(25.Juli 2008) Salon.com has published new details about a top secret government database that might be at the heart of the Bush administration’s domestic spying operations. The database is known as „Main Core.“ It reportedly collects and stores vast amounts of personal and financial data about millions of Americans. Some former US officials believe that „Main Core“ may have been used by the National Security Agency to determine who to spy on in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. We speak with author and investigative journalist, Tim Shorrock. (..)

Tim Shorrock: ..Now, when this program was created during the Reagan administration, there was a database, some kind of watch list that they used, that was developed to keep track of Americans that the government believed were threats to national security, subversives, in some way. And there were different incidents where information about this database came out. For example, there were stories in both the Miami Herald and some newspapers in Texas, the Austin Herald-American, that reported about this database and how Oliver North, who was very involved in the Iran-Contra controversy when he was working at the White House, was actually using this — might be using this database as a way to keep track of, say, Central American immigrants and people opposed to US policy in Central America during the 1980s. And at one point during the Iran-Contra hearings, Representative Jack Brooks of Texas focused on this and asked Oliver North about this database, which at that time was believed to be controlled by the Federal Emergency Management Administration, FEMA. And immediately, Senator Dan Inouye, who was the chairman of the Iran-Contra hearings, cut him off, said that’s — “That deals with very sensitive classified information. We can’t talk about it.” And it was never really discussed. And there’s been articles about it.

And I began to learn a few months ago that this database, which some people now call “Main Core,” is still in existence…