do I really have to say it???
Posted on 01/06/2006 8:21:05 AM PST by InvisibleChurch
Friday, Jan. 6, 2006 11:10 a.m. EST Clinton NSA Wiretapped Top Republican
During the 1990's under President Bill Clinton, the National Security Agency conducted random telecommunications surveillance of millions of phone calls daily under a top secret program known as Echelon.
But according to at least two people familiar with the spy operation at the time, some of the surveillance was far from indiscriminate.
In a February 2000 interview with CBS's "60 Minutes," NSA operator Margaret Newsham revealed that the agency's listening post in Great Britain was involved in monitoring the phone calls of at least one top Republican on Capitol Hill.
Questioned by "60 Minutes" interviewer Steve Kroft, Newsham recalled how she learned of the illegal surveillance:
"I walked into the office building and a friend said, 'Come over here and listen to--to this thing.' And he had headphones on, so I took the headphones and I listened to it, and I looked at him and said, 'That's an American.' . . .
Ms. Newsham remembered, "It was definitely an American voice, and it was a voice that was distinct. And I said, 'Well, who is that?'
"And he said it was Senator Strom Thurmond."
Until his retirement from the Senate in 2002, Thurmond was a frequent critic of the Clinton administration, who played a leading role in the 1998 impeachment drama - though there's no known connection to the decision to wiretap the South Carolina conservative.
During the same program, however, Kroft consulted with Mike Frost, who worked for Canada's version of the NSA for 20-years.
Asked if it was commonplace for the NSA to monitor the phone calls of top U.S. politicians, Frost told CBS: "Of course it goes on. Been going on for years. Of course it goes on. That's the way it works."
Clinton's had NSA "accidentally" use Eschelon to listen to Republicans. Oops.
Is anyone really surprised?
The chatter from the Clinton is 'Solid Gold' crowd is deafening in its silence. ;-)
No accident at all, I'm sure. heh
<< ... have Poppa Bush give him the cold shoulder. >>
You kidding?
The oligarchy takes care of its own.
Even, in the case of the Bushs and the Billy-Bubba Blythes, its own trailer-trash can't make strawberry jam from pigshit usurpers.
Funny how the media never looked into how Bubba and Janet "The Torch" Reno handled Ruby Ridge, Waco, and other domestic debacles to make sure they had their 't's crossed and 'i's dotted on their warrants, or if there even were warrants. All of a sudden now this stuff is a horrible threat to civil liberties. The media wasn't beating this drum during the Klinton years when the FBI/ATF was kicking in doors, gassing people, and burning their homes with them still inside. Maybe somebody ought to be asking Ted Koppel et al about their coverage on that!!
Even at the time of impeachment I could not understand why Ken Starr went after this criminal on such flimsy grounds!! Why didn't he go after Clintoon on the missing 900+ FBI files, or Chinagate, or many other illegal activities that were on-going at the time and were fairly much common knowledge? Here is another one - were there no "Whistle blowers" at the NSA, CIA, DIA, and FBI during the Clintoon Admiin? Did he make them take LOYALTY OATHS?
Damn, you all got a way with words!
They ought to do it right this time, but frankly, I think an excorcism might prove to be more efficacios.
I think the names of the people in those 500 files should be made public record. Why? Because, without some kind of check, 500 people and associates are subject to blackmail. The 500 files were all Republicans.
do I really have to say it???
One thing that is wonderfully predictable about the Democrats and their handmaidens, the media, is when they scream the loudest about some supposed Republican shenanigans it is they themselves who are up to their eyeballs in it. The NSA and Abramoff deals are only the latest.
Me too. It sure as hell wasn't the old couple (both DNC operatives) in Florida who claimed they managed to snatch both ends of a cell phone call on their "police scanner" and then just happened to have a tape recorder handy as well. That never passed the smell test.
It wouldn't take the NSA to do it, but it sure as hell wasn't a couple of retired union slumps either.
Oh yes, they do it every time. Tony Snow had a wonderful sound montage the other day that had all the top Democraps of the mid-1990s griping about Saddam's WMDs and his ambitions to use them or sell them to terrorists. It was priceless and even had Hillary. It also had Al Gore complaining that Bush I had done nothing about Saddam's WMDs during the first gulf war.
Find the 60 Minutes transcript then.
Some FReepers of what Queen Hillary (who would unconstitutionally serve an ADDITIONAL 4 years as co-president) would do with the powers granted by the Patriot Act. Those FBI files show she wouldn't care about any laws or restrictions ANYWAY.
One of the gripes was that Bush41 "hadn't finished the job" by taking down Saddam. Now they say that we had no right to do so and that this was an illegal war.
Sour grapes from the peanut gallery. Shut those unruly children up, already.
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