NSA 30 Year Veteran, Whistleblower William Binney on Corrupt NSA-- the Inside Story-- Transcript

W.B.: Right, until just recently, like the last six years I think they have been aware of most of the programs now but that didn't come until the exposure and all that in the New York Times and also the exposure in 2004 in the Department of Justice, okay?

R.K.: Now you're talking specifically about this NSA collection of information about Americans but in general, is it still the policy in congress that only the two chairs on the House and the Senate are the ones who are briefed by these spy agencies?

W.B.: Well actually it comes down to how they classify a program.  Like, the spying on US Citizens was classified as a covert program, now under that classification as a covert program they can limit knowledge of congress to the gang of eight.  

They don't have to do the gang of eight as they didn't with this NSA program but the gang of eight is the chair and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, the ones we've been talking about, and then the minority and the majority leaders of the House and Senate, republican and democrat leaders in the House and Senate, that makes up the gang of eight. But in this case of course when they first started, they only briefed the four members of the Intelligence Committees, ranking and chairs of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.  

So they don't have to include the gang of eight but they can restrict it to the gang of eight, and that limits knowledge of congress to only key members of congress.

R.K.: And this is particularly how it is with covert operations?

W.B.: Right, that's correct.  And if you look at the letter that Jane Harman sent to President Bush in January of 2006, right after the disclosure of the program, she told in that letter that he was in violation of the Intelligence Act of 1947 which was defining covert programs, in other words she was saying this is a collection program, you can't define it as a covert program and therefore you can't limit the knowledge to the gang of eight.

R.K.: So they were violating the constitution by using spin basically?  And framing?

W.B.: Yes, correct.

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