SPJ national update II: Is AT&T helping the NSA spy on U.S. internet traffic?; and were secrets disclosed to expelled reporters at Guantanamo Bay? In a network operations center in metropolitan St. Louis, AT&T has maintained a secret, highly secured room since 2002 where government work is being conducted, according to two former AT&T workers once employed at the center. The former AT&T workers say that only government officials or AT&T employees with top-secret clearance are admitted to the room. The former workers say company supervisors told them that employees inside the room were "monitoring network traffic" and that the room was being used by "a government agency." The details bear the earmarks of an operation run by the National Security Agency, according to two intelligence experts with extensive knowledge of the NSA and its operations. More here. ... Military officials at Guantanamo Bay have launched an investigation to find out if officers at the prison there revealed "classified or sensitive material" to reporters, according to the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer. The Observer is one of three newspapers whose journalists were expelled from the prison base June 14 after spending five days at the site covering the aftermath of three prisoner suicides. In a June 17 story the Observer reported that the "investigation was ordered the same day that an Observer story from Guantanamo ... caused controversy within the Defense Department. The story reported on the details of an officers' staff meeting at the prison in the wake of three detainee suicides." More here and here and here and here.
SPJ national update III: It's only wrong if you're caught, and then only if someone can make you pay. Over a 5.5-year period ending in 2005, members of Congress, their families and aides took at least 23,000 trips -- valued at almost $50 million -- financed by private sponsors, many of them with business on Capitol Hill. A nine-month analysis done by the Center for Public Integrity, American Public Media and Northwestern University's Medill News Service revealed at least 200 trips to Paris, 150 to Hawaii and 140 to Italy. Some trips seem to have been little more than pricey vacations -- often taken in the company of spouses or other relatives -- wrapped around speeches or seminars. Congressional ethics rules permit lawmakers and aides to take privately sponsored travel in connection with their official duties but the trips shouldn't be "substantially recreational in nature." The analysis found many apparent violations of ethics rules. Disclosure forms show, for example, that at least 90 trips, valued at about $145,000, were sponsored or co-sponsored by firms registered to lobby the federal government. Ethics rules do not allow lobbyists to pay for congressional travel. More here.
