NSA and CIA domestic spying programs presaged in proposed TIA.

The ongoing partisan wrangling over exposure of two major domestic spying operations by the Bush administration was to be expected: Clinton-Gore-Reno Democrats (who ignored Clinton-Gore-Reno spying abuses) are shrieking that the Bush-led Republicans are driving us headlong into a police state. Bush's GOP faithful, on the other hand, are automatically and unquestioningly buying the president's assurances that anything he does in the name of fighting terrorism is good and necessary, regardless of whether or not it is constitutional.

Last year it was revealed that the administration has had the National Security Agency (NSA) conducting surveillance of the overseas telephone calls of Americans (see page 25). In June of this year, the New York Times and other media organs disclosed another major spying operation, a CIA-directed program that uses "Swift" (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) to monitor bank transactions (see page 23).

These and other assaults on the rights of Americans were presaged in the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, which was being incubated early in the Bush administration under the direction of Vice Admiral John Poindexter. As planned by Poindexter, the TIA would have been invested with Orwellian "data mining" and surveillance powers. Exposure of the frightening scope of this secret program (see "Watching Your Every Move," http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2003/01-272003/vol9no02_watching.htm) caused Congress to shut the TIA proposal down. Or so it seemed. However, undeterred, the administration appears to have marched ahead, implementing TIA's most disturbing features piecemeal under other names and agencies.