National Security Agency U S

The super-secret National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on communication worldwide as part of U.S. spying operations, opened its doors Saturday to offer outsiders a rare glimpse of facilities that test antennas and print nuclear code books. About 16,500 employees and their families were expected at the first "family day" since 1996 held at NSA headquarters, about 25 miles outside Washington, as the spy agency makes a greater effort to inform Americans about its mission.

. -- The National Security Agency did not place a wiretap that reportedly intercepted phone conversations made by Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), the top U.S. intelligence official said Monday. Dennis C. Blair, the national intelligence director, declined to say which agency requested the reported wiretap and oversaw the information gleaned from Harman's conversations. Blair was speaking at the dedication of a new intelligence research facility.

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.

washington -- A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew a $200-million contract after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company's top lawyer said was illegal. Former Chief Executive Joseph Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept.

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.

A former employee and a current worker at Lockheed Missiles & Space Inc. accused the Silicon Valley defense contractor Wednesday of misusing upward of $15 million in government money in a highly secretive national defense program.

AT&T Inc. was sued in Texas over claims that the company violated customers' privacy by providing personal data to the National Security Agency. The suit was filed in federal court on behalf of AT&T customers who "have had telephone records divulged by AT&T to the National Security Agency," said George & Bros., the Austin law firm that filed the suit. AT&T, Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp.

A federal appeals court on Friday handed the Bush administration a major victory, ruling that plaintiffs who had challenged its domestic spying program did not have legal standing to do so. The 2-1 decision by the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati sent the case back to a judge in Detroit, who last year ruled the program unconstitutional. The panel ordered U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor to dismiss the case, but it did not rule on the program's legality. After the Sept.

The Bush Administration's classified intelligence budget for 1991 calls for a record $30 billion in secret funding and, despite the recent political changes in the East Bloc, more than half of the funds target the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, The Times has learned. The budget, whose contents are closely guarded, is pending before Congress and is expected to be approved with only a few amendments.

The National Security Agency's controversial domestic surveillance program faces its first major court test today before a veteran federal judge in Detroit. In January, groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations as well as several individuals, who said they feared the government was spying on them, filed a 60-page lawsuit seeking to have the warrantless wiretapping program declared unconstitutional.

A secret federal court has ordered the Bush administration to respond to an ACLU request that the court make public its rulings that approved the National Security Agency's controversial Terrorist Surveillance Program. The order was announced Friday by the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the request this month. "This is an unprecedented request that warrants further briefing," wrote Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

A federal appeals court on Friday handed the Bush administration a major victory, ruling that plaintiffs who had challenged its domestic spying program did not have legal standing to do so. The 2-1 decision by the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati sent the case back to a judge in Detroit, who last year ruled the program unconstitutional. The panel ordered U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor to dismiss the case, but it did not rule on the program's legality. After the Sept.

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.

A day after announcing that it had scrubbed a controversial warrantless surveillance program, the Bush administration refused to provide details to Congress of how a new court-review process for terror-related wiretaps would work, triggering a fresh round of complaints and suspicions from Democrats about what the administration was doing.

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.

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.

Lawyers for an Islamic scholar, a Fort Lauderdale computer programmer and an Ohio trucker want federal judges to determine whether evidence used against their clients was gathered by a secret domestic spying program. Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said Wednesday that there "seems to be a great likelihood" that Ali al-Timimi, a northern Virginia Islamic cleric convicted for exhorting followers after the Sept. 11 attacks to wage war against U.S.

Even if telephone carriers are surrendering all the e-mail that travels on their networks to government investigators, customers have no right to sue -- regardless of whether the program is legal, federal lawyers told a judge Friday. The Justice Department arguments came during the first court hearing over whether government demands for secrecy could scuttle a closely watched civil case against AT&T Corp. for allegedly allowing the National Security Agency to monitor phone and data traffic.

When the White House's secret domestic surveillance program was revealed last year, Sen. Arlen Specter was one of the first to leap into action, denouncing the wiretapping as "wrong" and insisting that President Bush acted outside the law by not seeking judicial or congressional approval. "We're not going to give him a blank check," the Republican from Pennsylvania insisted at the time.

President Bush has agreed on a plan to submit the National Security Agency's controversial domestic electronic surveillance program to a secret court for a limited review of its constitutionality, senators and White House officials said Thursday.