Reading Comprehension Can Be Fun

by emptywheel

Summary: In this post, I review Jason Leopold's claim that Bush authorized domestic surveillance before 9/11. Leopold relies heavily on a December 2000 document to make his claim and cites it out of context. He includes three other sources to support his claim, but these sources are talking about different programs, not the domestic surveillance program James Risen first exposed. While Leopold collects several incidences of disconcerting surveillance, he doesn't prove his central claim, purportedly disproving that Bush started the Risen program in response to 9/11.

Jason Leopold came out with what seemed to be a real scoop yesterday--the news that Bush ordered NSA surveillance of Americans before 9/11. Leopold quotes "people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists" and James Risen's book, but most of his scoop relies on a declassified agency report called "Transitions 2001." Now frankly, two of the quotes Leopold includes refute the claim that the NSA was illegally spying. For example, Leopold cites...

Director of the National Security Agency is obligated by law to keep Congress fully and currently formed of intelligence activities.

...and later cites NSA's limitations under the Fourth Amendment (see below). But Leopold suggests the citations from the document support his contention that:

the document contradicts [Bush's] assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups.

NSA's "Transitions 2001"

Before I look at the individual passages Leopold quotes, let me point out something very basic. This document is titled Transitions 2001. But it is dated--right there on the front cover--December 2000. Anything reported in this document is a report on what Clinton authorized, not what Bush authorized.

Here are the citations on which Leopold bases his claim:

In its "Transition 2001" report, the NSA said that the ever-changing world of global communication means that "American communication and targeted adversary communication will coexist."

"Make no mistake, NSA can and will perform its missions consistent with the Fourth Amendment and all applicable laws," the document says.

However, it adds that "senior leadership must understand that the NSA's mission will demand a 'powerful, permanent presence' on global telecommunications networks that host both 'protected' communications of Americans and the communications of adversaries the agency wants to target."

Now a word of background. The document explains NSA's multiple tasks--cryptology, SIGINT (which it describes in a strictly foreign context), and protection against cyber-attacks. One of the reasons the document refers to protected communication and targeted communication is because part of its job is to protect our communication networks--to prevent some hacker from bringing down our communications systems or corrupting government data. With that in mind, take a look at the full context of the passages Leopold cites (I've bolded the bits he quotes):

The National Security Agency is prepared organizationally, intellectually and--with sufficient investment--technologically, to exploit in an unprecedented way the explosion in global communications. This represents an Agency very different from the one we inherited from the Cold War. It also demands a policy recognition that the NSA will be a legal but also a powerful and permanent presence on a global telecommunications infrastructure where protected American communications and targeted adversary communications will coexist. (31)

The passage goes on to describe the difference between point-to-point analog communications and digital and wireless communications. It explains:

The volumes and routing of data make finding and processing nuggets of intelligence information more difficult. To perform both its offensive and defensive missions, NSA must "live on the network." (31; emphasis mine)

The document goes on to explain how this new technological environment requires a change in approach. It says:

The volume, velocity and variety of information today demands a fresh approach to the way NSA has traditionally done its business. This new approach is well under way. Significant effort and investment are being applied to mastering the global network, both to protect our nation's communications and to exploit those of our targets. (32; emphasis mine)

It elaborates on the difference between "SIGINT in the Industrial Age" and "eSIGINT," including the reality that communication is no longer point-to-point from known fixed points and data is often encrypted. It notes:

The Fourth Amendment is as applicable to eSIGINT as it is to the SIGINT of yesterday and today. The Information Age will however cause us to rethink and reapply the procedures, policies and authorities born in an earlier electronic surveillance environment.

