Salon's has long been investigating domestic spying. In an article from 2008, Exposing Bush’s historic abuse of power the existence of a "Main Core" in the 80's is described which supposedly started the NSA domestic spying apparently under Reagan :
A prime area of inquiry for a sweeping new investigation would be the Bush administration’s alleged use of a top-secret database to guide its domestic surveillance. Dating back to the 1980s and known to government insiders as “Main Core,” the database reportedly collects and stores — without warrants or court orders — the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security.
According to several former U.S. government officials with extensive knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its current incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies. One former intelligence official described Main Core as “an emergency internal security database system” designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name, he says, is derived from the fact that it contains “copies of the ‘main core’ or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.”
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Since the late 1980s, Inslaw has been involved in a legal dispute over its claim that Justice Department officials in the Reagan administration appropriated the PROMIS software. Hamilton claims that Reagan officials gave PROMIS to the NSA and the CIA, which then adapted the software — and its outstanding ability to search other databases — to manage intelligence operations and track financial transactions. Over the years, Hamilton has employed prominent lawyers to pursue the case, including Elliot Richardson, the former attorney general and secretary of defense who died in 1999, and C. Boyden Gray, the former White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush. The dispute has never been settled. But based on the long-running case, Hamilton says he believes U.S. intelligence uses PROMIS as the primary software for searching the Main Core database.
The whole Salon article details the results of investigative journalism at the time and many of its quotes sounded prophetic and ominous warnings.
“It was then that we [at Inslaw] started hearing again about the Main Core derivative of PROMIS for spying on Americans,” he told me.
Knowing that the national surveillance state was working under Reagan and that Rumsfeld and Cheney were involved is useful information to have as a background to more completely understand the incredible revelations about the total surveillance society in which we exist today.
From Salon's 2006 article, Strange Bedfellows v. Bush and Cheney, a lawsuit was the grounds that the ACLU and others tried to use to protect Americans from such domestic surveillance.
For the last month, civil liberties attorneys have been searching for the picture-perfect plaintiffs to challenge President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. The dilemma they faced was obvious: The only known targets of the secret spying are suspected or convicted terrorists, hardly the most politically palatable victims of government abuse. On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union revealed its solution to this problem in a spectacular fashion. It filed suit against the National Security Agency with a collection of litigants that reads like the guest list of an Arianna Huffington dinner party.
Begin with Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens, an Iraq war booster who holds the distinction of being the only person to condemn both Mother Teresa as a fraud and Henry Kissinger as a war criminal. Then add Larry Diamond, a Stanford academic who advised the Bush administration on democratization in Iraq, and James Bamford, an Iraq war opponent who has written extensively about the National Security Agency. Tara McKelvey, a writer on military torture for the American Prospect, makes an appearance, as does Barnett Rubin, a New York University professor who advised the United Nations on the formation of a new Afghan government. And for good measure, the litigants also include Greenpeace, the environmental group that has never been accused of any ties to al-Qaida, as well as several other lawyers.
The glue that binds this motley crew of pundits, scholars and activists was a legal theory that the ACLU hopes will convince federal courts to declare the wiretap program unconstitutional. In a Tuesday conference call with reporters, the ACLU did not provide any new evidence about who was targeted by the NSA wiretaps. Rather, it argued that the mere disclosure of the hitherto secret program has had a “chilling effect” on the plaintiffs’ willingness to communicate openly on international phone and data lines, violating their privacy and First Amendment rights. “Lawyers, journalists and scholars are already changing their behavior,” explained Ann Beeson, the ACLU’s associate legal director. “We have a lot of evidence of harm.”
HOW LONG HOW MANY HAVE KNOWN?
And either have been unable or unwilling to stop this? I would particularly like to know just what happened in the Reagan Administration, and just what happened with GHWBush at the CIA (his career took off after he left the CIA, if you remember,) and just what was the involvement of the Darth Vadar twins (Rumsfeld and Cheney)? That's just me wondering. Who else has been involved? etc. etc.
(These are some background articles which I hope might be of help to someone doing research on history of the NSA spying. When I found them, I said "Dahym" and although I do not have the time to follow the threads here, perhaps someone of you can and will. So, the purpose of this diary is to bring these links and articles to your attention and disposal. Enjoy!)
There appears to be a LOT more to this background story.