Gov. Bill Richardson fears his calls monitored by NSA for Bolton

Guv fears calls monitored

By James W. Brosnan
Scripps Howard News Service
April 28, 2005

WASHINGTON - Gov. Bill Richardson is concerned that some of his phone calls were monitored by a U.S. spy agency and transcripts of them were given to the president's nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.

Richardson called Sen. Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, to express his concerns after Dodd revealed that Bolton had on 10 occasions asked the National Security Agency for the intercepts of phone conversations involving Americans.

An online journalist then speculated that Richardson's conversations with former Secretary of State Colin Powell and another U.S. official about North Korea might have been among Bolton's requests.

"The governor is upset that his conversations with Secretary Powell would be intercepted since most of them were domestic calls," said Richardson spokesman Billy Sparks. "The governor felt his calls about North Korea were confidential."

more
http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/nw_local_state_government/article/0%2C2564%2CALBQ_19859_3736152%2C00.html



Edit - Sorry, missed the date line; perhaps the mods would like to move this to GD or something?

Bingo.

This is getting real deep, this time.

(Or is it the gist of the nub?)

What stupid group of people gave the Republicans control of every branch of government? Oh. Oh, yeah. It was the American people. "We have met the enemy..."

The responsibility for the American government - corruption and all - lies with the American people.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,-'t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there 's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

:D...Oh well...we are all a little stressed lately. What ever came of this?

Richardson doesn't seem to have been carrying on about it too much lately. :shrug:

it came from intelligence community "insiders":

Sparks said Richardson's call to Dodd was triggered when he read an online story by Washington journalist Wayne Madsen. The story said intelligence community "insiders" claim the NSA circumvented a ban on domestic surveillance by asserting that the intercepted calls were part of "training missions."

...handwriting on the wall and the inditements says it's time to revisit this.

I'm just full of questions. Even if the NSA wiretap info was legal, could the intelligence community legally have turned it over to Bolton? Was it ever determined if Madsen was right? (He does have a reputation of being too speculative.) What is the status of all this now? I did a brief search but I didn't notice any further mention of it.

Jeez, this is weird.

And I guess I may be presuming that the information on Richardson (if the suspicions are correct and this really did occur), came out of the same NSA spy programs that are getting so much scrutiny in the press and here on DU now. Or is there some other program?

So I wonder why they'd be spying on them two?

to be a smoking gun of almost mushroom cloud size.

It snarfs EVERYTHING from EVERYBODY. Echelon creates a huge database of who talked to who when and what key words were communicated. Analysts can then go back and search for interesting connections.

I keep seeing this random reports of 'if they were listening in on x' etc. Bush gave the green light to the NSA echelon system going domestic. Echelon already snarfed international traffic. It 'listened in' on everyone.

The questions to be asked are not phrased like 'if they were listening in on x', they are phrased like 'who had access to the NSA domestic echelon database', and 'what queries were submitted'.

Does this mean that one could query "Colin Powell" and "Bill Richardson" and have access to the full content of those communications? Would this not require that every conversation everywhere be recorded and retained?

Thanks.

My guess is that 'full content' would be too much data, but that instead you would get keyword lists plus date and time information. That is quite a bit though.

email and txt but also watching our BEHAVIOR as revealed by our spending activity which is diligently recorded by corp america already.

my biggest question is do they actually think they can cope with all that data? or is it more likely an excellent cover for being able to cherry pick?

peace

Than sending in burglars into the Watergate Hotel...

Let the computer do all the snooping without probable cause or a warrant and then:

SELECT * WHERE (BUSH_SUPPORTER='0');

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

The potential for abuse is so freaking obvious. Who had access? That question is not being asked, and to me that means that the answer is that Cheney's private security agency, whatever WHIG has transformed itself into these days, had and has full access.

Most people TRUST that the president was just spying on terrorists. They have this Bias that the American president would not use his power against Innocent people.

was blocking peace groups including nuns.

But you thought GWB was your man for the president! You refused to let recount happen in 2004 when you damn well knew, Kerry won your state!

If they were monitoring his calls, perhaps they heard something that gave them a bit of political leverage on Gov. Richardson? Have we considered that angle yet? Recent revelations might put things in a completely different light now. If he was correct, and they were monitoring him, perhaps they heard something during the election cycle that gave them the power to stop the recount remotely?

We need to press Gov. Richardson to come forward with a few more details, I think.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/03/BU183674.DTL

It doesn't help that White House spokesman Ari Fleischer had already gone on record criticizing Bill Maher, the host of the TV show "Politically Incorrect," for making statements that were, well, politically incorrect. (Maher said launching missiles from afar is a cowardly action, while a terrorist's suicide mission is not.) Even though Maher apologized, Fleischer said, "There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that."