Citing a highly placed intelligence official within an unknown agency, The New York Times today announced that the U.S. government is spying on its enemies. The source apparently told The Times that the United States embeds thousands of agents around the globe whose jobs include the express purpose of collecting information about those considered threatening to the United States. The agents apparently work for a previously unheard of government entity called the Central Intelligence Agency (or CIA), which is located in the Langley neighborhood of McLean, Virginia.

According to the same source, this information sometimes includes photography taken with tiny cameras that can be stowed away covertly in the agents’ pockets.

The story adds credence to long-standing rumors that U.S. satellites orbiting the Earth might be equipped with cameras and high-powered telephoto lenses, again to be used for spying on perceived threats to U.S. interests.

When asked about the story, which also ran in the L.A. Times and The Wall Street Journal, President Bush called the leak of this sensitive program “disgraceful.” Congressman Pete Hoekstra and Senator Pat Roberts, both Republicans, called for the immediate beheadings of all Times’ editors and reporters who exposed the “highly sensitive, top secret program,” citing as a direct result of the leak the recent death of one agent who had been posing as a Guatemalan tree frog.

When asked about the furor over the story, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller responded that his paper was merely exercising its First Amendment right to a free press.

In response, Senator Roberts shot back, “Only treasonous cowards hide behind that scrap of parchment!” And Hoekstra claimed that, because spying is now public knowledge, enemy nations and terrorist organizations might start using new techniques to evade U.S. efforts: “Thanks to The New York Times, we can expect our enemies to employ special handshakes, decoder rings and something being described as ‘double-dog secrets.’”

Senator Roberts promised that the Senate will postpone the second phase of the investigation on Iraq intelligence in order to launch an official inquiry into “double-dog secrets.”

Related Stories:
Funds-tracking no secret, some say.