ABCNews is reporting Russell Tice, ex-NSA employee, who apparently was so obsessed about a co-worker being a Chinese spy he who violated rules and tried to investigate her, has decided to admit he was a source for the NY Times story:

But now, Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret “black world” operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the National Security Agency in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists.

Emphasis mine. Bush is not spying on his political enemies, his administration is monitoring our enemies, who have sworn to risk all to kill us.

The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC News that he was a source for the Times’ reporters. But Tice maintains that his conscience is clear.

Tice wants attention so he can sue for screwing up his career at the NSA. I doubt Tice is the only source or a key source. But if the media and liberal fringe are going to use him as the basis for impeaching Bush – this will be interesting. Comparing a guy who obsessively imagined a woman co-worker was a Chinese agent, even after the NSA investigated her and she was clean, is not going to withstand scrutiny.

Tice doesn’t appear all that smart or knowledgeable:

Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use.

“If you picked the word ‘jihad’ out of a conversation,” Tice said, “the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing.”
…
“That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum,” Tice said.

I have mentioned before terrorists don’t go around saying ‘jihad’ and ‘attack at noon’ if they are coordinating their actions. They will use code words. While NSA does search communications for key words, it is probably the least efficient method. Better to identify a target and monitor who they talk to, etc, building a web of connections which will loop back to other key elements. But if Tice thinks I care their is a computer listening in my calls and emails to Germany looking for the word ‘Jihad’, he is sorely mistaken. I doubt I have anything to say of any interest to the NSA looking for terrorists. Just call me cavalier I guess.

But the problem is, Tice and the left are worried about spying on terrorists, who may be in our country! I would be worried about anything and anyone who tried to turn that surveillance off or hamper it. And there are many left leaning people in the country who agree. I was struck to find one of them is Bill Arkin at the Washington Post. I posted on Arkin’s liberal misunderstandings on Able Danger (here, here and here), so I was surprised at how logical his postings on the NSA-FISA issue were. For example:

“This wartime measure,” Cheney said, “is limited in scope to surveillance associated with terrorists.”

Is that it? Just terrorists? A limited scope and a limited program? No activists, no journalists, no political opponents?

Are we going to find out that this was the biggest non-story of 2005?

Ever since The New York Times revealed warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency of U.S. “persons” and the circumvention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), press speculation about domestic spying has gotten broader and broader while the President and Vice President’s description of the NSA program has become narrower and narrower.
….
Both the President and Vice President pledge in their defenses of NSA spying that the civil liberties of Americans have not been compromised. And the Vice President contends that had the government been conducting this surveillance before 9/11, “we might have been able to pick up on two hijackers who subsequently flew a jet into the Pentagon.”

“They were in the United States, communicating with al Qaeda associates overseas,” Cheney said. “But we did not know they were here plotting until it was too late.”

The vice president fails to mention that the NSA actually did intercept communications indicating an event on 9/11, but didn’t process it before that day. The FBI had reports about the hijackers, but it never put two and two together. The government had plenty of tip-offs and signals but it just wasn’t focused enough or competent enough to competently carry out its constitutional duties.

Now, we are told that the government miraculously is both focused and competent, and we should trust them because they have decided that they are operating in accordance with the President’s duties under the Constitution and that they have briefed a Top Secret highly compartmented program to a few members of Congress. We are told to trust that the government conducts only lawful surveillance and it is only focused on terrorists.

On this narrow point, on this narrow program, I buy it. But the government certainly has a history of overreach, and a lot more is going on here that the government isn’t telling us about. It is enough to make you both paranoid and angry.

If Bill Arkin, an open leftist, is having a tough time buying all this, just imagine what will happen when Tice becomes the star witness. It will be worse the Cindy Sheehan for the media.

In fact, it is such a bad move I am wondering if Tice is not just some fall guy taking for someone else higher up…

Geez, now I am sounding like a leftwing paranoid conspiracy theorist!

Speaking of the radical left, some are now proposing to snoop on leading conservatives, to pay them back for spying on their political opponents here. The left plans to do exactly what they fantasize the right is doing to them, to teach everyone a lesson….

Does this make sense to anyone?

More on Tice at Mac Ranger’s