Administration Careful in Talking about Classified Ops
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James Joyner | Monday, May 15, 2006 |
A page 3 story in today’s WaPo reports that the Bush Administration has answered questions about the covert intelligence operation reveleaded in the press months ago in such a way as to avoid hinting that there was a second, related covert operation ongoing.
[A]dministration officials have been punctilious in discussing the NSA program over the past five months, parsing their words with care and limiting comments to the portion of the program that had been confirmed by the president in December.
In doing so, the administration rarely offered any hint that a much broader operation, involving millions of domestic calls, was underway. Even yesterday — after days of congressional furor and extensive media reports — administration officials declined to confirm or deny the existence of the telephone-call program, in part because of court challenges that the government is attempting to derail.
Would we expect that any administration would, upon the illegal leak to the press about a highly sensitive intelligence program, decide it was time to reveal all of our classified ops in order to provide full disclosure? Regardless of one’s position on the utility or even legality of these programs, surely keeping them secret on operational grounds is reasonable.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.
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- None Found
- Sister Toldjah linked with Memo to the NYT/IHT: Trying to detect unusual calling patterns is not “eavesdropping”...
- Don Singleton linked with Negroponte Had Denied Domestic Call Monitoring...
Based on these two links, I'd say that the latest NSA program is quite legal, well at least if they buy them, like everybody else.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-privacy05.html
http://www.democrats.com/spy-on-them
This issue is moot.
So if this info is commercially available, why is it spying if the govenment does it?
The left just can't help showing how nutty they are.
Because we don't elect corporations, Mike. Nor do they have any responsibility to protect us. Nor are we obligated to fund their existence out of our salaries.
A corporation is answerable to its shareholders.
A government is answerable to its citizens.
These two groups are not equivalent.
We know you neocons want to replace the elected US govt. with a right-wing appointed corporate board, but that merger has not yet been finally approved by the shareholders.
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