Intellectual Property Law

More on NSA Attempt to Wiretap Congressman

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

NY Times reporter James Risen spoke to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last night and expanded slightly on the NSA story he wrote this week with colleague Eric Lichtblau. In that story, the reporters disclosed that in 2005 or 2006 the NSA had planned to spy on a U.S. congressman while he was traveling with a congressional delegation in the Middle East.

Risen told Olbermann that the information came from "a very senior U.S. intelligence official with direct knowledge of this, a person I can?t identify."

Risen hasn't been able to discover the identity of the congressman yet but said, "We do know that it occurred overseas and that the NSA had already begun to eavesdrop on someone else who was traveling with the congressman, and then wanted to go up and eavesdrop directly on the congressman, but was blocked at the last minute."

The NSA had wanted to spy on the congressman without a warrant, but unnamed intelligence officials nixed the plan.

It's unclear whether this 2005 or 2006 Middle East visit occurred before or after the newspaper broke its initial story on the warrantless domestic wiretapping on December 16, 2005. Two days after that story broke, President George Bush acknowledged that he had signed an order allowing the NSA to intercept international telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens and residents with suspected ties to terrorists, and that the agency could do so without a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Since intelligence officials nixed the NSA's plan to spy on the congressman, it would be interesting to know if this occurred before or after the agency's warrantless wiretapping had been exposed and been roundly criticized by many in Congress.

See also:

• Inside Operation Highlander: The NSA's Wiretapping of Americans Abroad

Full post as published by Threat Level on April 17, 2009 (boomark / email).