“Hanging on the telephone”

With suitable apologies to Debbie Harry et al...

The Whitehouse must be full of Christmas Cheer this year. I've been following the NSA wiretapping story for about a week and it appears that the Bush Administration is on the defensive in a way that has not been seen since the Abu Ghraib photos last year.

The New York Times first broke the story on Friday 16/12/2005 and I logged it here. About 500 suspects were having their telephone and email communication monitored for National Security purposes.

What is most interesting from a News and Current Affairs perspective is that the NYT sat on the story for about a year, at the behest of the Bush Administration. Apparently, it would jeopardize National Security operations if it were revealed. This makes the timing of its disclosure all the more interesting. The Administration is having a trying time with Republican led Senate and Congress. In theory, the two houses should be a source of rubber-stamp support for executive decisions, but these days the republican party is split over the Presidents actions.

The Whitehouse was so shaken by the NYT piece, and the subsequent media frenzy over it, that the President ditched his previously recorded weekly radio speech about the Iraqi elections and the spread of democracy. Instead he went with a live broadcast, and “often appearing angry”, defended his decision to authorize the surveillance.

Not that the Whitehouse has anything to hide, apparently. Vice President Chenney says that Americans back wiretapping, while ex secretary of state Colin Powell says saw “nothing wrong” with the President's decision. And anyway members of congress were informed of what was going on. Not so, say some Democrats, who deny they gave approval.

Which brings me back to the New York Times. Perhaps what we are seeing is a case of “indexing”, where the News media is sensing the split, not only between Democrats and Republicans, but within the Republican party itself, and is now digging into the split, widening it and offering stories that create political debate.

Later, Yahoo reported the New York Times as saying that the wire tapping was much wider spread than first stated. Instead of the 500-or-so specific suspects, the NSA were data mining the electronic records of the phone companies and internet service providers, to find patterns of activity that might indicate terrorist behavior. Patterns, like “Calls to and from Afghanistan.”

Now it seems the NYT is keeping the pressure up. It's latest article, “The Agency That Could Be Big Brother”, is a feature on the contemporary work of the NSA, which was set up during the Cold War to monitor the communications of States deemed to be dangerous to the interests of the United States. But now:

“the agency is still struggling to adjust to the war on terror, in which its job is not to monitor states, but individuals or small cells hidden all over the world. To accomplish this, the N.S.A. has developed ever more sophisticated technology that mines vast amounts of data. But this technology may be of limited use abroad. And at home, it increases pressure on the agency to bypass civil liberties and skirt formal legal channels of criminal investigation. Originally created to spy on foreign adversaries, the N.S.A. was never supposed to be turned inward.”

But hey, the troops are coming home. That's a nice christmas present, even if the timing is suspicious.

Whatever the new year may bring, at least the Administration will be able to sleep soundly, knowing the national defense is secure from dangerous saboteurs.