Firstfruits

"Firstfruits" was "part of a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) program that was maintained at least until October 2004 and was authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss. Firstfruits was authorized as part of a DCI "Countering Denial and Deception" program responsible to an entity known as the Foreign Denial and Deception Committee (FDDC). Since the intelligence community's reorganization, the DCI has been replaced by the Director of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte and his deputy, former NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden," Wayne Madsen wrote in the December 29, 2005, Alternative Press Review.

"Firstfruits was a database that contained both the articles and the transcripts of telephone and other communications of particular Washington journalists known to report on sensitive U.S. intelligence activities, particularly those involving NSA. According to NSA sources, the targeted journalists included author James Bamford, the New York Times' James Risen, the Washington Post's Vernon Loeb, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, the Washington Times' Bill Gertz, UPI's John C. K. Daly, and this editor [Wayne Madsen], who has written about NSA for The Village Voice, CAQ, Intelligence Online, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)."

SourceWatch Resources

• domestic spying
• George W. Bush's domestic spying
• Republican 'culture of corruption'

External links

• James Bamford, "The Agency That Could Be Big Brother," New York Times, December 25, 2005.
• Wayne Madsen, "NSA spied on its own employees, other U.S. intelligence personnel, journalists, and members of Congress," Alternative Press Review, December 29, 2005.
• Kurt Nimmo, "Neocon Stasi: Spy vs. Spy," Another Day in the Empire (uruknet), December 29, 2005.
• Wayne Madsen, "NSA Spied on Its Own, Congress and Media," Media Channel, December 30, 2005.
• Dana Priest, "Covert CIA Program Withstands New Furor. Anti-Terror Effort Continues to Grow," Washington Post, December 30, 2005: "The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved. ... GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world."