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May 12, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:09
May 12, 2006, Friday, Hour #2
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Lots of stuff happening out there, folks.
The feds got a warrant.
You hear that?
They got a warrant to search the office in the home of the retired, fired, whatever, CIA executive director Dusty Fogo, Kyle Fogo.
I think they've either searched his house and office or they're going to.
Sources are also saying the president in his immigration speech Monday night is going to propose the National Guard on the border to protect the border.
Lots cooking.
It's Friday.
Let's keep it rolling.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida.
It's Open Line Friday.
Oh, yes, goody, goody, goody, goody gun drops.
Ladies and gentlemen, El Rushbo, America's Anchorman, America's Truth Detector, the Doctor of Democracy, all combined here as one harmless, lovable little fuzzball amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic, first and second-hand premium cigar smoke.
Open line Friday.
When we go to the phones, the show is yours.
800-282-2882.
And the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
Interesting email from a Rush website subscriber, Phil Toll of Reston, Virginia, Sear Rush.
If you try to contact USA Today to complain about their story about the NSA, you can't unless you surrender personal information.
In order to send them a complaint note or any kind of feedback, you have to provide your full name, your email address, your age, your sex, male or female, not rarely or often, zip code, and more.
Maybe this is the way they keep their critics at bay, collect their personal information and use it to their detriment.
In any case, the irony is stunning, if not pathetic.
You have to turn over personal information and complain to USA Today, New York Sun today.
A very, very fascinating editorial.
Dialing in the Democrats, it's entitled, No sooner had the man who ran the NSA for years been nominated to head the CIA than USA Today rushed out details of our efforts to use technical means to find terrorists using the phones.
And no sooner had USA Today disclosed details of an apparent attempt by the NSA to defend Americans from terrorists than the Democratic Party and its leading politicians and interest groups went on the attack, not against the terrorists, but against President Bush.
Spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, Stacey Paxton, said this, another example of the Bush administration misleading the American people.
Senator Kennedy called the program abusive and said today's shocking disclosures make it more important than ever for the Republican Congress to end its complicity in the White House cover-up of its massive domestic surveillance program.
When three major phone companies are supplying the administration with records of all Americans regardless of any hint of wrongdoing, Congress cannot look the other way.
Harold Ford Democrat, Tennessee, went on Fox News, called the news disturbing.
Senator Clinton pronounced herself deeply disturbed.
I agree with that.
Mrs. Clinton might want to have a talk with her husband because you see, ladies and gentlemen, it was President Clinton who signed into law the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 after it was passed in both the House and Senate by a voice vote.
That law in 1994 is an act, quote, to make clear a telecommunications carrier's duty to cooperate in the interception of communications for law enforcement purposes and for other purposes, unquote.
The act made clear that a court order isn't the only lawful way of obtaining call information.
The act said, quote, a telecommunications carrier shall ensure that any interception of communications or access to call-identifying information affected within its switching premises can be activated only in accordance with a court order or other lawful authorization.
The law that President Clinton signed into law and it was approved by voice votes in 1994 by a Democrat-majority House and a Democrat-majority Senate not only made clear the phone company's duty to cooperate, it authorized $500 million in taxpayer funds to reimburse the phone companies for equipment enabling the government, pursuant to a court order or other lawful authorization, to access call-identifying information that is reasonably available to the carrier.
Again, the law, by referring to other lawful authorization, states clearly that a court order isn't the only form of lawful authorization possible.
So once again, ladies and gentlemen, we find the roots of this took place in the 90s in the Clinton administration with the support of a then Democrat House and Democrat Senate.
And they told the phone companies, you have a duty to let us do this.
President Bush struck exactly the right notes yesterday.
So far, we've been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil.
As a general matter, every time sensitive intelligence is leaked, it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy.
Our most important job is to protect the American people from another attack, and we'll do so within the laws of the country.
Now, if he seemed calm about the latest disclosures, we can't help wondering whether it's because he recognizes that when Americans go to sleep at night, they're less worried about the danger that the government's looking for terrorists than they are about the danger that terrorists are looking for them.
This is the issue that the Democrats of the Howard Dean, John Kerry era just don't seem to be prepared to credit.
The Democrats who control the White House and both houses of Congress in 94 showed signs of understanding the national security issues at stake here when they passed the law.
Their understanding seems to have eroded since then.
It can't be that they feel America faces less of a threat.
If anything, the attacks of September 11th make the case for such programs even stronger.
