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RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much!<\/p>\nRUSH: Here\u2019s Nick in Dalton, Georgia. Nick, welcome. Great to have you with us at the EIB Network. Hello.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Good to talk to you, Rush.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much!<\/p>\n
CALLER: In the early eighties, the mid-eighties I was in the Navy. I worked in intelligence. I was an intelligence gatherer, and we worked hand in hand close to NSA in gathering intelligence. We have always listened to the American telephones — and things that you say, they\u2019ve always been recorded. We\u2019ve always done it. At least when I was in the Reagan administration, we listened to dozens and dozens of phone calls at a time, picking out words that would seem to tip off that we have something that we need to maybe listen to a little closer.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Wait, how would you…? Would this include cell phones back in the Reagan years?<\/p>\n
CALLER: No, this is not cell phones. This is of course listening to lines, listening to whatever we can capture via satellite, so there were a lot of different —<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, did you guys have to get permission from the phone companies to involve them here?<\/p>\n
CALLER: Absolutely not. No.<\/p>\n
RUSH: Well, you\u2019re saying something I\u2019ve never heard.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
CALLER: Now, if you talk to any NSA agents, of course they\u2019re not gonna admit to it. I\u2019ve been out —<\/p>\n
RUSH: I know they had Echelon, but I\u2019ve never heard that there was a structured, purposeful monitoring of innocent Americans\u2019 phone calls.<\/p>\n
CALLER: Yeah. Well, it\u2019s all innocent until we need to listen to you. Then it\u2019s no longer innocent, and then a warrant comes out. But anything you say, anything you transmit, it\u2019s in the air. It\u2019s over the wire. It\u2019s up for grabs.<\/p>\n
RUSH: I know they can sweep it. I know now they can. I don\u2019t know how far back the Echelon program at NSA goes, but that was the first massive just sweep everything out of the air program that anybody had. I\u2019m gonna track this down and I don\u2019t want you to take it personally here, Nick, but you have to understand my position. Anybody can call here and say anything. I don\u2019t know you, I don\u2019t know who you are. You could be an excellent provocateur. You could hate Reagan. You could be trying to impugn Reagan in the midst of this effort to defend Trump. Could be anything.<\/p>\n
I have to consider all these things as a responsible host, not a responsible journalist, \u2019cause there isn\u2019t such a thing. But as a responsible host, I have to consider all this, so I will take your call and absorb it with interest and I will then begin to see if there\u2019s anything to it. Don\u2019t take it personally. I have to do this. The one thing that we\u2019ve learned in the WikiLeaks dump is that — well, it\u2019s hard to pinpoint one thing. But try this one, that the CIA has — I don\u2019t know when it happened.<\/p>\n
Look, folks, there\u2019s hundreds of thousands of pages here. I only got through a couple hundred thousand of them last night. I\u2019ve got much more to go. But they created their own NSA type spy program independent of the NSA because they grew tired of asking the NSA to share data, share information, and they did this with nobody\u2019s knowledge. Nobody until this leak knew that the CIA had basically created their own NSA-like vacuum cleaner to Hoover up all of this data that\u2019s out there. Now, it\u2019s not an exact replica. That\u2019s not the point. It is that they\u2019re doing things that the CIA is not permitted to do. They\u2019re not permitted to operate in the United — (laughing) I can\u2019t say that with a straight face anymore, but I mean theoretically they\u2019re not allowed to.<\/p>\n
So now there\u2019s this massive hunt on for the mole. There is a massive hunt to try to find out who is the Snowden here, or is it a group of Snowdens. They\u2019re gonna find out who leaked this stuff. They hope to. They\u2019re doing everything they can to find out who. Nick, I appreciate the call.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Okay. I made a quick inquiry here because I was intrigued. And fortunately the person to whom I inquired happened to be listening to the program, and this is the interpretation of what our last caller, Nick, was saying. A friend of mine thinks that Nick meant that back in the Reagan era, before the technology had changed so much, there weren\u2019t cell phones.<\/p>\n
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That\u2019s why I asked him the cell phone question. There weren\u2019t any back then. I mean, they were just starting. The cell phones in your car had to be built in and the battery was the size of your car battery. And you couldn\u2019t change \u2019em out. So they were mobile, but the pocket cell phones didn\u2019t come around for a while. That\u2019s why I asked him that question.<\/p>\n
Anyway, the theory is that during the Reagan era, no warrants were required to collect foreign intelligence outside the U.S. When the technology changed, especially after we hit the nineties, when everything became digital, the NSA sweeps outside the U.S. picked up conversations of Americans inside the U.S. And, by the way, that\u2019s probably how whatever investigation there is of Trump\u2019s associates — that\u2019s how they got Flynn.<\/p>\n
I mean, that fat Russian ambassador\u2019s under surveillance, the NSA. Fat Russian ambassador calls Flynn, Flynn takes the call, the Russian ambassador starts talking about lifting sanctions, Flynn didn\u2019t say anything, but that\u2019s probably how they got Flynn \u2019cause they\u2019re listening to the Russian ambassador. So, you know, Echelon was an anti-Soviet invention in terms of purpose. These NSA sweeps outside the U.S. pick up conversations of Americans inside the U.S., not because they\u2019re being targeted, but because of the way new technology works, there aren\u2019t any international boundaries.<\/p>\n
Somebody vacationing in London calls you, there\u2019s no boundary there. If somebody\u2019s being monitored in London legally and they call you, you\u2019re gonna be monitored as well. And so that\u2019s why they\u2019ve changed the rules. And now if the NSA picks up communications of Americans inside the U.S., they\u2019re supposed to minimize it, which means they\u2019re not supposed to access it unless they can meet certain high — So that\u2019s what he said, we sweep up everything, we\u2019re sweeping up everything. And until we found out you might have been involved in something, we never cared.<\/p>\n
So, in other words, he might have been legit. He could well have been legit. Snerdley is smiling big time at that reality. I know you wouldn\u2019t want to feel responsible for foisting a fraud on me. Fake news belongs to CNN. We don\u2019t do the fake news here. So, Nick, don\u2019t take any of this personnel here, Nick in Dalton, Georgia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CALLER: In the early eighties, the mid-eighties I was in the Navy. I worked in intelligence. I was an intelligence gatherer, and we worked hand in hand close to NSA in gathering intelligence. We have always listened to the American telephones — and things that you say, they've always been recorded. We've always done it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n