Make no mistake, NSA can and will perform its missions consistent with the Fourth Amendment and all applicable laws. But senior leadership must understand that today's and tomorrow's mission will demand a powerful, permanent presence on a global telecommunications network that will host the "protected" communications of Americans as well as the targeted communications of adversaries. (32)

Put aside the slight inaccuracies in citation. Put aside the fact that the changes this document describes pre-date the Bush Administration. There's simply no evidence that this passage refers to the domestic surveillance program first revealed in Risen's NYT article. Rather, the passage is referring to the very real ways that digitized communication changes the way NSA must approach its job. NSA is referring to a permanent presence on telecommunications networks because that's the only way to protect against cyber-attacks and because that's the only way to be able to intercept communication that is sent in bits of data rather than discrete analog messages. It's worth noting, too, that the document mentions the controversy surrounding and Congressional hearings on the Carnivore program in another section. Carnivore, a Clinton-era program, is precisely the kind of permanent presence the NSA document describes here.

We've long known that NSA has technical access to all telecommunications. The question Risen's reporting raises is what the Bush Administration is doing with that data.

Leopold's Other Sources

So what about Leopold's other sources? Do those support his claim that Bush started the program Risen has exposed before 9/11?

Leopold supplements the NSA document with references to three other sources (in addition to the several sources he cites to discuss the programs legality):

• Risen's book
• A Slate article from last year
• "People who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists"

Now, I haven't yet bought Risen's book, so I can't attest to the context of the passage Leopold cites.

James Risen, author of the book State of War and credited with first breaking the story about the NSA's domestic surveillance operations, said President Bush personally authorized a change in the agency's long-standing policies shortly after he was sworn in in 2001.

"The president personally and directly authorized new operations, like the NSA's domestic surveillance program, that almost certainly would never have been approved under normal circumstances and that raised serious legal or political questions," Risen wrote in the book. "Because of the fevered climate created throughout the government by the president and his senior advisers, Bush sent signals of what he wanted done, without explicit presidential orders" and "the most ambitious got the message."

It's not clear whether Risen is referring to the NSA program he first exposed on December 16 or some other NSA programs. But I've got my doubts. After all, Risen makes it pretty clear in his original article that this program started after 9/11:

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible ''dirty numbers'' linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said.

So it seems Risen, in the book passage cited, is talking about something else. And it's not clear whether this something else is the "eavesdropping on Americans" Leopold makes it out to be.

Then there's the Slate article. This article clearly does refer to something going on before 9/11. But it's not eavesdropping per se. Rather, it's getting telecommunications companies to allow NSA to collect data off commercial broadband.

A former telecom executive told us that efforts to obtain call details go back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president's now celebrated secret executive order. The source, who asked not to be identified so as not to out his former company, reports that the NSA approached U.S. carriers and asked for their cooperation in a "data-mining" operation, which might eventually cull "millions" of individual calls and e-mails.

Like the pressure applied to ITT a half-century ago, our source says the government was insistent, arguing that his competitors had already shown their patriotism by signing on. The NSA would not comment on the issue, saying that, "We do not discuss details of actual or alleged operational issues."

I'm not saying this news isn't troubling. But collecting data is different than monitoring what's in that data. Collecting the data makes eavesdropping and data-mining possible. But it doesn't say anything about what the NSA is actually doing with the data. Incidentally, this activity--collecting data bits--sounds a lot more like what the NSA document is referring to. So it may be that by coercing telecom companies to share their data, Bush is expanding the "permanent presence" the NSA described in its December 2000 document.

And finally, there are Leopold's own sources:

But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law.

Again, this is something entirely different than the Risen scoop. It apparently refers to the frequency with which (apparently) legally obtained NSA intercepts were being distributed without obscuring the name of the American citizen involved in the intercept. The best known example of this practice involves John Bolton, who ordered the NSA to reveal the name of at least ten Americans whose communications had been legally intercepted overseas. But as Newsweek revealed last May, the practice is much more common than previously known.

