Post-September 11, NSA ‘enemies’ include us By JAMES BAMFORD

[jakeXT]

By JAMES BAMFORD | 9/8/11 9:34 PM EDT

Somewhere between Sept. 11 and today, the enemy morphed from a handful of terrorists to the American population at large, leaving us nowhere to run and no place to hide.

Within weeks of the attacks, the giant ears of the National Security Agency, always pointed outward toward potential enemies, turned inward on the American public itself. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established 23 years before to ensure that only suspected foreign agents and terrorists were targeted by the NSA, would be bypassed. Telecom companies, required by law to keep the computerized phone records of their customers confidential unless presented with a warrant, would secretly turn them over in bulk to the NSA without ever asking for a warrant.

Around the country, in tall, windowless telecom company buildings known as switches, NSA technicians quietly began installing beam-splitters to redirect duplicate copies of all phone calls and email messages to secret rooms behind electronic cipher locks.

There, NSA software and hardware designed for “deep packet inspection” filtered through the billions of email messages looking for key names, words, phrases and addresses. The equipment also monitored phone conversations and even what pages people view on the Web — the porn sites they visit, the books they buy on Amazon, the social networks they interact with and the text messages they send and receive.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/62999.html#ixzz1XiqlHAiI

[saras]

1. Bamford writes GREAT books. READ them.

In one of his books on the NSA, he documents, pretty much by accident, the fact that the NSA had the source, destination, AND THE CONTENTS of EVERY phone call, including cell phones, involved in the planning of 9-11. They watched for MONTHS, and couldn't get anyone else to show any interest in the data.

I still "wonder" why no one was interested.

[jakeXT]

3. They started to spy well before 911

NSA Domestic Surveillance Began 7 Months Before 9/11, Convicted Qwest CEO Claims

Did the NSA’s massive call records database program pre-date the terrorist attacks of 9/11?

That startling allegation is in court documents released this week which show that former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio — the head of the only company known to have turned down the NSA’s requests for Americans’ phone records — tried, unsuccessfully, to argue just that in his defense against insider trading charges.

Nacchio was sentenced to 6 years in prison in 2007 after being found guilty of illegally selling shares based on insider information that the company’s fortunes were declining. Nacchio unsuccessfully attempted to defend himself by arguing that he actually expected Qwest’s 2001 earnings to be higher because of secret NSA contracts, which, he contends, were denied by the NSA after he declined in a February 27, 2001 meeting to give the NSA customer calling records, court documents released this week show.

AT&T, Verizon and Bellsouth all agreed to turn over call records to an NSA database, according to reporting in the USA Today in 2006. At that time, Nacchio’s lawyer publicly stated that Nacchio declined to participate until served with a proper legal order.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/10/nsa-asked-for-p/

[saras]

4. Yes, but I was being more specific

Bamford's (minor) point was that we had all the CONTENTS of THOSE calls. That is, the NSA could not have helped but known EXACTLY what was being planned for 9-11, and seen the plans move forward, day after day. THAT is the information they couldn't get the FBI or CIA to accept and act on.

[OnyxCollie]

5. We knew, all right.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3487945

On March 27, 2008, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, speaking at the Commonwealth Club in defense of the Bush Administrations surveillance program and proposing changes to FISA, made the statement that before the 2001 terrorist attacks

“We knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn’t know precisely where it went. You’ve got 3,000 people who went to work that day, and didn’t come home, to show for that.” (Egelko, 2008).

In a letter to Attorney General Mukasey from Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee; Rep. Jerry Nadler, Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties; and Rep. Bobby Scott, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security (hereinafter “Conyers Letter”), Rep. Conyers responds to Attorney General Mukasey’s statement:

This statement is very disturbing for several reasons. Initially, despite extensive inquiries after 9/11, I am aware of no previous reference, in the 9/11 Commission report or elsewhere, to a call from a known terrorist safe house in Afghanistan to the United States which, if it had been intercepted, could have prevented the 9/11 attacks. In addition, if the Administration had known of such communications from suspected terrorists, they could and should have been intercepted based on existing FISA law. For example, even assuming that a FISA warrant was required to intercept such calls, as of 9/11 FISA specifically authorized such surveillance on an emergency basis without a warrant for a 48 hour period. If such calls were known about and not intercepted, serious additional concerns would be raised about the government’s failure to take appropriate action before 9/11. (Conyers, Nadler, Scott, 2008).

In a statement provided to Glenn Greenwald (2008) at Salon, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, the vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, stated:

I am unfamiliar with the telephone call that Attorney General Michael Mukasey cited in his appearance in San Francisco on March 27. The 9/11 Commission did not receive any information pertaining to its occurrence.

Additionally, Greenwald (2008) provides an email response from Philip Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission Executive Director (and former Counselor to Condolleeza Rice) (ellipses in original):

Not sure of course what the AG had in mind, although the most important signals intelligence leads related to our report -- that related to the Hazmi-Mihdhar issues of January 2000 or to al Qaeda activities or transits connected to Iran -- was not of this character. If, as he says, the USG didn't know where the call went in the US, neither did we. So unless we had some reason to link this information to the 9/11 story....

In general, as with several covert action issues for instance, the Commission sought (and succeeded) in publishing details about sensitive intelligence matters where the details were material to the investigative mandate in our law.

[SnakeEyes]

2. Is this surprising?

I mean you have to expect this to be the case. Terrorists can be anyone, not just brown people from the middle east.