Entered into the database on Friday, February 24th, 2006 @ 18:31:56 MST
According to NSA sources, the signals intelligence agency, which has
been at the center of a political storm over President Bush's warrantless wiretaps
of U.S. citizens, has expanded the surveillance of journalists identified by
the Bush administration as alleged recipients of classified information.
The surveillance database, part of the intelligence community's "Denial
and Deception" operations and once known as "Firstfruit" until
WMR revealed its existence last May, now includes transcripts of phone calls
and e-mails between journalists and their contacts and associates. NSA sources revealed that the renamed Firstfruit database now contains signals
intelligence intercepts, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA), U.S. Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18), and the Fourth
Amendment of the Constitution, of individuals who have communicated via phone,
fax, and email with journalists who include James Bamford, James Risen, Seymour
Hersh, Vernon Loeb, Bill Gertz, John C. K. Daly, and this editor, Wayne Madsen,
among a growing list of others. NSA's spying on this editor must entail some surprises for the White House.
Although they and their right-wing minions consider this site "fringe"
and "conspiratorial," they must be surprised at the number of calls
and e-mails received by this editor from such "mainstream media" outlets
as the New York Times, CBS News, CNN, Fox, MS-NBC, Boston Globe, Salon, Knight-Ridder
Tribune, and yes, even Rupert Murdoch's British flagship publication, The Times
of London. Why does a "fringe" web publisher deserve the high-level
attention of the Bush administration and its law-violating intelligence officials?
Perhaps its because the Bush administration has damaged the U.S. intelligence
infrastructure to the point where this web site is now a primary steam vent
for U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials who've had enough of the
neo-cons and their GOP enablers.