Intelligence Director Defends Against Charges of “Domestic Spying”

President Bush’s Director of National Intelligence General Michael Hayden on January 23, issued a press statement intended to defend the White House-ordered NSA terrorist wiretap program against charges that it represented “domestic spying.”

General Hayden stated, “"I don't think domestic spying makes it. One end of any call targeted under this program is always outside the United States. I've flown a lot in this country, and I've taken literally hundreds of domestic flights. I have never boarded a domestic flight in the United States of America and landed in Waziristan. In the same way - and I'm speaking illustratively here now, this is just an example - if NSA had intercepted al Qaeda Ops Chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Karachi talking to Mohamed Atta in Laurel, Maryland, in say, July of 2001 - if NSA had done that, and the results had been made public, I'm convinced that the crawler on all the 7 by 24 news networks would not have been 'NSA domestic spying.'"

Also See:
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