The NSA under the Clinton Administration monitored private phone
calls. Liberals okay Bill but bash Bush
The New York Times, almost every DemocRat and a slew of assorted anti war hate bush
fanatics would rather protect the rights of terrorists than protect the U.S. from another
attack.
During the 1990's under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions
of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a
super secret program code-named Echelon.
Recently, the New York Times suggested that the Bush administration has instituted "a
major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices" when it "secretly
authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the
United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without obtaining
court-approved warrants."
But in fact, the NSA had been monitoring private domestic telephone conversations on a
much larger scale throughout the 1990s - all of it done without a court order, let alone a
catalyst like the 9/11 attacks.
In February 2000, for instance, CBS "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft
introduced a report on the Clinton-era spy program by noting:
"If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance
what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence
agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the
National Security Agency." NSA computers, said Kroft, "capture virtually every
electronic conversation around the world."
Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the
National Security Agency, told "60 Minutes" that the agency was monitoring
"everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to
ATMs."
Mr. Frost detailed activities at one unidentified NSA installation, telling "60
Minutes" that agency operators "can listen in to just about anything" -
while Echelon computers screen phone calls for key words that might indicate a terrorist
threat.
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