Who Is Russell Tice?

Tice is a whistle-blower who has worked as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Air Force, Office of Naval Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and National Security Agency (NSA). He took an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and since December 2005 he has been saying that the Bush administration subverted the Constitution and broke the law in spying wholesale and without warrant on American citizens. As a whistle-blower, he has suffered reprisals for speaking up and was ultimately fired from the NSA in May 2005.

He was one source of information for the NYTimes investigative report in Dec. 2005 which first revealed that the NSA was engaged in a clandestine eavesdropping program that bypassed the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.

In January a year ago, another whistle-blower named Dave Larson made significant disclosures to the Inspector General of the Dept. of Defense substantiating Tice's allegations and detailing unlawful criminal acts committed under NSA supervision. This matter remains pending and current with the Dept. of Defense Inspector General as case #103586. (Much more on Tice and his struggle as a government whistle-blower at Wikipedia.)

Last night on "Countdown with Keith Obermann," Tice said that journalists and reporters were one group that the Bush administration particularly targeted for illegal data mining. He will be back on Obermann's show tonight on MSNBC.

This is only the beginning, as Americans finally discover what the Bush administration criminal conspiracy has been up to in the name of keeping us safe.