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The late Ron Brown was not particularly paranoid. In fact, for most of his career, he conducted his business dealings cavalierly, smug in the knowledge that as a splendidly well-connected, black Democrat he was all but immune to criticism from either the media or the law. That began to change when he assumed his job as Bill Clinton's secretary of commerce in early 1993, and it changed absolutely when he ran afoul of the Clintons nearly three years later. As Brown learned upon taking office, the Department of Commerce was home to the Office of Intelligence Liaison. This sub-department received...

Bush's Spying: Scandalous, or Echo of Clinton-Era "Echelon"?        Friday's big scoop by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau on domestic spying by the National Security Agency, "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts," no doubt had the effect the paper intended, throwing the White House on the defensive and causing the renewal of the Patriot Act to be thwarted, a long-time goal of the Times editorial page.      But is this sort of terrorist surveillance truly a new and troubling thing? The government's Echelon spy program was reported on during the Clinton administration, in a 2000 report on...

NEW YORK, May 7 — Newly unearthed documents, mostly letters from the CIA to Congress, lay out evidence of an intensive intelligence effort to help U.S. corporations win contracts overseas. The documents, all published during the Clinton administration, appear to confirm reports that America’s electronic eavesdropping apparatus was involved in commercial espionage.

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...

Somehow the geeky Wired News managed to scoop the vaunted New York Times by more than four years: Bush Submits His Laws for WarBy Declan McCullagh 10:15 AM Sep. 20, 2001 PT WASHINGTON -- President Bush sent his anti-terrorism bill to Congress late Wednesday, launching an emotional debate that will force U.S. politicians to choose between continued freedom for Americans or greater security. Created in response to last week's bloody attacks, the draft "Mobilization Against Terrorism Act" (MATA) rewrites laws dealing with wiretapping, eavesdropping and immigration. The draft, intended to increase prosecutors' courtroom authority, also unleashes the government's Echelon and...

Television Broadcast February 27, 2000 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 and four English-speaking allies: Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The mission is to eavesdrop on enemies of the state: foreign countries, terrorist groups and drug cartels. But in the process, Echelon's computers capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world. How does it work,...

Executive Summary In the greatest surveillance effort ever established, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has created a global spy system, codename ECHELON, which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax, email and telex message sent anywhere in the world. ECHELON is controlled by the NSA and is operated in conjunction with the Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) of England, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of Canada, the Australian Defense Security Directorate (DSD), and the General Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) of New Zealand. These organizations are bound together under a secret 1948 agreement, UKUSA, whose terms and text remain...

Fact Sheet Details Secretive Agency's Growth From Focus on Policy to Counterterrorism By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, December 19, 2005; Page A10 The Pentagon's newest counterterrorism agency, charged with protecting military facilities and personnel wherever they are, is carrying out intelligence collection, analysis and operations within the United States and abroad, according to a Pentagon fact sheet on the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, provided to The Washington Post. CIFA is a three-year-old agency whose size and budget remain secret. It has grown from an agency that coordinated policy and oversaw the counterintelligence activities of units within...

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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 telephone conversations on a...

NEW YORK - President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States — without getting search warrants — following the Sept. 11 attacks, the New York Times reports. The presidential order, which Bush signed in 2002, has allowed the agency to monitor the international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States, according to a story posted Thursday on the Times' Web site. Before the new program began, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders...

ISLAMABAD: The US and Pakistan have established a project to check internet traffic, including e-mails as part of a counter-terrorism measure. The document-monitoring project has been set up by the joint counter-terrorism working group of the two countries. The project would identify and disseminate pieces of intelligence gleaned from its review of a number of confiscated materials, The Dawn reported on Monday. The paper also quoted an official as saying that a number of recent arrests in Pakistan were facilitated by the project’s working group which analyses and reviews a large volume of seized paper documents, electronic and digital media...

SPY NETWORK INSIDE AMERICA click here to read the SOFTWAR article on NEWSMAX.COM MAGIC LANTERN - FBI v. CIA BATTLE IN CYBERSPACE FBI CARNIVORE PROJECT