divulging a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber or customer to any government entity without customer consent, subpoena or court order. The privacy act also creates civil liabilities and provides for minimum fines of $1,000 per violation, punitive damages and attorney fees.

"This latest disclosure reinforces what CDT and others in the public interest community have been saying for months," CDT stated. "Congress needs to conduct a comprehensive in-depth and public inquiry into the scope of warrantless domestic surveillance."

The U.S. Department of Justice just closed an investigation into wiretapping the administration claimed was targeted at international communications because investigators were denied access and information. The revelation this week that domestic call information is stored in a huge database that could likely analyze call patterns - and match patterns with other databases containing personal information - is prompting renewed calls for investigation among advocacy groups and elected representatives.

The CDT stated that American citizens and leaders should have a full understanding of whether the "snooping is properly focused," rather than accepting assurances that the NSA spying programs respect the rights of ordinary Americans.

Another federal agency official with long-time experience and impeccable credentials told us, "MCI is an NSA shadow company. Just remember that MCI equals NSA and you'll always be correct in your research and investigation."

On February 14, 2005, Verizon announced its intention to purchase MCI for $6.7 billion, after which the company became involved in a strained bidding war with Qwest Communications.

MCI investors sharply criticized the Verizon takeover which was recently finalized; but federal prosecutors probing NSA spying will have reason to subpoena Verizon regarding whether the Bush administration's approval of Verizon's MCI takeover had anything to do with the company's willingness to provide private phone and email records to the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens.

U.S. intelligence sources within the Special Operations Group (SOG) are reporting that NSA computers have been downloading financial and personal files of all American citizens as a result of upgrades to the Echelon satellite network and software program which is part of the Prosecutor's Management Information System (PROMIS).

SOG says the NSA has a "7-10 second lead time" which effectively affords the agency the opportunity to delay the release of currency, stock and bond sales transactions permitting a criminal advantage to agency officials and other high-level associates who game the system of the world's financial markets to steal investment capital from both U.S. and foreign citizens throughout the world.

Personal phone service shut down after posting story

A TomFlocco.com phone call on Friday to Verizon seeking comment for this report on why the company provided personal phone records to the NSA without the knowledge or permission of its customers resulted in a "no comment" response from a Verizon spokesperson identifying herself only as Mrs. Singh: "We are not able to comment on whether we have cooperated with the NSA in this matter since this is a classified issue; but we're confident that we are within the law. We are protecting your privacy but we cannot comment further."

When we asked whether Verizon would deny helping the NSA to spy on Americans, Mrs. Singh's response was "we cannot comment on that."

We also asked to speak to the Verizon legal or security departments, or even the consumer public relations department for a comment; but we were told "We appreciate that this matter is causing concern among our customers but it will not be possible for you to speak to either group. We cannot comment on whether we cooperated with the NSA because it's classified."

Later that afternoon, wide news reported indicated that Verizon was sued for $5 billion for illegally providing phone numbers and records to the NSA without the knowledge or permission of Verizon customers.

On Saturday evening after the Friday call to Verizon, we posted a short new story, "Phone companies help NSA spy on personal computers for enemies list" in the IN BRIEF box at TomFlocco.com.

After the story was posted, our personal office hard-line telephone service with Verizon was shut down at about 1:30 am Sunday morning with that office line remaining out of service for over 23 hours before this story was posted online.

Internet IP address logs from this writer's computer firewall security system provide evidence that the Department of Defense (DoD) is conducting surveillance, since logs show DoD internet identification numbers during specific occasions while we conducted phone interviews with intelligence agents and other sources, and also while reports were being researched and word processed for stories regarding White House crime family activities.

NSA spying on dial-up, high-speed internet e-mail and websites for 'enemies list'

A U.S intelligence source wishing to remain anonymous but who has direct knowledge of the operations said U.S. cable internet corporations have joined the widely-reported telephone company operations to assist in compiling the largest database in history on American citizens while "using super-secret 5th generation Cray computers to tap into dial-up, DSL and high-speed broadband internet connections which have satellite voice recognition and keystroke monitoring capabilities."

This is the first indication that the NSA is also monitoring websites and personal e-mail communications of American citizens without their knowledge or permission.

The government official said "the voice patterns and voice print recognition comes from the original Inslaw systems which are hooked up to E-Systems Dallas voice recognition software and linked over to the NSA."

The long-time agent added that "part of the reason they are spying on Americans is to create an 'enemies list' of those critical of George W. Bush," adding "the monitored phrases and words trigger networks of contacts between people around the country who are inter-related to other activists regarding issues such as the Iraq War, NSA spying, illegal immigration and critical reporters."

The unnamed official also told us "the U.S. and foreign intelligence community has been using lead bags for the purpose of preventing satellite surveillance and physical reconnaissance ever since the Bush administration commenced a national spy program."

On condition of anonymity, the source added, "driver's licenses are already set up with chips for future use in capturing financial, medical and other personal and/or private records and information for use by the Bush administration and Congress to maximize tax compliance, national identification or for potential political purposes."  

NSA/Treadstone spy-death lists?

The Bush spy program enemies list "would be used to organize groups for internment camps-particularly the big camp being developed in northeast Yuma county, Arizona where most of the 'problem patriots and activists' would be housed if Mr. Bush is allowed to remain in power during another major terrorist or biological event," said the unnamed federal agent.

An October 27, 2001 report in the Houston Chronicle confirmed the existence of secret surveillance lists, and that NSA lawyers ordered a massive shredding program of the names and phone numbers of innocent Americans in late October, 2001; but the NSA made copies of the unlawful list, according to two former U.S. officials.

Federal prosecutors will likely have interest in the fact that the NSA reportedly mailed the list to then Under Secretary of State and current White House Chief of Staff John Bolton who emailed the list to Treadstone Space #77 in Colorado.

"All political critics of the Bush or Clinton families have had their names, phone numbers and addresses stored by the NSA at Treadstone Space #71/77," said national security expert Thomas Heneghan, who confirmed another federal agent's assertion that the NSA is being assisted by MCI regarding the Bush administration spy operation on the American people.

"#77 is the Colorado division of # 71 in New York State which is also linked to secret FBI Division 5 operations connected to both the Bush and Clinton families without the knowledge of U.S. citizens," added Heneghan.

The national security watchdog said "the Bush-Clinton crime families are planning a bird flu pandemic as an excuse for a temporary martial law government to cover up ongoing corruption and crimes committed against the American people."

A flu pandemic would allow Mr. Bush to suspend constitutional rights and round up patriot critics on the NSA/Treadstone death-spy list where they could transport innocent U.S. citizens who are politically outspoken to internment camps in locations such as the one in Yuma county, referred to earlier by another federal agent.

Heneghan added that U.S. Senate Leader and GOP presidential candidate William Frist and House of Representatives Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi are both aware of the Treadstone death list and also the Bush administration spy operations conducted by the NSA-both overseas and in the United States.

Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL-5) was identified by Heneghan as "an Israeli intelligence operative in Congress who actually carries copies of the updated [NSA/Treadstone] death-spy list to his office each day," raising questions as to whether alleged operatives loyal to foreign governments are only welcome in the U.S. House of Representatives.

"This was kind of a direct payback to the taxpayers for the investment made in this agency over the years, even though in its original design it was intended for foreign intelligence purposes," Clapper said in a Thursday interview with The Associated Press.

Geospatial intelligence is the science of combining imagery, such as satellite pictures, to physically depict features or activities happening anywhere on the planet. A part of the Defense Department, the NGA usually operates unnoticed to provide information on nuclear sites, terror camps, troop movements or natural disasters.

After last year's hurricanes, the agency had an unusually public face. It set up mobile command centers that sprung out of the backs of Humvees and provided imagery for rescuers and hurricane victims who wanted to know the condition of their homes. Victims would provide their street address and the NGA would provide a satellite photo of their property. In one way or another, some 900 agency officials were involved.

