WHAT DID THE NSA HAVE IN MIND?

The NY Times reports, "Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry,"that the NSA was eager to expand its operations not only well before 9/11 but also before Fredo took office:

The N.S.A., though, wanted to extend its reach even earlier. In December 2000, agency officials wrote a transition report to the incoming Bush administration, saying the agency must become a “powerful, permanent presence” on the commercial communications network, a goal that they acknowledged would raise legal and privacy issues.

Apparently, the NSA has been working on behalf of the DEA to analyze traffic patterns:

In the drug-trafficking operation, the N.S.A. has been helping the Drug Enforcement Administration in collecting the phone records showing patterns of calls between the United States, Latin America and other drug-producing regions. The program dates to the 1990s, according to several government officials, but it appears to have expanded in recent years.

This program seems to have changed for the worse in 2004, at least in the view of one telcom:

At least one major phone carrier — whose identity could not be confirmed — refused to cooperate, citing concerns in 2004 that the subpoenas were overly broad, government and industry officials said. The executives also worried that if the program were exposed, the company would face a public-relations backlash.

In ANOTHER program, the NSA wanted to drill down to the local level and was refused by Qwest:

In a separate program, N.S.A. officials met with the Qwest executives in February 2001 and asked for more access to their phone system for surveillance operations, according to people familiar with the episode. The company declined, expressing concerns that the request was illegal without a court order.

The agency, those knowledgeable about the incident said, wanted to install monitoring equipment on Qwest’s “Class 5” switching facilities, which transmit the most localized calls. Limited international traffic also passes through the switches.

An analysis of the local traffic indicates that the NSA was looking for local Al Qaeda cells. This normally would mean that they have plenty of evidence on at least one person, enough to get a warrant.