According to information obtained by NEWSWEEK, since January 2004 NSA received—and fulfilled—between 3,000 and 3,500 requests from other agencies to supply the names of U.S. citizens and officials (and citizens of other countries that help NSA eavesdrop around the world, including Britain, Canada and Australia) that initially were deleted from raw intercept reports. Sources say the number of names disclosed by NSA to other agencies during this period is more than 10,000. About one third of such disclosures were made to officials at the policymaking level; most of the rest were disclosed to other intel agencies and, perhaps surprisingly, only a small proportion to law-enforcement agencies. Civil libertarians expressed dismay at the numbers. An official familiar with NSA procedures insisted the agency maintains careful logs of all requests for U.S. names and doles out such info only after agency officials are satisfied "that the requester needs the information [and that it's] necessary to understand the foreign intelligence or assess its importance."

Again, don't get me wrong. This practice concerns me. But it's not the same program as the one Risen first scooped on December 16. Nor is it clear that Bush issued an executive order to make the practice legal. In fact, there's no indication that this practice is new with the Bush Administration.

The central assertion of Leopold's article is that Bush lied when he said he authorized the NSA domestic surveillance in response to 9/11.

Still, one thing that appears to be indisputable is that the NSA surveillance began well before 9/11 and months before President Bush claims Congress gave him the power to use military force against terrorist threats, which Bush says is why he believed he had the legal right to bypass the judicial process.

Yet Leopold proves no such thing. He does catalogue three troubling kinds of surveillance that have been going on since before 9/11 (and in the case of the NSA document he cites, before Bush was even in office). These three are: the "permanent presence on global telecom networks," the collection of domestic data using the cooperation of commercial telecommunications providers, and the circulation of legally-collected foreign intercepts without obscuring the name of American citizens involved. While the first two of these no doubt facilitate the program James Risen first exposed (that is, the collection of the data makes the actual eavesdropping possible), they do not by themselves equate to the Risen program. Further, it's not clear what the legal status of these programs is. Certainly, the first and third are programs Congress knows something about.

We need to be able to make a credible case to the American people that the Risen-exposed NSA program is an abuse of power. Perhaps we also need to make a credible case that these other programs go too far. But we're never going to be able to make a credible case if we conflate the several different programs the NSA uses or accuse Bush of things we can't prove.

Comments

[John Casper]

"But we're never going to be able to make a credible case if we conflate the several different programs the NSA uses or accuse Bush of things we can't prove." You have great gifts emptywheel and you use them very well.

[Uncle $cam]

Folk the Government!

[Mimikatz]

It would seem pretty clear that the "Transitions 2001" document detailed what the Clinton Admin was doing and proposed to do. But everything we know about Bush/Cheney suggests that the fact that a program had been developed under Clinton was a reason to scrap the program. At that time Bush was determined to be the "Anti-Clinton"; hence his disregard of warnings about bin Laden.

I believe that the NSA is intercepting a huge amount of phone and e-mail traffic (perhaps even all of it) and running it through computers looking for patterns, largely as a CYA exercise. But I think it started after 9/11, for the simple reason that before 9/11 there was no (perceived) need for a CYA exercise.

[Patriot Daily]

Part of the problem is that Bush won't reveal date of secret order. However, officials say US warrantless spying on Americans occurred before Bush "authorized" a secret program, perhaps under 1981 Reagan Executive Order. As stated in the Wash. Post on 1/4/06:
"Even before the White House formally authorized a secret program to spy on U.S. citizens without obtaining warrants, such eavesdropping was occurring and some of the information was being shared with the FBI, declassified correspondence and interviews with congressional and intelligence officials indicate."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/03/AR2006010301460.html

This article cites senior administration official as saying the secret NSA program was authorized in October 2001. So, if warrantless spying on Americans occurred before Bush's order in October 2001, we are getting very close to prior to 9/11.