Spy agencies historically avoided domestic operations out of concern for Pentagon regulations and Reagan-era executive order, known as 12333, that restricted intelligence collection on American citizens and companies. Its budget, like all intelligence agencies, is classified.

On Clapper's watch of the last five years, his agency has found ways to expand its mission to help prepare security at Super Bowls and political conventions or deal with natural disasters, such as hurricanes and forest fires.

With help, the agency can also zoom in. Its officials cooperate with private groups, such as hotel security, to get access to footage of a lobby or ballroom. That video can then be linked with mapping and graphical data to help secure events or take action, if a hostage situation or other catastrophe happens.

Privacy advocates wonder how much the agency picks up - and stores. Many are increasingly skeptical of intelligence agencies with recent revelations about the Bush administration's surveillance on phone calls and e-mails.

Among the government's most closely guarded secrets, the quality of pictures NGA receives from classified satellites is believed to far exceed the one-meter resolution available commercially. That means they can take a satellite "snapshot" from high above the atmosphere that is crisply detailed down to one meter level, which is 3.3 feet.

Clapper says his agency only does big pictures, so concerns about using the NGA's foreign intelligence apparatus at home doesn't apply.

"We are not trying to examine an individual dwelling, for example, because what our mission is normally going to be is looking at large areas," he said. "It doesn't really affect or threaten anyone's privacy or civil liberties when you are looking at a large collective area."

When asked what additional powers he'd ask Congress for, he said, "I wouldn't."



His agency also handles its historic mission: regional threats, such as Iran and North Korea; terrorist hideouts; and tracking drug trade. "Everything and everybody has to be some place," he said.

He considers his brand of intelligence a chess match. "There are sophisticated nation states that have a good understanding of our surveillance capabilities," including Iran, he said. "What we have to do is counter that" by taking advantage of anomalies or sending spy planes and satellites over more frequently.

Adversaries who hide their most important facilities underground is a trend the agency has to work at, he said.

NGA was once a stepchild of the intelligence community. But Clapper said it has come into its own and become an equal partner with the other spy agencies, such as the
CIA.

Experience-wise, the agency is among the youngest of the spy agencies. About 40 percent of the agency's analyst have been hired in the last five years.

"They are very inexperienced, and that's just fine. They don't have any baggage," said Clapper, who retires next month as the longest serving agency director. "The people that we are getting now are bright, computer literate. ... That is not something I lie awake and worry about."

The plaintiffs argue that phone companies should not cooperate with the NSA, which specializes in electronic espionage, without a proper court warrant based on a well founded "suspicion of terrorist activity or other criminal activity".

But in his weekly radio address, Bush rushed to assure the public the secret program did not target innocent citizens.

"It is important for Americans to understand that our activities strictly target Al-Qaeda and its known affiliates," he said Saturday.

But he gave no answer to questions raised in Congress as to why a program with a purported narrow target would need such a massive database.

The existence of the program was first disclosed this week by USA Today, which said the database compiled by the NSA following the September 11, 2001 attacks contained phone records of tens of millions of Americans provided by AT and T, Verizon and BellSouth.

Officials would not provide any details on how the records were used. But former government security experts and media reports indicated that its genesis lay in US phone numbers found on Al-Qaeda suspects captured overseas.

These numbers, the experts said, immediately became the focus of the NSA's attention, with the circle of surveillance growing exponentially as calls were made to or from the numbers in question.

Specially designed computer programs watch for patterns in these contacts and analyze them to make sure no terrorist cell is operating within the United States.

Bush said the intelligence activities he had authorized were "lawful" and that members of Congress from both parties had been adequately briefed.

"The privacy of all Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities," he insisted. "The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval."

The new controversy follows charges that Bush may have broken the law when he authorized the NSA in the wake of September 11 to conduct wiretaps -- without a court-issued warrant -- of international phone calls made by Americans suspected of terrorist ties.

But while the wiretaps put the White House on the spot, the new revelations could mean a world of legal and financial trouble for the phone companies.

