How Cheney Used the NSA for Domestic Spying Prior to 9/11
By JASON LEOPOLD
In the months before 9/11, thousands of American citizens were
inadvertently swept up in wiretaps, had their emails monitored, and
were
being watched as they surfed the Internet by spies at the super-secret
National Security Agency, former NSA and counterterrorism officials
said.
The NSA, with full knowledge of the White House, crossed the line from
routine surveillance of foreigners and suspected terrorists into
illegal
activity by continuing to monitor the international telephone calls and
emails of Americans without a court order. The NSA unintentionally
intercepts Americans' phone calls and emails if the agency's computers
zero in on a specific keyword used in the communication. But once the
NSA figures out that they are listening in on an American, the
eavesdropping is supposed to immediately end, and the identity of the
individual is supposed to be deleted. While the agency did follow
protocol, there were instances when the NSA was instructed to keep tabs
on certain individuals that became of interest to some officials in the
White House.
What sets this type of operation apart from the unprecedented covert
domestic spying activities the NSA had been conducting after 9/11 is a
top secret executive order signed by President Bush in 2002 authorizing
the NSA to target specific American citizens. Prior to 9/11, American
citizens were the subject of non-specific surveillance by the NSA that
was condoned and approved by President Bush, Vice President *****
Cheney,
and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, according to former NSA and
counterterrorism officials.
The sources, who requested anonymity because they were instructed not
to
talk about NSA activities but who hope they can testify before Congress
about the domestic spying, said that in December 2000, the NSA
completed
a report for the incoming administration titled "Transition 2001,"
which
explained, among other things, how the NSA would improve its
intelligence gathering capabilities by hiring additional personnel.
Moreover, in a warning to the incoming administration, the agency said
that in its quest to compete on a technological level with terrorists
who have access to state-of-the-art equipment, some American citizens
would get caught up in the NSA's surveillance activities. However, in
those instances, the identities of the Americans who made telephone
calls overseas would be "minimized," one former NSA official said, in
order to conceal the identity of the American citizen picked up on a
wiretap.
"What we're supposed to do is delete the name of the person," said the
former NSA official, who worked as an encryption specialist.
The former official said that even during the Clinton administration,
the NSA would inadvertently obtain the identities of Americans citizens
in its wiretaps as a result of certain keywords, like bomb or jihad,
NSA
computers are programmed to identify. When the NSA prepares its reports
and transcripts of the conversations, the names of Americans are
supposed to be immediately destroyed.
By law, the NSA is prohibited from spying on a United States citizen, a
US corporation or an immigrant who is in this country on permanent
residence. With permission from a special court, the NSA can eavesdrop
on diplomats and foreigners inside the US.
"If, in the course of surveillance, NSA analysts learn that it involves
a US citizen or company, they are dumping that information right then
and there," an unnamed official told the Boston Globe in a story
published October 27, 2001.
But after Bush was sworn in as president, the way the NSA normally
handled those issues started to change dramatically. Vice President
Cheney, as Bob Woodward noted in his book Plan of Attack, was tapped by
Bush in the summer of 2001 to be more of a presence at intelligence
agencies, including the CIA and NSA.
"Given Cheney's background on national security going back to the Ford
years, his time on the House Intelligence Committee, and as secretary
of
defense, Bush said at the top of his list of things he wanted Cheney to
do was intelligence," Woodward wrote in his book about the buildup to
the Iraq war. "In the first months of the new administration, Cheney
made the rounds of the intelligence agencies--the CIA, the National
Security Agency, which intercepted communications, and the Pentagon's
Defense Intelligence Agency. "
It was then that the NSA started receiving numerous requests from
Cheney
and other officials in the state and defense departments to reveal the
identities of the Americans blacked out or deleted from intelligence
reports so administration officials could better understand the context
of the intelligence.
Separately, at this time, Cheney was working with intelligence
agencies,
including the NSA, to develop a large-scale emergency plan to deal with
any biological, chemical or nuclear attack on US soil.
Requesting that the NSA reveal the identity of Americans caught in
wiretaps is legal as long as it serves the purpose of understanding the
context of the intelligence information.
