members on C-SPAN, the names of these
presidential findings change with administrations. They are called variously
Presidential Decision Directives, National Security Council Decision
Directives, Executive Orders, etc.
One might think these special override-the-constitution presidential
directives (which came out of nowhere) would be used for short-term
emergencies.
Wrong: the NSA is now a HUGE intelligence organization, eating billions
and billions and billions and billions of dollars in budgets each year,
and monitoring billions of messages a day.
* "Spying Budget Is Made Public By Mistake", By Tim Weiner
* The New York Times, November 5 1994
*
* By mistake, a Congressional subcommittee has published an unusually
* detailed breakdown of the highly classified "black budget" for United
* States intelligence agencies.
*
* In previously defeating a bill that would have made this information
* public, the White House, CIA and Pentagon argued that revealing the
* secret budget would cause GRAVE DAMAGE to the NATIONAL SECURITY of
* the United States.
*
* $3.1 billion for the CIA
* $10.4 billion for the Army, Navy, Air Force
* and Marines special-operations units
* $13.2 billion for the NSA/NRO/DIA
*
* The only damage done so far is to the
* credibility of those who opposed the measure.
There is no constitutional basis for this
massive loss of Fourth Amendment rights.
It sounds like some wild conspiracy theory, doesn't it?
Yet it exists.
******************************************************************************
Secret Court
------ -----
: The Washington Post Magazine, June 23 1996
: Government surveillance, terrorism and the U.S. Constitution:
: The story of a Washington courtroom no tourist can visit.
: By Jim McGee and Brian Duffy [snipped article excerpts
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 3.2.0
bz6oTGIlM98hy8UKPkIK9Leh8gC2KbwzN5YF5/o7Mp+q9/n2qh0j28B4jQnJ/3LO
bTpYdlwuKaWRQ5MokD9h2DeH1hQBtZOIm40qLoixm7oDijp9MrsvYfkShDrfPNXI
MrEZKDyAeIxWuQBRgpb92yUMmXCv1VP3JEtIn4KohzuVSzOdusp2jjpDS+99xfL+
c0TCXSA75NzPAZA+ez8MgpyLCy0Ik6==
=a8an
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----