The collaboration makes it possible for the agencies to create hybrid intelligence tools that enhance the ability of U.S. forces in combat. By combining intercepts of cellphone calls with overhead imagery gathered by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), for example, intelligence analysts can track suspected terrorists or insurgents in Iraq in real time. Last November, NGA director Robert B. Murrett disclosed that it was through such technology that the U.S. military was able to locate and bomb the safe house where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, was staying in June 2006. "Eventually, it all comes down to physical location," he told reporters. When NSA and NGA data are combined, he added, "the multiplier effect is dramatic."

Nine months prior, during Hurricane Katrina, the NGA's sophisticated surveillance tools, which can create three-dimensional maps, helped first responders identify hospitals, schools and areas where hazardous materials were stored in the Gulf Coast region. And in an unprecedented move, the NGA distributed thousands of unclassified images of stricken areas, via the Internet, to the public. "People could actually see their houses," said retired Air Force Gen. James R. Clapper, the NGA director at the time of Katrina. In an interview with Salon before his appointment in April as undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Clapper said that the NGA's work during the hurricane was "the most 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 lawmakers in 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 the legislation believe the changes will make it easier for the government to spy on U.S. citizens, because the more loosely defined FISA statute now allows warrantless surveillance of people communicating with others who are "reasonably believed to be outside the United States." During the House debate last Saturday night, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., described the bill as an enormous loophole that will grant the attorney general the ability to "wiretap anybody, any place, any time without court review, without any checks and balances."

President Bush signed the measure into law on Sunday.

The NGA, which has a staff of 14,000 and an estimated budget of about $2.5 billion (the actual amount is classified), buys most of its imagery from commercial satellite vendors, but it also relies on highly classified overhead photography captured by the National Reconnaissance Office's fleet of military satellites.

According to David H. Burpee, the NGA's director of public affairs, the agency operates under strict oversight rules that ban it from collecting imagery over the United States without a formal request from a "lead" domestic agency coordinating efforts during a disaster. In the case of Katrina, the NGA's assistance was requested by the Federal Emergency Management Administration. In a statement to Salon, Burpee said that the NGA collects intelligence "in accordance with Constitutional law, federal law, and executive policies such as Executive Order 12333." (That order, signed in 1981 by President Reagan, includes a mandate for federal agencies to cooperate with the CIA and other intelligence agencies.) Any questions involving domestic operations would have to be directed to the lead agency requesting NGA support, Burpee added.

It is unclear how the latest changes to FISA might affect other intelligence agencies besides the NSA. But the zeal with which McConnell and Bush pursued the new legislation unbridling the NSA-which could presumably tap the NGA for assistance with operations at home, just as it does in the war zones-raises stark questions about the administration's intentions with domestic intelligence.

A close look at the NSA programs suggests that the Bush administration is casting the widest net possible. To date, President Bush and administration officials have acknowledged only a narrow aspect of domestic spying—referred to as the Terrorist Surveillance Program—which they admitted, in the wake of media reports, included the warrantless wiretapping of phone calls. But in May 2006, USA Today reported on a program that involved the NSA's gaining access to huge customer databases maintained by AT&T and other telecommunications providers. In another alleged program, discovered by AT&T technician Mark Klein and disclosed in a lawsuit against the telecom provider filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the NSA attached what amounts to an electronic hose to AT&T Internet data lines in San Francisco and other cities and diverted global Internet traffic and phone calls to a special room, where calls and messages were analyzed with powerful computers to find clues to terrorist cells. A Salon report in June 2006 uncovered what appeared to be a nexus for such activity in a secret room at an AT&T facility in St. Louis.