By ,
Published January 13, 2015
Wednesday the Congress was briefed on the activities of the National Security Agency regarding monitoring phone calls from outside the country to inside, and the NSA's activities in compiling huge data banks of phone numbers, particularly which phone numbers called which other phone numbers.
As you might have noticed, there has been an enormous hue and cry about this since it was revealed by two newspapers over the last six months. The most recent revelations came last week.
Now the administration has declassified the records of which members of Congress had been briefed on these NSA activities and when.
FOX's Jim Angle reports that Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi requested the declassification. So it wasn't a matter of Bush declassifying something just because it makes him look good.
But it does make him look good.
That's because it turns out that important and crucial members of Congress were briefed about the NSA wiretapping and number gathering programs and have been since 2001.
Prominent among those who have been kept up to date is none other than Nancy Pelosi herself.
She was briefed five weeks after 9/11 and several times since.
This is important because Democrats have been screaming bloody murder about this program for the six months that it has been known publicly. They have been saying the president is spying on Americans; that the president is abusing the Constitution; that the president is exceeding his authority; that the president has run amok.
In The L.A. Times Wednesday, columnist Max Boot — something of an expert on security matters — correctly notes that we need more spying, not less.
Also, for a little context here, it should be noted that Britain has recently discovered that there are 700 active Al Qaeda members running around Britain — at large — whom authorities are trying to locate and, presumably, jail.
How did Britain discover this information? Wiretaps, that's how.
The NSA is doing important work. I hope the people who have been demanding information get the information they need to realize this is not something they want stopped.
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https://www.foxnews.com/story/some-of-congress-briefed-on-nsa-wiretapping-other-programs-since-2001