NATIONAL
September 11, 2006 | Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer
As Americans consider whether they are more safe or less five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, one thing is certain: They are being monitored by their own government in ways unforeseen before terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Within minutes of the strikes, U.S. law enforcement and intelligence-gathering authorities mobilized to find the culprits and prevent another attack. They increased the tapping of Americans' phone calls and voice mails.
NATIONAL
January 2, 2006 | Walter F. Roche Jr. and Edwin Chen, Times Staff Writers
Emphasizing that "we are at war with an enemy who wants to hurt us again," President Bush on Sunday strongly defended the domestic eavesdropping program that began in 2002, and repeated his contention that the disclosure of its existence had caused the country "great harm."
NATIONAL
August 18, 2006 | Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer
A federal judge in Detroit ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless domestic wiretapping program is unconstitutional and must be halted. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor held that the wiretapping program violates the 1st and 4th Amendments to the Constitution, which respectively protect free speech and prohibit unlawful searches.
NEWS
November 5, 1989 | From Associated Press
An Air Force lieutenant colonel assigned to the National Security Agency and his wife, an NSA psychologist, were arrested on drug-dealing charges when police raided their suburban Washington home. The couple's son and daughter were also charged Friday after police seized $780,000 worth of illegal drugs, $70,000 in cash, two machine guns, an assault rifle, various shotguns, a motorcycle and a car from the home in Crofton, said Joseph Bisesi, a spokesman for the Anne Arundel County Police.
NATIONAL
December 20, 2005 | James Rainey, Times Staff Writer
The New York Times first debated publishing a story about secret eavesdropping on Americans as early as last fall, before the 2004 presidential election. But the newspaper held the story for more than a year and only revealed the secret wiretaps last Friday, when it became apparent a book by one of its reporters was about to break the news, according to journalists familiar with the paper's internal discussions.
NATIONAL
December 25, 2005 | Josh Meyer and Joseph Menn, Times Staff Writers
President Bush has acknowledged that several hundred targeted Americans were wiretapped without warrants under the National Security Agency's domestic spying program, and now some U.S. officials and outside experts say they suspect that the government is engaged in a far broader U.S. surveillance operation.
NATIONAL
January 21, 2006 | James Gerstenzang, Times Staff Writer
The Bush administration is launching an aggressive effort to persuade Americans that a controversial National Security Agency program of domestic eavesdropping without obtaining warrants is legal and justified. With public opinion polls indicating that Americans are divided over the program, President Bush's top political lieutenants on Friday used the surveillance program as a weapon against Democrats during speeches to Republican activists.
NATIONAL
May 12, 2006 | Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer
President Bush and his nominee to lead the CIA faced a new furor Thursday over domestic spying operations after a news report that the National Security Agency has secretly assembled the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. Moving to limit the political fallout, Bush held a hastily arranged news appearance at the White House in which he said the government was not "trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans."
NATIONAL
January 24, 2007 | Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday rejected the Bush administration's claim that it had brought a controversial domestic spying program into compliance with the law, saying he wanted strict new rules requiring the government to obtain a separate warrant every time it places a wiretap on a U.S. resident. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.
BUSINESS
February 21, 2007 | From Bloomberg News
Media companies lost a bid to unseal documents in a lawsuit accusing AT&T Inc. of helping the National Security Agency to spy on U.S. residents. U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, in a ruling filed in San Francisco federal court, allowed six news organizations to join the lawsuit. He denied their request to unseal records filed in April in the case, saying the documents weren't sufficiently related to the legal proceeding.