William Arkin noted that in the Spring 2001 (or prior to 9/11), NSA changed its method from gathering massive data to analyze to a method of hunting even more information to determine what should be collected.
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2005/12/inside_nsas_wor.html#more
This new method could have obtained warrantless information about Americans. So, perhaps Bush's secret order for the NSA spy plan at issue was partially designed to retroactively validate what NSA was doing prior to 9/11?

[emptywheel]

Mimikatz

I actually don't doubt the Bush Administration was collecting information pre-9/11. But what you're describing is data mining that may be legal.

And I agree with you, PD, that there is a very good chance that Bush was doing illegal surveillance before 9/11. You've made a better case, IMO, than Leopold did, with just two paragraphs. I just want to refrain from conflating all of these programs, because it really discredits us. And I want to avoid making claims as to illegality without the proof. I think it's very clear the post-9/11 stuff is illegal. But a lot of surveillance is legal, and we'd do well to note those distinctions. They may still be wrong, but we've got to fight them differently.

[jonnybutter]

Thanks for this EW. I read the Leopold piece last night at FDL and sensed - by the time I got all the way to the end - that something didn't quite add up. Thanks for parsing it for us. The 'administration' is plenty bad as it is. This sort of 'chicken-little-ing' really is fully counterproductive. It kind of 'pre-pays the tolls' on the road to hell.

[Parsing it?]

Having not read the Risen book - nor having access to Leopold's sources (as one would expect from a former L.A. Bureau Chief for Dow during the Enron crisis) I am sure you're chin is right on the counter with this one.

Jason's got more data than he's giving. In fact, he emailed me that he does. If anything he is guilty of crafting a bad lead.

Or should I say the diarist at Daily Kos who pumped this story? It was inaccurately disseminated which has led to further misunderstanding or disinformation based on a weak 'diarist' dump at Kos.

Cut and paste google-sourced commentary on both your part and the lame Kos rush-rush-to-get-recommended diary - have no legitimacy. Are you willing to pick up the phone to back your critique? Or can you for that matter?

Unless you are willing to provide a source of your own - I consider this 'bottom feeding'. Period. You can't even claim a source. And the pitbulls you unleash on Leopold with your utterly flaccid dogma ultimately fails because you can't back it.

[Patriot Daily]

EW:
Your post is good and raises excellent point about mixing apples and oranges that then reduce our credibility. And we posted it at our site. Just wanted to make sure door is not closed on issue raised about whether Bush may have authorized prior to 9/11. Bush's refusal to give the date of his order just makes me suspicious as well as his apparent fondness for unilaterally validating actions by a retroactive interpretation, as with the habeas corpus law. So, we are on same page. Great work, had to take a lot of time!

[Jason Leopold]

Response to Emptywheel sent to me by JASON LEOPOLD (none / 0)

Had emptywheel done some real gumshoe reporting like the month I spent fleshing out this story she or he would have realized that the NSA had prepared this Transition 2001 document for the incoming Bush administration. Here is a link http://msnbc.msn.com/... from an AP story showing that. I took that report and went a step further and spent a month reporting this story. I spoke to many, many people who worked at the NSA and who were involved with this program BEFORE 9/11. In doing so, I got my scoop that Bush's NSA had been spying prior to 9/11 and was specifically ordered by him. Moreover, if you look carefully at the story you will see that the NSA director is supposed to by law inform Congress of it's intel program which the NSA director did not do either before 9/11 or after 9/11. Now if anyone wants to disagree with my story that's fine. You've got that right. But make sure you get facts straight before doing so. At the very bottom of this reply I am going to post a little known article from the Houston Chronicle from October 2001 that in hindsight when combined with my reporting sheds more light on the fact that the NSA was spying on Americans before 9/11. If anyone, anyone wants to contact me to talk about my sources, my reporting methods or just chat here's my phone number 310-556-2852 and my email jasonleopold@hotmail.com

NSA destroys data that might hold leads
JOHN DONNELLY
Boston Globe
748 words
27 October 2001
Houston Chronicle
3 STAR
21
English
(Copyright 2001)

WASHINGTON - Analysts at the super-secret National Security Agency, acting on advice from the organization's lawyers, have been destroying data collected on Americans or U.S. companies since the Sept. 11 attacks - angering other intelligence agencies seeking leads in the anti-terrorist probe, according to two people with close intelligence ties.

