EXPERTS: Damage to NSA Reputation May Be Irreversible

Some fear eavesdropping could undermine work of spy agency

BY WARREN P. STROBEL AND JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The White House decision to order surveillance of international phone calls by U.S. citizens without a warrant violated longstanding practices and could undermine a key U.S. intelligence agency that's critical in the struggle against terrorists, former senior intelligence officials and other experts said this week.

The super-secret National Security Agency, which eavesdropped on the Soviet Union's leaders and scored other intelligence coups during the Cold War, has spent three decades recovering from domestic spying scandals in the 1970s.

Now, with its electronic ears and vast computer banks turned primarily to intercepting suspecting terrorists, the officials said they fear that the NSA once again will bear the brunt of congressional scrutiny and public outrage, complicating its mission.

"The damage it's done to NSA's reputation is almost irreversible in my view," said a longtime top intelligence official with intimate knowledge of the agency's workings.

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/politics/13476242.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

rather than execute the administration's policy.

they should have come forward, but fear does its work in many many varying ways.

When you work for such an organization as the NSA in any remotely sensitive position, you must have a military security clearance. When you get said clearance it becomes illegal for you to even talk about what goes on in your job.

How do I know? I was there- I worked on an Echelon base during my Air Force tour in the mid-70s. I had a top secret codeword clearance, and I'm certain that if I discussed any classified aspect of my work even today, I could be arrested.

There is no "whistleblowing" when you have a classified military clearance, unless you're willing to do time behind bars in Ft. Leavenworth.

Canada.... and let her rip.... could they still come and getcha??

"The damage it's done to NSA's reputation is almost irreversible in my view,"

What reputation was that exactly? That of a giant, secret spy agency? Did they help out poor children in the hospital?

are complicit as co-conspirators. Time to make some heads roll.

on guys like John Kerry, Howard Dean and Joe LIEberman, who ran against Bush last year. America's security has been diluted into a state of uselessness, by intercepting and sorting domestic information and spending the man hours on politics, or on checking out the American people's reading habits. The neocons are not worried much about foreign terrorists, or they would concentrate all the security effort America can afford, on fighting terrorists over there, instead of playing politics and snooping over here.

they'd be diligently upgrading port security, steadfastly securing the borders, and inspecting a good deal of airline baggage. Starting several years ago.

just like Clinton had body slammed w's ole natural Daddy before him. If shrub hadn't used every tool at his disposal, including his gubmint spy ring, to assure a political victory last year, even Diebold couldn't have pulled it out, IMO. I'll bet the neocons spied on Arlan Specter too, because the GOPers were upset with Specter, for wanting to play by the rules of law on the patriot act. I've noticed that Arlan Sphincter has gone with the neocon flow more often lately, since he's won his senate seat back last year. Maybe the spooks have spooked him and he found out about it.

Bush is the uber Troll from Hell, that was hiding underneath Clinton's "Bridge to the 21st Century!" The Pubby's Pandoric Democracy Killing Pandemic and the Plague of the New Millennia! America is very sick now that the fungi in chief owns the government, instead of the people. OUR VOTES ARE TRASH thanks to the GOP...Our Liberty and Freedom are trash now, thanks to the PNAC. PEACE ON EARTH...is dead now, thanks to the neocons.

Merry F---ing Christmas!

For months now, Rush Limbaugh has been talking about how unnecessary the Plame investigation is, how its just a partisan witch-hunt.

But now he has been calling, almost daily, for investigations of who "leaked" the news of spying on Americans.

These people just don't get it.

When you expose secrets to bring illegal activity to light, you're a whistle-blower.

When you break the law to settle a political score, you're an asshole.


Subtle difference.


Its sorta like that backlash after the whole "torture-room" mess a while back.

"Liberals are exposing government secrets because they want the US to lose! They are undermining American security!"

The anti-constitutionalists who have hijacked our country know precisely what they are doing. They have been working to this end for 50 years now, starting with Duane Gish's "Creationist" movement, through Hoover, Daley, Watergate, the Ford pardons, Iran-Contra, the "Moral Majority", the "Christian Coalition", the "Contract With America", the false Persian Gulf War, the set-up in Somalia, PNAC, the impeachment of Clinton, and the appointment of Bush--who is surrounded by ALL the same men who were working this agenda under Reagan, and who created Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein (and set the stage for Ayatollah Khomeini).

They understand things very well indeed.

Not a "super-secret" cabal run by the bosses and protected by "super-secret" flunkies.

to following presidential orders, their aparatus is a tremendous assest, it will be the willful reputation of the president who orders it otherwise that will suffer the longer term disrepair imo

too many 'experts' thought it was a good idea to go into iraq at the time for that matter

Your country needs you.

No damage....I STILL consider them Murka's version of the GESTAPO...

They do shit for the White House that even the CIA has reservations about doing...

Their reputation is hurt. Now they might actually have to answer questions at the next budget appropriation hearing.

It just doesn't work the way all these uninformed people think it does.

There is absolutely nothing - and that really needs to be repeated - NOTHING in common about how the CIA works and how the NSA works. To say they are similar is about like an utterly uninformed person saying saying that the Executive Branch and he Congress must both have the same rules and procedures for day to day operations because they are both part of he Government. Anyone who knows anything at all about how they work would never make a comparison.

As to the notion that it could undermine their activities, that is simply laughable. People have no idea what their activities are, how they are accomplished, or how far - or not so far - reaching they are. How have they been damaged, by people knowing Fort Mead exists? Laughable.

actually, they DO have a reputation in my book, but current events are IMPROVING my version.

make reputation a joke. It is legitimate to suspect the worst if the truth is hidden if only to pressure
for enough oversight to reveal that those suspicions are utterly unfounded. or else in a scandalous debacle one finds out it is worse or not as bad as the evidence deprived theorists suspected and treacherously exposes by its own fault its daily operations and limits or wasteful, threatening lack thereof.

The sour medicine of accountability and oversight and REGULATION(you know, law, rational control, disciplined viability) is something any organization prone to oppose such must be forced to take for its own good.

Now they have the same odor of respectability as Enron, the GOP or FOX News just for obeying orders from above.

Their charter and their whole culture forbid acting against US citizens.

Spying is an act of war. To spy on American citizens is to wage war against America. The agents I knew were too patriotic to commit acts of treachery against their own people.

I have a friend that is still inside. I wonder what is happening with him and how he feels about bush soiling the agency.