The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution is the strongest statement therein that powers not expressly granted the State are retained as rights of the People. The State has misconstrued, misrepresented, ignored, and denied the People's rights by elimination of protections reserved alone to them, not recognized by the Supreme Court, the Legislative, and worst the Executive Branch in the illegitimate exercise of draconian powers which unlawfully disparage the inalienable rights of the People.
Saturday, 25 July 2015, WASHINGTON, D.C. - Just released "never before seen" 9/11 photographs of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick "Criminal Notorious" Cheney, National Security Adviser Condosleeza "Fellow Torture Enthusiast" Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director Tenet and other White House senior staff in the hours following the 11 September 2001 attacks can be viewed by interested readers by going to the below link.
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Surprise! It turns out that there’s something to be said for having the brother of a failed president make his own run for the White House. Thanks to Jeb Bush, we may finally have the frank discussion of the Iraq invasion we should have had a decade ago.
But many influential people — not just Mr. Bush — would prefer that we not have that discussion. There’s a palpable sense right now of the political and media elite trying to draw a line under the subject. Yes, the narrative goes, we now know that invading Iraq was a terrible mistake, and it’s about time that everyone admits it. Now let’s move on.
Well, let’s not — because that’s a false narrative, and everyone who was involved in the debate over the war knows that it’s false. The Iraq war wasn’t an innocent mistake, a venture undertaken on the basis of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. America invaded Iraq because the Bush administration wanted a war. The public justifications for the invasion were nothing but pretexts, and falsified pretexts at that. We were, in a fundamental sense, lied into war.
The fraudulence of the case for war was actually obvious even at the time: the ever-shifting arguments for an unchanging goal were a dead giveaway. So were the word games — the talk about W.M.D that conflated chemical weapons (which many people did think Saddam had) with nukes, the constant insinuations that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11.
And at this point we have plenty of evidence to confirm everything the war’s opponents were saying. We now know, for example, that on 9/11 itself — literally before the dust had settled — Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, was already plotting war against a regime that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack. “Judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] ...sweep it all up things related and not”; so read notes taken by Mr. Rumsfeld’s aide.
This was, in short, a war the White House wanted, and all of the supposed mistakes that, as Jeb puts it, “were made” by someone unnamed actually flowed from this underlying desire. Did the intelligence agencies wrongly conclude that Iraq had chemical weapons and a nuclear program? That’s because they were under intense pressure to justify the war. Did prewar assessments vastly understate the difficulty and cost of occupation? That’s because the war party didn’t want to hear anything that might raise doubts about the rush to invade. Indeed, the Army’s chief of staff was effectively fired for questioning claims that the occupation phase would be cheap and easy.
Why did they want a war? That’s a harder question to answer. Some of the warmongers believed that deploying shock and awe in Iraq would enhance American power and influence around the world. Some saw Iraq as a sort of pilot project, preparation for a series of regime changes. And it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that there was a strong element of wagging the dog, of using military triumph to strengthen the Republican brand at home.
Whatever the precise motives, the result was a very dark chapter in American history. Once again: We were lied into war.
Now, you can understand why many political and media figures would prefer not to talk about any of this. Some of them, I suppose, may have been duped: may have fallen for the obvious lies, which doesn’t say much about their judgment. More, I suspect, were complicit: they realized that the official case for war was a pretext, but had their own reasons for wanting a war, or, alternatively, allowed themselves to be intimidated into going along. For there was a definite climate of fear among politicians and pundits in 2002 and 2003, one in which criticizing the push for war looked very much like a career killer.
On top of these personal motives, our news media in general have a hard time coping with policy dishonesty. Reporters are reluctant to call politicians on their lies, even when these involve mundane issues like budget numbers, for fear of seeming partisan. In fact, the bigger the lie, the clearer it is that major political figures are engaged in outright fraud, the more hesitant the reporting. And it doesn’t get much bigger — indeed, more or less criminal — than lying America into war.
But truth matters, and not just because those who refuse to learn from history are doomed in some general sense to repeat it. The campaign of lies that took us into Iraq was recent enough that it’s still important to hold the guilty individuals accountable. Never mind Jeb Bush’s verbal stumbles. Think, instead, about his foreign-policy team, led by people who were directly involved in concocting a false case for war.
So let’s get the Iraq story right. Yes, from a national point of view the invasion was a mistake. But (with apologies to Talleyrand) it was worse than a mistake, it was a crime.
