As illustrated by Negroponte's remarks last week, administration officials have been punctilious in discussing the NSA program over the past five months, parsing their words with care and limiting comments to the portion of the program that had been confirmed by the president in December. In doing so, the administration rarely offered any hint that a much broader operation, involving millions of domestic calls, was underway. Even yesterday -- after days of congressional furor and extensive media reports -- administration officials declined to confirm or deny the existence of the telephone-call program, in part because of court challenges that the government is attempting to derail.
I continue to be surprised that no one else has recommended Black Arts, by Thomas Powers, more than a year after its publication and appearance on MemeStreams. For this reason, I will reiterate his closing statement for you: About the failure everyone now agrees. But what was the problem? And what should be done to make us safe? It wasn't respect for the Constitution that kept the NSA from reading the "Tomorrow is zero hour" message until the day after the disaster. It was lack of translators. To meet that kind of problem, the Comint professionals have a default solution: more. Not just more Arab linguists but more of everything -- more analysts, more polygraph examiners and security guards, more freedom to listen in on more people, more listening posts, more coverage, more secrecy. Is more what we really need? In my opinion not. But running spies is not the NSA's job. Listening is, and more listening is what the NSA knows how to organize, more is what Congress is ready to support and fund, more is what the President wants, and more is what we are going to get.
Don't say you were surprised by the USA Today story last week. You might also recall this thread from February, in which Russell Tice testified before Congress about the broader program. Again, no one recommended that article. Negroponte Had Denied Domestic Call Monitoring | 
