quit making me look sane!

Every time I throw out some worst case scenario about something the Bush Administration is up to, thinking, “I know I sound like some crazy conspiracy theorist, but I’m just saying. . .” the gang at the White House makes me look cautious and naïve.

Last week, I put out the idea that NSA data-mining is being used for something other than the so-called war on terror. Well:

Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You're Calling
May 15, 2006 10:33 AM

Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells us the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

We do not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

One former official was asked to sign a document stating he was not a confidential source for New York Times reporter James Risen.

Our reports on the CIA's secret prisons in Romania and Poland were known to have upset CIA officials.

People questioned by the FBI about leaks of intelligence information say the CIA was also disturbed by ABC News reports that revealed the use of CIA predator missiles inside Pakistan.

PS You gotta love the last two paragraphs where Ross and Esposito pimp some of their own reporting. . . seems to me ABC was a little late to the CIA prisons story (the report came long after Dana Priest’s WaPo story). It reminds me of the Nixon years—you’re nobody if you’re not on the list.


(t.o.t.h. to Atrios)