What's changed isn't the enemy threat, but the party that now controls the White House, which explains why Mrs. Clinton is deeply disturbed about activities legal under a law her husband signed.
So there you have it.
That's an editorial today in the New York Sun.
And as you can see, ladies and gentlemen, this is something that once again had its root in the 90s.
Nobody complained about it.
And in fact, I got another email from a subscriber, Professor David Pearson Rush.
The NSA listening program has been going on for a very long time.
James Bamford's book, The Puzzle Palace, discusses how Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon and Ford and Carter used the NSA for domestic listening.
Bamford's book was published in the early 80s, but the program continued during Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.
Let's see here.
Kennedy Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter used the NSA for domestic listening.
Looked up the book, and it does, there's a bunch of editorial reviews, but it basically describes how the whole thing began.
In 1947, the governments of the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand signed a secret treaty in which they agreed to cooperate in matters of signals intelligence.
In effect, the governments agreed to pool their geographic and technological assets in order to listen in on the electronic communications of China, the Soviet Union, and other Cold War bad guys, all in the interest of truth, justice, and the American way.
The thing is, the system apparently catches everything.
Government security services, led by the U.S. National Security Agency, screen a large part of the voice and data traffic that flows over the global communications network.
50 years later, the European Union is investigating possible violation of its citizens' privacy rights by the NSA, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public advocacy group, has filed suit against the NSA, alleging that the organization has illegally spied on U.S. citizens.
Well, again, it takes me back to the echelon program.
But again, folks, just run the numbers on this.
Let me run through this very, very quickly.
300 million Americans, let's say conservatively, 200 million of them use the phone.
Let's say that 200 million Americans talk 30 minutes a day.
We know that's a low number, but we're going to be conservative in this.
So if they talk 30 minutes a day, that is 6 billion talk minutes or 100 million talk hours.
If you add businesses to this, use the phone two hours a day, 100,000 businesses, another 12 million talk minutes or 200,000 talk hours.
So now we're up to 100,200,000 talk hours per day.
It would take 4,175,000 people at 24 hours a day to listen in.
The idea that these phone calls are being monitored, everything being listened to by individuals.
It's physically not possible.
And then you add in what is supposedly happening.
They're doing this for all phone traffic and email traffic around the world.
But beyond that, right after 9-11, the cat calls.
Why didn't we connect to that?
Why didn't we connect to Dots?
Who knew this?
They knew that.
And why didn't they tell each other?
Why didn't we know this?
Trying to make sure that we can connect the dots before another attack.
And panic sets in in the drive-by media and the Democratic Party, who are making it very, very clear, folks, they simply cannot be trusted with this nation's national security.
Open line Friday, retenant returns and continues after this.
Having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have all without guilt of any kind.
El Rushbo, enjoying life, even though some of you liberals aren't.
And speaking truth to Kooks here at 800-282-2882.
Now, you know, go back to this New York Sun editorial, 1994, $500 million, or is it $500 billion, whatever the number is.
The Clinton administration, a Democrat House, a Democrat Senate, approved a law, all Democrats, requiring phone companies to provide your personal phone information should the government want it.
Said they had a civic duty to do it.
When that happened, Pat Leahy was in the Senate.
When that happened, Ted Kennedy was in the Senate.
When that happened, Carl Levin was in the Senate.
When this 1994 law was acclaimed by voice vote, Pat Leahy voted for it.
Ted Kennedy voted for it.
Carl Levin voted for it.
It's a voice vote.
And ladies and gentlemen, there's Leahy holding up USA Today yesterday as though he didn't know anything about this.
This was outrageous.
You know, liberals usually can do their damage and retire and be free of participation, but these guys, and Specter was there too.
These people voice voted for this.
And how much outrage was there?
You remember the Clinton administration, that guy Livingstone, Craig Livingstone, 500 FBI files they had in the White House?
They have no outrage over that.
Oh, you Republicans, you need to stop being paranoid about this.
Let me tell you something.
We know Washington posted a poll with ABC.
66% of the American people have no problem with this program.
They're polled.
No problem.
33%, 34% obviously have a problem with it.
Probably some liberals.
Let me assure you, liberals, you have nothing to worry about.
Your lives are so boring and uninteresting that if anybody does listen in, they're going to give you all of five seconds.
Nobody wants to listen to what's stinking rage and hatred or boring conversations.
They're going to hang up if they do listen in.
You have no worries.
Don't flatter yourselves.
Your lives are too meaningless, worthless, and boring for anybody to care about.
They want to monitor you.
