There is deep analogy between financial services and intelligence services. Both try to escape from
the control of democratic society. the question is: Can democratic state ensure that intelligence
services remained under control of elected officials? The answer is: No. As JFK
assassination had shown tail wants to wag the dog.
How can democratic societies ensure that intelligence services are able to operate
effectively while complying with democratic norms and standards? This book chapter
from the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces examines the
control and oversight of intelligence services in democratic states. It argues
that security and intelligence agencies have special features that make effective
control and oversight particularly challenging. Democratic oversight and
accountability of intelligence services requires constant vigilance from the
executive, legislature, judiciary and civil society.
The challenges of effective
control and oversight of intelligence are significant and daunting, particularly in
environments where perceptions of threats to security are heightened. The paradox of
striving for transparency in an inherently secretive area and the degree of
professional discretion that effective intelligence requires are central issues.
Nevertheless, the values and norms which are fundamental to democratic systems
require that intelligence agencies are accountable and subject to internal control
and external oversight.
Horizontal accountability refers to the accountability of state institutions to
other state institutions. Vertical accountability refers to accountability within the
hierarchy of state institutions and of state institutions to the public. The ‘third
dimension’ of accountability refers to the role of international actors in holding
state institutions to account. These three forms of accountability highlight the
importance for ensuring democratic oversight and accountability of intelligence
services of various actors, including:
The executive – Ministers exercise control of intelligence through
directives and policy guidelines. Governments and intelligence agencies should not
have too close a relationship to avoid politicisation of intelligence and
weakening of oversight.
Intelligence agencies themselves – Directors and senior management
can enforce accountability within institutions. Channels for reporting illegal
action, together with a commitment to professional ethics and standards, can
contribute to accountability.
Civil society and the media – Lobbying and advocacy by civil society
organisations can influence intelligence policies and hold intelligence agencies
and their political masters to account.
The legislature – Legislatures can review reports from the
intelligence services submitted to parliament and scrutinise intelligence services
through specialised committees.
The judiciary – Courts can review intelligence service powers and
government actions to ensure that they do not violate citizens’ rights.
International actors – Donor governments and international
organisations can seek to influence state actors on issues such as human rights
and democracy.
Control of intelligence services confronts a number of structural problems.
Secrecy, the discretionary authority granted to intelligence practitioners, the
principle of ‘plausible denial’ and claims of national security all pose challenges
for control of intelligence. Oversight and control of intelligence also faces a
number of paradoxes:
The dependence of oversight committees on the intelligence community versus
independence. Oversight committees are highly dependent on the intelligence
services for information. Without this information, however, they cannot be
effective.
The adversary versus advocacy issue. An antagonistic relationship between
overseers and intelligence agencies can prevent the sharing of information. A
cooperative relationship, however, can lead to the overseer’s loss of
independence.
Functional versus institutional oversight. Oversight bodies are often
established for specific institutions. However, as intelligence becomes the
responsibility of various institutions, some may escape oversight.
Secrecy and the public interest. Secrecy is vital to many intelligence
activities. However, overly stringent restrictions on information are likely to
hinder public debate and scrutiny of security agencies and activities.
"... Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America's Universities ..."
"... The Boston Globe ..."
"... Inside Higher Ed ..."
"... The Wall Street Journal ..."
"... The Price of Admission ..."
"... Inside Higher Ed ..."
"... Inside Higher Ed ..."
"... look back to Stalin, Hitler, Franco, Mao, Mussolini et.al with THIER use of domestic agencies to impose lock-step thinking and to ferret out free-thinkers. ..."
"... It is amazing how many biochemists and microbiologists from the People's Republic of China would e-mail me asking if I had a position in my "lab," touting their bench skills, every time I published a paper on the federal bioterrorism program, medical civic action programs, etc. ..."
"... When I started teaching 48 years ago, the president of my college was James Dovonan, Bill Donovan's (founder of the OSS) brother, portrayed by Tom Hanks in the movie, "Bridge of Spies." ..."
"... Beyond NIH funded grant-based research, Homeland Security, Energy, Defense, and the Intelligence Community agencies have long histories of relationships with American academia. This could be funded research, collaborative research, shared personnel relationships, or all other manner of cooperation. Sometimes it's fairly well known and sometimes it's kept quiet, and sometimes it's even classified. But it is much more extensive and expansive than what Golden describes, and much less "cozy" or suspicious. ..."
"... For years I have said that it is foolish to look to universities for moral guidance, and this story is one more instance. In this case, the moral ground is swampy at best, and the universities do not appear to have spent a lot of time worrying about possible problems as long as the situation works to their advantage financially. ..."
"... Does Golden discuss at all the way in which the CIA and other intelligence services funnel money into academic research without the source of the funding ever being revealed? This was common practice in the 1960s and 1970s, and colleges like MIT were among those involved in this chicanery. ..."
"... Where has IHE been for the past several decades? Read Rosenfeld's book, Subversives..... about the FBI's illegal acts at Berkeley. Or read this, a summary of his book: https://alumni.berkeley.edu... Or read George R. Stewart, The Year of the Oath. ..."
Book documents how foreign and domestic intelligence agencies use
-- and perhaps exploit -- higher education and academe for spy operations.
Foreign and domestic intelligence services spar and spy on one another all across the world.
But it would be naïve to think it's not happening in the lab or classroom as well.
In his new book, Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit
America's Universities ( Henry Holt and Company ),
investigative journalist Daniel Golden explores the fraught -- and sometimes exploitative --
relationship between higher education and intelligence services, both foreign and domestic.
Chapters explore various case studies of the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of
Investigation using the open and collaborative nature of higher education to their advantage,
as well as foreign governments infiltrating the U.S. via education.
"It's pretty widespread, and I'd say it's most prevalent at research universities," Golden,
an editor at ProPublica and an alumnus of The Boston Globe 's "Spotlight" team, told
Inside Higher Ed . "The foreign intelligence services have the interest and the
opportunity to learn cutting-edge, Pentagon-funded or government-funded research."
Golden, who has also covered higher education for The Wall Street Journal ,
previously wrote about
the intersection of wealth and admissions in his 2006 book The Price of Admission
.
Each of the case studies in Spy Schools , which goes on sale Oct. 10, is critical.
One could read the chapters on the Chinese government's interest in U.S. research universities
as hawkish, but then turn to the next chapter on Harvard's relationship with the CIA and read
it as critical of the American intelligence establishment as well.
"People of one political persuasion might focus on [the chapters regarding] foreign
espionage; people of another political persuasion might focus on domestic espionage," Golden
said. "I try to follow where the facts lead."
Perhaps the most prestigious institution Golden examines is Harvard University, probing its
cozy relationship with the CIA. (While Harvard has recently come under scrutiny for its
relationship with the agency after it withdrew an invitation for Chelsea Manning to be a
visiting fellow -- after the agency objected to her appointment -- this book was written before
the Manning incident, which occurred in September.) The university, which has had varying
degrees of closeness and coldness with the CIA over the years, currently allows the agency to
send officers to the midcareer program at the Kennedy School of Government while continuing to
act undercover, with the school's knowledge. When the officers apply -- often with fudged
credentials that are part of their CIA cover -- the university doesn't know they're CIA agents,
but once they're in, Golden writes, Harvard allows them to tell the university that they're
undercover. Their fellow students, however -- often high-profile or soon-to-be-high-profile
actors in the world of international diplomacy -- are kept in the dark.
"Kenneth Moskow is one of a long line of CIA officers who have enrolled undercover at the
Kennedy School, generally with Harvard's knowledge and approval, gaining access to
up-and-comers worldwide," Golden writes. "For four decades the CIA and Harvard have concealed
this practice, which raises larger questions about academic boundaries, the integrity of class
discussions and student interactions, and whether an American university has a responsibility
to accommodate U.S. intelligence."
But the CIA isn't the only intelligence group operating at Harvard. Golden notes Russian
spies have enrolled at the Kennedy School, although without Harvard's knowledge or
cooperation.
When contacted by Inside Higher Ed , Harvard officials didn't deny Golden's
telling, but defended the university's practices while emphasizing the agreement between the
university and the CIA -- which Golden also writes about -- on not using Harvard to conduct CIA
fieldwork.
"Harvard Kennedy School does not knowingly provide false information or 'cover' for any
member of our community from an intelligence agency, nor do we allow members of our community
to carry out intelligence operations at Harvard Kennedy School," Eric Rosenbach, co-director of
the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said in a
statement.
While Golden said the CIA's involvement on campus raises existential questions about the
purpose and integrity of higher education, Harvard maintained that the Kennedy School was
living up to its mission.
"Our community consists of people from different spheres of public service. We are proud to
train people from the U.S. government and the intelligence community, as well as peace
activists and those who favor more open government," Rosenbach said in his statement. "We train
students from a wide range of foreign countries and foreign governments, including -- among
others -- Israel, U.K., Russia and China. That is consistent with our mission and we are proud
to have that reach."
On the other hand, other countries are interested in exploiting U.S. higher education.
Golden documents the case of Ruopeng Liu, a graduate student at Duke University who siphoned
off U.S.-government-funded research to Chinese researchers. Liu eventually returned to China
and has used some of the research for his Chinese-government-funded start-up ventures.
Golden is comprehensive, interviewing Duke researchers who worked with Liu, as well as
dispatching a freelance journalist in China to interview Liu (he denied wrongdoing, saying his
actions were taken as part of higher education's collaborative norms regarding research
projects). Despite questions that arose while Liu was a student, he received his doctorate in
2009 without any formal questions or pushback from the university. A week before Liu defended
his dissertation, Golden notes that Duke officials voted to move forward in negotiations with
the Chinese government regarding opening a Duke campus in China -- raising questions about
whether Duke was cautious about punishing a Chinese student lest there were negative business
implications for Duke. (
The building of the campus proved to be a controversial move in its own right. )
The Duke professor Liu worked under told Golden it would be hard to prove Liu acted with
intentional malice rather than out of genuine cultural and translational obstacles, or ethical
slips made by a novice researcher. Duke officials told Inside Higher Ed that there
weren't any connections between Liu and the vote.