Some Central Intelligence Agency analysts and staff members of the House and Senate intelligence committees fear that important information that could aid in the investigation, and perhaps even redirect it, is being lost in the process.

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 U.S. citizens.

The lawyers said that preserving the information would invite lawsuits from people whose names appear in the surveillance reports, according to the two, both of whom are former senior U.S. officials.

But people familiar with the NSA, including some who have worked for it, dismiss the idea that the agency needed to destroy the information immediately.

Although that's been the NSA's practice in the past, they believe the NSA's own rules allow it to change that practice in the face of the threat of terrorism.

They believe the real reason behind the agency's stance is its longstanding distaste for sharing raw data with other intelligence organizations.

"There are some people in law enforcement who are very unhappy about it, because they need investigative leads," said Vincent Cannistraro, former director of counterterrorism at the CIA.

The NSA spies on foreigners and foreign governments, using high- tech operations to intercept phone calls, e-mail messages, and faxes around the world; collecting data from satellite operations; and translating documents in foreign languages.

By law, the NSA cannot spy on a citizen of the United States, an immigrant lawfully admitted to this country for permanent residence or a U.S. corporation. But it can, with court permission, target foreigners inside the United States, including diplomats.

If, in the course of surveillance, NSA analysts learn that it involves a U.S. citizen or company, "they are dumping that information right then and there," said the second official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"There's a view of a lot of people in the intelligence community who say, `Wait a minute, it could be useful to the FBI; let them look at it.' It's been the subject of some heated discussion between the agency (CIA) and the NSA," said the official.

The NSA declined to comment on the issue Friday. The CIA also declined to comment.

In the aftermath of the air attacks, former U.S. officials and analysts say that information-sharing has proceeded fairly well between the CIA and the FBI. But their relationships with the NSA have not significantly changed.

The NSA - which is based in Fort Meade, Md., and operates under the Department of Defense - distributes analysis summaries of its intelligence-gathering to a select number of senior U.S. officials, but it doesn't give its raw data - for example, the transcripts from wiretaps - to anyone. It is such raw data that are especially prized by intelligence analysts because they provide more context and leads than the distilled summaries.

U.S. Rep. Charles F. Bass, R-N.H., who served for four years on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said he knows of a long list of problems arising from the rules governing the NSA as well as the NSA's culture of keeping information in-house.

"I think it could be the biggest information problem that we face," Bass said in an interview. "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."

Once a U.S. citizen or corporation is mentioned, NSA's rules dictate that it must stop that surveillance.

A congressional outcry in the mid-1970s on U.S. intelligence abuses against American citizens led to many of the federal regulations strictly prohibiting the CIA and NSA from domestic spying.

The intelligence official said the NSA did share information "in cases to ward off a threat."

But the former U.S. officials said many investigators now were extremely frustrated that many possible leads stemming from the Sept. 11 attack weren't being followed because of the NSA position.

Document hou0000020011027dxar0009c

[DHinMI]

Sorry, but you're wrong.

First, let's look at the source you offer here, from the AP:

The National Security Agency warned President Bush in 2001 that monitoring U.S. adversaries would require a "permanent presence" on networks that also carry Americans' messages that are protected from government eavesdropping.

The warning was contained in an NSA report entitled "Transition 2001," which was made public Friday. The report was delivered to Bush shortly after he took office and reflects the agency's major concerns at the time.

Note that it says the report was delivered to Bush shortly after he became President. This article does not support your claim that "the NSA had prepared this Transition 2001 document for the incoming Bush administration."

Is it a quibble? No. In fact, it makes me seriously doubt your care with source materials.

