Government Kills Domestic Spying Probe, Reports Show Spying Very Expansive

[UPDATE: President Bush to address nation. See Yahoo for live video of this.]

With the nomination of Gen. Hayden beginning to reignite discussions over the President's warrantless spying program, the government is pulling the plugs on probes and working to quiet away any debate of the program and issue that Karl Rove still tries to insist will be a winner for them politically...

The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program...

I love the smell of coverup in the morning.

Rep. Hinchey responded to this news with disappointment, stating "This administration thinks they can just violate any law they want, and they've created a culture of fear to try to get away with that. It's up to us to stand up to them."

And then there was this-

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the terrorist surveillance program "has been subject to extensive oversight both in the executive branch and in Congress from the time of its inception."

Would that be why almost every member of Congress didn't know about it until last December?

There is also this at the bottom of the article-

The administration has vehemently defended the eavesdropping, saying the NSA's activities were narrowly targeted to intercept international calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the U.S. with suspected ties to the al-Qaida terror network.

Oh, really? This is just one of many lies the White House has told about the program.

Via AmericaBlog, here's what a new USA Today article reveals-

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

Bold added by me for all the obvious reasons.

Read the full USA Today article above... it has lots of details on how the program works.

Here's another sad aspect of all of this- the telecommunication companies (AT&T, Verizon, etc) may be voluntarily handing over customer information to the NSA, even though they know there's no warrants involved and know the legal justification is still being debated by lawmakers. If you use any of the companies mentioned in the article, you may want to call them up and ask them about their complicity in the government's spying.

The USA Today article also correctly notes-

The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.

This is a key point- that the White House has been misleading the public on the full extent of this program. By labeling it as the 'terrorist surveillance program' and dismissing any of its critics (including a former NSA chief and numerous government officials from both parties) as being soft on terror, they mean to frame it as they like to frame everything... as just another part of life in the post-9/11 world. But while most Americans are aware of the program at this point, they likely only know that spin version, and not the whole story. If they did, you better believe you'd have a mighty angry populace on your hands. Even now, with these larger facts not known by most Americans, polls have consistently shown a slight majority do not support the program or the President's actions in authorizing it. Finally, as I've noted before, we still haven't gotten answers from the White House to the most basic questions about the program.

So where's Congress on this? It's time they stopped being afraid and started asking more questions.

[Your Government- Working For You!]