Some Purely Domestic Calls Were Intercepted

Now we know why President Bush went out of his way in his Monday press conference to deny that the government was eavesdropping on any calls in which both parties were located in the United States. He was lying.

Any reasonably shrewd person knows that when someone explains something simple by going into a great deal of detail, this wordiness can be a "tell" that the person is not being truthful.

The President, already under fire for the extra-legal NSA spying, kept insisting that all of the intercepted conversations involved one party located outside the confines of the U.S.. When a questioner asked if any purely domestic calls had been captured in this COMINT program, Bush emphatically assured the nation that he would have gone for permission to the FISA court in that eventuality.

Today's New York Times says that contrary to the President's claim, there were U.S./U.S. calls intercepted by NSA without the required secret court order. This puts the matter in an even more sinister light:

Eavesdropping on communications between two people who are both inside the United States is prohibited under Mr. Bush's order allowing some domestic surveillance.

Mr. Bush couldn't even be trusted to adhere to the terms of his illegal order.

The Times, whose behavior in this scandal has been peculiar, insists that the purely domestic calls were few in number and were accidents caused by the advanced technology utilized by NSA. But, if this is true, why would the Times have bothered to publish a story about this aspect of the flap at all?

The Times even gives the government a handy alibi for when (and if) the NSA scandal gets investigated:

Telecommunications experts say the issue points up troubling logistical questions about the program. At a time when communications networks are increasingly globalized, it is sometimes difficult even for the N.S.A. to determine whether someone is inside or outside the United States when making a cellphone call or sending an e-mail message. As a result, people that the security agency may think are outside the United States are actually on American soil.

The Times article shows that the cover story is breaking down somewhere:

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former N.S.A. director who is now the second-ranking intelligence official in the country, was asked at a White House briefing this week whether there had been any "purely domestic" intercepts under the program.

"The authorization given to N.S.A. by the president requires that one end of these communications has to be outside the United States," General Hayden answered. "I can assure you, by the physics of the intercept, by how we actually conduct our activities, that one end of these communications are always outside the United States."

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales also emphasized that the order only applied to international communications. "People are running around saying that the United States is somehow spying on American citizens calling their neighbors," he said. "Very, very important to understand that one party to the communication has to be outside the United States."

The Times piece ends with a quote by someone whose family is familiar to longtime intelligence community types:

With roaming cellphones, internationally routed e-mail, and voice-over Internet technology, "it's often tough to find out where a call started and ended," said Robert Morris, a former senior scientist at the N.S.A. who is retired. "The N.S.A. is good at it, but it's difficult even for them. Where a call actually came from is often a mystery."

Mr. Morris' son, Robert Jr., a Cornell University grad student, unleashed the very first worm (virus) onto the internet in 1988. Back in the 1980s, 99.7% of Americans had never heard of the internet, and the only access to the network was through the government, military and some universities.