"The awarding of Ruopeng Liu's degree had absolutely no connection to the deliberations over
the proposal for Duke to participate in the founding of a new university in Kunshan, China," a
spokesman said in an email.
These are just two chapters of Golden's book, which also goes on to document the foreign
exchange relationship between Marietta College, in Ohio, and the controversial
Chinese-intelligence-aligned University of International Relations. Agreements between Marietta
and UIR, which is widely regarded a recruiting ground for Chinese intelligence services,
include exchanging professors and sending Chinese students to Marietta. Conversely, Golden
writes, as American professors teach UIR students who could end up spying on the U.S., American
students at Marietta are advised against studying abroad at UIR if they have an interest in
working for the government -- studying at UIR carries a risk for students hoping to get certain
security clearances. Another highlight is the chapter documenting the CIA's efforts to stage
phony international academic conferences, put on to lure Iranian nuclear scientists as
attendees and get them out of their country -- and in a position to defect to the U.S.
According to Golden's sources, the operations, combined with other efforts, have been
successful enough "to hinder Iran's nuclear weapons program."
But Golden's book doesn't just shed light on previously untold stories. It also highlights
the existential questions facing higher education, not only when dealing with infiltration from
foreign governments, but also those brought on by cozy relationships between the U.S.
intelligence and academe.
"One issue is American national security," Golden said. "Universities do a lot of research
that's important to our government and our military, and they don't take very strong
precautions against it being stolen," he said. "So the domestic espionage side -- I'm kind of a
traditionalist and I believe in the ideal of universities as places where the brightest minds
of all countries come together to learn, teach each other, study and do research. Espionage
from both sides taints that that's kind of disturbing."
After diving deep into the complex web that ties higher education and espionage together,
however, Golden remains optimistic about the future.
"It wouldn't be that hard to tighten up the intellectual property rules and have written
collaboration agreements and have more courses about intellectual safeguards," he said. "In the
1970s, Harvard adopted guidelines against U.S. intelligence trying to recruit foreign students
in an undercover way they didn't become standard practice [across academe, but], I still think
those guidelines are pertinent and colleges would do well to take a second look at them."
"In the idealistic dreamer mode, it would be wonderful if the U.N. or some other
organization would take a look at this issue, and say, 'Can we declare universities off-limits
to espionage?'"
Equating the presence and activities of US intelligence on campuses with that of foreign
intelligence is pretty obtuse moral relativism. US academia and US intelligence alike benefit
from cooperation, and the American people are the winners overall. By the way, is it really
necessary to twice describe this relationship as "cozy"? What does that mean, other to
suggest there's something illicit about it?
It'd be nice if American intelligence was paying a bit more attention to
what goes on in academic research--as far as I can tell, the country
keeps making policies that don't seem particularly well-informed by the
research in relevant areas. Can we get them to infiltrate more labs of
scientists working on climate change or something?
Maybe stick around, engage in some
participant observation and figure that research out? It's not clear they
have any acquaintance with the literature on the causes of war. Really,
pick a place to start, and pay attention.
If you cannot see how a gov't intelligence agency, prohibited from working in the USA by
statute and who is eye-deep in AMERICAN education is wrong, then I am worried. Read history.
Look back to the 1970's to start and to the 1950's with FBI and the military agents in
classrooms; then read about HUAC.
Now, look back to Stalin, Hitler, Franco, Mao, Mussolini
et.al
with THIER use of domestic agencies to impose lock-step thinking and to ferret out
free-thinkers.
Actually, I read quite a bit of history. I also know that US intelligence agencies are not
"prohibited from working in the USA." If they have relationships in academia that remind you
of Stalin, Hitler, etc., how have US agencies "imposed lock-step thinking and ferreted out
free-thinkers?" Hasn't seemed to work, has it? Your concern is overwrought.
"Cozy" might refer to the mutual gains afforded by allowing the federal government to
break many rules (and laws) while conducting their "intelligence operations" in academe. I do
not know if I felt Homeland Security should have had permission to bring to this country,
under false premises supported by ICE and accrediting agencies, thousands of foreign
nationals and employed them at companies like Facebook, Apple, Morgan Stanley and the U.S.
Army. While Homeland Security collected 16K tuition from each of them (and the companies that
hired these F-1s didn't have to pay FICA) all our nation got was arrests of 20 mid level visa
brokers.
Personally, I think cozy was quite complimentary as I would have chosen other words. Just
imagine if there are additional "undercover students" with false credentials in numbers
significant enough to throw off data or stopping universities and colleges from enforcing
rules and regulations. If you set up and accredit a "fake university" and keep the proceeds,
it strikes me as illicit.
And behaving as if the "the presence and activities of US intelligence on campuses" is
something to accept without question is also "obtuse moral relativism". We are talking about
an arrangement wherein a / the most prestigious institutions of higher learning has an
established relationship with the CIA along with some accepted protocol to ongoing
participation.
Whether it is right, wrong, or in between is another matter but please don't
pretend that it's just business as usual and not worthy of deeper investigation.
It is amazing how many biochemists and microbiologists from the People's Republic of China
would e-mail me asking if I had a position in my "lab," touting their bench skills, every
time I published a paper on the federal bioterrorism program, medical civic action programs,
etc.
Never mind that I primarily do health policy and economics work, and have not been near
a lab bench since I returned to school for my doctorate.....anything with a defense or
security application drew a flurry of interest in getting involved.
As a result, I tended to
be very discerning in who I took on as an advisee, if only to protect my security
clearance.
PAr for the course for both UG and grad students from China who have not paid a head
hunter. ANY school or program offering money to international students was flooded by such
inquiries. Get over yourself.
When I started teaching 48 years ago, the president of my college was James Dovonan, Bill
Donovan's (founder of the OSS) brother, portrayed by Tom Hanks in the movie, "Bridge of
Spies."
We had a program in "Tropical Architecture" which enrolled students form "third world"
countries. Rumor was -- --
When I got my Ph.D. from Harvard in 1968, the Shah of Iran got an honorary doctorate at
the same commencement. The next year, by pure coincidence!, he endowed three chairs of Near
Eastern Studies at H.U.
So glad to see they're on campus. Many young people now occupy the CIA; the old "cowboys"
of the Cold War past are gone. U may find this interesting>>
http://osintdaily.blogspot....
Hundreds of government civil servants attend courses at the Kennedy School every year.
That a few of them come from the CIA should be no surprise. It and all the other intelligence
agencies are nothing more than departments within the federal government, just like Veterans
Affairs, Health and Human Services, the FDA, Energy, and so on. Nothing sneaky or suspicious
about any of it. Why anyone with cover credentials would tell the Kennedy School admin that
is beyond me. When I was in cover status, I was in cover status everywhere; to not be was to
blow your cover, period, and was extremely dangerous.
Beyond NIH funded grant-based research, Homeland Security, Energy, Defense, and the
Intelligence Community agencies have long histories of relationships with American academia.
This could be funded research, collaborative research, shared personnel relationships, or all
other manner of cooperation. Sometimes it's fairly well known and sometimes it's kept quiet,
and sometimes it's even classified. But it is much more extensive and expansive than what
Golden describes, and much less "cozy" or suspicious.
For years I have said that it is foolish to look to universities for moral guidance, and
this story is one more instance. In this case, the moral ground is swampy at best, and the
universities do not appear to have spent a lot of time worrying about possible problems as
long as the situation works to their advantage financially.
The key, here, is financially. The bean counters and those whose research is funded don't
look hard at the source of the funding. Just so it keeps coming.
Does Golden discuss at all the way in which the CIA and other intelligence services funnel
money into academic research without the source of the funding ever being revealed? This was
common practice in the 1960s and 1970s, and colleges like MIT were among those involved in
this chicanery.
Remember also how intelligence agency money was behind the journal Encounter?
Lots of propaganda got distributed under the guise of objective social science research.
Where has IHE been for the past several decades? Read Rosenfeld's book, Subversives.....
about the FBI's illegal acts at Berkeley. Or read this, a summary of his book:
https://alumni.berkeley.edu... Or read George R. Stewart, The Year of the Oath.
In the
research for my biography of Stewart I found significant information about CIA presence on
the UC Berkeley campus, in the mid-twentieth century, which reached in to the highest levels
of the administration and led to a network of "professors" recruited by that unAmerican spy
agency.
The oaths, the current gender wars and the conviction by accusation of harassment are
all later attempts to politicize education and turn fiat lux into fiat nox. IHE should be
writing more about that and about the current conviction by sexual accusation, and the effect
of such on free thought and free inquiry.
Indiscriminate spying is a costly and not very efficient operation. The problem of drinking
form a fire hose arise. So a lot of money spend by US, GB and other countries on installation of
such software are wasted. If the user of such computers uses steganography this does not even
allow to detect the targeted activities.
It in not that elimination of Kaspersky software from the US market (due to current
anti-Russia witch hunt) is a big loss. The efficiency of AV program against new threats was
always problematic. But this hysteria points to a larger problem: threat from regular hackers to
your data, especially financial data and access to financial sites. I would say that the
person who does not use two separate computers for browsing and for his financial and other
confidential operations and data is reckless indeed. Now anybody with important
financial data can afford two laptops. A good used, enterprise class, Dell laptop is
around $400.
In Windows each antivirus is simultaneously a backdoor. That's given. So usage by the US
government agencies of foreign AV software was an oversight; and the US government is doing the right
thing to prohibit such usage. Similarly it would be highly irresponsible for, say Russian government, to use MacAfee
software on government computers. Even with large transnational companies there are some tricky problems about
which AV software to use. And that was the problem already understood long ago, say in 1996.
