Two whistleblowers from the NSA have revealed what should have been obvious to anyone paying attention, that the warrantless wiretaps and other surveillance programs went far beyond merely tracking terrorists:

The Senate Select Intelligence Committee is looking into allegations from two U.S. military linguists that the government routinely listened in on phone calls of American military and humanitarian aid workers serving overseas.

"These are extremely disturbing allegations," said Committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., in a statement issued Thursday. "We have requested all relevant information from the Bush administration. Any time there is an allegation regarding abuse of the privacy and civil liberties of Americans it is a very serious matter."

I'm gonna venture a guess here and predict that the White House is going to suddenly lose every email and document related to this subject. Or claim executive privilege and forbid anyone in the executive branch from testifying before the committee. Or invoke the state secrets privilege and do the same thing. Or those two whistleblowers will suddenly retract their stories after a superior at the NSA plays the tapes the agency has of their own private conversations. Or all of the above, not necessarily in that order.

ABC News first reported the charges Thursday, citing one current and one former military linguist by name. They are contained in the book "The Shadow Factory," to be published next week.

The linguists said National Security Agency interceptors routinely monitored and recorded the private calls of U.S. military personnel, Red Cross and other humanitarian workers; personal discussions that had entertainment value -- pillow talk or phone sex --were shared among intercept operators, they said.

Support the troops by listening to their phone sex calls with the wife back home. Very patriotic. Listening in on the Red Cross makes sense, though. The Red Cross is clearly made up of dangerous radicals who believe in crazy ideas like the Geneva Conventions. That can only lead to communist notions like liberty and justice.