Wednesday, 6 October 2015, PARIS - Seemingly oblivious to the debate raging in the United States over post-9/11 attacks U.S government Bush Administration, N.S.A., C.I.A., F.B.I. defense intelligence and other agencies' continuing widespread profound civil liberties' abuses in the wake of the United States hysterical reaction to those attacks which government abuses still haunt Americans seriously threatening foundational principles of the U.S. Constitution to this day nevertheless the so-called "socialist" French Government today in a shameful Parliamentary vote in which ruling socialists joined with French right-wingers but for the Front National (apparently leaving that far right group as the last elected bastion of French civil liberties) overwhelmingly voted to give French intelligence agencies mass surveillance powers giving the French Government the "right to gather potentially unlimited Internet data from Internet communications, and to tap cellphones and capture text messages" of anyone at all.
France's capitulation to terrorist fears in sacrificing French fundamental foundational liberties existing since the French Revolution long a singularly vital inspiration to the free world which liberties largely define French society to this day not even sacrificed in the face of two world wars is a profound tragedy perhaps especially sadly ironic given that in the wake of the horrific Charlie Hebdo attack the former French Prime Minister Dominque de Villepin emphatically implored on or about 17 January 2015 in Le Monde that the French not adopt comparable "exceptional" measures such as the so-called disastrous "Patriot Act" which legislation Mr. Villepin in condemning further asserted specifically started a "downward spiral" in the United States leading directly to a result which "has caused that country today to lose of its moral compass".
The editorial board of the Ninth Amendment observes that the French unhappily now may assess the consequences on the "moral compass" of France itself of legislation which according to the description of at least one civil liberties group there sounds as bad or worse even than United States post-9/11 legislation and its aftermath. Considering the acknowledged failure of the United States secretive adoption of huge mass surveillance and myriad other unconstitutional practices acknowledged to have yielded virtually no valuable information preventing significant homeland terrorist threats should France find it has with virtually no debate sweepingly sacrificed such fundamental liberties itself to purchase but "a little temporary safety" and God forbid still face some worse attack, how much liberty will France have left to sacrifice? The action of the French is a dangerous harbinger for Europe arguably as bad or if possible worse even than Great Britain's vast GCHQ surveillance described by Edward J. Snowden as "worse than the N.S.A." with the French further setting an example that should neither be followed elsewhere in Europe nor anywhere else in the free world lest the free world as known cease to exist.
Readers interested in more information about the above can go to either or both of the first two links below. [UPDATE] Those readers interested in further details about the new French mass surveillance law as well on the response of other European countries to terrorism fears can go to the third link below.
Wednesday, 7 January 2015, PARIS - News agencies now are reporting a midday lunch hour (Paris time) military-style terror attack about two hours ago by what are believed to be three (3) at large gunmen armed with AK-47s (Automatic Kalashnikov 1947) and a possible rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) on French satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo" (the "Magazine") with a history of "poking fun" at the absurdity of various religious groups of all faiths including since 2006 of satirical cartoons of the prophet of Mohammad resulting in a previous terror attack firebombing in 2011 on the Magazine. The Magazine's current issue featured a cartoon of ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi. This is the worst terror attack on French soil in two decades. France now has declared itself to be highest level of alert for terrorist attacks. The magazine's name is derived from a defunct French magazine named "Charlie" after Charlie Brown. "Hebdo" strictly means "daily" although the Magazine apparently was actually a weekly.
The Magazine reportedly refused to be intimidated by either the 2011 terror attack nor continuing threats dating back to 2006 and was under 24/7 "heavy police protection" which just was recently scaled back for unknown reasons. Although journalist hostages previously have been executed by ISIS this is the first time that a news organization has been targeted by terrorists considerably widening attempts to stifle the voice of a free press. The gunmen apparently had significant intelligence as to the reduced security as well as the fact that they were attacking during the Magazine's editorial meeting. Nevertheless the gunmen first entered the wrong building at address number 6 where they were told it was not the Magazine offices at which point the gunmen went to number 10 and entered the Charlie Hebdo building.
The two or more masked gunmen apparently entered the editorial board meeting and specifically targeted the editor-in-chief as well as four famous cartoonists including the previously firebombed targeted cartoonist of the famous Mohammad 2011 cartoon killing ten (10) journalists altogether. Upon leaving the gunmen in perfect French with no accent said "Charlie is dead".
