Have you wondered why the ABC News Blog is paranoid?Today's post:
"The Department of Justice says it secretly sought phone records and other documents of 3,501 people last year under a provision of the Patriot Act that does not require judicial oversight.
The records were obtained with the use of what are known as National Security Letters, which can be signed by an FBI agent and are only for use in terrorism cases.
The letters require telephone companies to keep secret even the existence of the request for records.
Assistant Attorney General William Moschella told Congress last month that 9,254 National Security Letters were issued in 2005 involving 3,501 people.
Federal law enforcement sources say the National Security Letters are being used to obtain phone records of reporters at ABC News and elsewhere in an attempt to learn confidential sources who may have provided classified information in violation of the law.
The FBI says its request for reporters' phone records are made in compliance with the law."
Who is Brian Ross? He's the ABC News reporter that wrote back in January that Goss's pursuit of leakers was a "Witch Hunt".
In a part of that article he reports, "Goss told the Intelligence Committee that "on the external side, I've called in the FBI, the Department of Justice. It is my aim, and it is my hope, that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information."
Now since Ross seems to have a source or two as he reported last Friday, that the Govenment was monitoring his and a colleague's cell phone
"A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.
"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation."
Ross may have a good reason to be paranoid. Sources have told me that he has been idenified in at least one investigation as a 'subject" of serveral unauthorized leaks of classified information. See here, and here.
Perhaps that "Senior official" was his source giving him a friendly "heads up?" before the hammer falls.
More to the point, these latest 'scoops' are deflections to throw off the dogs, yet notice that no one other MSM news outlet is coming to his aid, and no wonder - the press is running scared now - real scared.
Additionally, just for reference, Ross is a hack who consistently writes hit pieces on conservatives, which were later found to be unsubstantiated.
Back in Dec, 2005, Don Singleton called for this reference to Ross and Esposito's article on "Secret CIA prisons":
"A grand jury needs to be conviened, and Brian Ross and Richard Esposito need to be called to identify the current and former CIA officers who betrayed their country by revealing this information, and if they will not identify them, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito need to be jailed until they agree to reveal their sources. If they can do it to compel journalists to reveal who told them what as a part of a CIA Coup attempt against the Bush Administration, surely it can be done to ferret out traitors who reveal where top al Qaeda suspects are being held."
For whom the bell tolls...eh Brian and Richard?
iraq Politics News bush war on terror spying patriot act nsa CIA mary O. mcCarthy porter goss kappes negroponte hayden
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