For governments any large AV company represents tremendous asset as for surveillance. Also
intelligence community probably has close understanding of signature updaters and their vulnerabilities
and probably have agents in each of major AV company. And for government AV
signature updates are the best way to install malware on your computer. And much simpler then
hijacking OS updates.
So it is only natural that
AV companies are primary target of intelligence agencies. I remember being very surprised
the McAfee was bought by Intel. Now I know why ;-). In the past some mass deployed AV
companies software (Symantec) as well as Google software (Google bar) were spyware even without
intelligence agencies interference. In a way they were pioneers of mass surveillance.
In no way linux is a panacea. This is another monstrously complex OS with multiple
backdoors, especially on application level (Apache is one recent example). But it will be much
less attacked by non-government hackers. This is true. Security via obscurity does work. Still
if you need security against exfiltration of your data MS DOS and Windows 3.1 are also useful option
(any non-networked computer actually would work; you can exchange data via parallel port too. for
example Total Commander has such an option ).
Notable quotes:
"... The British spy agency regarded the Kaspersky software in particular as a hindrance to its hacking operations and sought a way to neutralize it. ..."
"... An NSA slide describing "Project CAMBERDADA" lists at least 23 antivirus and security firms that were in that spy agency's sights . They include the Finnish antivirus firm F-Secure, the Slovakian firm Eset, Avast software from the Czech Republic. and Bit-Defender from Romania. Notably missing from the list are the American anti-virus firms Symantec and McAfee as well as the UK-based firm Sophos ..."
"... That the NSA and the British GCHQ did not list U.S. and British made anti-virus products on their "to do" list lets one assume that these packages can already be controlled by them. ..."
"... The Kaspersky anti-virus software, which the NSA employee had installed, identified parts of these tools as malware and uploaded them for analysis to the Kapersky's central detection database. The Kaspersky software behaved exactly as it should . Any other anti-virus software behaves similar if it detects a possibly new virus. ..."
"... The only person in the tale who did something illegal was the NSA employee. The case also demonstrates that the NSA continues to have a massive insider security problem. There is no hint in the story to any evidence for its core claim of "Russian hackers". ..."
"... Meanwhile its a well reported established fact that american virus/antimalware corps have allowed the FBI and other agencies to compromize their software with silent signatures - as with Magic Lantern for example (and imagine how far its gone since then) ..."
"... In the network security world there is this concept of a honeypot where you entice/allow the world to attack/invade your honeypot so you can study the tools they use and insure the trail back to them is useful. ..."
The British spy agency regarded the Kaspersky software in particular as a hindrance to its
hacking operations and sought a way to neutralize it.
... An NSA slide describing "Project CAMBERDADA" lists at least 23 antivirus and security firms
that were in that spy agency's sights . They include the Finnish antivirus firm F-Secure, the
Slovakian firm Eset, Avast software from the Czech Republic. and Bit-Defender from Romania.
Notably missing from the list are the American anti-virus firms Symantec and McAfee as well
as the UK-based firm Sophos
That the NSA and the British GCHQ did not list U.S. and British made anti-virus products on
their "to do" list lets one assume that these packages can already be controlled by them.
In February 2015 Kaspersky
announced that it found U.S. and UK government spying and sabotage software infecting
computers in various foreign countries. Later that year the CIA and FBI tried to recruit
Kaspersky employees but were warned off. In June 2015 Kaspersky Lab detected a breach in its
own systems by an Israeli government malware. It published an
extensive autopsy of the breach and the malware programs used in it.
That the U.S. government now attempts to damage Kaspersky is likely a sign that Kaspersky
products continue to be a hard-target that the NSA and GCHQ find difficult to breach.
To justify the campaign against Kaspersky, which began in May, U.S. officials recently
started to provide a series of cover stories. A diligent reading of these stories reveals
inconsistencies and a lack of logic. On October 5 the Wall Street Journal reported: Russian
Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense :
Hackers working for the Russian government stole details of how the U.S. penetrates foreign
computer networks and defends against cyberattacks after a National Security Agency
contractor removed the highly classified material and put it on his home computer, according
to multiple people with knowledge of the matter.
The hackers appear to have targeted the contractor after identifying the files through the
contractor's use of a popular antivirus software made by Russia-based Kaspersky Lab, these
people said.
A NSA employee copied code of top-secret NSA spy tools and put it on his private computer.
("It's just that he was trying to complete the mission, and he needed the tools to do it." said
'one person familiar with the case'
to WaPo.)
The Kaspersky anti-virus software, which the NSA employee had installed, identified parts of
these tools as malware and uploaded them for analysis to the Kapersky's central detection
database. The Kaspersky software behaved exactly as it should . Any
other anti-virus software behaves similar if it detects a possibly new virus.
The "multiple people with knowledge of the matter" talking to the WSJ seem to allege that
this was a "Russian hacker" breach of NSA code. But nothing was hacked. If the story is
correct, the Kaspersky tool was legally installed and worked as it should. The only person in
the tale who did something illegal was the NSA employee. The case also demonstrates that the
NSA continues to have a massive insider security problem. There is no hint in the story to any
evidence for its core claim of "Russian hackers".
The incident occurred in 2015 but wasn't discovered until spring of last year , said the
people familiar with the matter."
The stolen material included details about how the NSA penetrates foreign computer
networks, the computer code it uses for such spying and how it defends networks inside the
U.S., these people said.
If the last sentence is true the employee must have had top access to multiple NSA
programs.
It was a case of spies watching spies watching spies: Israeli intelligence officers looked on
in real time as Russian government hackers searched computers around the world for the code
names of American intelligence programs.
What gave the Russian hacking, detected more than two years ago , such global reach was
its improvised search tool -- antivirus software made by a Russian company, Kaspersky Lab,
...
The Israeli officials who had hacked into Kaspersky's own network alerted the United
States to the broad Russian intrusion, which has not been previously reported, leading to a
decision just last month to order Kaspersky software removed from government computers.
The Russian operation, described by multiple people who have been briefed on the matter,
is known to have stolen classified documents from a National Security Agency employee who had
improperly stored them on his home computer.
The Washington Post
version of the story is remarkable different. Unlike the NYT it does not claim any Russian
government involvement in Kaspersky systems:
In 2015, Israeli government hackers saw something suspicious in the computers of a
Moscow-based cybersecurity firm : hacking tools that could only have come from the National
Security Agency.
Israel notified the NSA, where alarmed officials immediately began a hunt for the breach,
according to people familiar with the matter, who said an investigation by the agency
revealed that the tools were in the possession of the Russian government
Israeli spies had found the hacking material on the network of Kaspersky Lab ...
While the NYT asserts that the Russian government had access to the Kaspersky systems, the
Washington Post does not assert that at all.
The NYT claims that the Israelis alerted the NSA of Russian government knowledge of its
tools while WaPo says that it was the NSA itself that found this out. That Israel alerts the
NSA when it has its hands on a valuable source that reveals NSA tools is not believable. There
is no love lost between Israeli and U.S. spy agencies. They spy on eachother whenever
they can with even
deadly consequences .
The NYT story is based on "current and former government officials", not on the usual " U.S.
officials". It might well be that Israeli spies are spinning the NYT tale.
We already knew that the Israeli government had in 2015 breached some Kaspersky systems.
Kaspersky Lab itself alarmed the public about it and provided an extensive forensic
report.
There are several important questions that the above quote stories do not ask:
If the Israelis detected NSA malware in the hand of the Russian government "more than two
years ago" (NYT) how come that the NSA hole was only found in 2016 (WSJ)? Did the Israelis use
their claimed knowledge for a year without alarming their "allies" at the NSA? Why?
And why would the detection of alleged Russian government intrusion into Kaspersky products
lead to a ban of these products only in fall 2017?
If the story were true the NSA should have reacted immediately. All Kaspersky products
should have been banned from U.S. government systems as soon as the problem was known. The NSA
allowed the Russian government, for more than a year, to sniff through all systems of the more
than two dozen American government agencies (including the military) which use the Kaspersky
products? That does not make sense.
These recently provided stories stink. There is no evidence provided for the assertions
therein. They make the false claim that the NSA employees computer was "hacked". Their
timelines make no sense. If not complete fantasies they are likely to be heavily spun to
achieve a specific goal: to justify the banning of Kaspersky products from U.S. markets.
I regard these stories as part of "blame Russia" campaign that is used by the
military-industrial complex to justify new defense spending. They may also be useful in
removing a good security product that the NSA failed to breach from the "western" markets.
Computers are dirt cheap these days. My first Mac cost me $3000 and the first clone PC I
built cost me $1500. Today, I can buy a super-duper-anti-pooper PC device for $500. Hell
folks, that is cheaper than an Iphone...
Use one computer for your critical work that has no internet connection, or use an old PC
that has no network card. The OS may be uncool by today's standards, but the dang business
software has hardly changed - just gotten more bloated with features.
Have one computer for exposure to wild viruses and all that crap, and another you can rely
on. Move files one-way using cheap, new memory sticks.
My old PC runs the last version of Windows NT - and never crashes or locks up. It uses MS
Office from that period, and the files are still readable by newer products.
My outward looking computer is either a Mac or a Linux box. I only transfer sensitive
files one-way - from isolated to unisolated. Periodically, I toss the hard drive and pop in a
new one. My 'sensitive' stuff is miniscule, as I don't work in the military or spook world.
It's patent stuff.
And run Kaspersky - it works and the other's don't. Unless you are working on sensitive
government crap, do you really even care if Russians can fish a few of your files? Do most
people have PLC devices hung off their computers that stuxnet things can access?
If you have Alexa and other IoT crap - get rid of it because they are gadgets that have
more downside than upside. Do you TRULY need a talking fridge? A washer you can turn on with
your phone? A talking link to Google?