The black-clad masked heavily armed two (2) or possibly more gunmen were captured in "home" videos as well as a video briefly released then removed from the internet after they left the building. Although none of the videos or information developed so far show exact details of the killings of those at the Magazine's editorial meeting the videos do show the gunmen calmly firing their weapons in the street after apparently three policemen were engaged resulting in two wounded one of whom was wounded on the ground when a gunman calmly approached then executed with an AK-47 shot to head.
The gunmen shouted "God is Great" in perfect French as the assailants stood in the street and according to Reuters also shouted "We have avenged the Prophet". One police car left in the street showed a tight pattern of bullet holes in the windshield indicating a relatively high degree of training including not setting an AK-47 on automatic but first set on semi-automatic firing a tight pattern of three shots. The gunmen in contrast to prior terrorist attacks were not suicidal as they calmly left in at least one black sedan with one gunmen calmly even first stopping to pick up a sneaker the gunman apparently had lost. The gunmen then slowly drove away.
Although there were several lower profile attacks in Paris before Christmas as well as others thwarted before today's attack today's terror attack has "sent a shiver up the spine" of the French because of the attack's apparent military sophistication as well as the fact that the gunmen reportedly spoke perfect French. The French Interior Minister has assured the French that heavy security has been deployed to all critical French locations such as train stations, etc. Both he and the French Prime Minister assured the French that a full-scale manhunt is underway for three (3) "criminals" who he said will face a punishment commensurate with their crime.
United States President Barack Obama through his spokesperson Josh Earnest as well as in a his own statement sent to French officials said among other things that the United States "Stood shoulder to shoulder with France" which the President referred to as the United States' "Oldest Ally" perhaps referring to French assistance to Americans in the Revolutionary War and especially the French naval presence role in bringing that war to a conclusion with the surrounding of the English in the siege at Norfolk, Virginia at which point Lord Cornwallis surrendered. Of the United States executive branch agencies the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been the first and most vociferously offered to make its resources available to the French government upon request.
Meanwhile the Department of Homeland Security has taken the opportunity to complain that it has inadequate funding based on outdated needs of a few years ago. This has been attributed to the Republican government gridlock of the past couple years which has resulted among other things in the Republicans denying needed funding for perplexing reasons to the Department of Homeland Security meaning it is unable to be fully prepared to fulfill its duty in circumstances such as the present. The Ninth Amendment Editorial Board opines that hjopefully this strategy of shooting themselves in the foot will not continue to be the practice of Republicans now that they have taken control of the House of Representatives which many expect not to last for more than a period of two years during which time their ineptitude should become apparent to the American people from whom their limited power derives without causing too much more damage to these United States in the meantime.
Of particular concern to French authorities and all Western intelligence, security and law enforcement agencies is the fact that France with its large north Parisian Islamic largely unpoliced currently is estimated to have has many as 3,000 citizens who have joined ISIS along with thousands more from other European countries who after receiving training from ISIS or other terrorist groups may return with their valid passports to their home countries to wreak havoc.
Copyright 2014 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved
Thursday, 25 September 2014, WASHINGTON, D.C. - CREDO Action yesterday made this plea that the American people call the White House their Senators and Representatives and demand an immediate Congressional vote on the war President Obama has launched expanding from Iraq now into Syria arguing for a vote of "no war" and calling on the American People to sign the below petition. The reason CREDO Action submits justifying this plea is detailed below on the basic premise that that United States continued and escalating participation in hostilities in the region of diverse warring factions will not end them based on long historical experience in the region and almost certainly exacerbate them using the analogy of the CIA's disastrous failed attempts in Afghanistan which only eventually led to the CIA's creation of the fully armed Taliban. Interested readers desiring more information may find the below an informative alternative or enhancement to incessantly repittitious largely uninformative CNN-style repeated coverage of pathologically sick ISIS beheadings and of supposed "pinpoint" bombings which we later knew how really went in the U.S. pre-emptive strike on Iraq by never-elected "President" George "little shrub" Bush as well as endless CNN-style interviews with the same limited group of military and other pundits over and over again. May the United States have the forbearance to refrain from intervening in the things it cannot change the courage to change the things it can and the wisdom to know the difference. Our generation has seen the blood spilled the wounded return and the dead not. We know the cost. God Bless America.
Zack Malitz, CREDO Action
To
Me
Sep 24 at 8:40 AM
President Obama just bombed Syria
Tell Congress: "The American people deserve a vote on war in Syria and that vote should be no. Call an up-or-down vote on President Obama's new war in the Middle East and stop the rush to war."
Add your name:
Dear Martin,
President Obama dramatically escalated his misguided war to "degrade and destroy" the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) by launching massive airstrikes in Syria this week.
