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Last Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” a former National Security Association analyst disclosed that he was ordered to wiretap certain organizations in order to “not target” them – to not “harpoon the wrong people,” so they would not be spied on by his organization.
Russell Tice confessed on “Countdown” that the agency not only “had access to all Americans’ communications, faxes, phone calls, and their computer connections,” but also “looked over” American journalists and news organizations. Mr. Tice was told that this was just to clear them, so they wouldn’t be targeted the way that terror suspects were. When Mr. Tice noticed that the surveillance was occurring “24/7, 365 days a year,” he started to investigate. Shortly thereafter, he was fired.
When Mr. Olbermann asked to what extent this had taken place, Mr. Tice replied, “It would be everything.” He also reported that, all media surveillance was digitized and stored electronically somewhere. Apparently the government was saving this info for posterity’s sake.
This means that anything from e-mails sent to a journalist’s children from a work computer, to internal editorial decisions made by editor in chiefs all over the country were under the watchful eye of the NSA.
Mr. Tice was one of the anonymous sources of the 2005 New York Times story first reporting on our recently departed administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping on American citizens, whistle-blowing the cover off one of the greatest abuses of government power under the Bush White House.
The role of a free and independent press corps in a modern democracy is perhaps even more important now than it was when Thomas Carlyle observed the media’s role as “the fourth estate” in 1841. In a world of globalized markets and authority, the media can and should be the largest check and balance in our 21st century world. When the government acts as a check on journalism, the journalist’s role as the fourth estate becomes defunct.
Obviously these claims require investigation – which I sincerely hope will take place promptly and thoroughly – but if what Mr. Tice said is true, the most important question arising from this information is: Why? What legitimate reason could there be to systematically target the communications of media organizations and journalists?
I’m no expert in the field of information harvesting, but I don’t see any value in the federal government, or any agency, knowing the details of the telephone and e-mail correspondences of the press corps – unless that same government wants to keep tabs on the journalists charged with the task of keeping tabs on it. Unless a far more valid reason for this sort of Orwellian surveillance surfaces, the NSA should immediately desist in the collection of private media-related communications.
Mario Moretto is opinion editor for The Maine Campus.
