NSA spying part of broader effort

Intelligence chief says Bush authorized secret activities under one order

By Dan Eggen
The Washington Post
Updated: 11:34 p.m. CT July 31, 2007

The Bush administration's chief intelligence official said yesterday that President Bush authorized a series of secret surveillance activities under a single executive order in late 2001. The disclosure makes clear that a controversial National Security Agency program was part of a much broader operation than the president previously described.

The disclosure by Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, appears to be the first time that the administration has publicly acknowledged that Bush's order included undisclosed activities beyond the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005.

In a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), McConnell wrote that the executive order following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks included "a number of . . . intelligence activities" and that a name routinely used by the administration -- the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- applied only to "one particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more."

"This is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be discussed publicly, because it is the only aspect of those various activities whose existence has been officially acknowledged," McConnell said.

The program that Bush announced was put under a court's supervision in January, but the administration now wants congressional approval to do much of the same surveillance without a court order.

[note that technically even the names of members of the secret court are secret, and that only one person, hand picked by die führer appoints all of them, in secret.]

So now we know that the Secret program to spy on us isn't the only secret program to spy on us, but that there are other Secret Secret programs for spying on us, but they only want exemption from warrants for the Secret spying. (And to pretend that Gonzales didn't commit perjury.)

John