There are so many conspiracy theories coming from national security leaks it is hard to keep them all straight. We had the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program leak back in December by Rish and Lichtbau which was so full of errors and hype the only facts where those necessary to help the terrorists. The NY Times discovered a change between military and civilian information sharing that was made post 9-11 since it is clear we had our sites on the 9-11 highjackers in Germany, but were forced to pretend that information did not exist once they hit our shores and the FISA Court. See, prior to 9-11 a lead garnered from monitoring terrorists overseas by the NSA would be destroyed unless the FBI asked for the information specifically. And the FISA Court refused to accept military intel as a basis for FISA surveillance once people made landfall here. So all we knew about Atta and company (from Able Danger and the CIA/German Monitoring) was evidently non-existant in the eyes of the vaunted FISA court. FISA was not in arms because the NSA went around them, FISA was in arms because their intel was going through the FBI and becoming part of their evidence for probable cause. The NY Times got that one 180 degress backwards.

The USA Today story on a large database of phone calls and durations (number to number, no content) is obviously nothing more than the records of legal surveillances given the fact the database is a small fraction of the size needed to contain all US numbers. My guesstimate (and they are usually pretty good) is we are talking 10% of the total number. But USA Today went on to claim these 10’s of millions of records represented the information on 300 million people who have at least that number (probably twice that number) of phone numbers in use.

Then we had the EFF court case where some low level technician who is no communications engineer steals documents and claims the NSA is capturing everyone’s internet communications. Except the fact is EFF’s own ‘expert’ makes a strong case this is not an NSA vacuum but simply the government setting up Virtual Private Networks to connect agencies and centers across the nation. NASA does the same thing with its 14 sites and we do get consulting from NSA on security measures. The expert dismissed the idea of AT&T setting up separate, secure government bandwidth because it never occurred to the expert the government would pay AT&T for the service! The expert’s entire logic relies on the idea that AT&T, out of the goodness of its heart, would put all this capability in place for free. Talk about your stretches!

Now we have this yahoo coming out and noticing that the NSA existed before 9-11 – therefore 9-11 must have been an iinside job to take over the world!

MarkusQ writes
“Bloomberg is reporting that, according to documents filed in the breach of privacy suit on behalf of Verizon and BellSouth, the NSA asked AT&T to set up its domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Could it be that they were intending to monitor domestic calls (and internet traffic) all along, and the ‘Global War on Terror’ was just a convenient excuse when they got caught?”

Actually, it is possible that what I have been saying all along is accurate. That the NSA monitors overseas communications of specifically targetted individuals and organizations. That was why it was created and its primary purpose. And that before 9-11 the only difference was they through away leads to people here in the US unless they were working with the FBI on a FISA-warranted investigation. These people think we did nothing at all before 9-11 because they have been living in ignorant bliss about what it takes to protect our nation from ongoing threats.

The actual article blows apart the conspiracy theories of the left because it notes the project started at AT&T in Feb 2001. And if these blessedly ignorant people understood how the Federal government worked, they would know the three year concept and competitive bidding phase of such a program, which must precede the start at AT&T, would make this a Clinton era objective which at the earliest launched right before the millenium change over and the massive threat spike at that time. The proof is in the excerpt:

The NSA says on its Web site that in June 2000, the agency was seeking bids for a project to “modernize and improve its information technology infrastructure.” The plan, which included the privatization of its “non-mission related” systems support, was said to be part of Project Groundbreaker.

One thing is for sure. The news media is attracting all the leftwing nutjobs in the government and allowing them to fulfill their White Knight fantasies in taking down the evil empire. Their stories are all fantasy, except the information needed to aid terrorists. And the media believes anything expoused by their ‘sources’ and no mitigating or contrary information from the governmnet. Truly a case of the blind leading the blind.