Spies Like U.S.

How in the world would tapping Christiane Amanpour’s telephone enhance our country’s national security? Apparently, according to questions posed by NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell there’s some reason to believe this has happened under one of the Bush Administration's out-of-control Special Access Programs (SAPs) allowing the National Security Agency to secretly monitor Americans without court warrants.

This is all such a blatant violation of the FISA law and the U.S. Constitution that I’m amazed we’re not talking seriously on a national level about impeachment proceedings, as we should have been doing long ago.

By the way, NBC has scrubbed the transcript of the Mitchell interview with James Risen, the Times reporter who broke the warrant-less spying scandal, of any reference to Amanpour. Nice going there, NBC.

Russ Tice, a former NSA analyst, wants to come forward to tell Congress and the American people more still. Here’s the text of a letter he has sent to the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in mid December 2005:

Dear Chairman Roberts,

Under the provisions of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), I intend to report to Congress probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while I was an intelligence officer with the National Security Agency (NSA) and with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). These acts involve the Director of the National Security Agency, the Deputies Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations, and the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

These probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts were conducted via very highly sensitive intelligence programs and operations known as Special Access Programs (SAP)s. I was a technical intelligence specialist dealing almost exclusively with SAP programs and operations at both NSA and DIA.

Due to the highly sensitive nature of these programs and operations, I will require assurances from your committee that the staffers and/or congressional members to participate retain the proper security clearances, and also have the appropriate SAP cleared facilities available for these discussions.

Please inform me when you require my appearance on Capitol Hill to conduct these discussions in relation to this ICWPA report.


Very Respectfully,


Russell D. Tice
Former Intelligence Officer, NSA

Will the Republicans in charge of Congress give this man a hearing?

For further reading on our American shadow government, I highly recommend William Arkin’s Code Names, a book that should freak out any patriotic American over the extent to which crucial functions and decisions of the U.S. government are carried out in total secrecy, with disregard for the basic tenets of democracy. It has been an indispensable guide for understanding this still-unfolding NSA spying debacle.