NSA Whistleblower Promises Shocking Revelations Of Illegal Activity

Posted on May 12, 2006

NSA whistleblower and former NSA staffer Russell Tice is going to testify in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee next week and promises that his revelations of rampant illegal activity at the NSA will shock most Americans.

CongressDaily reports that former NSA staffer Russell Tice will testify to the Senate Armed Services Committee next week that not only do employees at the agency believe the activities they are being asked to perform are unlawful, but that what has been disclosed so far is only the tip of the iceberg. Tice will tell Congress that former NSA head Gen. Michael Hayden, Bush's nominee to be the next CIA director, oversaw more illegal activity that has yet to be disclosed.

CongressDaily reports:

[Tice] said he plans to tell the committee staffers the NSA conducted illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of U.S. citizens while he was there with the knowledge of Hayden. "I think the people I talk to next week are going to be shocked when I tell them what I have to tell them. It's pretty hard to believe," Tice said. "I hope that they'll clean up the abuses and have some oversight into these programs, which doesn't exist right now."
Tice said his information is different from the Terrorist Surveillance Program that Bush acknowledged in December and from news accounts this week that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of millions of Americans. "It's an angle that you haven't heard about yet," he said. "He would not discuss with a reporter the details of his allegations, saying doing so would compromise classified information and put him at risk of going to jail. He said he "will not confirm or deny" if his allegations involve the illegal use of space systems and satellites.

The American people want terrorists stopped and they certainly want our spy agencies to be able to do their jobs. But to react like a bunch of frightened children is not the answer. There are procedures in place, such as the FISA courts, whereby the spy agencies can get after the fact, quick approval of warrants to wiretap in order to track down terrorists. This program appears to be something totally different: tracking the records (and possibly more) of tens of millions of Americans for some unknown purpose unrelated to terrorism.

Given the rampant identity theft and the numerous revelations that financial institutions' databases have been hacked, it is more important than ever that American citizens' private information be safeguarded. And that includes their phone conversations, in which people routinely give out personal information, including their credit card numbers when ordering from catalogues. The people in charge of this information are human beings, subject to the same corruption that has been found in numerous cases lately, such as when phone company employees' routinely sold customers' private information for cash.

It is time for Congress to stop this blatantly unconstitutional activity.