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Supposed NSA “Whistleblower” Tied to Wilson/Plame

by Rush Limbaugh - Jan 5,2006

RUSH: This is Bill Gertz’s story in the Washington Times today. “A former National Security Agency official wants to tell Congress about electronic intelligence programs that he asserts were carried out illegally by the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Russ Tice, a whistleblower who was dismissed,” which means fired, “from the NSA last year, stated in letters to the House and Senate intelligence committees that he is prepared to testify about highly classified Special Access Programs, or SAPs,” What an appropriate name for some guy like Russ Tice to be associated with, “that were improperly carried out by both the NSA and the DIA. ‘I intend to report to Congress probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while I was an intelligence officer with the National Security Agency and with the Defense Intelligence Agency,’ Mr. Tice stated in the Dec. 16 letters, copies of which were obtained by The Washington Times. The letters were sent the same day,” the same day, the same day, “that the New York Times revealed that the NSA was engaged in a clandestine eavesdropping program that bypassed the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. The FISA court issues orders for targeted electronic and other surveillance by the government.”

All right, now, this smells from the get-go. In the first place, good ol’ boy Russ Tice is not a whistleblower. May I read to you what a whistleblower is, as legally defined? “A federal agency violates the whistleblower protection act if it takes or fails to take or threatens to take or failed to take a personnel action with respect to any employee or applicant because of any disclosure of information by the employee or applicant that he or she reasonably believes evidences a violation of law, rule or regulation.” The bottom line here is that a whistleblower does not go public.

There are mechanisms for whistleblowers to follow. They do it internally. This guy not only went to Congress, he went to the media. He is not a whistleblower. He’s something else. Whistleblowing procedures are designed to promote good ideas and promote the waste of time. Folks, there’s something about this that really smells, because I don’t believe that Tice is actually this big a player in all this. I’ve done a little research. Clarice Feldman today at one of our favorite blogs, the American Thinker, has done a little research, too, on this, and has found out that this guy Tice is part of a group called the National Security Whistleblowers. This group was formed in August of 2004. If you look up the group, the National Security Whistleblowers group, you’ll notice that the founder, director, and chief spokesperson of the group is Sibel Edmond.

She’s faced a real uphill battle in her struggle with the FBI which fired her. Her story about why she was fired from the FBI has a number of variations — although she, like Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, numbers among the darlings of the people that hate George W. Bush. Also other members of the National Security Whistleblowers, Daniel Ellsberg, Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson. These are members of VIPs, V-I-Ps, the group that encouraged intelligence agents to leak. This is the group that shopped Joe Wilson and his story — and if you’re wondering who Larry Johnson is he was in the CIA with Valerie Plame, is close to her. They seem to have been behind much of the Plame-Wilson story. This whole VIPs NSW group has ties, it appears, to the Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson story. This guy’s letters go to Congress and at the same time the New York Times James Risen story appears about all of this.

It seems to me that we have an orchestrated, premeditated campaign with the media as willing accomplices and participants. But I’m going to tell you what I think. I think this is all an attempt to divert our attention, because I don’t think Russ Tice is the guy leaking all this stuff. I don’t think Russ Tice is in this. I think the leakers are in Congress. I think the leakers are in the Senate. I think that they probably feel that they’re going to have some sort of protection because of their positions. But whoever the leakers are, we’re going to someday find out. We’re going to find out who leaked all this stuff to James Risen. We’re going to find out who his sources are one way or the other. That is going to happen, and it is not going to be Russ Tice. Now, I’m not going to name any names because I don’t know but my guess is that these leakers are part of a coordinated plan in the Democratic Party because we know of the Rockefeller memo from 2002 or 2003, which spelled out this very strategy that the Democrats are unfolding right now. You just wait and see if this is not the case.

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