Reply #5: NSA Whistle-blower Says He Has Lost His Livelihood [View All]

[seemslikeadream]

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/09/nsa_whistleblow.html

NSA Whistle-blower Says He Has Lost His Livelihood
September 21, 2006 11:16 AM

Vic Walter and Krista Kjellman Report:

NSA whistle-blower Russell Tice says his choice to reveal what he says were unlawful acts at the National Security Agency while he was working there "has cost me my career and livelihood."

In a letter to Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services, Tice asks Duncan to "include real whistleblower protections to national security employees in the 2007 Defense Authorization Bill."

"My case, from beginning to end, is a testament to the utter and complete failure of whistle-blower protections for federal employees that work within the most crucial aspects of national security," Tice writes.

Tice, a former NSA intelligence officer, told ABC News this past January in a Nightline report that he saw unlawful and unconstitutional acts at the NSA while working there. He said the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the programs used by the agency were employed to their full capacity.





http://www.organicconsumers.org/politics/coverup060216.cfm
Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican and chairman of the
national security subcommittee that held the hearing, told Provance: "It
takes a tremendous amount of courage for someone of your rank to tell a
general what they may not want to hear."


Asked what his current military duties are, the former computer specialist
replied," The only thing I've been doing since being demoted is picking up
trash and pulling guard duty."


Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst who was a New York
Times source for its reporting on domestic wiretapping, told of having been
classified as mentally ill and then fired in connection with an earlier
episode at the espionage agency.


Tice said he would have to testify in closed hearings about the details of
the eavesdropping program, which President Bush authorized soon after the
Sept. 11 attacks. But under questioning by lawmakers, Tice suggested that
other NSA programs also raised concerns for him.


"Some of the programs that I worked on I believe treaded on illegalities
and, I believe, unconstitutional activity," Tice said.


In one of the hearing's most dramatic moments, Tice read aloud the Fourth
Amendment of the Constitution, which protects Americans against
"unreasonable searches and seizures" without a court warrant. Tice also read
an NSA policy that limits the signals agency to monitoring foreign
communications.


http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0215-12.htm


Published on Wednesday, February 15, 2006 by the Sacramento Bee (California)
National Security Whistle-Blowers Allege Retaliation
by James Rosen

WASHINGTON - Military and intelligence officers told spellbound lawmakers Tuesday that their careers had been ruined by superiors because they refused to lie about Able Danger, Abu Ghraib and other national security controversies.
Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, wearing a crisp olive Army uniform with the Bronze Star and other awards, delivered his first public testimony about his central role in Able Danger, a Pentagon computer data-mining program set up long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to infiltrate the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Shaffer told a House Government Reform subcommittee that he and other intelligence officers and contractors working on the top-secret program code-named "Able Danger" had identified Mohammed Atta, ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, but were prevented from passing their findings to the FBI.

"I became a whistleblower not out of choice, but out of necessity," Shaffer said. "Many of us have a personal commitment to ... going forward to expose the truth and wrongdoing of government officials who - before and after the 9/11 attacks - failed to do their job."

Shaffer contradicted recent statements by Philip Zelikow, former executive director of the Sept. 11 commission, who denied having met with Shaffer and other Able Danger operatives in Afghanistan in October 2003.

"I did meet with him," Shaffer said. "I have the business card he gave me. I find it hard to believe that he could not remember meeting me."

The commission set up by Congress to probe the Sept. 11 attacks didn't mention the Able Danger project on al Qaeda in its final report in July 2004.


Curt Weldon maybe a wack job that doesn't mean Able Danger didn't exist


and no one in our government would ever lie to us, would they?