Russ Tice has been warned not to testify [View All]

[dajoki]

Village Voice
http://villagevoice.com/news/0604,hentoff,71823,6.html

The Ultimate Spiderweb
NSA whistle-blower wants to tell congress, but they don't have clearance to hear

by Nat Hentoff
January 20th, 2006 5:18 PM

Then and there the child Independence was born. — John Adams, in a Boston courtroom, 1761, hearing the argument of James Otis against the limitless violations of the colonists' privacy by the king—abuses that resulted, after the revolution, in the very specific privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment, which have now been discarded.


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There is, however, a former NSA officer who is eager to testify at an open hearing. Russ Tice, a former technical-intelligence specialist with NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, was also involved in the agency's SAPs (special access programs), which—Bill Gertz reported in the January 12 Washington Times—"are the most sensitive U.S. intelligence and weapons programs and are exempt from many oversight mechanisms used to check other intelligence agencies."

Russ Tice has been warned, however, by Renee Seymour, director of NSA's special access programs, not to testify about secret electronic intelligence programs because they are so super-secret; she emphasizes that "neither the staff nor the members are cleared to receive the information covered by the special access programs."

Russ Tice, Bill Gertz also reports, was a source for the New York Times story that has created the continuing fervor over Bush's further extension of his unilateral powers as commander in chief to do whatever he wants to protect our otherwise democratic and constitutional values.

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By my definition, Russ Tice is a patriot. He told Brian Ross: "If we basically come to the conclusion that we don't mind spying on millions of Americans to find, you know, a few bad eggs or some terrorists, then . . . I think you have to pretty much rewrite the Bill of Rights and change the laws around to adjust for that."