Walter Pincus Continues to Try and Scare the Public

Get a load of this over the hill Hack pretend ex-CIA wanabe Pincus. This idiot is determined to create a boogy-man under your bed. Of course in Pincus's pea-brain that boogy-man is GW with the NSA.


NSA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From SurveillanceFruit of Eavesdropping Was Processed and Cross-Checked With Databases

By Walter PincusWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, January 1, 2006; A08

Information captured by the National Security Agency's secret eavesdropping on communications between the United States and overseas has been passed on to other government agencies, which cross-check the information with tips and information collected in other databases, current and former administration officials said.

The NSA has turned such information over to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and to other government entities, said three current and former senior administration officials, although it could not be determined which agencies received what types of information. Information from intercepts -- which typically includes records of telephone or e-mail communications -- would be made available by request to agencies that are allowed to have it, including the FBI, DIA, CIA and Department of Homeland Security, one former official said.
At least one of those organizations, the DIA, has used NSA information as the basis for carrying out surveillance of people in the country suspected of posing a threat, according to two sources. A DIA spokesman said the agency does not conduct such domestic surveillance but would not comment further. Spokesmen for the FBI, the CIA and the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, declined to comment on the use of NSA data.

Since the revelation last month that President Bush had authorized the NSA to intercept communications inside the United States, public concern has focused primarily on the legality of the NSA eavesdropping. Less attention has been paid to, and little is known about, how the NSA's information may have been used by other government agencies to investigate American citizens or to cross-check with other databases. In the 1960s and 1970s, the military used NSA intercepts to maintain files on U.S. peace activists, revelations of which prompted Congress to restrict the NSA from intercepting communications of Americans.

It takes Pincus 3 paragraphs to get to his boogy-man under your bed. He then goes on for several more paragraphs, explaining what and how the surveillance that is going on now works. Until he brings it full circle back into his boogie-man paranoia.

After about 8 more very good paragraphs he throws this in:
Talon is a system that civilian and military personnel use to report suspicious activities around military installations. Information from these reports is fed into a database known as the Joint Protection Enterprise Network, which is managed, as is the Talon system, by the Counterintelligence Field Activity, the newest Defense Department intelligence agency to focus primarily on counterterrorism. The database is shared with intelligence and law enforcement agencies and was found last month to have contained information about peace activists and others protesting the Iraq war that appeared to have no bearing on terrorism.
Which is bullshit it had information on peace activists that were conducting protests and harassment vigals outside of our military bases. I guess we shouldn't check out the people harassing our military outside there bases here in the US.
Military officials acknowledged that such information should have been purged after 90 days and that the Talon system was being reviewed.

He also doesn't stress that the info was purged and that it is a completely different setup than the NSA eavesdropping.

Now here's where he ties it into his delusion:
Today's controversy over the domestic NSA intercepts echoes events of more than three decades ago. Beginning in the late 1960s, the NSA was asked initially by the Johnson White House and later by the Army, the Secret Service, and the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs to intercept messages to or from the United States. Members of Congress were not informed of the program, code-named Minaret in one phase.

The initial purpose was to "help determine the existence of foreign influence" on "civil disturbances occurring throughout the nation," threats to the president and other issues, Gen. Lew Allen Jr., then director of NSA, told a Select Senate Committee headed by then-Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) in 1975.

Allen, in comments similar to recent Bush administration statements, said collecting communications involving American citizens was approved legally, by two attorneys general. He also said that the Minaret intercepts discovered "a major foreign terrorist act planned in a large city" and prevented "an assassination attempt on a prominent U.S. figure abroad."
Overall, Allen said that 1,200 Americans citizens' calls were intercepted over six years, and that about 1,900 reports were issued in three areas of terrorism. As the Church hearings later showed, the Army expanded the NSA collection and had units around the country gather names and license plates of those attending antiwar rallies and demonstrations. That, in turn, led to creation of files on these individuals within Army intelligence units. At one point a Senate Judiciary subcommittee showed the Army had amassed about 18,000 names. In response, Congress in 1978 passed the Foreign Intelligence Security Act, which limited NSA interception of calls from overseas to U.S. citizens or those involving American citizens traveling abroad.

This old wacko is still fighting Vietnam. He can't see the differences between the events and threats we face today compared to the internal problems that were faced 30years ago. And that is the problem. Assholes like Pincus and a lot of other reporters are stuck on stupid, oh excuse me, I mean stuck in the 60s/70s. Get over it guys this is not Vietnam no one is spying on reporters or non-terrorist connected Americans. People like Pincus have their head shoved so far up their ass by living in the past that they have no perspective on today's world. Go to the link above and read his whole story. It is written wonderfully. He is an excellent writer. The problem is he's just an old ass.