"Firstfruits" (domestic spying): What do we know about it?

Firstfruits is reported to be the code-name for a Pentagon domestic surveillance program. According to items that originally appeared on Wayne Madsen's website on Dec. 28 and 30 that have been sporadically picked up and reposted here at DU and at some other boards, the Bush White House ordered the NSA to specifically target prominent American journalists for warrantless wiretaps. http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

Madsen's alleged list of targets is a veritable Who's Who of investigative journalism, including author James Bamford, the New York Times' James Risen, the Washington Post's Vernon Loeb, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, the Washington Times' Bill Gertz, and UPI's John C. K. Daly. These wiretaps were ordered, the report claims, to identify leakers within the intelligence agencies, the State Department and other government agencies who were spilling the beans on Bush Administration abuses to reporters and Congress. If this report is true, it would be the most extensive domestic surveillance operation since the Vietnam War, and the most egregious violation of federal anti-wire tap laws in recent memory.

Has anyone seen any accounts in major media or by reliable bloggers that might confirm this? I can't find one. A cursory GOOGLE search of "Firstfruits surveillance" came up with nothing, other than Madsen's own site and those, such as Rense.com, that reposted it. There was a string posted here on the afternoon of the 29th that was locked 24 hours later, no one having provided any confirmation to the original report. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=17304

Most recently, the story appeared again as a post here earlier this morning.

For what it's worth, here's my take on Firstfruits. If there was indeed something to this, one would expect to see a lot of follow-up, but so far nobody appears to be touching it.

So, what is Madsen doing? While his story contains elements that seem to be grounded in actual programs and events, apparently, the account is a compilation of unsupported hunches. A disinformation stinker that may as well have been thrown into the well to poison it. Caveat emptor.

When the harvest time came, farmers brought in the "firstfruits" of their crops to "sacrifice" to God.

Why the proliferation of religious terminology when describing government functions?

"The Hand Maid's Tale", anyone?