I don't care if the alphabet guys get my files - because they aren't of use to them. Most
of the guys working at the alphabet agencies are spending their time on porno anyway or
looking for blackmail files and images - which is why they can't seem to ever do anything
useful except maybe foul a keyboard irretrievably.
It's hilarious to me that so much effort is put into all this when the old school ways of
passing notes and talking are such simple workarounds, IF you are truly wanting privacy and
fear for your precious files.
Isn't it to little to late for a payback, since it's been 5+ years since Kaspersky Labs
discovered and
revealed who is behind Stuxnet and Flame? Nah, this one smells more of a good
ole-fashioned fascist market protectionism where you simply ban "those vile Russians" from a
large portion of the market. Of course, all in context of the Empire's ongoing Blame
Russia! campaign.
Linux doesn't have many viruses - instead it has all manner of extremely dangerous 0-day bugs
that can be exploited, plus a multitude of open source library vulnerabilities and channel
attacks.
I was at a presentation by Paul Vixie - one of the 2 people who first proclaimed open source
as the best way to product good and secure products 10 years ago. He's Internet Hall of Fame,
ICANN Security Board, etc.
He no longer believes that for this reason: 10 years ago, there were 50 million lines of open
source code, and you could rely that it was reviewed regularly and reasonably widely.
Today there are 50 billion lines of open source code, and the majority is never reviewed by
anybody.
If you really want to go secure: don't use email. Don't use the internet. Just use your
computer with no outside connection. Of course, you can't read Moon of Alabama, either - a
fantastic way to nail all you paranoid types would be to watering hole attack this site.
As for the story: it is believable that one or more spy agencies hacked into Kaspersky's
systems.
What again is not being said is whether Kaspersky was actively participating or abetting this
activity.
While banning Kaspersky from US government and military isn't completely nonsensical, the
reality is that *all* AV and other type of security products - any ones which auto update
include FireEye, Palo Alto, Symantec, Microsoft and so forth all have the same vulnerability:
The ability to access all data on a computer is an inherent ability to spy.
Meanwhile its a well reported established fact that american virus/antimalware corps have
allowed the FBI and other agencies to compromize their software with silent signatures - as
with Magic
Lantern for example (and imagine how far its gone since then)
With such subservience by the corporations anything is possible with whats been buried in
these closed source systems.
I'm pretty sure the US establishment never accuses anyone of something if they aren't
already themselves doing the same in the extreme.
What you say may be correct in the most part. However, is it better to run an OS where
there is a possibility of someone reviewing the code to improve it or run an OS where the
vulnerabilities are intentionally left in the OS at the behest of the three-lettered agencies
? Only one choice gives the possibility of security even if it is remote.
The greater problem is the lack of maturity in so much of the software on Linux.
@Steve #11
I guess you didn't read far enough into Vixie's comment: No one is reviewing the code - there
is just too much.
Apache is an enormously widely used Linux platform with presumably an optimal reviewer
population - it has millions of installs worldwide and is used from huge corporations to
individuals, yet the Struts bug was also enormous (allows someone to remotely run code on any
Apache server via a command line in a browser).
From my view as a security professional: I'd rather have a platform where there are
thousands to tens of thousands of people actively trying to improve its security as opposed
to one where there might be a few hundred.
The reality is that iOS, for example, is far more secure than Android.
iOS is not open source, Android is.
But the relative security has nothing to do with open sourcedness - it has to do with the
architects of iOS continuously adding capabilities to make it more secure. iOS was the first
widespread OS to use signed firmware updates - which is why jailbreaking an iPhone is so much
harder than it used to be.
Despite that, there are still vulns which the 3 letter agencies likely know about and
use.
That doesn't change the overall fact that iOS is more secure than Android and will be for
the foreseeable future, because Android simply doesn't do all the things iOS can (and does)
do.
If your concern is 3 letter agencies, then you need to create your own OS.
If your concern is overall security except for the 3 letter agencies, open source is *not*
the way.
And lest you think I'm an Apple fanboi - I am not. I don't use iOS/iPhone/OSX or any of
the Apple products for reasons outside of security. It doesn't mean I do not recognize the
reality, however.
Well sure if the NSA or some super-hacker specifically targets your machine, you will get
owned (unless you invest in some kind of cyber Fort Knox, and are very lucky as well). These
people who rant that Linus is "unsafe" are 100% full of it. In the end NOTHING is "safe". But
Linux has astonishing advantages! Pay no heed to those naysayers!
I could write a book about how colossally dreadful Microsoft Windows is.
The BSD systems were clunky as hell so far.
So that leaves Linux. Big Problem: 98% of the Linuxes out there have been coerced into
adopting "systemd" (yikes!). This is an allegedly open source (so it might be "audited" for
trap doors and such) giant blob of 500,000+ lines of code (!) that has sneakily been
infiltrated into 98% of the Linux distributions (distros) by the Red Hat Corporation and
their NSA buddies. Obviously no one is ever going to "audit" it!
This Windows-like monster
infests all of the Ubuntu and Linux Mint brand distros. The real question becomes "how many
teams are you going to trust?"
Presumably the easiest distro to install and use "designed for home computer users" is
Devuan based, systemd-free "Refracta Linux": https://sourceforge.net/projects/refracta/files/isohybrid/
(I suggest ONLY the "refracta8.3_xfce_amd64-20170305_0250.iso" version for modern
machines.)
You can "unlock" the upper panel, and move it to the bottom with the mouse.
You have to launch Konqueror five seconds before Firefox or it will crash :(
My very best alternative is the systemd-free "Void Linux": https://repo.voidlinux.eu/live/current/
(I suggest ONLY the "void-live-x86_64-20171007-xfce.iso" version for most modern
machines.)
I think Void Linux is just as nice as Refracta Linux, and they have different available
programs (but they can work together) but it requires a bit more Linux chops to install. I
needed to get the "live DVD file" GParted, which is a free partition editor DVD that you can
burn yourself for free: http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Administration/GParted-3725.shtml
I had to create a "MS-DOS"-style primary ext4 partition (could be between 80 to 200 GiB)
with "boot" flag set, and a 20 GiB "Linux swap partition" with GParted before the install
(may have to fiddle with the "BIOS" first). Then insert the Void DVD, open the "command
window" and type "void-install". At some point the options look hopeless, but continue, and
when it starts to repeat go back and back and continue on to completion. It's a BEAUTIFUL
system! Have TWO passwords ready to use before starting (any Linux install) -- they might be
of the form: "hermitcabbagetorus
I would get a book(s) about Linux. Maybe "Linux Cookbook" from Alibris. This will all
prove to be VERY MUCH WORTH THE THE TROUBLE as time goes on!
In the network security world there is this concept of a honeypot where you entice/allow the
world to attack/invade your honeypot so you can study the tools they use and insure the trail
back to them is useful.
If I were a security vendor I would set up a honeypot that looked like my business as
simply one of many best practices. It is a great way to learn what others are doing while
honing your skills at staying secure and invisible to potential perps.
If I had to wade into the "which OS is more secure" discussion I would just note that,
IMO, in the long run open source is going to win the war world wide for most stuff but there
will always be room for proprietary OS's and application software.
What a great waste of taxpayers dollars. After Stuxnet any government that cares about
secrecy does not use open, connected to internet networks for sensitive information. Some switched
to typewriters, at least for highly sensitive operations, which is probably overkill. but good,
old DOS can still be used to above NSA spook pretty much like typewriter; and communication
via parallel port is not that easy to hack; UUCP is also pretty much available for serial port
communication ;-)
But the effect on undermining the US software and hardware sales is overwhelming. Why
anybody in foreign government would buy the US hardware or software, when it is clear that NSA can
put a backdoor into both "before arrival". In this sense the game is over and net beneficiary
might be Taiwanese and other East Asia firms as China is suspect too.
To say nothing about the effects of the US consumers and business when those tools are
incorporated by criminal hacking groups into commercial malware. And this is a real dnager
of NSA activities. Boomerang tends to return. And the security culture in most US
companies (including government security contractors) is simply rudimentary or non existent. In no
way they can withstand the attack of NSA tools. The sordid take of Hillary shadow IT and "bathroom
server" is actually not an exception. Creation of "Shadow IT" is pretty common in fossilized
and over-bureaucratized US enterprise It world.
Moreover operations like "Its operations that violate sovereignty of other nations, like
digging
into China's networks , developing
the tools British spies used to break into Belgium's largest telecom, and hacking
sections of the Mexican government " are clearly criminal, and are possible only due
to the status of the USA as a sole of superpower. But they can result is some shipment of arms to
anti-USA factions as a state-to-state retaliation. Moreover "There is no honor among
thieves" and sharing of this information should be assumed is always larger then
intended.
Like drone strikes they inflame anti-Americanism and has constrained U.S. foreign policy
options in ways that civilian and military planners neither imagined nor anticipated.
Last week, multiple outlets reported that the NSA's elite Tailored Access Operations unit --
tasked with breaking into foreign networks -- suffered another serious data breach. The theft
of computer code and other material by an employee in 2015 allowed the Russian government to
more easily detect U.S. cyber operations, according to the Washington Post. It's potentially
the fourth large scale incident at the NSA to be revealed in the last five years.
Now, multiple sources with direct knowledge of TAO's security procedures in the recent past
tell The Daily Beast just how porous some of the defenses were to keep workers from stealing
sensitive information -- either digitally or by simply walking out of the front door with
it.
One source described removing data from a TAO facility as "child's play." The Daily Beast
granted the sources anonymity to talk candidly about the NSA's security practices.
TAO is not your average band of hackers. Its operations have included digging
into China's networks , developing
the tools British spies used to break into Belgium's largest telecom, and hacking
sections of the Mexican government . While other parts of the NSA may focus on tapping
undersea cables or prying data from Silicon Valley giants, TAO is the tip of the NSA's
offensive hacking spear, and could have access to much more sensitive information ripped from
adversaries' closed networks. The unit deploys and creates sophisticated exploits that rely on
vulnerabilities in routers, operating systems, and computer hardware the general population
uses -- the sort of tools that could wreak havoc if they fell into the wrong hands.
