I’ll have more about this story later, but Brian Ross of ABC News reported today that he has interviewed two former NSA linguists who claim they routinely eavesdropped on, transcribed and recorded conversations made by members of the press, the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, and the US Military as they made calls to the United States. Not terrorists. Not suspected terrorists. Just ordinary US citizens calling the United States from abroad.
Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.
ROSS: Kinne says she listened to hundreds of Americans simply calling their families …
KINNE: Personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything having anything to do with terrorism. It was just personal conversations that nobody else should have been listening to.
ROSS: President Bush has reassured Americans again and again:
GEORGE BUSH: It’s phone calls of known Al Qaeda suspects making a phone call into the United States.
KINNE: I would say that that is completely a lie — I would call it a lie — because we were definitely listening to Americans who had nothing to do with terrorism…
ROSS: Kinne says she intercepted, recorded, and transcribed conversations with the military, journalists, and Red Cross and aid workers.
What a shock! Bush and his cronies in the NSA, CIA and Justice Department lied to us about what they were really doing.
Glenn Greenwald has the first salvo that one can only hope will lead to a criminal investigation of the most corrupt, lawless Administration in history.