Проект "Минарет": Наблюдение АНБ за гражданами США

National Security Agency surveillance operation

Project MINARET was a domestic espionage project operated by the National Security Agency (NSA), which, after intercepting electronic communications that contained the names of predesignated US citizens, passed them to other government law enforcement and intelligence organizations. Intercepted messages were disseminated to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), and the Department of Defense. The project was a sister project to Project SHAMROCK.

Starting in 1962, the NSA had a "watch list" of Americans travelling to Cuba, expanded to include narcotic traffickers. Then, from 1967 onwards, President Lyndon B. Johnson included the names of activists in the anti war movement. President Richard Nixon further expanded the list to include civil rights leaders, journalists and two senators. The NSA included David Kahn. This entailed the FBI and CIA either returning the reports to the NSA or destroying them after two weeks, classifying the reports "Top Secret," and not filing them along with other NSA records. One result of these investigations was the 1978 creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which limited the powers of the NSA and put in place a process of warrants and judicial review. Another internal safeguard was U. S. Signal Intelligence Directive 18, an internal NSA and intelligence community set of procedures, originally issued in 1980, and updated in 1993. USSID 18 was the general guideline for handling signals intelligence (SIGINT) inadvertently collected on US citizens, without a warrant, prior to the George W. Bush Administration. Interpretations of FISA and the principles of USSID 18 by the Bush administration assume the Executive Branch has unitary authority for warrantless surveillance, which is under Congressional investigation as an apparent violation of the intent of FISA.

1,650 U. S. citizens were targeted. Among those monitored were: U. S. Senator Howard Baker, Civil Rights Movement leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Whitney Young, boxer Muhammad Ali, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker, the actress Jane Fonda and Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald. In 1975, Senator Frank Church, himself a target, chaired the Church Committee, which disclosed the program.