That doesn't mean those tools are locked down, though. "TAO specifically had a huge amount
of latitude to move data between networks," the first source, who worked at the unit after
Edward Snowden's mega-leak, said. The former employee said TAO limited the number of USB drives
-- which could be used to steal data -- after that 2013 breach, but he still had used several
while working at TAO.
"Most operators knew how they could get anything they wanted out of the classified nets and
onto the internet if they wanted to, even without the USB drives," the former TAO employee
said.
A second source, who also worked at TAO, told The Daily Beast, "most of the security was
your co-workers checking to see that you had your badge on you at all times."
The NSA -- and recently TAO in particular -- have suffered a series of catastrophic data
breaches. On top of the Snowden incident and this newly-scrutinized 2015 breach, NSA contractor
Hal Martin allegedly hoarded a trove of computer code and documents from the NSA and other
agencies in the U.S. Intelligence Community. Martin worked with TAO, and he ended up storing
the material in his car and residence, according to prosecutors. Like Snowden, Martin was a
contractor and not an employee of the NSA, as was Reality Winner, who allegedly leaked a
top-secret report about Russian interference in the U.S. election to news site The
Intercept.
Then there's the incident now in the news. Israeli operatives broke into the systems of the
Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, officials told The Washington Post. On those systems
were samples of sophisticated NSA hacking tools; a TAO employee had brought them home and
placed them on his home computer. That machine was running Kasperky software, which allegedly
sent the NSA tools back to Moscow.
It's not totally clear how the breach overlaps with any others, but in 2016,
a group called The Shadow Brokers started publishing full NSA exploit and tool code.
Various hackers went on to incorporate a number of the dumped exploits in their own campaigns,
including some designed to break into computers and mine digital currency, as well as the
WannaCry ransomware, which crippled tens of thousands of computers around the world. (A handful
of other, smaller NSA-related disclosures, including a catalogue of TAO hacking gear from 2007
and 2008, as well as intelligence intercepts, were not attributed to the Snowden documents, and
the public details around where that information came from are muddy.)
Although not a data breach per se, in 2015 Kaspersky publicly revealed details on the
history and tools of the so-called Equation Group, which is widely believed to be part of the
NSA. A third source, who worked directly with TAO, said the fallout from that exposure meant
the hacking unit entered a "significant shutdown," and "ran on minimum ops for months."
Nevertheless, a report by the Defense Department's inspector general completed in 2016 found
that the NSA's "Secure the Net" project -- which aimed to restrict access to its most sensitive
data after the Snowden breach -- fell short of its stated aims. The NSA did introduce some
improvements, but it didn't effectively reduce the number of user accounts with 'privileged'
access, which provide more avenues into sensitive data than normal users, nor fully implement
technology to oversee these accounts' activities, the report reads.
Physical security wasn't much better, at least at one TAO operator's facility. He told The
Daily Beast that there were "no bag checks or anything" as employees and contractors left work
for the day -- meaning, it was easy smuggle things home. Metal detectors were present,
including before Snowden, but "nobody cared what came out," the second source added. The third
source, who visited TAO facilities, said bag checks were random and weak.
"If you have a thumb drive in your pocket, it's going to get out," they said.
Unsurprisingly, workers need to swipe keycards to access certain rooms. But, "in most cases,
it's pretty easy to get into those rooms without swipe access if you just knock and say who
you're trying to see," the third source added.
To be clear, The Daily Beast's sources described the state of security up to 2015 -- not
today. Things may have improved since then. And, of course, the NSA and TAO do of course have
an array of security protections in place. TAO operators are screened and people on campus are
already going to have a high level clearance, some of the sources stressed. The part of the NSA
network that TAO uses, and which contains the unit's tools, can only be accessed by those with
a designated account, according to the source who worked with TAO. Two of the sources believed
in the NSA's ability to track down where a file came from after a breach.
Indeed, the system TAO members use to download their hacking tools for operations has become
more heavily audited over the years too, although the network did have a known security issue,
in which users could make their own account and automatically gain access to additional
information, the source who worked with TAO said.
"The NSA operates in one of the most complicated IT environments in the world," an NSA
spokesperson told The Daily Beast in a statement. "Over the past several years, we have
continued to build on internal security improvements while carrying out the mission to defend
the nation and our allies."
"We do not rely on only one initiative. Instead, we have undertaken a comprehensive and
layered set of defensive measures to further safeguard operations and advance best practices,"
the spokesperson added.
The problem of securing this data from the inside is not an easy one to solve. If the NSA
was to lock down TAO systems more ferociously, that could hamper TAO's ability to effectively
build tools and capabilities in the first place, and two of the sources emphasised that
excessive searches would likely create a recruiting problem for the agency. "It's not prison,"
one of the former TAO employees said.
"The security is all predicated on you having a clearance and being trusted," the source who
has worked with TAO said.
"The system is just not setup to protect against someone with a clearance who is determined
to go rogue," they added.
"... "Israeli intelligence has developed a predictive policing system – a computer algorithm – that analyzes social media posts to identify Palestinian "suspects." " ..."
How to fix it? I don't know – maybe the internet . . . that is also a big IF
– since there is so much on the internet which is just trash and lacks any sort of
serious vetting.
The Israeli algorithm criminalizing Palestinians for online dissent Oct 4 2017
"Israeli intelligence has developed a predictive policing system – a computer
algorithm – that analyzes social media posts to identify Palestinian "suspects."
"
The intelligence division
at the Treasury
Department has repeatedly and systematically violated domestic surveillance laws by
snooping on the private financial records of US citizens and companies, according to
government sources.
Over the past year, at least a dozen employees in another
branch of the Treasury Department, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, have
warned officials and Congress that US citizens' and residents' banking and financial
data has been illegally searched and stored. And the breach, some sources said,
extended to other intelligence agencies, such as the National Security Agency, whose
officers used the Treasury's intelligence division as an illegal back door to gain
access to American citizens' financial records. The NSA said that any allegations
that it "is operating outside of its authorities and knowingly violating U.S.
persons' privacy and civil liberties is categorically false."
In response to detailed questions, the Treasury Department at first issued a
one-sentence reply stating that its various branches "operate in a manner consistent
with applicable legal authorities." Several hours after this story published, the
department issued a more forceful
denial
: "The BuzzFeed story is flat out wrong. An unsourced suggestion that an
office within Treasury is engaged in illegal spying on Americans is unfounded and
completely off-base." It added that "OIA and FinCEN share important information and
operate within the bounds of statute."
Still, the Treasury Department's Office of the Inspector General said it has
launched a review of the issue. Rich Delmar, a lawyer in that office, offered no
further comment.
But a senior Treasury official, who is not authorized to speak on the matter so
requested anonymity, did not mince words: "This is domestic spying."
Sources said the spying had been going on under President Barack Obama, but the
Donald Trump appointees who now control how the department conducts intelligence
operations are Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Under Secretary for Terrorism
and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelker.
At issue is the collection and dissemination of information from a vast database
of mostly US citizens' banking and financial records that banks turn over to the
government each day. Banks and other financial institutions are required, under the
Bank Secrecy Act
of 1970, to report suspicious transactions and cash transactions over $10,000. The
database is maintained by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or
FinCEN
, a bank regulator charged with
combatting money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes. Under
the law, it has unfettered powers to peruse and retain the data.
In contrast to FinCEN, Treasury's intelligence division, known as the Office of
Intelligence and Analysis, or OIA, is charged with monitoring suspicious financial
activity that occurs outside the US. Under a seminal Reagan-era executive order, a
line runs through the Treasury Department and all other federal agencies separating
law enforcement, which targets domestic crimes, from intelligence agencies, which
focus on foreign threats and can surveil US citizens only in limited ways and by
following stringent guidelines.
FinCEN officials have accused their counterparts at OIA, an intelligence unit, of
violating this separation by illegally collecting and retaining domestic financial
information from the banking database. Some sources have also charged that OIA
analysts have, in a further legal breach, been calling up financial institutions to
make inquiries about individual bank accounts and transactions involving US citizens.
Sources said the banks have complied with the requests because they are under the
impression they are giving the information to FinCEN, which they are required to do.
One source recalled an instance from 2016 in which OIA personnel, inserting
themselves into a domestic money-laundering case, sought information from a Delaware
financial institution. In other cases, according to a second source, FinCEN gave OIA
reports with the names of US citizens and companies blacked out. OIA obtained those
names by calling the banks, then used those names to search the banking database for
more information on those American citizens and firms.
"This is such an invasion of privacy." -- Treasury Department official
Sources also claimed that OIA has opened a back door to officers from other
intelligence agencies throughout the government, including the the CIA and the
Defense Intelligence Agency. Officials from those agencies have been coming to work
at OIA for short periods of time, sometimes for as little as a week, and thereby
getting unrestricted access to information on US citizens that they otherwise could
not collect without strict oversight.
"This is such an invasion of privacy," said another Treasury Department official,
who, lacking authorization to speak on the matter, asked not to be named. This person
predicted that banks "would lose their minds" if they knew that their customers'
records were being used by government intelligence officers who did not have the
legal authority to do so.
The Defense Intelligence Agency did not respond to a request for comment. CIA
spokesman Dean Boyd said, "Suggestions that the Agency may be improperly collecting
and retaining US persons data through the mechanisms you described are completely
inaccurate."
Sources claimed the unauthorized inspection and possession of Americans' financial
data have been going on for years but only became controversial in 2016, when
officials at FinCEN learned about it and began objecting. Early last year, Treasury's
Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, which oversees OIA, proposed
transferring much of FinCEN's work to OIA.
