Linguists say U.S. illegally listened to calls

WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence analysts eavesdropped on personal calls between Americans overseas and their families back home and monitored the communications of workers with the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations, according to U.S. military linguists involved in U.S. surveillance programs.

The accounts are the most detailed to date to challenge the assertions of President Bush, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and other administration officials that the United States' controversial overseas wiretapping activities have been carefully monitored to prevent abuse and invasion of U.S. citizens' privacy.

Describing the allegations as "extremely disturbing," Sen. John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the panel had launched an inquiry and requested records from the Bush administration.

Intimate conversations

The linguists said that recordings of intimate conversations between U.S. citizens and their loved ones were sometimes passed around, out of prurient interest, among analysts at an electronic surveillance facility at Fort Gordon, Ga.

They also said they were encouraged to continue monitoring calls of aid workers and other personnel stationed in the Middle East even when it was clear the callers had no ties to terrorists or posed any threat to U.S. interests.

"There were people who called the states to talk to their families," said Adrienne Kinne, 31, a former Arab linguist in the Army Reserves who worked at a National Security Agency (NSA) facility at Fort Gordon from 2001 to 2003.

Kinne's accounts were echoed by a former Navy linguist, David Murfee Faulk, 39, who worked at the same facility from 2003 to 2007 and said in an interview that the government routinely monitored conversations between U.S. troops in Iraq and their spouses or loved ones.

"I observed people writing down, word for word, very embarrassing conversations," Faulk said. "People would say, 'Hey, check this out; you're not going to believe what I heard.'"

Their claims were initially reported by ABC News.

The United States' overseas wiretapping activities have been a source of controversy since it was disclosed in December 2005 that Bush had secretly authorized the NSA to override existing laws and begin monitoring the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents. Critics, including some members of Congress, have described the eavesdropping as a violation of laws passed in the 1970s that required court warrants before communications of U.S. residents could be monitored.

Investigation continues

Congress overhauled the foreign intelligence surveillance laws earlier this year to give the government greater latitude to track targets overseas. But the law still imposes strict protections for U.S. citizens abroad and requires the government to delete or block out information that isn't for valid intelligence purposes.

Civil liberties groups said the linguists' accounts raise questions about safeguards for U.S. citizens. "The NSA used its surveillance powers to intentionally collect the personal communications of innocent Americans," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project.

Kinne and Faulk both described working in massive facilities at Ft. Gordon where rows of linguists and analysts wearing headphones comb through intercepts collected from all over the world. Kinne said the recordings she transcribed were mainly intercepted transmissions from satellite phones in the Middle East.

Faulk said he thinks "it was a small number of people abusing the program."