Outrageously, the president launched this major air offensive without first receiving constitutionally required approval from Congress. Congress must rein in President Obama's illegal war in Iraq and Syria. Silence is consent.
President Obama's publicly stated position is that he doesn't need authorization from Congress to go to war with ISIS. Instead, he has claimed that the outrageously broad 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) -- passed at the behest of George W. Bush just days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 -- grants him sufficient authority to launch airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.1
This is a dramatic flip-flop for President Obama, who campaigned for president on a platform that included winding down George W. Bush's disastrous wars of choice overseas, and last year called for the repeal of the very same 2001 AUMF that he is now using to justify bombing positions in Iraq and Syria.
Congress is widely expected to debate and vote on whether to give President Obama the authority to wage a sustained, multi-year war against ISIS during the December "lame duck" session, once the pressures of election season have subsided. This will come in the form of a new Authorization for the Use of Military Force. Senator Dick Durbin has already announced that the Senate will debate and vote on a new AUMF for Iraq and Syria after the 2014 midterm elections.
The truth is that it's going to be a steep climb to convince Congress not to sign off on President Obama's war. But the expansion of airstrikes into Syria makes it all the more urgent that we put pressure on Congress right now not to rubberstamp another costly, open-ended war in the Middle East. Congress rejecting authorization is no guarantee that the president will halt his war in Iraq and Syria -- but it's the best shot we have.
The war against ISIS is a war of choice. There is no urgency driving an American response at this moment. Even according to the Department of Homeland Security, ISIS poses no immediate threat to the United States.
There is no immediate crisis as there was in August when CREDO supported the emergency U.S. air strikes that blocked the genocidal ISIS and helped protect minorities by holding the Kurdish defense line in Northern Iraq.2 Since then, the situation in Iraq has stabilized, and Iraq has formed a new government, replacing the corrupt and divisive former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The civil war in Syria is stuck in a bloody stalemate. The current media frenzy that has been ginned up largely by chickenhawks from the Bush administration and parroted by politicians from both parties is not an adequate justification for the United States to continue its intervention in either Iraq or Syria.
The sad and simple truth is that, when it comes to the current brutal conflict, rooted in centuries of religious hostilities in Iraq and Syria, there is no solution that American leadership can offer. Given America's history of waging wars of aggression and covert operations in the region, American military intervention will only make a terrible situation even worse.
A year ago progressives organized massive pressure on Congress to stop a war with Syria -- and we won. We can do it again, but it's going to take a truly massive outcry against the war.
Thursday, 10 July 2014, SAADA, YEMEN - Media organizations early this morning have released preliminary news reports that ISIS self-renamed The Islamic State may have acquired weapons-grade nuclear materials at unidentified locations in an unknown condition nor state of capability for use. Meanwhile in the notorious arms bazaar outside of this city a wide selection of major weaponry apparently remains for sale by arms dealers documented to include such weapons as RPG's with a variety of available warheads to any buyer with the funds to make purchases, as is reportedly the case at many locations outside of the United States for weapons such as RPGs. The availability of weapons at this notorious weapons bazaar at Saada extends to many other heavy weapons however even including in less public areas armaments such as shoulder-launched Stinger missiles for sale by one dealer for one million dollars (U.S.) which missiles are known to be capable of taking down airplanes such as commercial passenger airliners.
The Ninth Amendment editorial board stresses that it has no confirmed information whatsoever as to the actual existence of any type of weapons-grade nuclear materials purchased and/or captured by what has been preliminarily reported to be The Islamic State "terrorists". Recent media reports have focused particularly on the proximity of the group's control of territory in the area of the airport northwest of Baghdad's outskirts as the airport reportedly provides the only escape route for many American critical government personnel presently remaining attached to the United States Embassy and presumably largely confined to the extremely heavily secured United States "Green Zone" in Baghdad.
The growing presence of United States Marines to supplement existing Marine security, as well as military "advisers" to the Iraqi Army, followed by further combat troops to protect the advisers and help maintain/regain control of the airport, as well as unknown numbers of United States special forces units in and being dispatched to the area and region has been widely reported. The actual total numbers of all these United States forces is unknown and presumably classified especially given foreign combatants and/or "terrorists" in the region are widely reported to collect information from publicly available news reports.