In a bureaucratic turf war, FinCEN officials objected to the proposal, which would
have shifted numerous employees and a portion of FinCEN's budget to OIA. They
said
the move was illegal without prior approval from Congress.
For some of President Trump's staunchest allies, reports that former campaign chairman Paul
Manafort was under U.S. surveillance are nothing short of vindication of the president's
widely-dismissed claims that former President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
... ... ...
Longtime advisor Roger Stone has gleefully circulated a segment from Tucker Carlson's show
on Fox News in which the host says "all those patronizing assurances that nobody is spying on
political campaigns were false" and "it looks like Trump's tweet may have been right."
... ... ...
A spokesperson for Manafort, Jason Maloni, has characterized the court orders as an abuse of
power by the Obama administration, which he says wanted to spy on a political
opponent.
"It's unclear if Paul Manafort was the objective," Maloni told The Journal.
"Perhaps the real objective was Donald Trump."
Surveillance experts are skeptical of that suggestion. For one thing, it is illegal for
investigators to "reverse target" a U.S. person by spying on a person with whom they know their
true target to be in communication.
If the president were in fact the oblique target of government surveillance - either as a
candidate or as the president-elect - both Eddington and Shedd say, it would have been so
explosive that it would have almost certainly been leaked to the press.
... ... ...
The disclosure of the warrants targeting Manafort have drawn legitimate
scrutiny as a violation of Manafort's civil liberties and a possible criminal leak - the mere
existence of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, warrant is classified.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who first raised alarm about
the practice of "unmasking" the names of Americans caught up in government surveillance, is
currently under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly exposing classified
information when he disclosed his findings to reporters.
"... In addition to funding Bellingcat and joint ventures with the CIA, Brin's Google is heavily invested in Crowdstrike, an American cybersecurity technology firm based in Irvine, California. ..."
"... Crowdstrike is the main "source" of the "Russians hacked the DNC" story. ..."
"... Allegations of Russian perfidy are routinely issued by private companies with lucrative US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts. The companies claiming to protect the nation against "threats" have the ability to manufacture "threats". ..."
"... US offensive cyber operations have emphasized political coercion and opinion shaping, shifting public perception in NATO countries as well as globally in ways favorable to the US, and to create a sense of unease and distrust among perceived adversaries such as Russia and China. ..."
"... The Snowden revelations made it clear that US offensive cyber capabilities can and have been directed both domestically and internationally. The notion that US and NATO cyber operations are purely defensive is a myth. ..."
"... The perception that a foreign attacker may have infiltrated US networks, is monitoring communications, and perhaps considering even more damaging actions, can have a disorienting effect. ..."
"... In the world of US "hybrid warfare" against Russia, offensive cyber operations work in tandem with NATO propaganda efforts, perhaps best exemplified by the "online investigation" antics of the Atlantic Council's Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcat disinformation site. ..."
There is no reason to assume that the trollish rants of "Voytenko" are from some outraged flag-waving
"patriot" in Kiev. There are plenty of other "useful idiots" ready, willing and able to make mischief.
For example, about a million Jews emigrated to Israel ("made Aliyah") from the post-Soviet
states during the 1990s. Some 266,300 were Ukrainian Jews. A large number of Ukrainian Jews also
emigrated to the United States during this period. For example, out of an estimated 400 thousand
Russian-speaking Jews in Metro New York, the largest number (thirty-six percent) hail from Ukraine.
Needless to say, many among them are not so well disposed toward the nations of Russia or Ukraine,
and quite capable of all manner of mischief.
A particularly "useful idiot" making mischief the days is Sergey Brin of Google. Brin's parents
were graduates of Moscow State University who emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1979 when their
son was five years old.
Google, the company that runs the most visited website in the world, the company that owns
YouTube, is very snugly in bed with the US military-industrial-surveillance complex.
In fact, Google was seed funded by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA). The company now enjoys lavish "partnerships" with military contractors like SAIC,
Northrop Grumman and Blackbird.
Google's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make
it universally accessible and useful".
In a 2004 letter prior to their initial public offering, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey
Brin explained their "Don't be evil" culture required objectivity and an absence of bias: "We
believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not
only to the information people pay for you to see."
The corporate giant appears to have replaced the original motto altogether. A carefully reworded
version appears in the Google Code of Conduct: "You can make money without doing evil".
This new gospel allows Google and its "partners" to make money promoting propaganda and engaging
in surveillance, and somehow manage to not "be evil". That's "post-truth" logic for you.
Indeed, a very cozy cross-promotion is happening between Google and Bellingcat.
In November 2014, Google Ideas and Google For Media, partnered the George Soros-funded Organised
Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) to host an "Investigathon" in New York City. Google
Ideas promoted Higgins' "War and Pieces: Social Media Investigations" song and dance via their
YouTube page.
Higgins constantly insists that Bellingcat "findings" are "reaffirmed" by accessing imagery
in Google Earth.
Google Earth, originally called EarthViewer 3D, was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) funded company acquired by Google in 2004. Google Earth uses satellite images provided
by the company Digital Globe, a supplier of the US Department of Defense (DoD) with deep connections
to both the military and intelligence communities.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is both a combat support agency under the
United States Department of Defense, and an intelligence agency of the United States Intelligence
Community. Robert T. Cardillo, director of the NGA, lavishly praised Digital Globe as "a true
mission partner in every sense of the word". Examination of the Board of Directors of Digital
Globe reveals intimate connections to DoD and CIA.
Google has quite the history of malicious behavior. In what became known as the "Wi-Spy" scandal,
it was revealed that Google had been collecting hundreds of gigabytes of payload data, including
personal and sensitive information. First names, email addresses, physical addresses, and a conversation
between two married individuals planning an extra-marital affair were all cited by the FCC. In
a 2012 settlement, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Google will pay $22.5 million for
overriding privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser. Though it was the largest civil penalty
the Federal Trade Commission had ever imposed for violating one of its orders, the penalty as
little more than symbolic for a company that had $2.8 billion in earnings the previous quarter.
Google is a joint venture partner with the CIA. In 2009, Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel invested
"under $10 million each" into Recorded Future shortly after the company was founded. The company
developed technology that strips information from web pages, blogs, and Twitter accounts.
In addition to funding Bellingcat and joint ventures with the CIA, Brin's Google is heavily
invested in Crowdstrike, an American cybersecurity technology firm based in Irvine, California.
Crowdstrike is the main "source" of the "Russians hacked the DNC" story.
Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, is a Senior Fellow
at the Atlantic Council "regime change" think tank. Alperovitz said that Crowdstrike has "high
confidence" it was "Russian hackers". "But we don't have hard evidence," Alperovitch admitted
in a June 16, 2016 Washington Post interview.
Allegations of Russian perfidy are routinely issued by private companies with lucrative
US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts. The companies claiming to protect the nation against
"threats" have the ability to manufacture "threats".
The US and UK possess elite cyber capabilities for both cyberspace espionage and offensive
operations.
Both the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ) are intelligence agencies with a long history of supporting military operations. US military
cyber operations are the responsibility of US Cyber Command, whose commander is also the head
of the NSA.
US offensive cyber operations have emphasized political coercion and opinion shaping, shifting
public perception in NATO countries as well as globally in ways favorable to the US, and to create
a sense of unease and distrust among perceived adversaries such as Russia and China.
The Snowden revelations made it clear that US offensive cyber capabilities can and have
been directed both domestically and internationally. The notion that US and NATO cyber operations
are purely defensive is a myth.
Recent US domestic cyber operations have been used for coercive effect, creating uncertainty
and concern within the American government and population.
The perception that a foreign attacker may have infiltrated US networks, is monitoring
communications, and perhaps considering even more damaging actions, can have a disorienting effect.
In the world of US "hybrid warfare" against Russia, offensive cyber operations work in
tandem with NATO propaganda efforts, perhaps best exemplified by the "online investigation" antics
of the Atlantic Council's Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcat disinformation site.
Abe , September 16, 2017 at 1:58 pm
Higgins and Bellingcat receives direct funding from the Open Society Foundations (OSF) founded
by business magnate George Soros, and from Google's Digital News Initiatives (DNI).
Google's 2017 DNI Fund Annual Report describes Higgins as "a world–leading expert in news verification".
In their zeal to propagate the story of Higgins as a courageous former "unemployed man" now
busy independently "Codifying social conflict data", Google neglects to mention Higgins' role
as a "research fellow" for the NATO-funded Atlantic Council "regime change" think tank.
Despite their claims of "independent journalism", Eliot Higgins and the team of disinformation
operatives at Bellingcat depend on the Atlantic Council to promote their "online investigations".
The Atlantic Council donors list includes:
– US government and military entities: US State Department, US Air Force, US Army, US Marines.
– The NATO military alliance
– Large corporations and major military contractors: Chevron, Google, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon,
BP, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Northrup Grumman, SAIC, ConocoPhillips, and Dow Chemical
– Foreign governments: United Arab Emirates (UAE; which gives the think tank at least $1 million),
Kingdom of Bahrain, City of London, Ministry of Defense of Finland, Embassy of Latvia, Estonian
Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Defense of Georgia
– Other think tanks and think tankers: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS),
Nicolas Veron of Bruegel (formerly at PIIE), Anne-Marie Slaughter (head of New America Foundation),
Michele Flournoy (head of Center for a New American Security), Center for Middle East Policy at
Brookings Institution.
Higgins is a Research Associate of the Department of War Studies at King's College, and was
principal co-author of the Atlantic Council "reports" on Ukraine and Syria.
Damon Wilson, Executive Vice President of Programs and Strategy at the Atlantic Council, a
co-author with Higgins of the report, effusively praised Higgins' effort to bolster anti-Russian
propaganda:
Wilson stated, "We make this case using only open source, all unclassified material. And none
of it provided by government sources. And it's thanks to works, the work that's been pioneered
by human rights defenders and our partner Eliot Higgins, uh, we've been able to use social media
forensics and geolocation to back this up." (see Atlantic Council video presentation minutes 35:10-36:30)
However, the Atlantic Council claim that "none" of Higgins' material was provided by government
sources is an obvious lie.