Eric in Los Angeles, welcome to the EIB Network.
Hello.
Hey, Rush.
I consider myself very lucky to get through to you.
People are talking about everybody, the government snooping, but major credit reporting firms have wonderfully sold my information.
And I've got phone calls offering me mortgages, and all they need is my name and phone number to rip off my identity.
So I wonderfully called the reporting agency, and they said, you know, we have a legal right to do this.
I said, well, I want to know who you sold it to.
Oh, we can't disclose that.
That's private information.
So I called Die Fi because, you know, that's my senator.
And I got pushed through three offices, finally ended up in the Washington office.
And they said, oh, well, you got to talk to this guy and got a voicemail.
So I don't know what they're hissy about when legitimately stuff is getting sold and people are getting ripped off.
Well, what did Diefy's office do about it?
Anything?
Well, I called the LA office.
They told me I got to call San Francisco.
San Francisco told me I got to call the legislative branch in Washington.
Washington said, Oh, you got to talk to this guy.
He handles that.
And I said, I want the law changed.
Well, you're going to have to talk to him.
And I got a voicemail, left a message, and haven't had a call back.
So they did absolutely nothing.
I see.
Okay, so they're not concerned about the sale of your privacy by a private firm that you can't stop or track down.
That is.
Well, I guarantee if George Bush owned a firm, they'd care about it.
And you'd be a witness at the next Senate hearing because that's all this is about.
I would love to be a witness at the next Senator's hearing because what I'd say is, hey, what does it mean to be an American?
And I think people have forgotten that, Rush.
People have forgotten that.
And if you will indulge me, I know this is your program.
I know this is Open Line Friday, but I wrote something I did for 200 soldiers called What Does It Mean to Be an American?
It just really needs to be heard.
Would you indulge me today?
How long is it?
I could do it in under two minutes.
Or I can do it some other day.
I'll tell you what.
No, it's not that.
It's not.
No, I sent it to you.
I recorded it and I can send it to you and then you can play it.
All right.
Hang on.
I'll get an address and you can do that.
And here's the reason why.
It's a programming reason.
It has nothing to do with you personally.
It is, I have always had a rule.
Callers are not allowed to read anything.
It just, if you're not a highly trained specialist, you will sound like this.
As monotonously long as Gore droned on, he failed to mention a tidbit.
It's just, I can't run the risk, not to insult you or anybody else, of having the audience tune out because it takes a certain level of passion and talent to be able to read something, even if you wrote it, and have it be compelling.
So it's just that's the restriction I have on it.
It has nothing to do with the content of what you wrote.
But stay on hold, Eric.
We'll get you an address where you can send this thing into us, and we will make sure that it gets heard.
Who's next?
Vic in Gold Canyon, Arizona.
Welcome to the program, sir.
Nice to have you with us.
Hello.
I'm looking at today's paper.
It's Associated Press by David Stringer, and it says the suicide bombers who killed 52 passengers on London's transit system last year contacted someone in Pakistan just before striking.
It goes on to say there are a series of suspicious contacts from an unknown individual or individuals in Pakistan in the immediate run-up to the bombings.
Reed said we do not know their content.
Well, obviously they got this information after the fact.
If they had been monitoring this, they might have been able to stop that bombing.
Same situation with the 9-11 attacks.
The paymaster, the organizer that the 19 hijackers here were talking to, was in Dubai.
He was.
The phone calls were going back and forth, and they finally, after the fact, they got hold of Adda, Mohammed Ada, and some of these other terrorists, hijackers, their phone records, and they found that number.
And they all.
And I think the number was known in advance, too.
We weren't able to connect the docs.
That's what all this is about.
Now, appreciate that.
Give me line three here.
This is Hisperia, California.
Kim, welcome to the program.
Great to have you with us.
Rush, I can't believe that I am talking to my absolute hero, my all-time hero besides my husband.
So thank you so much for taking my call.
And honey, if you're listening, hi.
Oh, damn.
Rush, I just wanted to tell you that every time I go to the grocery store and I use a so-called club card, they gather every single bit of information about my purchases.
They know how much adult beverage I buy, how much Tylenol, FudaFed, whatever I buy.
And then I get coupons in the mail from manufacturers based on my buying habits.
So I think this NSA hoopla is just that.
It's just a bunch of bunk.
Well, let me ask you a question, though.
Since Big Grocery is spying on you, the concern people would have, okay, is can other big grocery customers get the information that big grocery has on you?
Like, for example, could your boss find out just how much adult beverage you're buying and then extrapolate from that how much you're drinking or your husband?