The lawsuit in New York was filed under the 1986 Stored Communications Act, which expressly forbids the companies from turning over customers' records to the government without a warrant.

The statute also gives consumers the right to sue for violations of the act and allows claims of at least 1,000 dollars for each violation.

"If you've got 50 million people, that's potentially 50 billion dollars," said Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University and a former White House adviser on privacy issues.

A Newsweek poll released Saturday showed that a majority of Americans, 53 percent, believe the NSA's telephone database goes too far in invading privacy.

But in a Washington Post and ABC television poll released Friday, 63 percent said the secret program was acceptable.

The fact that the government is trying to track (but not wiretap) every call you make and every call you receive - at home or on your cellphone is, to say the least, disturbing.

It means that your phone company (if you are a customer of AT&T, BellSouth or Verizon) tossed your privacy to the wind and collaborated with this extraordinary intrusion, and that it did so secretly and without following any court order.

That is, unless you're lucky enough to be served by Qwest, the one major phone company that had the integrity to resist government pressure.

It means that unless public opposition changes the government's course, this database will be compiled, updated and expanded into the indeterminate future, through countless administrations with who-knows-what interests and motives.

Only the most naive and unsuspicious soul could trust that it will remain safe, secured and for the eyes only of those hunting terrorists.

One need look no further than past abuses of power to be uncomfortable about the future.
Richard Nixon during Watergate. Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War. J. Edgar Hoover during his long reign as
FBI director.

Even assuming that the Bush administration's motives are pure, and that this program merely looks for patterns of calls that could reveal terror networks, it raises a number of troubling questions:

Is it legal? Bush insists it is, but that's questionable. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires a court order to gather a person's current phone records. A 1934 law requires phone companies to protect customers' privacy. And the Fourth Amendment forbids "unreasonable searches and seizures."

Is it useful? Taken as a whole, such a database is of dubious utility. U.S. intelligence-gathering agencies are already suffering from an abundance of raw information and a dearth of good intelligence. Looking for suspicious patterns among billions of phone numbers seems like the ultimate search for a needle in a haystack.

Is it foolproof? These types of databases invariably have errors. The federal terrorist "watch list," which is used to screen airline passengers, has ensnared a number of innocent travelers - among them Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., and a 23-month-old toddler - whose names are similar to, or the same as, suspects on the list. Once you're mistakenly targeted, the error can be nearly impossible to fix and your life can be turned upside down.

Will it be abused? Maybe not at first. Over time, however, this vast quantity of data is a potentially irresistible tool for government officials who want to zero in on individual Americans.

At the very least, one can imagine this information being used by law enforcement agencies trying to trace people who have attracted their attention but about whom they don't have enough information to justify a court order. Or to look for whistle-blowers who have leaked sensitive information to reporters.

Consider what happened in the 1960s and '70s, the last time federal law enforcement and national security agencies launched mass snooping expeditions against U.S. citizens. The FBI, which became a clearinghouse for the data, sent them to the CIA, the Justice Department and the IRS, where some of the data were used in tax probes.

"Information that should not have been gathered in the first place has gone beyond the initial agency to numerous other agencies and officials, thus compounding the original intrusion," concluded a committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, which investigated and reported on the abuses in 1976. The amount of information was "so voluminous," it was difficult "to separate useful data from worthless detail."

NSA's technological capabilities, the Church Committee wrote, are a "sensitive national asset" valuable to the national defense. Even so, it warned, "if not properly controlled ... this same technological capability could be turned against the American people, at great cost to liberty."

The panel's conclusions about NSA are as valid today as they were then.

The phone record program serves as a powerful reminder of how, in a digital age, records can be compiled and analyzed in ways you are unaware of.

And combined with a separate NSA program (revealed in December by The New York Times) to eavesdrop without warrants on international calls from the USA, it raises the question of what other secret and constitutionally suspect programs the Bush administration might still be shielding.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA for six years and is now Bush's nominee to be CIA director, is a master of evasion. Speaking in January about the international eavesdropping, he said the program is not a widely cast "drift net" but is narrowly "focused" and "targeted."

