Thursday, January 05, 2006

NSA PILE-ON

The Washington Times reports on former National Security Agency intelligence officer Russ Tice, who has announced his desire to testify before Congress under the provisions of the 1998 Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act:

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20060104-114052-6606r.htm

"I intend to report to Congress probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while I was an intelligence officer with the National Security Agency and with the Defense Intelligence Agency," Mr. Tice wrote in a letter to Sen. Pat Roberts and Rep. Peter Hoekstra, comittee chairs for Senate and House Select intelligence comittees, respectively.

So what? From The Times: "Mr. Tice said yesterday that he was not part of the intercept program," alluding to the current teapot tempest involving covert wiretaps. This is a new issue.

Prediction: The larger issue will be found to go far beyond GWB and the "war on terror" he has declared on our behalf. My bet is Slick Willie's boys were doing the same thing, and it may go further than that.

Recall, GHWB, "Bush #41," was once a significant figure in the CIA. And recall these agencies may well have acted on their own...

But ponder this: Let's just say GHWB tore up the book fourteen years ago, or Slick Willie did, ten years ago, and from then on, the spooks have run amok. Let's say the rules were never followed...

The jails aren't full of political prisoners - or Al Qaeda operatives, for that matter.

So what has it mattered? Maybe nothing. Maybe, despite all the sound and fury, this signifies nothing.

You have to admit this would be good news. Our "rights" and "privacy" may have been "assaulted," but we the people are still safe and free, and the Republic is intact.

That's a tribute to the Republic's strength and sound foundations.

Comments:
There is another aspect to Mr. Tice's offer to testify. From what I am seeing on various sites,Tice was the leak to the NY Times.
By trying to go straight to Congree now, he is trying to sidestep the secrecy laws.
In the final analysis, there is a Whistleblower channel in the government, but he didn't use it. This makes anything he says suspect from the start.
Add to that his status as a "former" NSA employee, and it starts to look a lot like someone that was canned lashing out as his former employer, not a Patriot with, as Chuck Shumer says, "the best of intentions"...
 
As my old man used to tell me, the CIA are the spooks. The NSA is the super-spooks.
 
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