NSA Secretely Wiretapped Jesus, Discloses Senate Panel

Washington, D.C., August 29, 2006 -- The National Security Agency (NSA) extensively wiretapped and conducted other surveillance activities targeting Jesus of Nazareth over a period of at least four years, a report issued by the Special Senate Investigative Panel into Unlawful Domestic Surveillance Activities disclosed today.

Jesus (artist's impression)

The domestic NSA wiretaps, which many Republican and Democratic lawmakers believe may have overstepped numerous legal and constitutional boundaries, were secretly ordered by President George W. Bush. Beyond their questionable legality, the surveillance has also been decried by Christians and liberal activist groups as an insidious form of religious persecution and an abuse of power by a president anxious to quash dissent.

The Senate report was issued at the conclusion of a six-month investigation into potentially illegal domestic surveillance and wiretaps of American citizens secretly ordered by President Bush in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and conducted by the shadowy National Security Agency.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, speaking at a hastily called press conference following the disclosures by the Senate panel, confirmed the NSA wiretapping of Jesus, but explained that the action was held by President Bush to be "entirely appropriate, and essential to our ongoing war on terror."

"Jesus of Nazareth has every potential to emerge as a dangerous revolutionary who could seriously threaten the American way of life," Mr. McClellan said. "His teachings, if you've read them, are all about self-sacrifice, feeding the poor, healing the sick, turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, praying in secret instead of with a bullhorn, acquiring treasures in Heaven instead of on Earth, not judging unless you want to get judged yourself, driving the hypocrites and money-grubbing merchants from the House of the Lord, doing unto others as you'd have them do unto you, and other dangerously subversive and anti-war propaganda. That man has been working for over 2,000 years to scuttle every important initiative this president and this president's party have been working to achieve. He's a menace."

Neither the Senate panel nor Mr. McClellan would disclose the location or locations at which the wiretaps of Jesus occurred, citing national security considerations, other than to indicate "many of them happened at a secret undisclosed location that I think can be safely described as the diametric opposite of Vice President Dick Cheney's secret undisclosed location, if you catch my drift," according to Mr. McClellan.

A high-level administrator at the NSA, who demanded that his identity remain secret to prevent compromising what he terms "an ongoing operation", said that the NSA had monitored incoming and outgoing communications from Jesus on a regular basis from late 2001 until the present day.

"We noted a major spike in outbound overseas Jesus-related traffic toward the third and fourth weeks of December, 2001, mere months after the September 11 attacks," said the administrator. "That's what I think first opened our eyes to this potentially serious problem. Since then, we've seen similar late-December spikes every year, together with a major rise in traffic around the annual Easter holidays. None of these have yet led to the discovery of a credible threat to the homeland, but we're going to keep a close eye on Him, and anyone who mentions His name in a telephone call or email, just in case."

Liberal activists groups have characterized the wiretapping of Jesus as another example of abuse of power by a president who seems to consider constitutional legality as optional.

"Has this president ever even heard of the Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure?" said Henry Thurbine of Citizens for Civil Liberties, a grass-roots organization dedicated to the enforcement of constitutional protections. "And just saying we're at war is no justification, particularly when the war is undeclared, permanent, mind-numbingly corrupt, and against a continually shifting assortment of real and imaginary enemies."

According to Mr. Thurbine, Jesus, in particular, was targeted because of his outspoken non-violent and liberal ideals.

"It's totally political. Remember, this has nothing to do with national security, and Jesus wasn't the only one. The NSA's got their little secret claws and cameras and microphones into about every vocal opponent of the war they could find. But when you have a president secretly telling a security agency to wiretap the Son of God, you've got to begin questioning whether imperial hubris has made that last small step into clinical psychosis. It's much, much more than just an illegal and utterly inappropriate abuse of power, although that alone is bad enough."

According to Mr. McClellan, constitutional protections do not apply in this specific instance due to the murky question of Jesus' nationality.

"Jesus, to the best of my knowledge, is not even an American citizen," said Mr. McClellan.

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor