On the July 7 broadcast of his KOA radio program, Mike Rosen repeated the misleading claim that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic wiretapping program targeted “known terrorists and their contacts in the U.S.” But as Media Matters for America has noted, media reports have cited intelligence officials who described the wiretap program as being far broader, monitoring the communications of thousands of people with no terrorist connection.

Rosen made the misleading claim about the domestic surveillance program during an interview with retired Lt. Col. Joseph A. Ruffini, a counterterrorism consultant and author of When Terror Comes To Main Street: A Citizens' Guide to Terror Awareness, Preparedness, and Prevention (Archangel Group, May 2006).

A February 5 Washington Post article reported that unnamed “current and former government officials” told the paper that "[i]ntelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat." As the Post reported:

Fewer than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year, according to an authoritative account, have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls, as well. That step still requires a warrant from a federal judge, for which the government must supply evidence of probable cause.

The Bush administration refuses to say -- in public or in closed session of Congress -- how many Americans in the past four years have had their conversations recorded or their e-mails read by intelligence analysts without court authority. Two knowledgeable sources placed that number in the thousands; one of them, more specific, said about 5,000.

According to the Post, intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, “said the prevalence of false leads is especially pronounced when U.S. citizens or residents are surveilled. No intelligence agency, they said, believes that 'terrorist ... operatives inside our country,' as Bush described the surveillance targets, number anywhere near the thousands who have been subject to eavesdropping.”

A January 17 New York Times article reported that a number of counterterrorism and enforcement officials -- some of whom knew of the wiretap program -- said that the large amount of tips from the National Security Agency's (NSA) wiretapping “led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not [already] know of” and that chasing after these leads “diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.”

From July 7 broadcast of KOA's The Mike Rosen Show :

ROSEN: Your level of concern would have been more heightened, but I don't think, given human nature and political reality and the inclination of people to be in denial about things that will cost them an inconvenience, I don't think Americans would have been ready to take the kind of steps that we've taken since 9-11.

RUFFINI: I can't argue with you on that point. No, I would have to agree.

ROSEN: And listen to what's happened since 9-11. Now we have the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] and others complaining about NSA wiretaps between known terrorists overseas and their contacts in the United States. I mean, they're -- they're complaining about this because they don't accept the fact that we are at war and under attack, because they don't want to accept that fact.

RUFFINI: No, but you know what? We either have to accept that fact and kind of toughen up a little --

ROSEN: Or suffer the consequences.