BY Wayne Madsen
Insider Contributing Editor from Waynemadsenreport.com
FIRST FRUITS
Washington, D.C.
May 15, 2006 -- When is a "scoop" not a "scoop?" ABC News, in an "exclusive" today, is reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies, including the NSA and CIA, have been conducting surveillance on the phone calls of journalists, specifically those working for ABC News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. WMR reported this surveillance in much greater detail last year.
The following is WMR's three articles on the subject of spying by the Bush administration on journalists:
May 10, 2005 -- The inquisition side of NSA is the one that
Hayden and his advisers do not want the public to see. In fact, NSA maintains a
database that tracks unofficial and negative articles written about the agency.
Code named "FIRSTFRUITS," the database is operated by the Denial and
Deception (D&D) unit within SID. High priority is given to articles written
as a result of possible leaks from cleared personnel.
According to those familiar with FIRSTFRUITS, Bill Gertz of The Washington Times
features prominently in the database. Before Hayden's reign and during the
Clinton administration, Gertz was often leaked classified documents by
anti-Clinton intelligence officials in an attempt to demonstrate that collusion
between the administration and China was hurting U.S. national security. NSA,
perhaps legitimately, was concerned that China could actually benefit from such
disclosures.
In order that the database did not violate United States Signals Intelligence
Directive (USSID) 18, which specifies that the names of "U.S. persons"
are to be deleted through a process known as minimization, the names of subject
journalists were blanked out. However, in a violation of USSID 18, certain high
level users could unlock the database field through a super-user status and view
the "phantom names" of the journalists in question. Some of the
"source" information in FIRSTFRUITS was classified—an indication
that some of the articles in database were not obtained through open source
means. In fact, NSA insiders report that the communications monitoring tasking
system known as ECHELON is being used more frequently for purely political
eavesdropping having nothing to do with national security or counter terrorism.
In addition, outside agencies and a "second party," Great Britain's
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), are permitted to access the
journalist database. FIRSTFRUITS was originally developed by the CIA but given
to NSA to operate with CIA funding. The database soon grew to capacity, was
converted from a Lotus Notes to an Oracle system, and NSA took over complete
ownership of the system from the CIA.
Tens of thousands of articles are found in FIRSTFRUITS and part of the upkeep of
the system has been outsourced to outside contractors such as Booz Allen, which
periodically hosts inter-agency Foreign Denial and Deception meetings within its
Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility or "SCIF" in Tyson's
Corner, Virginia. Currently, in addition to NSA and GCHQ, the National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) routinely access the database, which is in
essence a classified and more powerful version of the commercial NEXIS news
search database.
In addition to Gertz, other journalists who feature prominently in the database
include Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker; author and journalist James Bamford,
James Risen of The New York Times, Vernon Loeb of The Washington Post, John C.
K. Daly of UPI, and this journalist.
NSA abhors negative publicity. Anytime the agency is the subject of unwanted
media attention, Hayden sends out an email known as an "All Agency."
The memo reiterates NSA's long standing "neither confirm nor deny"
policy regarding certain news reports:
"NSA personnel must refrain from either confirming or denying any
information concerning the agency or its activities which may appear in the
public media. If you are asked about the activities of NSA, the best response is
"no comment." You should the notify Q43 {Public Affairs] of the
attempted inquiry. For the most part, public references to NSA are based upon
educated guesses. The agency does not normally make a practice of issuing public
statements about its activities."
***
December 28, 2005 -- BREAKING NEWS. NSA spied on its own
employees, other U.S. intelligence personnel, and their journalist and
congressional contacts. WMR has learned that the National Security Agency (NSA),
on the orders of the Bush administration, eavesdropped on the private
conversations and e-mail of its own employees, employees of other U.S.
intelligence agencies -- including the CIA and DIA -- and their contacts in the
media, Congress, and oversight agencies and offices.
The journalist surveillance program, code named "Firstfruits," was
part of a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) program that was maintained at
least until October 2004 and was authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss. Firstfruits
was authorized as part of a DCI "Countering Denial and Deception"
program responsible to an entity known as the Foreign Denial and Deception
Committee (FDDC). Since the intelligence community's reorganization, the DCI has
been replaced by the Director of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte
and his deputy, former NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden.
Firstfruits was a database that contained both the articles and the transcripts
of telephone and other communications of particular Washington journalists known
to report on sensitive U.S. intelligence activities, particularly those
involving NSA. According to NSA sources, the targeted journalists included
author James Bamford, the New York Times' James Risen, the Washington Post's
Vernon Loeb, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, the Washington Times' Bill Gertz,
UPI's John C. K. Daly, and this editor [Wayne Madsen], who has written about NSA
for The Village Voice, CAQ, Intelligence Online, and the Electronic Privacy
Information Center (EPIC).
