

The nation's top spook Michael McConnell told El Paso Times reporter Chris Roberts last week that debating the nation's spy laws in public means "some Americans are going to die" and that companies being sued for helping the government spy on Americans did help the government, an admission that Bush Administration lawyers have repeatedly told courts was a secret that could put Americans at risk. The astounding interview was published on Wednesday.

The companies being sued for helping with the government's warrantless wiretapping program, which include AT&T, Bellsouth, and Verizon, did indeed assist the program since the NSA obviously needed help to wiretap, McConnell said. The companies need retroactive immunity or they will face bankruptcy from the lawsuits, he added. That's an astonishing admission, given that the administration and the telecoms have long argued that confirming or denying the telcos' participation would damage national security and put Americans' lives at risk.

Now the second part of the issue was under the president's program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us. Because if you're going to get access you've got to have a partner and they were being sued. Now if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies. So my position was we have to provide liability protection to these private sector entities.

Just last week, Justice Department lawyers told the 9th Circuit Appeals Court that such information was a state secret and AT&T attorney Michael Kellogg told the court: "The government has said that whatever AT&T is doing with the government is a state secret. As a consequence, no evidence can come in whether the individuals' communications were ever accepted or whether we played any role in it."

McConnell further revealed that the first judge at government's secret spying court who looked at the previously warrantless Terrorist Surveillance Program in early 2007 approved the whole program. But the second judge who looked at the program struck down the NSA's interception of communications inside the United States. The government got a stay until May 31, then pressed Congress to pass the Protect America Act of 2007, which greatly expanded the NSA's authority to install wiretapping outposts and backdoors in the U.S.'s communication architecture.

Furthermore, while the NSA keeps tabs on thousands of foreigners, it targets fewer than 100 hundred Americans at a time, McConnell said.

McConnell struck a less reassuring note when he told the reporter that terrorists are crossing the Southwest border between the U.S. and Mexico, including a "significant number" of Iraqis smuggled in.

El Paso Times transcript.

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