White House to lash out at media coverage of terror surveillance

Financial Times ^ | Feb. 6, 2006 | Edward Alden and Christopher Swann

[FairOpinion]

The Bush administration will tell the Senate today that the National Security Agency's programme for terrorist surveillance has been badly distorted by media reports, and that the scheme is a strictly limited one aimed at al-Qaeda members and affiliated groups.

In the first Senate hearing on the controversial programme, which was set up secretly in 2002 and revealed publicly in December, Alberto Gonzales, the attorney-general, will say that the press accounts "are in almost every case, in one way or another, misinformed, confused or wrong," according to Time magazine, which has obtained documents outlining the planned testimony.

"Contrary to the speculation reflected in some media reporting, the terrorist surveillance programme is not a dragnet that sucks in all conversation and uses computer searches to pick out calls of interest," Mr Gonzales will say in response to questions raised by Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee. "No communications are intercepted unless first it is determined that one end of the call is outside of the country, and professional intelligence experts have probable cause [that is, 'reasonable grounds to believe'] that a part to the communication is a member or agent of al-Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organisation."

[Pirate21]

General Hayden "tells it like it is" better than any other intelligence person I've heard. While polite, he's frank. We need that.