January 16, 2006 | Hitchens And Bamford Sue Bush Administration! No Really!

It was going to be the journalistic equivalent of Cagney and Lacey, but better. Well, better, but with fewer lesbians.

James Bamford, the studious and diligent one who has written books on the NSA, who has a soft spot for conspiracy theoeires was cast as the soul-searching, muckraking honest journalist who just might find out things he doesn't want to know are true..

Christopher Hitchens, the wild one prone to lighting up in elevators and putting whiskey in his oatmeal, would play the bitter, lost journalist who thinks all his colleagues are sellouts and pansies, but he has a soft side and spell checks his byline.

Together the duo would fight injustice, drink and smoke and make fun of editors, and have secret Meet-Ups, IM Department of Agriculture whistleblowers and wage the war on terror and anti-terror (the plan was to alternate weeks) with word processors! Word processors with byline spell checkers, of course.

And their first case?

Here's the shocker -- they don't write anything in the pilot episode. Instead, Bamford hears immediate clicks on the phone when he calls Mossad sources. For his part Hitchens hears clinks in his the highball glass when he calls on his sources.

Both suspect the government is wiretapping them.

So they sign up to have the ACLU sue the government, claiming the government probably eavesdropped on their phone calls (Hitchens vaguely recalls a late night international booty call from some months back, while Bamford claims not to have known that the NSA could intercept his calls to his sources in Israel., No really, he has at least one source there. No really some of his best friends are high level Israeli spooks.).

Too bad reality just scooped me.

No really, it did.

I swear on Echelon, reality bit me.

My blockbuster is in the New York Times. The news section of the NYT.

"There's almost a feeling of déjà vu with this program," said James Bamford, an author and journalist who is one of five individual plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit who say they suspect that the program may have been used to monitor their international communications.

"It's a return to the bad old days of the N.S.A.," said Mr. Bamford, who has written two widely cited books on the intelligence agency.

Although the program's public disclosure last month has generated speculation that it may have been used to monitor journalists or politicians, no evidence has emerged to support that idea. Bush administration officials point to a secret audit by the Justice Department last year that reviewed a sampling of security agency interceptions involving Americans and that they said found no documented abuses.

[...]

Also named as plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit are the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has written in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; ...

Wiretap Lawsuit.

Remember this isn't old-school Trotskyite Hitchens; this is the post-9/11 Hitchens.

I guess we should have seen the re-reversal coming after he threw this bomb after the government decided to start confiscating his lighter when he gets on planes ((no I don't know how he lit the fuse after they took away his lighter) and yes, yes, I and You know that wasn't the administration pushing the lighter ban and we know that Michael Moore and Byron Dorgan are to blame but Hitchens doesn't know that and like Blutarsky, he's on a roll so don't interrupt him.)

I guess that while Hitchens made good friends with the Neo-Cons (who are Trotskyites of a sort), they weren't kind enough to give him a get-out-of-surveillance free card.

Now those neo-cons are going to hear from his ACLU lawyer.

All I can say to that is God help the Kurds if they ever even think one mean thing about Hitchens.

Posted by Ryan Singel at January 16, 2006 10:09 PM

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Posted by: A Alexander Stella at January 21, 2006 02:29 PM