Higgins' primary "pieces of evidence" are a video depicting a Buk missile launcher and a set
of geolocation coordinates that were supplied by the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) and the
Ukrainian Ministry of Interior via the Facebook page of senior-level Ukrainian government official
Arsen Avakov, the Minister of Internal Affairs.
Higgins and the Atlantic Council are working in support of the Pentagon and Western intelligence's
"hybrid war" against Russia.
The laudatory bio of Higgins on the Kings College website specifically acknowledges his service
to the Atlantic Council:
"an award winning investigative journalist and publishes the work of an international alliance
of fellow investigators using freely available online information. He has helped inaugurate open-source
and social media investigations by trawling through vast amounts of data uploaded constantly on
to the web and social media sites. His inquiries have revealed extraordinary findings, including
linking the Buk used to down flight MH17 to Russia, uncovering details about the August 21st 2013
Sarin attacks in Damascus, and evidencing the involvement of the Russian military in the Ukrainian
conflict. Recently he has worked with the Atlantic Council on the report "Hiding in Plain Sight",
which used open source information to detail Russia's military involvement in the crisis in Ukraine."
While it honors Higgins' enthusiastic "trawling", King's College curiously neglects to mention
that Higgins' "findings" on the Syian sarin attacks were thoroughly debunked.
King's College also curiously neglects to mention the fact that Higgins, now listed as a Senior
Fellow at the Atlantic Council's "Future Europe Initiative", was principal co-author of the April
2016 Atlantic Council "report" on Syria.
The report's other key author was John E. Herbst, United States Ambassador to Ukraine from
September 2003 to May 2006 (the period that became known as the Orange Revolution) and Director
of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center.
Other report authors include Frederic C. Hof, who served as Special Adviser on Syrian political
transition to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2012. Hof was previously the Special Coordinator
for Regional Affairs in the US Department of State's Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East
Peace, where he advised Special Envoy George Mitchel. Hof had been a Resident Senior Fellow in
the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East since November 2012, and assumed
the position as Director in May 2016.
There is no daylight between the "online investigations" of Higgins and Bellingcat and the
"regime change" efforts of the NATO-backed Atlantic Council.
Thanks to the Atlantic Council, Soros, and Google, it's a pretty well-funded gig for fake "citizen
investigative journalist" Higgins.
"... add Bush. Glenn Greenwald on John Brennan . It is interesting that the empire sues the little people. ..."
"... "It is a perfect illustration of the Obama legacy that a person who was untouchable as CIA chief in 2008 because of his support for Bush's most radical policies is not only Obama's choice for the same position now, but will encounter very little resistance. Within this change one finds one of the most significant aspects of the Obama presidency: his conversion of what were once highly contentious right-wing policies into harmonious dogma of the DC bipartisan consensus. Then again, given how the CIA operates, one could fairly argue that Brennan's eagerness to deceive and his long record of supporting radical and unaccountable powers make him the perfect person to run that agency. It seems clear that this is Obama's calculus." ..."
"... one more quote from your newest link to the NYT: "The job Mr. Brennan once held in Riyadh is, more than the ambassador's, the true locus of American power in the kingdom. Former diplomats recall that the most important discussions always flowed through the C.I.A. station chief." The Saudis bought the CIA. From station chief in Riyadh to Director Tenet's chief of staff to Deputy Executive Director of the CIA and finally, under Obama, to Director of the CIA. ..."
"... Best background article I've come across on how the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings were either suppressed (in the U.S. client oil monarchies like Bahrain) or hijacked for regime change purposes (as in Libya and Syria): http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion... how-the-arab-spring-was-hijacked/ (Feb 2012) ..."
"... The best explanation is that despite the effort to "woo" Assad into the Saudi-Israeli axis (c.2008-2010), Assad refused to cut economic ties with Iran, which was setting up rail lines, air traffic and oil pipeline deals with Assad on very good terms. This led Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, etc. to lobby Obama to support a regime change program: ..."
"... Replace "plan" with "ongoing project". The main point would be that Panetta and Clinton also belong on that "illegal arms transfer" charge sheet. Civil damages for the costs Europe, Turkey, Lebanon etc. bore due to millions of fleeing refugees should also be assessed (let alone damage in Syria, often to priceless historical treasures destroyed by ISIS). ..."
"... Then there's the previous regime and its deliberate lies about non-existent WMDs in Iraq, claims used to start a war of aggression that killed thousand of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Woolsey, Tenet, Powell - they should have their own separate charge sheet. ..."
"... But it wasn't just anti-arms trafficking laws that were broken, was it? Wouldn't a conspiracy to use extremists as a weapon of state amount to a crime against humanity? David Stockman thinks so, but he pins the 'crime' on old, sick McCain. (see: 'Moderate Rebels' Cheerleader McCain is Fall Guy But Neocon Cancer Lives ..."
"... I classify attempts at regime change as terrorism, too, since it's essentially the waging of aggressive war via different means, which is the #1 War Crime also violating domestic law as well ..."
"... What of the US bases being established in N. Syria that were helpfully marked by the Turks? Within the context that the SF force multiplier model has varied success but hasn't worked AFAIK since the Resistance in WW2. What, short of an explicit invasion, is an option for the US+? US-hired mercenaries failed to do the job, and the US as mercenaries for the Arabs are not willing to commit. Maybe if the USIC offered up more "wives" they'd acquire more psychopathic murderers to spread the joy. ..."
"... Trump may have put Pompeo in to present the facade of housecleaning, but who here believes that there is any serious move to curtail the Syrian misadventure? Just a change in the marketing plan. ..."
"... As the Brits came out with blocking the release of 30-yr-old official records on the basis that "personal information" and "national security" would be compromised? More like the criminal activity at 10 Downing St. and the misappropriation of public money for international crime would be brought to light. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4159032/whitehall-refuses-documents-release/ ..."
"... While I do agree with some of the things Trump has done so far, I cannot agree that he makes for a good "leader" of our rapidly devolving nation. As much "good" that Trump has done, he's probably done much worse on other issues and levels. It's really pretty awful all around. ..."
"... That said, when some people say how much they "miss Obama," I want to either pound my head into a brick wall and/or throw up. The damage that Obama and his hench men/women did is incalculable. ..."
"... Not so much with "No drama Obama" the smooth talking viper that we - either unwittingly or wittingly - clutche to our collective bosom. Obama's many many many lies - all told with smooth suave assurance - along with his many sins of omission served as cover for what he was doing. Trump's buffoonery and incessant Twitting at least put his idiocies out on the stage for all to see (of course, the Republicans do use that as cover for their nefarious deeds behind Trump's doofus back). ..."
"... I likened a Trump presidency to sticking the landing of a crashing US empire. ..."
"... Remember this, The prosecution of a Swedish national accused of terrorist activities in Syria has collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain's security and intelligence agencies would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead, the Guardian can reveal. ..."
"... His lawyers argued that British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he was, and were party to a secret operation providing weapons and non-lethal help to the groups, including the Free Syrian Army. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/01/trial-swedish-man-accused-terrorism-offences-collapse-bherlin-gildo ..."
"... John McCain was neck deep in supporting Terrorists in Syria he wanted to give them manpads. ..."
"... WASHINGTON (Sputnik) -- Media reported earlier in October that Syrian rebels asked Washington for Stinger missiles to use them against Russia's military jets. "Absolutely Absolutely I would," McCain said when asked whether he would support the delivery of Stinger missiles to the opposition in Syria. ..."
"... The US were into regime change in Syria a long time ago..... Robert Ford was US Ambassador to Syria when the revolt against Syrian president Assad was launched. He not only was a chief architect of regime change in Syria, but actively worked with rebels to aid their overthrow of the Syrian government. ..."
"... Ambassador Ford talked himself blue in the face reassuring us that he was only supporting moderates in Syria. As evidence mounted that the recipients of the largesse doled out by Washington was going to jihadist groups, Ford finally admitted early last year that most of the moderates he backed were fighting alongside ISIS and al-Qaeda. ..."
"... b asked : "When will the FBI investigate Messrs Petraeus, Obama and Brennan? Duh, like never... Most here understand this, I'm sure. The wealthy and the connected puppets never face justice, for their crimes, committed in the service of their owners. ..."
"... NYT never saw a war (rather an attack by the US, NATO, Israel, UK, on any defenseless nation) that it did not support. Wiki uses the word "allegedly" in explaining the CIA and Operation Mockingbird. It just isn't feasible that a secret government agency - gone rogue - with unlimited funding and manpower could write/edit the news for six media owners with similar war-profiteering motives. ..."
"... Seymour Hersh, in his 'Victoria NULAND moment' audio, states categorically BRENNAN conceived and ran the 'Russian Hack' psyop after Seth RICH DNC leaks. ..."
Rasheed Al Jijakli,[the CEO of a check-cashing business who lives in Walnut,] along with three
co-conspirators, allegedly transported day and night vision rifle scopes, laser boresighters used
to adjust sights on firearms for accuracy when firing, flashlights, radios, a bulletproof vest,
and other tactical equipment to Syrian fighters.
...
If Jijakli is found guilty, he could face 50 years in prison . Jijakli's case is being prosecuted
by counterintelligence and Terrorism and Export Crimes Section attorneys. An FBI investigation,
in coordination with other agencies, is ongoing.
C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, recommended to President Trump that he shut down a four-year-old
effort to arm and train Syrian rebels
...
Critics in Congress had complained for years about the costs [...] and reports that some of the
C.I.A.-supplied weapons had ended up in the hands of a rebel group tied to Al Qaeda
...
In the summer of 2012, David H. Petraeus , who was then C.I.A. director, first proposed a covert
program of arming and training rebels
...