First, the report was given to Bush after he became President. However, if you look at the report (archived in PDF form at the National Security Archives, link provided by emptywheel in the post), it shows that the date it was completed was December, 2000. That's significant, because for the first twelve days of December, it wasn't even clear that George W. Bush would be President. Furthermore, such reports are usually the product of months of writing and deliberation at various levels. Thus, it's almost certain that this report, completed some time in the month of December, certainly prior to Bush becoming President and possibly prior to it even becoming clear that he and not Al Gore would be President, was prepared not for the Bush administration, and certainly not at the behest of the Bush administration, but as a matter of standard policy for the office of the President, and not for a specific individual.

There is a very remote possibility that this document was prepared for the specific administration of George W. Bush before he took office and even before he knew he even would take office, and that it was prepared in a matter of a few days. But that seems highly improbable, and in any regard isn't a claim supported by your claim and evidence as provided in this comment.

[emptywheel]

Jason

I'm not disputing your sources or the amount of work you've put into this. I'm saying that the article you have written does not support the claims you have made for it.

I realize that the NSA document was written for the incoming Bush Administration (really, the title "Transitions 2001" is kind of a tip-off). What I don't understand is how you can use a document written in 2000 as proof of what Bush has done? If the NSA document reveals domestic spying (I don't think it does, but I can see how someone might argue the case), then it's domestic spying conducted under Clinton's watch.

I don't doubt Bush has broken the law. I find it highly likely that he spied on US citizens before 9/11. But your article argues that Bush's claim that he wrote the Executive Order in response to 9/11 is false. You can't prove that until you prove either that the program Risen describes started before 9/11 or that the Executive Order was intended to legalize all the other surveillance going on (some of which seems to be legal). You don't provide any evidence of either one of these.

Now if you have evidence that the Risen program existed before 9/11, by all means please share it. But you have not yet done so, not here, and not in your article.

[eriposte]

Jason,

It's not just Emptywheel who got a different impression reading your article. Upon reading it yesterday I sent you an email from the Truthout website. Perhaps you did not receive it - so let me reproduce the points I made there.

It is more than obvious that the Transition 2001 document was prepeared for the Bush admin. But the fact remains that the document is actually dated December 2000 (on page 1). If that document actually admits that NSA was spying on Americans without warrants, then wouldn't that mean NSA was doing so as of Dec 2000 or before?

Second, the document talks about the "protected" communications of Americans, but I don't see that it says that the surveillance was *warrantless*. Is there a passage in the document which indicates that it was warrantless?

Third, the sentences in the document seem to have been written more in the context of what NSA "must" do, rather than suggesting it was already doing what the document says is a must.

My point in my email is that it has already been obvious Bush broke the law (http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/006455.php), but your article does not make it quite clear what the source of your claim is, that Bush started the illegal wiretapping prior to 9/11. Which is why, in my email, I wondered whether you have some additional information not contained in the document (e.g., Risen's book?)...and if you can clarify this.

If I read your comment, what you seem to be suggesting is that the Transition 2001 document does not actually prove that the NSA was spying on Americans without warrants, but rather, your sources within the NSA confirm this. Is that correct?

Thanks.

[eriposte]

Whoops...DHinMI is right...let me correct one of the points in my comment...

I said "It is more than obvious that the Transition 2001 document was prepared for the Bush admin". As DHinMI points out, even this is not that obvious.

However, my other points are still valid.

[praktike]

Good work, EW. In fact, you beat me to this post.

I was going to go a bit, further, though, and note that "protected communications of Americans" refers to legal protection, as in, the NSA acknowledging that their are 4th Amendment and FISA constraints on the monitoring of Americans.

[Jason Leopold]

The issue here is that of the headline, which was misleading and which I will contact my editor and see if we could change it.

This is what the lead of my article says:

The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.

