Robert Scheer: Hayden--the Spook in Your Phone

[Jack Rabbit]

From TruthDig.com
Dated Thursday May 11

Hayden--the Spook in Your Phone
By Robert Scheer

Editor’s note: This is an updated version of Robert Scheer’s original May 10 column.

Michael V. Hayden, nominated by President Bush to head the CIA, is the man responsible for the most extensive attack ever on the privacy of U.S. citizens. As USA Today reveals, it was during the six years that Hayden ran the ultra-secret National Security Agency that the feds gained access to the phone calling records of most Americans.

By cross-checking those phone record against other readily available databases, the feds are now in a position to profile the intimate daily lives of the citizenry--providing a tool that no Big Brother could ever have dreamed of obtaining before the advent of modern telecommunications technology. Yet this assault on our freedom was never disclosed to the public, debated by our elected representatives or tested by the courts.

Most disturbing is the revelation by USA Today that leading members of Congress--Democrats as well as Republicans--had been told of this ghastly assault on our freedom but did nothing to thwart it. They must now be held accountable. So too Gen. Hayden, who obviously should not be trusted with running the CIA spy agency after having engineered such massive spying on the American public. As my Wednesday column, reproduced below indicates, there were already sufficient reasons to reject this nominee, but the latest charge dwarfs previous concerns.

Read more.

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1. Go Sheer! The male version of Helen Thomas!

I wish he could be in there with Snow!