Yes, absolutely.
Because those records, they could be subpoenaed.
Let's say you're going through a nasty divorce and you're going through child custody and the ex-wife or husband is claiming you're an alcoholic and they can prove it in court by how much alcohol you buy.
Those records can be subpoenaed.
Absolutely.
Great answer.
And I'm honored to be your second hero.
I'm glad you called, Kim.
Thanks very much.
We'll take a break and be right back after this.
Stay with us.
Heft my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair.
Let's go to a cell call from Willimer, Minnesota.
Guy, welcome to the program.
Great to have you with us.
Hey, Rush, thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
Say, I just had a comment on your commentary here on this domestic logging thing.
And I don't really think it's a monitoring program.
It's just logging phone calls.
But I guess my point is your comment about this information or the type of information that's available on the internet is entirely different than what the government's doing.
You can't go out on the internet and look up my phone records of who I've been calling.
Sure, you can go and find my address and find my phone number, but knowing where I live is entirely different than knowing who I'm calling.
So, you know, that's very true.
But, however, there is a circumstance or a number of circumstances where that could happen.
Well, not by an individual.
The government could certainly do that.
And, you know, in that situation, I'm assuming they got to get some sort of other court authority to tap what I'm actually saying.
There's two different programs here.
And that's what people don't understand.
The first program is monitoring known al-Qaeda terrorist phone calls in and out of the country.
The second program is what USA Today is just the collection of this data.
If a terrorist number matches one of the numbers that is in the data being collected, then BAMO, I guarantee a warrant would be asked and the investigation would begin.
Another scenario.
You say, I can't get your phone records, you can't get mine.
Right.
That's true.
Let's say that you are accused of raping a college student in Durham, North Carolina, and you're not on the lacrosse team, but you're accused of, but you called me at the time that the authorities and the witnesses say the rape happened.
And you tell the authority, I called Rush Limbaugh and I can prove it.
Then that would make it possible for people to find out who called who, when, where, and why, to find out if you actually did, and then bring me in and so forth.
Now, the public can't do it, but the government won't do it unless that kind of circumstances arise in terms of national security.
Do you really think they might be out there trolling people just for the fun of spying on them?
No, and I understand that, but my point is that your comment about public information and people being able to get this is entirely off base.
My point is, I can't go get your phone records.
The government can.
But even that being said, that doesn't concern me.
The fact that they can look up and monitor who I'm calling, I guess it's not a big deal to me.
And I do think this whole thing is kind of getting blown out of proportion.
But then again, I think your commentary was kind of off base, too.
So that's all I really wanted.
Well, you're a really good moderate.
You find a lot of things wrong and a lot of things right.
On balance, everything works out.
I'm sitting here thinking, I'm sure there are people more informed than I, and certainly more computer literate than I, but you know there are hackers out there.
And I would bet you that there are people who have hacked into phone company databases and are able to, average citizens, doing criminal things.
I didn't mean to say, when I said these records are public, what I meant is the phone company shares the information when called upon to do it.
Your phone bill is sent to you every month.
Now, I don't know what you do with it after you pay it.
Do you shred it?
Do you keep it on file?
Do you throw it away?
Do you have people sniffing around your garbage?
You know, I've had that happen occasionally.
And there's any number of ways these things can happen.
Once it's printed and published and sent to you, it is in the public domain.
The idea that it's kept something super secret is absurd because it's out there.
Want to go to the audio soundbites?
Dick Durbin last night on Paula Zahn Now, she asks this question.
Late last year, President Bush said that the monitoring would exist exclusively with international calls.
Now we hear today the domestic calls are being tracked.
She's totally wrong, embarrassingly wrong about this when she frames the question.
But she then says, is there any justification for this, Senator Durbin, in the overall war on terror?
Of course.
If we knew that there was a domestic telephone conversation involving would-be terrorists, they should be tapped.
They should be eavesdropped.
I don't think that was the answer she's looking for.
So she said, so you think what the administration is doing is illegal in spite of the fact that the president has defended the surveillance program so far as being perfectly legal.
Two things going on here.
Warrantless wiretaps, where the president is not following the law and says he doesn't have to.
I think that's clearly illegal.
Now we have this data mining where the National Security Agency is gathering more intelligence data in one place than anyone in the history of the world and is gathering the telephone records to show calls that we have made, every American has made in our nation.
I don't know the legal authority for that second activity by the government.
It's called the Clinton administration.