Perhaps. But, at the time, he was fully aware of a program that is many of the things the other is not. A 2006 version of the Church Committee is needed to investigate the anti-terror programs created in the scary aftermath of 9/11, and the Senate should hold up Hayden's nomination until all its questions are answered.

Creating a huge, secret database of Americans' phone records does far more than threaten terrorists. It is a deeply troubling act that undermines U.S. freedoms and threatens us all.

The White House declined to provide an opposing view to this editorial.

By several accounts, General Hayden, a 61-year-old Air Force officer who left the agency last year to become principal deputy director of national intelligence, was the man in the middle as Bush demanded that intelligence agencies act urgently to stop future attacks, the paper pointed out.

On one side was a strong-willed vice president and his longtime legal adviser, David Addington, who believed that the Constitution permitted spy agencies to take sweeping measures to defend the country, The Times said.

On the other side were some lawyers and officials at the largest American intelligence agency, which was battered by eavesdropping scandals in the 1970s and has since wielded its powerful technology with extreme care to avoid accusations of spying on Americans, the report noted.

As in other areas of intelligence collection, including interrogation methods for terrorism suspects, Cheney and Addington took an aggressive view of what was permissible under the Constitution, according to The Times.

If people suspected of links to Al-Qaeda made calls inside the United States, the vice president and Addington thought eavesdropping without warrants "could be done and should be done," the paper said.

It quotes one of the officials as saying that there was "a very healthy debate" over the issue.

The vice president's staff was "pushing and pushing, and it was up to the NSA lawyers to draw a line and say absolutely not," the official said.

Both officials said they were speaking about the internal discussions because it was important for citizens to understand the interplay between Cheney's office and the NSA.

The trip, undertaken on behalf of the CIA, helped dispel suspicions that the government of Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein had tried to procure the ore known as "yellowcake" from the African nation as part of a secret effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program.

Charges that Saddam was trying to build an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction served as the prime rationale for the launch the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. No such weapons have subsequently been found.

Wilson publicized his findings in a 2003 article in The New York Times, in which he accused the Bush administration of "exaggerating the Iraqi threat" in order to justify the war.

His conclusion also undercut an assertion made by
President George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address that "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Shortly thereafter, Plame's name was illegally leaked to conservative columnist Robert Novak, who made it public by including it in his column, effectively ending the woman's
Central Intelligence Agency career.

The documents, filed by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald Friday, do not contain a smoking gun pointing to a specific White House employee behind the leak, which is now the subject of a criminal investigation.

But they show that Cheney was upset by both Wilson's mission to Niger and Plame's suspected role in launching it long before her public outing.

The filing contains a copy of Wilson's article with angry notes scribbled by the vice president on the margins.

"Have they done this sort of thing before?" Cheney queried. "Send an amb. (ambassador) to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"

According to the documents, Cheney also notified his then-chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA about four weeks before her identity was illegally disclosed.

That contradicts Libby's earlier assertions that he had learned about Plame from the media.

Libby was formally indicted last year for making false statements, obstruction of justice and perjury. The indictment was chiefly based on his denials that he ever discussed Plame's role in the yellowcake matter with journalists.

In his filing, Fitzgerald told the court he planned to use the article with Cheney's notes at Libby's trial, which is expected to begin in January.

He insisted the article had "acutely focused the attention of the vice president and the defendant" and was "relevant to establishing some of the facts" in the case.

Some legal experts believe Cheney is likely to be summoned to testify at Libby's trial.

The Fitzgerald probe is also focused on chief White House political strategist Karl Rove, who has been called to answer questions about the leak five times.

Meanwhile, court papers released last month reveal that Libby testified that he had been "specifically authorized" by
President Bush to disclose the "key judgments" from a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq.

This authorization is largely seen as part of a broader White House campaign to discredit Wilson and his findings.

More information about the case is likely to come to light in Plame's future book. She is reported to have signed a 2.5-million-dollar deal with Crown Publishing.