Reports have not focused on the possibility that even if The Islamic State does not overrun the apparently critical northwest Baghdad airport escape route of last resort for American government personnel what the status may be of the group's access to Stinger missiles which presumably may have fallen into its hands in the large areas of territory the group has overtaken and/or by purchase by the group with the well-publicized extremely ample funding of the Islamic State not only originally from certain (private) wealthy donors in countries such as Saudi Arabia but the very large amounts of funds stolen by the group by overtaking a major Iraqi government bank holding a significant percentage of the country's currency reserves. This is in addition to many large caches of weaponry including much supplied previously by the United States to the Iraqi Army but largely abandoned by fleeing Iraqi troops in their haste to escape the advancing forces of ISIL now renamed The Islamic State.
This editorial board of the Ninth Amendment must stress that the above information on the extremely serious matter on any acquisition of nuclear materials is based solely on unconfirmed first incomplete reports and should not serve as the basis for any certainty on the part of readers of its accuracy to any degree, which is completely unknown. The lessons of the lies of the Bush Administration as to the presence previously in Iraq of "WMDs" under the control of Saddam Hussein widely now believed by a great many Americans to have been a heinous bogus justification for the peremptory invasion of Iraq most likely motivated by former Vice President Dick "Pigheart" Cheney's insatiable monstrous greed for oil and cash for his many related commercial endeavors remain fresh in the minds of many Americans and Iraqis including those having suffered enormous personal grief and loss as a result of the pointless ensuing manufactured conflict.
Concerned readers it is emphasized emphatically are provided the information in this post as that available at this time in UNCONFIRMED BREAKING NEWS reports and are urged absolutely to perform further research and review any developing news in reaching conclusions of their own of what actual facts are or become known based on developing informed sources at this time and the ensuing hours and days.
Copyright 2014 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved
Sunday, 8 June 2014, MALMSTROM AIR FORCE BASE, MONTANA - The Ninth Amendment is at a complete loss to explain or even imagine why in the wake of two or more widely publicized breaches of United States ICBM nuclear missile domestic silo security in 2012 why in the world within the past weeks the United States military was permitted to go one step further and announce that in a (thankfully) mock exercise attempt a team of supposed enemy combatants or terrorists were successful in past weeks not only in breaching security of a nuclear ICBM missile silo in the geographic heartland of the United States but actually secure control of it such that they were in a position to launch an ICBM nuclear missile.
In a time when the Bush 43 and even worse Obama administrations have effectively dismantled the United States Constitution's protections of individuals' inalienable rights under our system of Government in the name of "national security" such that they have gone to such heinous extremes that the U.S. Government with the blessing of so-called U.S. Government "attorneys" can eavesdrop on Americans every communication among a multitude of other formerly unthinkable transgressions against ordinary law-abiding American citizens.
That the United States Government and the multitude of rogue "national security" outfits it now routinely supports and contracts out to track Americans every move as well as violating almost every imaginable fundamental right in order to accomplish absolutely nothing while hunting down a 20-something-year-old contractor named Edward Snowden for revealing that the first thing Obama now reviews in the morning are Americans' private Facebook pictures of Americans' childrens' birthday parties as well as their young daughters taking showers and dressing to go to school in the morning, we can only question whether in light of the "national security" necessities of such rank invasions of Americans' privacy what in the name of God are they doing revealing to the world including all the enemies of the United States that our nuclear missiles are literally ready for the taking?
The link below is to but of one of hundreds of news reports immediately publicly released by the U.S. Government to news outlets including newspapers and media outlets with world viewership detailing the latest United States by far most damaging threat to our national security by the Government's own choice. That unless this is intended to be justified as some reason for a further escalation of martial law in this country necessitated by the Government's own complete ineptitude or catastrophically misguided intentions.
Friday, 27 September 2013, SAN FRANCISCO - Dianne Feinstein has come (excuse us, "gone" apparently) far away since her heart's start as a San Francisco city councilperson and Mayor before the big one-way trip to Waxhington, D.C. She always has may we say appeared to have a proclivity for the more refined circles. Certainly even in bearing alone her she has seemed well-suited ( yes, pun, good) to her regal stature. Senator Feinstein has good posture.
Oddly in this case that stature compared to at least sheer height though perhaps with more awkwardness would be President Obama thus making her somehow somewhat comparable to the early President Obama in the case at hand. That is here in the NSA case that it seems to us she has taken a step reminiscent of an earlier in his term Barack Obamism.
We wish to emphasize our disappointment with Senator Feinstein's apparent apologism for the National Security Agency and indeed her even apparent ratification, verification, legitimization, there are a lot of words which seem uncomfortably close to fitting this situation of the NSA's operation "Prism". Well at least it sounds a lot closer than the "Patriot" Act which President Obama endorsed to that for which it might be suited should the need arise.
