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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Thursday, August 23, 2007

DNI McConnell allows local reporter to blow the lid off of warrantless wiretapping?

Okay, we knew that Dick Cheney had declared the right to unilaterally declassify, but did DNI Mike McConnell just pass the declassification torch to a local reporter at the El Paso Times?

After an interview in which McConnell revealed several previously classified details regarding the warrantless wiretapping program, MSNBC reports,
At the end of the interview, McConnell cautioned reporter Chris Roberts that he should consider whether enemies of the U.S. could gain from the information he just shared in the interview, Roberts said. McConnell left it to the paper to decide what to publish.

This is in the same interview that McConnell said, "Part of this is a classified world. The fact that we're doing it this way (publicly discussing it) means that some Americans are going to die."

So he left it to the El Paso Times reporter to decide which of these previously classified details to publish? Did they serve drinks at the conference?

(PS. In this interview McConnell more or less confirmed the claims in the lawsuits against the carriers, one of which is the existence of the "NSA closets" in AT&T switching offices which were allegedly used to conduct vast datamining on citizens email and phone content.)

4 Comments:

  • This, along with the ravings of Bush on Vietnam and Iraq, is proof that we are in the hands of lunatics. But, like deer in the headlights, we are stunned by the bizarre, Wonderlandian reality in which we find ourselves, and will do nothing. The people will shrug and turn back to the TVs. The traditional media will look for a ratings angle and sell us down the road to ruin for a few bucks in advertising revenue. And our honorable congress people will wag a stern finger of rebuke, but then submit.

    Seriously. Is this country on the path for a century of devolution and decline?

    By Blogger -epm, at 8:23 AM  

  • You know, you obliquely raise an interesting question.

    How much money do the "news" networks make on candidate and issue ads?

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 8:44 AM  

  • ... and how many times have networks refused to air 527 ads critical of the Bush administration vs. ads propagandizing Bush "vision"?

    The traditional, corporate media is in a win-win: they rake in dough AND they control the message for self-serving purposes.

    By Blogger -epm, at 8:54 AM  

  • We can argue about the swiftboaters, (because of the inaccuracies I don't think those should have been allowed to run,) but what other Republican 527 ads have there been?

    I may well be forgetting something significant, but I don't recall anything hugely objectionable on first thought.

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 1:36 PM  

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