Intelligence director: Al-Qaida, Iran, N. Korea are top threats to security
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 1:57 p.m. ET Feb. 2, 2006
WASHINGTON - CIA Director Porter Goss said Thursday that the disclosure of President Bush’s eavesdropping-without-warrants program and other once-secret projects had undermined U.S. intelligence-gathering abilities.
“The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission,” Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said a federal grand jury should be empaneled to determine “who is leaking this information.”
His testimony came after National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, who directs all intelligence activities, strongly defended the program, calling it crucial for protecting the nation against its most menacing threat. “This was not about domestic surveillance,” Negroponte said.
It would seem to me that most Americans do not care about the current activities as stated above. In fact, the very same type of "spying" took place under the Clinton Administration with the Echelon project. With the major difference being that the Clinton program was much broader in it expanse of who to listen in to. It encompassed a much wider range of activities again supposedly to locate those within the United States who were possible terrorist activists and or sympathizers, and did encompass "domestic" spying. Yet, once again we find that there was no out cry from the Democrats or the so called left wing watch groups. It seemed that it was perfectly sound to do these things.
There have been cries from the left that this has been an invasion of privacy of millions of Americans. Yet they have yet to bring forth one example to back there claim. I agree with Mr. Goss, there should be an investigation as to who is leaking these top secret covert activities. After all for the last three or four years we have had extensive investigations into the leaking of who named who as a CIA operative and it has know no boundaries as to whom they have suspected. However, something that can possibly keep America safe from further attacks has gone uninvestigated as far the leaking the of this information goes.
Personally, I have no problem with this "spying" as long as it has been directed toward thwarting any further attacks such as 9/11, and neither do most Americans, as the polls show. So where do we go from here. Is there any wonder why shortly after this was brought to the attention of America that we finally hear from OBL or his cronies? We have just tipped our hand as to how a good part of this information gathering process has been done. Why not just fore go the top secretiveness and just give it straight to the media? For that is pretty much exactly what is taking place now with this information being leaked to the media.
Article posted on UnionLeader.com...2/1/2005 (partial)
Last week, it was leaked that Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean appears to be endorsing a plan that dilutes the impact of the New Hampshire primary. Now, state Democratic Chair Kathy Sullivan, of all people, is questioning her loyalty to the national party.
Sullivan said she was told by Dean’s chief of staff, Tom McMahon, that a Dean letter to the co-chairs of the party rules committee was not an endorsement of the party’s calendar commission’s recent recommendation to place one or two caucuses between the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary.
Given the wording of the letter, that’s debatable.
But the letter’s content is not what angered Sullivan.
It’s the fact that she, as a member of the rules committee and the state chair, has yet to receive a copy from the DNC and first learned of it from a Washington reporter last Thursday.
“Someone who must be closely affiliated with the DNC sent a copy of the Dean letter” to the D.C. press “before it was delivered to other members of the rules committee,” Sullivan said. She found the leak “very offensive.”
“When someone at the DNC makes a decision to leak a letter like this to the press and not first give it to the members of the rules committee, I start to wonder why I am so loyal to the DNC,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan said she was told by Dean’s chief of staff, Tom McMahon, that a Dean letter to the co-chairs of the party rules committee was not an endorsement of the party’s calendar commission’s recent recommendation to place one or two caucuses between the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary.
Given the wording of the letter, that’s debatable.
But the letter’s content is not what angered Sullivan.
It’s the fact that she, as a member of the rules committee and the state chair, has yet to receive a copy from the DNC and first learned of it from a Washington reporter last Thursday.
“Someone who must be closely affiliated with the DNC sent a copy of the Dean letter” to the D.C. press “before it was delivered to other members of the rules committee,” Sullivan said. She found the leak “very offensive.”
“When someone at the DNC makes a decision to leak a letter like this to the press and not first give it to the members of the rules committee, I start to wonder why I am so loyal to the DNC,” Sullivan said.
I rest my case !!!
1 comment:
Can't believe you are willing to give up YOUR privacy for old Bushie baby. I take it you don't care if your conversations become part of "the record". To think that (according to your statement at the top of you blog) you are a vet. Didn't you fight for the right of freedom of speech and choice? Yet you are willing to have you privacy invaded by Bush and his cronies.
This is just another step in the making of Bush as a dictator, just like Hitler. That's how he gained power over his opposition, and now you want to give King George the same power. Just like a a right wing NeoCon. Let's throw away the Constitution and rewrite history the way Bushie wants to written. Not me, and I am willing to fight for it.
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