NY Times mischaracterized NSA spying program

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Ignoring its own reporting, NY Times characterized NSA spying program as limited to international communications

Summary: A New York Times article characterized the National Security Agency's domestic spying program as "eavesdrop on some international calls involving people in the United States." However, the exact scope and dimensions of the program remain unclear, and there is evidence that it intercepted communications in which all parties were located in the United States.

Reporting on a January 4 speech Vice President Dick Cheney delivered in defense of the Bush administration's recently disclosed domestic eavesdropping program, a January 5 http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/05/politics/05prexy.html?ex=1294117200&en=2384890e778729c6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">article in The New York Times by Richard W. Stevenson characterized the National Security Agency program as "eavesdrop on some international calls involving people in the United States." However, the exact scope and dimensions of the program remain unclear. The NSA program has reportedly intercepted communications in which all parties were located in the United States -- something the Times failed to note despite having been the first to report on these domestic intercepts less than a month earlier.


Stevenson also omitted any reference to the reason why the program -- first reported in a December 16 New York Times http://mediamatters.org/rd?http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?ex=1292389200&en=e32072d786623ac1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">article -- has been so strongly denounced: President Bush has acknowledged authorizing numerous wiretaps of communications involving people in the United States, without following the procedures for obtaining a warrant that are set out in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

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http://mediamatters.org/items/200601050007