Go ask Senator Kennedy and Senator Leahy and Senator Spector.
They voted for it, Senator Durbin, you dumb.
I don't know the justification.
I don't know the legal authority for the second act.
Go call Senator Clinton.
Her husband sponsored the legislation.
Senator Durbin, you dumb.
This is just too rich.
It's just too good.
So in the first answer, he says, oh, yeah, we need this program.
And the second answer, it's illegal.
We are not tapping anybody's phone.
By the way, when he says warrantless wire taps or the president's not following the law, these are foreign calls.
I'll tell you what, folks, these people are losing it.
And the American people are not buying it.
This is more fun than anything else.
This is Lydia in Ledoux, Missouri, outside St. Louis.
Welcome to the program.
Great to have you with us.
Hi, Rush.
How are you?
Fine.
Thank you.
Good.
I'm calling to clear up the confusion that you had the other day with a guy on the phone, I guess Wednesday, when you were discussing how even though you go out with women and you say, I don't want to have children, they still somehow think that you're going to want to have children and insisted that you do.
You remember that conversation?
Yeah, but I don't know what I was confused about.
The caller was confused about why this happens.
Why don't they believe you when you say you don't want to have children?
Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.
Yeah, a caller, okay.
The caller was confused.
I'm sure you're never confused about stuff like that.
But anyway, the reason is that I think every woman believes, everyone who's able to have children believes that the man who loves her, she's going to be the one to change him because he's never been in love before like he is now with her.
Yeah.
Yeah, boy, you nailed that.
Huh?
I said you nailed that one.
Well, yeah, I mean, and a woman who's able to have children, even if she doesn't think she wants children, she's eventually most likely going to change her mind because she's biological.
It's the ticking time bomb.
It's biology.
There's no tipping time clock, it's bomb to me, but whatever.
Yeah, I mean, she may not know that she wants children, but eventually she might change her mind.
And the problem with people like you, and maybe this caller too, although I don't know, is that, you know, people like you are so charming that women just get wrapped up in the belief that you feel this way about them, even if you may or may not.
I know exactly what you said.
Because you love them, you'll do anything for them, including change your mind, change who you are, change what you want to do, change where you want to go, change how you want to look, change what you want to dress.
I know that.
Well, because once you realize how important she is to you, and you didn't realize that she was going to become that important to you.
And so, you know, you may not have thought you wanted to have children in the beginning because you thought, you know, she was just going to be a...
Wait a minute now.
Wait, it sounds like you're sounds like you're changing the game.
Now you're telling me why I am going to change my mind and want kids.
No, a lot of men don't.
Now, a lot of men do.
Like you mentioned, Robert Vaughn.
He's, you know, he was an older man, obviously dating a younger woman, and he may not have thought he wanted children, but obviously the woman he was going out with, she did become important enough to him.
I understand it.
He changed his mind at some point.
And I know what you're saying, that women think that they can all do that.
They can all change some guy's mind.
And that's why, so that's you're just called clear that up.
That's why women don't take no for an answer because they think they're going to change the guy's mind at some point.
Well, yeah, and they think that you are the kind of man who will change your mind too, but you're not.
And they don't know that.
So there's.
You can learn the hard way.
There are two solutions.
Here's one.
Oh.
Either you, people who know you don't want children no matter what, need to go out with women your own age where that won't even be a possibility, or you have to resign yourself to the fact that you're going to have to endlessly date younger women for short periods of time, and it's not going to ever be anything more than a superficial relationship one after another until you're dead.
Yeah, well, those two options, I dig the second one.
You know what?
You still be happy with that?
Oh, hell yes.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Well, more power than you.
That's every man's dream out there, Lydia.
You think?
Well, apparently it wasn't Robert Vaughn.
Well, I can't.
It was for a while, but something got trapped.
Well, remember, though, that you've only been in this mindset for, what, a short period of time?
I mean, you've got to do that.
No, I've been in this mindset since I was 14.
Well, you've only decided to actually live it for a short period of time because, I mean, once you.
Oh, you mean the mindset of choosing option two?
Yeah, I mean, once you.
Oh, I thought you were still talking about having kids.
No, no, no, no.
I just never succeeded at it till now.
It's been a lifelong quest, and I finally realized the dream.
Lydia, thanks for the call.
I appreciate it.
We must take a brief time out here.
It's Open Line Friday.
That's a great Open Line Friday call, folks.
Back in just a second.
You know, I got an email here from a friend.
I wasn't able to watch television last night because I was in Dallas on a Rush to Texas tour for our Metroplex affiliate, WBAP.
