http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506I.shtml

NSA Destroyed Evidence of Domestic Spying

Byy Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 05 January 2006

The National Security Agency, the top-secret spy shop that has been
secretly eavesdropping on Americans under a plan authorized by
President Bush four years ago, destroyed the names of thousands of
Americans and US companies it collected on its own volition following
9/11, because the agency feared it would be taken to task by lawmakers
for conducting unlawful surveillance on United States citizens without
authorization from a court, according to a little known report
published in October 2001 and intelligence officials familiar with the
NSA's operations.

NSA lawyers advised the agency to immediately destroy the names of
thousands of American citizens and businesses it collected shortly
after 9/11 in its quest to target terrorists in this country.

NSA lawyers told the agency that the surveillance was illegal and that
it could not share the data it collected with the CIA or other
intelligence agencies.

The lawyers said the surveillance could result in numerous lawsuits
from people identified in the surveillance reports, two former US
officials told the Houston Chronicle in an October 27, 2001, report,
and was illegal despite any terrorist threat that existed in the days
following 9/11.

By law, the NSA cannot spy on a US citizen, an immigrant lawfully
admitted to this country for permanent residence, or a US corporation.

But, with the permission of a special court, it can target foreigners
inside the United States, including diplomats.

The revelation raises new questions about the legality of the NSA's
domestic spying initiative, authorized by President Bush in 2002,
which has come under intense scrutiny by Republicans and Democrats and
will likely lead to Congressional hearings.

The fact that the NSA has purged the names of thousands of Americans
and businesses it collected after 9/11 suggests that at the time there
were questions about the constitutionality of the agency's efforts to
combat terrorism by secretly spying on Americans.

Still, the intelligence destruction angered CIA and FBI officials as
well as staff members of the House and Senate intelligence committees
who feared that leads on potential terrorists would be permanently
lost.

"In heated discussions with the CIA and congressional staff, NSA
lawyers have turned down requests to preserve the intelligence because
the agency's regulations prohibit the collection of any information on
US citizens," the Chronicle reported.

The NSA, based in Fort Meade, Maryland, operates under the Department
of Defense.

It distributes analysis summaries of its intelligence-gathering to a
certain number of senior US officials, but it doesn't share its raw
data - transcripts from wiretaps - with anyone.

The raw data is prized by intelligence analysts because it provides
additional context and more leads than the watered-down summaries.

However, those guidelines changed after 9/11 also.

The NSA ended up giving its raw data to then Under Secretary of State
for Arms Control John Bolton on at least 10 different occasions since
9/11.

Bolton, nominated by Bush to be US ambassador to the United Nations,
let slip during his confirmation hearings in April that he asked the
NSA to unmask the identities of the Americans blacked out in the
agency's raw reports, to better understand the context of the
intelligence.

However, evidence suggests that Bolton used the information for
personal reasons, in direct violation of rules governing the
dissemination of classified intelligence.

During one routine wiretap, the NSA obtained the name of a state
department official whose name had been blacked out when the agency
submitted its report to various federal agencies.

Bolton's chief of staff, Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA official,
revealed during the confirmation hearings that Bolton had requested
that the NSA unmask the unidentified official.

Fleitz said that when Bolton found out his identity, he congratulated
the official, and by doing so he had violated the NSA's rules by
discussing classified information contained in the wiretap.

It turned out that Bolton was just one of many government officials
who learned the identities of Americans caught in the NSA intercepts.

The State Department has asked the NSA to unmask the identities of
American citizens 500 times since May 2001.

At the time of the NSA purge in October 2001, US Rep. Charles F. Bass,
R-NH, who served for four years on the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, suggested that the NSA routinely skirted
the law by eavesdropping on Americans.

"I think it could be the biggest information problem that we face,"
Bass told the Chronicle.

"If somebody is abroad and they even mention the name of an American
citizen, bang, off goes the tap, and no more information is
collected."

But what seemed to be a blatant violation of the law shortly after
9/11 was beginning to get a second look a year later, when Bush first
authorized the NSA to spy on Americans, and lawmakers suggested that
domestic spying was all but guaranteed to avoid terrorist attacks.

Porter Goss, the former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, said as much in a wide ranging interview with the Miami
Herald on June 11, 2002.

"The most critical question of all - how much spying on Americans do
we want," said Goss, now the Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency.

"What this comes down to is domestic surveillance [on individuals and
groups], and I don't know how you do that without spying on Americans.
I can't emphasize enough that that's the hardest part."

_____________________________________________________

Harry

NSA Destroyed Evidence of Domestic Spying