But the sources said that on dozens of occasions Cheney would, upon
learning the identity of the individual, instruct the NSA to continue
monitoring specific Americans caught in the wiretaps if he thought more
information would be revealed, which crossed the line into illegal
territory.
Cheney advised President Bush of what had turned up in the raw NSA
reports, said one former White House official who worked on
counterterrorism related issues.
"What's really disturbing is that some of those people the vice
president was curious about were people who worked at the White House
or
the State Department," one former counterterrorism official said.
"There
was a real feeling of paranoia that permeated from the vice president's
office and I don't think it had anything to do with the threat of
terrorism. I can't say what was contained in those taps that piqued his
interest. I just don't know."
An NSA spokesperson would not comment for this story. Because of the
level of secrecy at the agency, it's impossible to ascertain for the
record how far the agency has gone in its domestic surveillance.
James Bamford, the author of the bestselling books The Puzzle Palace
and
Body of Secrets, which blew the door wide open by first revealing the
NSA's covert activities, said he doesn't believe terrorism was a
priority for the administration before 9/11 and he doesn't think the
agency targeted specific Americans as it is doing now.
"I looked into that theory," Bamford said in an interview. "And I was
assured that domestic surveillance was a black area the NSA stayed away
from before 9/11.
The NSA was sort of a side agency before 9/11. At that point they were
looking for a mission. Terrorism was not a big priority. (American)
names may have been picked up but I was told they dropped them
immediately after. That's the procedure."
But Bamford said it's possible the NSA may have conducted the type of
spying prior to 9/11 that the former NSA officials described. "It's
hard
to tell" if that happened, Bamford said. "It's a very secret agency."
In the summer of 2001, the NSA spent millions of dollars on a publicity
campaign to repair its public image by taking the unprecedented step of
opening up its headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland to reporters, to
dispel the myth that the NSA was spying on Americans.
In a July 10, 2001, segment on "Nightline," host Chris Bury reported
that "privacy advocates in the United States and Europe are raising new
questions about whether innocent civilians get caught up in the NSA's
electronic web."
Then-NSA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, who was interviewed by
"Nightline," said it was absolutely untrue that the agency was
monitoring Americans who are suspected of being agents of a foreign
power without first seeking a special warrant from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court.
"We don't do anything willy-nilly," Hayden said. "We're a foreign
intelligence agency. We try to collect information that is of value to
American decision-makers, to protect American values, America--and
American lives. To suggest that we're out there, on our own, renegade,
pulling in random communications, is--is simply wrong. So everything we
do is for a targeted foreign intelligence purpose. With regard to
the--the question of industrial espionage, no. Period. Dot. We don't do
that."
But, when asked "How do we know that the fox isn't guarding the chicken
coop?" Hayden responded by saying that Americans should trust the
employees of the NSA.
"They deserve your trust, but you don't have to trust them," Hayden
said. "We aren't off the leash, so to speak, guarding ourselves. We
have
a body of oversight within the executive branch, in the Department of
Defense, in the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which
is comprised of both government and nongovernmental officials. You've
got both houses of Congress with--with very active--in some cases,
aggressive--intelligence oversight committees with staff members who
have an access badge to NSA just like mine."
One former NSA official said in response to Hayden's 2001 interview,
"What do you expect him to say? He's got to deny it. I agree. We
weren't
targeting specific people, which is what the President's executive
order
does. However, we did keep tabs on some Americans we caught if there
was
an interest" by the White House. "That's not legal. And I am very upset
that I played a part in it."
James Risen, the New York Times reporter credited with exposing the
NSA's covert domestic surveillance activities that came as a result of
a
secret executive order President Bush issued in 2002, wrote in his
just-published book, State of War, that the administration was very
aggressive in its intelligence gathering activities before 9/11.
However, Risen does not say that means the administration permitted the
NSA to spy on Americans.
"It is now clear that the White House went through the motions of the
public debate over the (2001) Patriot Act, all the while knowing that
the intelligence community was secretly conducting a far more
aggressive
domestic surveillance campaign," Risen wrote in State of War.
Jason Leopold is the author of the explosive memoir, NEWS JUNKIE, to be
published in April on Process/Feral House books.
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