Yesterday Russell Tice, the former NSA whistleblower who said he would
testify before Congress, admitted to being one of the source’s for Risen’s
article which exposed the wiretapping story in last month’s New York Times. Tice
also appeared on Nightline last night.

During his interview on Nightline, he described the NSA program. According to
Tice, the NSA uses a technology that monitors every communication entering and
leaving the country. If certain keywords are used in that communication, say
“Jihad”, then that communication is now flagged. After that the NSA goes to work
making graphs of everyone you communicated with and everyone the other party
communicated with to create charts called spider webs.

According to Tice, if the program is fully used the number of Americans spied
on could be in the Millions.

Tice was also asked about the current investigation into the leak. He says he
never discussed any classified information and as long as he doesn’t he should
have nothing to worry about. He also said he feels the information needs to be
known because their have been “abuses” in the intelligence community which need
to be resolved.

Perhaps Mr. Tice will get his chance to address at least some members of
Congress on this important issue:

Reps. John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Chris Van Hollen
(D-MD) will hold a Democratic hearing next Friday to consider the legal
ramifications of President Bush’s warrantless surveillance on international
calls, RAW STORY has learned.

The Jan. 20 Democratic hearings come in the wake of a request from House
Judiciary Committee Democrats to hold official Congressional hearings on the
matter. The Republican chairman, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), has not
responded to Democrats’ requests.

In the Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) said he
would hold hearings on the taps, but has not officially scheduled a session

View complete article

here.

At least the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee has agreed to hold
hearings. He was even on the talk show circuit this past Sunday verifying this.
Sensenbrenner is an individual who cares nothing about the constitution, rules
or laws of the land. He proved that during his storming out of a hearing
involving the Patriot Act a couple months ago.

This could be a good position for Democrats. They hearing will most likely
echo that of the Downing Street Memo hearings they held last June. The big
difference this time is that America knows about the NSA wiretaps. They weren’t
paying that much attention or didn’t even know about the Downing Street Memos,
thanks in part to a lazy media. This hearing will show that the Democrats take
our rights and liberties seriously where as the Republicans in the House just
choose to ignore them.