Firstfruits

…The journalist surveillance program, code named “Firstfruits,” was part of a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) program that was maintained at least until October 2004 and was authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss….

…Firstfruits was a database that contained both the articles and the transcripts of telephone and other communications of particular Washington journalists known to report on sensitive U.S. intelligence activities, particularly those involving NSA…

…In 2001, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rejected a number of FISA wiretap applications from Michael Resnick, the FBI supervisor in charge of counter-terrorism surveillance. The court said that some 75 warrant requests from the FBI were erroneous and that the FBI, under Louis Freeh and Robert Mueller, had misled the court and misused the FISA law on dozens of occasions. In a May 17, 2002 opinion, the presiding FISA Judge, Royce C. Lamberth (a Texan appointed by Ronald Reagan), barred Resnick from ever appearing before the court again. The ruling, released by Lamberth’s successor, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelley, stated in extremely strong terms, “In virtually every instance, the government’s misstatements and omissions in FISA applications and violations of the Court’s orders involved information sharing and unauthorized disseminations to criminal investigators and prosecutors . . . How these misrepresentations occurred remains unexplained to the court.”

“The announcement signals a new level of scrutiny for the NSA program, which was launched shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and revealed in news reports in December 2005.”

The program was launched well before September 11. It had nothing to do with September 11, even though the Bush administration (and apparently the Washington Post also) wants you to believe that it did.

There have been posts here and other evidence that the US has covertly been involved in fomenting Shia/Sunni fighting.

What would be the reason?

Two things came to mind this AM:

1. For Neocons, only one thing is better than killing an Arab: have them kill eachother

2. An corrolary to the threory “we’ll fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here”: “Let them kill eachother so they don’t gang up on us.”

May Bunny Greenhouse serve as consultant for the contract investigations.

Pat Lang would have been in Baker’s group had he not been so knowledgeable about all the things that should matter to Baker and his stooges.

Pat Lang is exactly who they need. Good idea about Greenhouse. She’s not one to let anything slide.

Soma @
47

And maybe a little deeper investigation into those
mysterious anthrax attacks while we’re at it, eh, Senator Leahy?

Yes, please. I’m tired of GOPers saying, unchallenged by pundits, “we haven’t had an attack on American soil since 9/11.” We have: several anthra* attacks in late fall 2001, plus all the domestic terroristic threats for which the loon was just arrested in LA, and about which TradMed has been silent. These are attacks! We don’t know who perpetrated the real anthra* attack, although we know people died.
!

We know for a fact that two liberal Democrats were targeted in the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks and it is not too much of a stretch to assume why the domestic terrorist picked those two members of the U.S. Senate;

We know the person(s) involved were (& perhaps still are) associated with the U.S. defense dep’t/industry;

We know, as with most legitimate threats or actual offenses against the people of the United States, the Bush administration has not accomplished anything on this investigation; and

We know, as with most legitimate threats or actual offenses against the people of the United States, the Bush administration does not take the issue seriously and/or is not competent in handling a problem they can barely comprehend.

cl

Pat Lang would have been in Baker’s group had he not been so knowledgeable about all the things that should matter to Baker and his stooges.

Citizens Gentleman Jim and Hugh:

Jim, your construction of the history of the cost of Viet Nam and it’s political effects and your speculation as to the fascists’ current strategy is right on…witness their walkin’ away from the unresolved budget problems of this Congress to dump it on the Democrats in the new session.

Hugh, you are correct about the mechanism the fascists have used this time to push forward the costs of this war…the impact on the economy in the near term will be the same as Jim described, however, and may be large enough to blow our paper mache economy right back ta the 18th century.

KEEP THE FAITH AND TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER…THEY DON’T HAVE HEALTHCARE IN THE RE-EDUCATION CAMPS EITHER!!