Pelosi wants her NSA letter declassified to 'shed light on her concerns'

Pelosi Requests Declassification of Her Letter on NSA Activities

12/20/2005 5:41:00 PM

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=58481

Contact: Brendan Daly or Jennifer Crider, 202-226-7616, both of the Office of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 /U.S. Newswire/ -- House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on her request to the director of National Intelligence to declassify a letter she wrote to the Bush Administration expressing concerns about the activities of the National Security Agency.

"When I learned that the National Security Agency had been authorized to conduct the activities that President Bush referred to in his December 17 radio address, I expressed my strong concerns in a classified letter to the Administration and later verbally.

"Today, in an effort to shed light on my concerns, I requested that the director of National Intelligence quickly declassify my letter and the Administration's response to it and make them both available to the public.

"The president must have the best possible intelligence to protect the American people. That intelligence, however, must be produced in a manner consistent with our Constitution and our laws, and in a manner that reflects our values as a nation to protect the American people and our freedoms."

http://www.usnewswire.com/

that the freepers are talking about.

I expect Bush will release this letter cheering his efforts immediately.

campaign starts picking up steam.

Call out the bastards!

OH, right, national security co-opted the constitution.

before he could go public with his also.

"In eight sentences on two sheets of Senate letterhead, Rockefeller wrote obliquely of "the sensitive intelligence issues we discussed today." Yesterday, after confirming with White House officials that the letter contains no classified information, the senator said the briefing's topic was the National Security Agency's expanded surveillance of Americans, publicly disclosed last week by the New York Times and now at the center of a political furor.

Rockefeller's unease suffused the short letter. "Clearly, the activities we discussed raise profound oversight issues," he wrote. Laws governing classified information barred him from sharing the information with lawyers, aides or other experts who might have helped him evaluate the information, he told Cheney.

"As I reflected on the meeting today, and the future we face, John Poindexter's TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveillance," Rockefeller wrote.

Poindexter, a retired Navy admiral, had been President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser. After the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he quietly pushed a venture called Total Information Awareness."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/19/AR2005121901641.html


Good to see Nancy had concerns also.

...why the Chimp would talk about members of Congress being informed while he's sitting on a bag of letters, all classified, from those he's told telling him what a jerk he is.

Did he -really- think they'd back him up and not demand the release of their letters?

:eyes: