U.S. tapped intimate calls from
Americans overseas, 2 eavesdroppers say
They say government monitors transcribed and passed
around embarrassing information for their own enjoyment.
By Greg Miller
Los Angeles Times, October 10, 2008
go to original
See Article I.1 Illegal
Domestic Spying
| |
NSA officials are alleged to have
passed around recordings of intimate converstaions
for their own enjoyment.
Source: CNN
|
WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence analysts eavesdropped
on personal calls between Americans overseas and their
families back home and monitored the communications
of workers with the Red Cross and other humanitarian
organizations, according to two military linguists
involved in U.S. surveillance programs.
The accounts are the most detailed to date to challenge
the assertions of President Bush, CIA Director Michael
V. Hayden and other administration officials that
the government's controversial overseas wiretapping
activities have been carefully monitored to prevent
abuse and invasion of U.S. citizens' privacy.
Describing the allegations as "extremely disturbing,"
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said
the panel had launched an inquiry and requested records
from the Bush administration.
The linguists said that recordings of intimate conversations
between citizens and their loved ones were sometimes
passed around, out of prurient interest, among analysts
at an electronic surveillance facility at Ft. Gordon,
Ga.
They also said they were encouraged to continue monitoring
calls of aid workers and other personnel stationed
in the Middle East even when it was clear the callers
had no ties to terrorists or posed no threat to U.S.
interests.
"There were people who called the States to
talk to their families," said Adrienne Kinne,
31, a former Arab linguist in the Army Reserve who
worked at a National Security Agency facility at Ft.
Gordon from 2001 to 2003.
"We identified phone numbers belonging to nonthreatening
groups, including the Red Cross," she said in
an interview with The Times. "We could have blocked
their numbers, but we didn't, and we were told to
listen to them just in case."
Kinne's accounts were echoed by a former Arab linguist
for the Navy, David Murfee Faulk, 39, who worked at
the same facility from 2003 to 2007 and said in an
interview that the government routinely monitored
conversations between U.S. troops in Iraq and their
spouses or loved ones.
"I observed people writing down, word for word,
very embarrassing conversations," Faulk told
The Times. "People would say, 'Hey, check this
out, you're not going to believe what I heard.' "
Their claims were reported Thursday by ABC News.
The overseas wiretapping activities have been a source
of controversy since it was disclosed in December
2005 that Bush had secretly authorized the NSA to
override existing laws and begin monitoring the international
phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents. Critics,
including some members of Congress, have described
the eavesdropping as a violation of laws passed in
the 1970s that required court warrants before communications
of U.S. residents could be monitored.
Bush and Hayden, who headed the NSA from 1999 to
2005, have repeatedly defended the legality of the
program, characterizing it as a carefully targeted
operation.
"We're going after very specific communications
that our professional judgment tells us we have reason
to believe are those associated with people who want
to kill Americans," Hayden said in a speech defending
the program in 2006.
It is not clear whether the abuses alleged by Kinne
and Faulk occurred as part of the sweeping Terrorist
Surveillance Program authorized by Bush in the aftermath
of the Sept. 11 attacks or were tied to more narrow
military intelligence operations focused on protecting
U.S. forces.
An NSA spokesman said the agency "takes its
legal responsibility seriously" and operates
"in strict accordance with U.S. laws and regulations
and with the highest standards of integrity and lawful
action."
"Some of these allegations have been investigated
and found to be unsubstantiated," the NSA spokesman
said. "Others are in the investigation process."
Congress overhauled the foreign intelligence surveillance
laws this year to give the government greater latitude
to track targets overseas. But the law still imposes
strict protections for U.S. citizens abroad and requires
the government to delete or block information that
isn't for valid intelligence purposes.
"At NSA, the law was followed assiduously,"
said Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for Hayden, who became
CIA director in 2006. "The notion that Gen. Hayden
sanctioned or tolerated illegalities of any sort is
ridiculous on its face."
An intelligence official who was not authorized to
discuss the matter publicly and requested anonymity
said the inspectors general at the Army and the NSA
had investigated Kinne's allegations and "were
not able to substantiate them."
Civil liberties groups said the linguists' accounts
raise questions about safeguards for citizens. "The
NSA used its surveillance powers to intentionally
collect the personal communications of innocent Americans,"
said Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil
Liberties Union's National Security Project.
Kinne and Faulk described working in massive facilities
at Ft. Gordon where rows of linguists and analysts
wearing headphones comb through intercepts collected
from all over the world, transcribing the recordings
in English. Ft. Gordon is one of three military facilities
in the United States -- the others are in Texas and
Hawaii -- dedicated to so-called signals intelligence
analysis.
Kinne said the recordings she transcribed were mainly
intercepted transmissions from satellite phones in
the Middle East. The recordings would initially be
sorted by computer and given rankings from 1 to 9,
with the lowest numbers associated with terrorists
and other immediate threats and given greatest priority.
"Humanitarian aid organizations were priorities
around 5 or 7," said Kinne, who now works at
a veterans hospital in Vermont and has joined an antiwar
veterans group.
She said she reported her concerns to superiors as
well as members of Congress, including Sen. Patrick
J. Leahy (D-Vt.), but "nobody ever bothered to
call me back."
Faulk, who worked until recently as a reporter for
a community newspaper in Augusta, Ga., said he was
one of as many as 3,000 linguists at Ft. Gordon, many
of them in their early 20s. His group spent much of
its time monitoring calls into and out of Baghdad's
Green Zone, the fortified enclave that houses the
U.S. Embassy and military and intelligence commands.
"I think it was a small number of people abusing
the program," Faulk said. "But I also think
that the majority of translators, because of their
age -- very young, very often recruited right out
of high school -- are susceptible to falling into
this trap."