In addition, beginning in 2001 but before the 9-11 attacks, NSA began to
target anyone in the U.S. intelligence community who was deemed a
"disgruntled employee." According to NSA sources, this surveillance
was a violation of United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18 and
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The surveillance of U.S.
intelligence personnel by other intelligence personnel in the United States and
abroad was conducted without any warrants from the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court. The targeted U.S. intelligence agency personnel included
those who made contact with members of the media, including the journalists
targeted by Firstfruits, as well as members of Congress, Inspectors General, and
other oversight agencies. Those discovered to have spoken to journalists and
oversight personnel were subjected to sudden clearance revocation and
termination as "security risks."
In 2001, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rejected a number of FISA
wiretap applications from Michael Resnick, the FBI supervisor in charge of
counter-terrorism surveillance. The court said that some 75 warrant requests
from the FBI were erroneous and that the FBI, under Louis Freeh and Robert
Mueller, had misled the court and misused the FISA law on dozens of occasions.
In a May 17, 2002 opinion, the presiding FISA Judge, Royce C. Lamberth (a Texan
appointed by Ronald Reagan), barred Resnick from ever appearing before the court
again. The ruling, released by Lamberth's successor, Judge Colleen
Kollar-Kotelley, stated in extremely strong terms, "In virtually every
instance, the government's misstatements and omissions in FISA applications and
violations of the Court's orders involved information sharing and unauthorized
disseminations to criminal investigators and prosecutors . . . How these
misrepresentations occurred remains unexplained to the court."
After the Justice Department appealed the FISC decision, the FISA Review court
met for the first time in its history. The three-member review court, composed
of Ralph Guy of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Edward Leavy of the 9th
Circuit, and Laurence Silberman [of the Robb-Silberman Commission on 911
"intelligence failures"] of the D.C. Circuit, overturned the FISC
decision on the Bush administration's wiretap requests.
Based on recent disclosures that the Bush administration has been using the NSA
to conduct illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, it is now becoming apparent
what vexed the FISC to the point that it rejected, in an unprecedented manner,
numerous wiretap requests and sanctioned Resnick.
***
December 30, 2005 -- More on Firstfruits. The organization
partly involved in directing the National Security Agency program to collect
intelligence on journalists -- Firstfruits -- is the Foreign Denial and
Deception Committee (FDDC), a component of the National Intelligence Council.
The last reported chairman of the inter-intelligence agency group was Dr. Larry
Gershwin, the CIA's adviser on science and technology matters, a former national
intelligence officer for strategic programs, and one of the primary promoters of
the Iraqi disinformation con man and alcoholic who was code named
"Curveball." Gershwin was also in charge of the biological weapons
portfolio at the National Intelligence Council where he worked closely with John
Bolton and the CIA's Alan Foley -- director of the CIA's Office of Weapons
Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) -- and Frederick
Fleitz -- who Foley sent from WINPAC to work in Bolton's State Department office
-- in helping to cook Iraqi WMD "intelligence" on behalf of Vice
President Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby. In addition to surveilling journalists
who were writing about operations at NSA, Firstfruits particularly targeted
State Department and CIA insiders who were leaking information about the
"cooking" of pre-war WMD intelligence to particular journalists,
including those at the New York Times, Washington Post, and CBS 60 Minutes.
The vice chairman of the FDDC, James B. Bruce, wrote an article in Studies in
Intelligence in 2003, "This committee represents an interagency effort to
understand how foreign adversaries learn about, then try to defeat, our secret
intelligence collection activities." In a speech to the Institute of World
Politics, Bruce, a CIA veteran was also quoted as saying, "We've got to do
whatever it takes -- if it takes sending SWAT teams into journalists' homes --
to stop these leaks." He also urged, "stiff new penalties to crack
down on leaks, including prosecutions of journalists that publish classified
information." The FDDC appears to be a follow-on to the old Director of
Central Intelligence's Unauthorized Disclosure Analysis Center (UDAC).
Meanwhile, WMR's disclosures about Firstfruits have set off a crisis in the
intelligence community and in various media outlets. Journalists who have
contacted WMR since the revelation of the Firstfruits story are fearful that
their conversations and e-mail with various intelligence sources have been
totally compromised and that they have been placed under surveillance that
includes the use of physical tails. Intelligence sources who are current and
former intelligence agency employees also report that they suspect their
communications with journalists and other parties have been surveilled by
technical means.
***
January 13, 2006 -- The name has been changed to protect the guilty. The National Security Agency's (NSA) illegal database code-named Firstfruits, which contains transcripts of the communications of and articles written by U.S. journalists about NSA has undergone a name change. Inside sources report that because of the "compromise" of the system, the name of the database has been changed from Firstfruits. However, the database continues to be maintained under a new cover term.