Pentagon to Discontinue Domestic Spying Program; In Related News, Pat Leahy’s Foot “A Bit Sore” After Repeated Ass-Kicking
Due in no small part to the aggressive efforts of Vermont’s senior Senator Patrick Leahy, the Pentagon announced yesterday that it will discontinue a domestic spying operation known by the acronym TALON (Threat and Local Observation Notices).
After repeated requests by Leahy, Donald Rumsfeld grudgingly revealed in 2006 that the TALON program had been collecting information on Quaker and other peace groups — two here in Vermont.
Said Leahy yesterday, “If the Bush Administration wants video of a Vermonter speaking out against the war in Iraq, all they need to do is tape one of my floor speeches on CSPAN.”
In fairness to the Bush Administration, VDB should make clear that the Pentagon’s TALON program had little or nothing to do with Talon News, a GOP faux-news outlet shut down in 2005 after Jeff Gannon — its star reporter and White House Press Conference stand-out — was revealed to be a working male prostitute.
Any resemblance is completely accidental. Well, except in the general Republican/Department of Defense preference for aggressive metaphor that borders on the revealingly creepy and/or kinky.
But other than that.
on September 19th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
[…] As states go, Vermont has fairly good reason to doubt the Administration’s word on suspension of civil liberties: Vermont-based Quakers and anti-war organizations were targeted by the Pentagon under their now-infamous TALON program (Threat and Local Observation Notices). […]