And the friend says, you know, you can learn a lot without eavesdropping.
There was a feature on Fox, he thinks it was Fox last night, not sure, that some guy out there has been able to predict who will be dumped from the current episode of American Idol.
A program, by the way, I have never seen.
Have you watched it, Brian?
Have you watched it, Dawn?
You do.
Have you seen it, Mr. Sterling?
I have never seen it.
I have no clue.
I mean, I read about all the controversies in the show, but I have never seen it.
Apparently, though, there's this guy who has been able to predict who will be dumped from the current American Idol show, and he's never been wrong.
How does he do it?
Well, he doesn't rig the vote and he doesn't snoop on the vote.
What he does, he speed dials all the candidates.
He developed a software program to figure out which he gets through to vote on the quickest.
The easiest to get through on to vote means that fewer people are voting on that particular suspect, contestant, and therefore is not going to be an American Idol winner.
And he's not listening to a thing.
Not listening to anything.
You can learn without listening.
You know, I meant I mentioned this earlier about IP addresses.
If you think collecting phone numbers is bad, you're going to flip out when you learn that your IP address is known by most anybody who cares.
And people will also be shocked.
You'll be shocked to know how many people know what websites that you've been visiting.
Pedophiles worry about this lack of internet privacy, just as terrorists do when it comes to making phone calls.
Now, but here's the question: all these Democrats raising holy hell about this.
I want to know which Democrat or Democrats will step up and say they're going to dismantle the NSA and this program when they're elected president.
If it's so bad, if it's so rotten, some Democrat owes us the honesty.
Mrs. Clinton, will you stand up and say, because you're deeply disturbed, that you are going to wipe out the NSA, that you're going to cancel this program?
Would you stand up and say that?
Would any Democrat who today is bleating and moaning and wanging stand up and say, this is so bad, this is such an invasion of privacy, I am canceling the program the moment I am sworn into office.
It'll be my first act of presidency as an executive order.
I'm canceling this program and I am going to conduct an investigation in the NSA for the purposes of shutting it down.
No Democrat will say that because no Democrat will do that.
But they want you to make you think that it should be done.
Something else for you people to keep in mind, especially you at USA Today, do you know that intelligence and law enforcement agencies use fake identities in chat rooms?
That's how they discover illegal activities going on on the internet.
They set up sting operations and they don't tell the stingy.
They don't tell the suspect that it's happening.
And they use fake names and fake IDs.
You know, there have been liberal Democrats who've wanted to open up people's medical records, and I didn't hear anybody complaining about it when that happened.
All this feigned outrage about privacy and so forth, purely the latest drive-by Democrat and media opportunity to try to nail the president for something that is not worth chump change.
Stephen St. Louis, great to have you on the EIB network.
Hello.
Oh, thank you, sir.
Pleasure to call you.
I used to do this when I was in the military, and we had such strict rules.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Used to do what?
The NSA program that everybody's complaining about, gathering information and listening to international calls.
If we accidentally got a national call, say like you and Bo Snerdley, planning to rob a bank, if I told anybody about it, I would go to jail faster than you would.
Okay, well, then what did you do?
If you're listening into a phone call and me and Snerdley were going to rob a bank, what would you do?
I couldn't do anything.
I couldn't tell a soul if I it would come out eventually that where it came from.
I would go to prison for 15 years for divulging information that I didn't collect legally.
We would have to dump the call and just say, okay, bank's going to get robbed, but we couldn't tell anybody.
All right, but that doesn't apply, does it, if you're monitoring foreign phone calls of known terrorist suspects?
No, it doesn't.
If it's known terrorist suspects, we got permission to do it.
But national calls, we'd have to go to a court.
Then we'd have to prove how we got the information.
Well, since we got it illegally to begin with, they wouldn't give us a warrant.
So you'd have to do it.
So even if you heard Snerdley and I in a phone conversation, you're going to rob a bank.
Right.
But you couldn't stop us, and then we go out and rob the bank and we got away with it.
You can say, yeah, Because we couldn't tell anybody.
We had very strict rules on what we could do with information we got.
And if it became between two people in the United States, we had no authorization to do it.
All right, hang on.
I have to take a break here.
I want to talk to you.
If you hold on through the break, I've got one more question I want to ask you.
Can you hang on, Steve?
Okay, he's holding.
Good.
We'll be back.
We'll continue in real moments, my good buddies.
We've got some great ports news coming up, folks.
Do buy ports deal news coming up.
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