Intel from domestic wiretapping= phone sex/pillow talk. Civil what-berties?

Oski2005 · Oct 9, 2008

U.S. Officers' "Phone Sex" Intercepted; Senate Demanding Answers
By BRIAN ROSS, VIC WALTER, and ANNA SCHECTER
Oct. 9, 2008

Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), called the allegations "extremely disturbing" and said the committee has begun its own examination.

"We have requested all relevant information from the Bush Administration," Rockefeller said Thursday. "The Committee will take whatever action is necessary."

"These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones," said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA's Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003.

Kinne described the contents of the calls as "personal, private things with Americans who are not in any way, shape or form associated with anything to do with terrorism."

She said US military officers, American journalists and American aid workers were routinely intercepted and "collected on" as they called their offices or homes in the United States.

Watch "World News Tonight with Charles Gibson" and "Nightline" for more of Brian Ross' exclusive report.

Another intercept operator, former Navy Arab linguist, David Murfee Faulk, 39, said he and his fellow intercept operators listened into hundreds of Americans picked up using phones in Baghdad's Green Zone from late 2003 to November 2007.

"Calling home to the United States, talking to their spouses, sometimes their girlfriends, sometimes one phone call following another," said Faulk.

The accounts of the two former intercept operators, who have never met and did not know of the other's allegations, provide the first inside look at the day to day operations of the huge and controversial US terrorist surveillance program.

"There is a constant check to make sure that our civil liberties of our citizens are treated with respect," said President Bush at a news conference this past February.

But the accounts of the two whistleblowers, which could not be independently corroborated, raise serious questions about how much respect is accorded those Americans whose conversations are intercepted in the name of fighting terrorism.

Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer.

"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News.

Faulk said he joined in to listen, and talk about it during breaks in Back Hall's "smoke pit," but ended up feeling badly about his actions.

"I feel that it was something that the people should not have done. Including me," he said.

In testimony before Congress, then-NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden, now director of the CIA, said private conversations of Americans are not intercepted.

"It's not for the heck of it. We are narrowly focused and drilled on protecting the nation against al Qaeda and those organizations who are affiliated with it," Gen. Hayden testified.

He was asked by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), "Are you just doing this because you just want to pry into people's lives?"

"No, sir," General Hayden replied.

Asked for comment about the ABC News report and accounts of intimate and private phone calls of military officers being passed around, a US intelligence official said "all employees of the US government" should expect that their telephone conversations could be monitored as part of an effort to safeguard security and "information assurance."

"They certainly didn't consent to having interceptions of their telephone sex conversations being passed around like some type of fraternity game," said Jonathon Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University who has testified before Congress on the country's warrantless surveillance program.

"This story is to surveillance law what Abu Ghraib was to prison law," Turley said.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=5987804&page=1
Click to expand...

I only posted the first 2 pages, there are 4 total.

rimrocker · Oct 9, 2008

I'm shocked. Who could have ever thought the Bush Administration capable of such a thing.

pirc1 · Oct 9, 2008

rimrocker said:

I'm shocked. Who could have ever thought the Bush Administration capable of such a thing.
Click to expand...

Yes, but if you have not done anything wrong, why should you worry about someone listen to your private calls? Or do you have something to hide?

mic · Oct 9, 2008

Who cares about the right to privacy?

bucket · Oct 9, 2008

But hey, Bush hasn't had sex with any interns!

Apollo Creed · Oct 9, 2008

This story gives me a patriotic boner.

professorjay · Oct 9, 2008

I am totally shocked that this happened. I don't think anyone saw this problem coming.*

*

Baqui99 · Oct 9, 2008

"I'm Chris Hanson, Dateline NBC"

JuanValdez · Oct 9, 2008

rimrocker said:

I'm shocked. Who could have ever thought the Bush Administration capable of such a thing.
Click to expand...

The blame does belong to Bush, since this is his baby, but it is obvious that any such program, regardless of who ran it, would have this abuse. Whoever believed Bush when he said we'd only spy on terrorists... well, I have a bridge for sale.

FranchiseBlade · Oct 9, 2008

JuanValdez said:

The blame does belong to Bush, since this is his baby, but it is obvious that any such program, regardless of who ran it, would have this abuse. Whoever believed Bush when he said we'd only spy on terrorists... well, I have a bridge for sale.
Click to expand...

agreed, that any type of program like that would have problems of abuse. That's why so many of us wanted to make sure there was oversight.

IROC it · Oct 9, 2008

When the heat is on Obama... scream out "BUSH!!!!"

pgabriel · Oct 9, 2008

IROC it said:

When the heat is on Obama... scream out "BUSH!!!!"
Click to expand...

obssession

JuanValdez · Oct 9, 2008

IROC it said:

When the heat is on Obama... scream out "BUSH!!!!"
Click to expand...

Jeez Louise, we finally get a thread that is not beating the McCain-Obama horse to death, and you got to come in with this? Is there a D&D subject that can avoid being sullied by this stupid election?

Forums

Intel from domestic wiretapping= phone sex/pillow talk. Civil what-berties?

Oski2005 Member

rimrocker Member

pirc1 Member

mic Member

bucket Member

Apollo Creed Contributing Member

professorjay Member

Baqui99 Member

JuanValdez Member

FranchiseBlade Member
Supporting Member

IROC it Member

pgabriel Educated Negro

JuanValdez Member

Share This Page

About ClutchFans

Rockets Content

Support ClutchFans!

Intel from domestic wiretapping= phone sex/pillow talk. Civil what-berties?

Oski2005 Member

rimrocker Member

pirc1 Member

mic Member

bucket Member

Apollo Creed Contributing Member

professorjay Member

Baqui99 Member

JuanValdez Member

FranchiseBlade Member Supporting Member

IROC it Member

pgabriel Educated Negro

JuanValdez Member

Share This Page

FranchiseBlade Member
Supporting Member