That's what they did. The NSA told the president that they were eavesdropping on Americans. The report is a warning to Bush that in the course of pursuing terrorists Americans would get caught up in the wiretaps.

Then:

The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups.

So, after being advised that the NSA was spying on Americans after 9/11, Bush allowed the NSA to continue doing what it had been doing and he went a step further, according to MY sources, and told the NSA to keep the names handy.

The agency, by law, is supposed to black out the names of Americans but it didn't. It kept those names in the system and provided it to certain members of the administration. That was done before 9/11 and Russ Tice will agree to that.

The fact that the NSA had advised the president that Americans were getting caught up in wiretaps is evidence of spying without a FISA warrant no matter how you cut it. Bush knew this and allowed it to continue

[Jason Leopold]

I can't believe I've allowed myself to get caught up in this game of semantics which is what this is. Semantics. I am actually on the phone with a source, one who plans to testify if he can, confirming this. You guys need to read that NSA declassified document from beginning to end before you go on a tirade.

Meanwhile I am going to continue reporting the truth

[DHinMI]

Hey, great show of character. You really established an unassailable writerly ethos.

[Semblance]

I hope these sources testify to Congress.

[Jason Leopold]

DHinMI:
Obviously I have a different take on this and I could go back and forth all day and then I wouldn't get any work done.

best
Jason

[DHinMI]

We all make mistakes, but I think it's pretty appalling how you're refusing to acknowledge and correct some pretty basic errors.

To be blunt, with your post misleading people into believing things you didn't establish, and now refusing to account for some pretty fundamental errors in dealing with source materials, I have to tell you that the possibility of you not getting much work done is one I find kind of appealing.

[Jason Leopold]

Oh fuck off DHinMI. here's the thing, I don't HAVE to agree with what you're saying. And I don't. It's real easy to talk shit on a blog, but I left my phone number on the post so if you've got some balls you can call me.

[DHinMI]

I don't want to talk with you, I want you to change your post. Talking to me doesn't do anything to prevent people from reading your erroneous post and drawing conclusions that aren't supported. And the real irony is, to paraphrase one of your earlier comments, "Leopold knew this and allowed it to continue."

And whether we're on a blog has no bearing on whether we're correct.

[Jason Leopold]

Pussy

[eriposte]

Jason,

My comments were not intended to portray your article as wrong or false. As I said above, the way the article is written, it is not really clear what the basis is for the assertion that the NSA and Bush were doing illegal wiretapping of U.S. persons prior to 9/11. Again, as I read your second comment, I get the impression that the only piece of information you have confirming that assertion is the information from your sources. I just want to understand if that is indeed the case.

I am not casting doubts or aspersions on you or your sources. I happen to believe that if your NSA sources are telling you that, then it is almost certain to be accurate. But please don't dismiss these comments as having to do with "semantics". Accuracy in reporting is about ensuring that the information communicated in accurate - whether it is a matter of semantics or not. I am trying to understand what the basis is for the article's assertion - nothing more and nothing less. I suspect that Emptywheel is also in the same boat.

I am also not trying to trash your article. In fact, my intention is to use it, once I can be sure that I understand the basis for the article's assertion. I will try and read the declassified document from "beginning to end" when I get the opportunity to do so, but if there is a statement in the document proving that the NSA started warrantless wiretapping of U.S. persons in 2001, then please highlight it. If not, I will assume that your article's source was people inside NSA and that the declassified document does not directly prove what your NSA sources have told you independently.

Thanks.

[Jason Leopold]

Eriposte
The way you communicated this to me comes across much better than DMinHI. When I am being personally attacked it puts me on the defensive. I'm human just like all of you. And that's why I reacted the way I did. I plan on re-reporting this story and taking it a step further. I have four of my NSA sources who have just agreed to go on the record and will explain this further. Thank you Eriposte for your truly constructive criticisms which I appreciate. My apologies for the defensive attitude and the dismissive statements.

Best
Jason