One more interesting point. As of 12:30, WaPo and NYT have yet to publish this one their website.

All the leaks started after Plame decided to out. She tried to have important people leak her to out others. She outed herself in ’Vanity Fair.’ She outed the others the next day.

So, the leaks became international and had to be monitored, just like the original Niger forgeries that the Directorate of Operations used to affect the US government. Yes, the other intelligence agencies learnd and emulated Plame’s operation to Niger.

And why are we expected to care what the Bush Administration guidelines are? Under guidelines, it is not considered illegal. What does that even mean? I like laws to determine what’s legal.

Re: â€Bush administration guidelinesâ€, that clanged in my head, too. What guidelines are these exactly? Exec. Orders? Abu Gonzales back-of-the-envelope musings? And the passive voice is ugly, too: â€it is not considered illegal…â€? They might as well have said, â€Under Soprano family guidelines, it is not considered illegal to whack your competitors; it’s simply business.â€

Every time I re-read this Ross and Esposito report, my heart skips a beat, and I have trouble breathing. It’s one thing to be paranoid about this stuff, it’s quite another to see it reported. Holy crap.

But, catching my breath, I have to think, this information can’t possibly be news to a number of people.

Which begs the question: is the crazy series of news stories coming out of washington this past month part of some coordinated effort? Is this, perhaps, the only way to put a stop to this administration?

The media may even begin thinking â€Fascists†and do some honest investigative reporting. Maybe not.

â€dark gray felt hats and impassive faces that, to the knowing, suggest the KGB officer.â€

http://www.time.com/time/archi…..22,00.html

Quick quiz: describe the Bush secret police officer.

FYI, my brother ran into one once on a commercial flight. He was a muscular goon who looked totally out of place in first class. You’ll never guess what he left in the bathroom that identified him all too easily.

Now you know why they hate Seymour Hersh but are helpless to stop his reporting – he meets his informants in person and never discusses anything substantive with them via e-mail or phone. BTW he probably practices better tradecraft than 90% of today’s spooks.

Mike G, come on, don’t leave us hanging!

What? His shoephone?

â€â€™â€¦a widespread CIA leak investigation,’ but the article goes onto say that people are being specifically interviewed about James Risen. Whose great sin against the Administration, of course, is reporting on an NSA program, not a CIA one.â€

I too wonder which investigation. Maybe McCarthy’s CIA-IG due diligence parallel to Tenet’s mea for the SOTU16. Though the NSA person is migrating to DI, somewhat blurring the separation for a transition period until acclimatized to the Company way. As far as the NSA leak, though, Gonzales announced the internal investigation in December, to find the leaker and leakees, including subpoenaing reporter’s private notes. But with the unilateral executive policies as they have become publicized in the past half year, someone probably pointed out to AG that they did not need to subpoena or go thru FISC. Kind of their version of the Just Do It modern world-outlook.

Reporters’ telephone records have got to be challenging, as they call lots of people.

The eastern European prisons were reported in international press before in the US. Same for the Predator overflight; there was a Waziristan villager in the news complaining of the hours of buzzing overhead before the armament fired; that was one occurrence. Clandestine is a different world now that international communications are rapid.

â€Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers.
Is that what senior law enforcement officer told them? Or is that written down somewhere I should know about? Is that why the House withdrew the restrictions on selling cell phone records on Friday?
Honest, this is uttered as if it is obvious. Is it?â€
There is a rule called pen register, which apparently makes it alright to subpoena all dialed numbers, but I think FISC has to approve; leaving FISC out is the missing step. There was something about this on the Univ of Chicago law faculty website [caveat very polarized thread there] when the USA today article appeared last week, and CDT has documented the applicability of the pen register concept fairly well, too; I read somewhere a live discussion even more energized than UChi and CDT, though both of those are pretty inflamed on the topic and worth perusal; basically pen register refers to only the numbers not the audio. However, archiving everything would enable a revisit to the audio of some datamining of the pattern of dialup numbers piqued interest. Just want to be helpful here, but to me it is pretty much of a tempest in a teapot, and has been fairly unavoidable for many decades, albeit putatively illegal. I would count on congress to treat this about as evenly as the legislation proposed following the December 2005 revelations, to ’update’ FISA; though there is political hay to be made there: if only because it is a personal and simple matter people will understand, without evaluating the principles, as you do: the risk is patent. Yet, to a computer program, a cache of every number dialed by everybody is a compact database for datamining; just a part of the ore in the datamine.

Let’s view it the way a poster observes, above: if the result is a MSM with the personalized excellence of Hersh, e.g., the net result will be an improvement; but those press gaggles will get very interesting.