graphic example in my 40 years of intelligence of coming to the direct aid of people in extreme circumstances."

The purpose and utility of such intelligence tools in a disaster area, or in a war zone, are clear. But given the Bush administration's highly secretive, aggressive policies in the war on terror, what's to stop the NGA and the NSA from collaborating on other types of real-time surveillance at home?

This past Saturday, Congress approved legislation expanding the ability of the National Security Agency to eavesdrop, without warrants, on telephone calls, e-mail and faxes passing through telecommunications hubs in the United States when the government suspects terrorists may be involved. The legislation, which expands the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was negotiated between the White House and lawmakersin response to a federal court ruling this summer determining that the NSA's past eavesdropping had violated the law. Mike McConnell, the retired Navy admiral who was appointed last January as the nation's second director of national intelligence, told Congress that the ruling drastically reduced the ability of the NSA to track terrorists, while Bush warned that, because of the ruling, the government was "missing a significant amount of foreign intelligence that we should be collecting to protect our country."

The fear of Democratic leaders that their party might be further accused of being soft on terrorism apparently prompted them to vote for the new FISA legislation -- handing new unilateral surveillance powers to the executive branch while significantly diminishing judicial oversight. Civil liberties groups and lawmakers opposed to