Senator Feinstein's avowed and/or at least otherwise obvious purpose apart from "preserving" the components of this blanket surveillance which she sees as "lawful" (a very good start) is not necessarily going to raise the public's "confidence" in something which has pushed beyond the limits of the public's trust for seven years already with some blanket surveillance program of which the public has had no knowledge whatsoever.
Difficult at best to raise a person's confidence in something which they did not even know existed but was intentionally kept hidden doubtless because of its "slap you in the face" overarching invasion of your privacy until the dark secret slipped out. Of what kind of confidence is one speaking in which the only evidence held up to bolster this massive systematic invasion of the privacy of all is the young man who told you about it and apparently two persons in the United States who broke the law in giving thousands of dollars to a "forbidden" Somali group presumably of "terrorists".
Whoa! Seven years of our national government by whatever means necessary directly collecting and keeping sorted specifically identifying records of every one of each of our telephone calls for our doing nothing at all except dialing and/or speaking on the phone, and that is all they have to show for the blanket surveillance of their own people. And one General who says he thinks this system would have averted the 9/11 attacks had it then been in place.
God Bless America. For readers interested in seeing the New York Times articles related to this matter please click the link below, which is also followed by the text and further New York Times links. All material below Copyright The New York Times Co.
WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee appears to be moving
toward swift passage of a bill that would “change but preserve” the
once-secret National Security Agency
program that is keeping logs of every American’s phone calls, Senator
Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the panel, said
Thursday.
Ms. Feinstein, speaking at a rare public hearing of the committee, said
she and the top Republican on the panel, Senator Saxby Chambliss of
Georgia, are drafting a bill that would be marked up — meaning that
lawmakers could propose amendments to it before voting it out of
committee — as early as next week.
After the existence of the program became public by leaks from the
former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, critics called for it to be
dismantled. Ms. Feinstein said her bill would be aimed at increasing
public confidence in the program, which she said she believed was
lawful.
The measure would require public reports of how often the N.S.A. had
used the calling log database, she said. It would also reduce the number
of years — currently five — that the domestic calling log data is kept
before it is deleted. It would also require the N.S.A. to send lists of
the phone numbers it searches, and its rationale for doing so, to the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for review.
By contrast, a rival bill
drafted by skeptics of government surveillance, including two members
of the committee, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of
Colorado, would ban the mass call log collection program.
That more extensive step is unlikely to pass the committee. Ms.
Feinstein contended that “a majority of the committee” believed that the
call log program was “necessary for our nation’s security.”
Ms. Feinstein said her bill with Mr. Chambliss would also require Senate
confirmation of the N.S.A.’s director. At the same time, it would
expand the N.S.A.’s powers to wiretap without warrants in the United
States in one respect: when it is eavesdropping on a foreigner’s
cellphone, and that person travels to the United States, the N.S.A.
would be allowed to keep wiretapping for up to a week while it seeks
court permission.
That step would remove the largest number of incidents in which the
N.S.A. has deemed itself to have broken rules about surveillance in the
United States. Those incidents were identified in a May 2012 audit leaked by Mr. Snowden.
Still, most of the senators on the Intelligence Committee, which had
received briefings about the call log program and other surveillance
even before Mr. Snowden’s leaks, used the hearing on Thursday to largely
defend the programs and criticize the disclosures.
Mr. Chambliss suggested that people could die because of Mr. Snowden’s
disclosures, and he pressed Gen. Keith Alexander, the N.S.A. director,
to describe the program’s value.
“In my opinion,” General Alexander said, “if we had had that prior to 9/11, we would have known about the plot.”
Officials have struggled to identify terrorist attacks that would have
been prevented by the call log program, which has existed in its current
form since 2006. The clearest breakthrough attributed to the program
was a case involving several San Diego men who were prosecuted for
donating several thousand dollars to a terrorist group in Somalia.
Mr. Wyden pressed General Alexander about whether the N.S.A. had ever
collected, or made plans to collect, bulk records about Americans’
locations based on cellphone tower data.
General Alexander replied that the N.S.A. is not doing so as part of the
call log program, but that information pertinent to Mr. Wyden’s
question was classified.
Copyright 2013 Big M and Proud M All World Rights Expressly Reserved (no claim as to New York Times article following link)
Copyright 2014 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved (no claim to CREDO Action content)