Thus, in 1977, during an investigation by the House Government
: * Operations Committee, Admiral Inman could claim, with a straight face,
: * that "there are no U.S. Citizens now targeted by the NSA in the United
: * States or abroad, none."
: *
: * Since the targeting was done not by NSA but by employees of British
: * GCHQ, he was literally telling the truth.
[snip]
: *
: * According to a former special agent of the FBI, the you-spy-on-mine,
: * I'll-spy-on-yours deal has been extended to other Western partners,
: * particularly Canada and Australia. The British, with the help of
: * sophisticated NSA computers, can bug just about anyone anywhere. The
: * electronic search for subversives continues, particularly in the U.S.
: *
: * The NSA conceded precisely that point when the U.S. Justice Department
: * investigated its wiretapping of American protesters during the Vietnam
: * War.
: *
: * The NSA assured the Justice Department that the information was
: * acquired only *incidentally* as part of a British GCHQ collection
: * program.
: *
: * The "incidental" British exception has become the rule.
: *
: * To this day Congress does not realize that the British liaison officers
: * at the NSA are still free to use American equipment to spy on American
: * citizens. And, in fact, they are doing just that. Congress has been kept
: * in the dark deliberately.
: *
: * This is a fact, not a matter of conjecture
: * or a conclusion based on anonymous sources.
: *
: * In the early 1980s, during the Reagan administration, one of the authors
: * of this book submitted to the intelligence community a draft of a
: * manuscript that briefly described the wiretap