[ Mr. Obama signed] a presidential finding authorizing the C.I.A. to covertly arm and train small
groups of rebels
-...
John O. Brennan , Mr. Obama's last C.I.A. director, remained a vigorous defender of the program
...
When will the FBI investigate Messrs Petraeus, Obama and Brennan? Where are the counterintelligence
and Terrorism and Export Crimes Section attorneys prosecuting them? Those three men engaged in the
exactly same trade as Mr. Jijakil did, but on a much larger scale. They should be punished on an
equally larger scale.
*Note:
The NYT story is largely a whitewash. It claims that the CIA paid "moderate" FSA rebels stormed
Idleb governate in 2015. In fact al-Qaeda and Ahrar al Sham were leading the assault. It says
that costs of the CIA program was "more than $1 billion over the life of the program" when CIA
documents show that it was over $1 billion
per year and likely much more than $5 billion in total. The story says that the program started
in 2013 while the CIA has been providing arms to the Wahhabi rebels since at least fall 2011.
Posted by b on August 3, 2017 at 05:15 AM |
Permalink
India and Pakistan spends insane amounts of money because Pakistan arms "rebels" both countries
could use that money for many other things. Especially Pakistan which has a tenth the economy
of India. BUT Pakistan is controlled by the military or MIC so arming terrorists is more important
than such things as schools and power supplies etc. Their excuse is India is spending so much
on arms. Which India says is because in large part due to Pakistan. US says well move those 2
million troops to attack China instead. Everyone is happy except the population in those 3 countries
which lack most things except iphones. Which makes US extremely happy.
It would interesting to get to the truth about Brennan. Is he an islamist himself? Did he actually
convert to islam in Saudi Arabia? Lots of stories out there.
Has he been acting as a covert agent against his own country for years?Selling out the entire
west and every christian on the planet. Time to find this out, methinks.
Is treason in the USA
a death penalty issue?. Its certainly what he deserves.
"a four-year-old effort to arm and train Syrian rebels."
A four year effort to arm the f**kers? Doubtful it was an effort to arm them, but training
them to act in the hegemon's interests... like upholders of democracy and humanitarian... headchopping
is just too much of an attraction
"7,000 Syrian refugees and fighters return home from Lebanon"
The 'al-Qaeda linked' fighters are mostly foreigners, paid mercenaries. They have been dumped
in Idlib along with the other terrorists. In the standard reconciliation process, real Syrians
are given the option of returning home if they renounce violence and agree to a political solution.
Fake Syrians are dumped in with the foreigners. The real Syrian fighters who reconcile have to
join the SAA units to fight against ISIS etc.
ISIS fighters were encouraged to bring their families with them (for use as human shields and
to provide settlers for the captured territory). ISIS documents recovered from Mosul indicate
that unmarried foreign mercenaries fighting with them were provided with a wife (how does that
work? do the women volunteer or are they 'volunteered'?), a car and other benefits. These families
and hangers-on would probably be the 'Syrian refugees'.
On a side note, the Kurds have released a video showing the training of special forces belonging
to their allies, the 'Syrian Defense Force' (composed largely of foreigners again). The SDF fighters
fly the FSA flag, ie they are the carefully vetted moderate head chopping rebels beloved of the
likes of McCain.
"It is a perfect illustration of the Obama legacy that a person who was untouchable
as CIA chief in 2008 because of his support for Bush's most radical policies is not only Obama's
choice for the same position now, but will encounter very little resistance. Within this change
one finds one of the most significant aspects of the Obama presidency: his conversion of what
were once highly contentious right-wing policies into harmonious dogma of the DC bipartisan
consensus. Then again, given how the CIA operates, one could fairly argue that Brennan's eagerness
to deceive and his long record of supporting radical and unaccountable powers make him the
perfect person to run that agency. It seems clear that this is Obama's calculus."
My own addition to the Brennan record:
Brennan was station chief for the CIA in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia during the planning period for
9/11. The Saudi rulers do not use the US embassy as their first point of contact with Washington,
they use the CIA. Brennan moved back to the US some time in (late?) 1999. The first 9/11 Saudi
hijackers arrived on US shores in January 2000. Brennan was made CIA chief of staff to Director
Tenet in 1999 and Deputy Executive Director of the CIA in March 2001.
The support for the Syrian rebels is only the latest chapter in the decades long relationship
between the spy services of Saudi Arabia and the United States, an alliance that has endured
through the Iran-contra scandal, support for the mujahedeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan
and proxy fights in Africa. Sometimes, as in Syria, the two countries have worked in concert.
In others, Saudi Arabia has simply written checks underwriting American covert activities.
... Although the Saudis have been public about their help arming rebel groups in Syria, the
extent of their partnership with the C.I.A.'s covert action campaign and their direct financial
support had not been disclosed. Details were pieced together in interviews with a half-dozen
current and former American officials and sources from several Persian Gulf countries. Most
spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the program.
From the moment the C.I.A. operation was started, Saudi money supported it.
...
The roots of the relationship run deep. In the late 1970s, the Saudis organized what was
known as the "Safari Club" -- a coalition of nations including Morocco, Egypt and France -- that
ran covert operations around Africa at a time when Congress had clipped the C.I.A.'s wings
over years of abuses.
...
Prince Bandar pledged $1 million per month to help fund the contras, in recognition of the
administration's past support to the Saudis. The contributions continued after Congress cut
off funding to the contras. By the end, the Saudis had contributed $32 million, paid through
a Cayman Islands bank account.
When the Iran-contra scandal broke, and questions arose about the Saudi role, the kingdom
kept its secrets. Prince Bandar refused to cooperate with the investigation led by Lawrence
E. Walsh, the independent counsel.
In a letter, the prince declined to testify, explaining that his country's "confidences
and commitments, like our friendship, are given not just for the moment but the long run."
one more quote from your newest link to the NYT: "The job Mr. Brennan once held in Riyadh
is, more than the ambassador's, the true locus of American power in the kingdom. Former diplomats
recall that the most important discussions always flowed through the C.I.A. station chief." The
Saudis bought the CIA. From station chief in Riyadh to Director Tenet's chief of staff to Deputy
Executive Director of the CIA and finally, under Obama, to Director of the CIA.
Best background article I've come across on how the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings were
either suppressed (in the U.S. client oil monarchies like Bahrain) or hijacked for regime change
purposes (as in Libya and Syria):
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion... how-the-arab-spring-was-hijacked/ (Feb 2012)
In particular:
A fourth trend is that the Arab Spring has become a springboard for playing great-power geopolitics.
Syria, at the center of the region's sectarian fault lines, has emerged as the principal
battleground for such Cold War-style geopolitics. Whereas Russia is intent on keeping its only
military base outside the old Soviet Union in Syria's Mediterranean port of Tartus, the U.S.
seems equally determined to install a pro-Western regime in Damascus.
This goal prompted Washington to set up a London-based television station that began broadcasting
to Syria a year before major protests began there. The U.S. campaign, which includes
assembling a coalition of the willing, has been boosted by major Turkish, Saudi, Qatari and
UAE help, including cross-border flow of arms into Syria and the establishment of two new petrodollar-financed,
jihad-extolling television channels directed at Syria's majority Sunni Arabs.
The best explanation is that despite the effort to "woo" Assad into the Saudi-Israeli axis
(c.2008-2010), Assad refused to cut economic ties with Iran, which was setting up rail lines,
air traffic and oil pipeline deals with Assad on very good terms. This led Hillary Clinton, Leon
Panetta, etc. to lobby Obama to support a regime change program:
Replace "plan" with "ongoing project". The main point would be that Panetta and Clinton
also belong on that "illegal arms transfer" charge sheet. Civil damages for the costs Europe,
Turkey, Lebanon etc. bore due to millions of fleeing refugees should also be assessed (let alone
damage in Syria, often to priceless historical treasures destroyed by ISIS).
Then there's the previous regime and its deliberate lies about non-existent WMDs in Iraq,
claims used to start a war of aggression that killed thousand of U.S. soldiers and hundreds of
thousands of Iraqi civilians - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Woolsey, Tenet, Powell - they should have
their own separate charge sheet.
Send the lot to Scheveningen
Prison - for the most notorious war criminals. Pretty luxurious as prisons go, by all accounts.
But it wasn't just anti-arms trafficking laws that were broken, was it? Wouldn't a conspiracy
to use extremists as a weapon of state amount to a crime against humanity? David Stockman thinks
so, but he pins the 'crime' on old, sick McCain. (see:
'Moderate Rebels' Cheerleader McCain is Fall Guy But Neocon Cancer Lives
Within the Outlaw US Empire alone, there're several thousand people deserving of those 5,000 year
sentences, not just the three b singled out. But b does provide a great service for those of us
who refuse to support terrorists and terrorism by not paying federal taxes by providing proof
of that occurring. I classify attempts at regime change as terrorism, too, since it's essentially
the waging of aggressive war via different means, which is the #1 War Crime also violating domestic
law as well. Thanks b!
it's the usa!!!! no one in gov't is held accountable.. obama wants to move on, lol... look forward,
not backward... creating a heaping pile of murder, mayhem and more in other parts of the world,
but never examine any of it, or hold anyone accountable.. it is the amerikkkan way...
What of the US bases being established in N. Syria that were helpfully marked by the Turks?
Within the context that the SF force multiplier model has varied success but hasn't worked AFAIK
since the Resistance in WW2. What, short of an explicit invasion, is an option for the US+? US-hired
mercenaries failed to do the job, and the US as mercenaries for the Arabs are not willing to commit.
Maybe if the USIC offered up more "wives" they'd acquire more psychopathic murderers to spread
the joy.
Trump may have put Pompeo in to present the facade of housecleaning, but who here believes
that there is any serious move to curtail the Syrian misadventure? Just a change in the marketing
plan.
As the Brits came out with blocking the release of 30-yr-old official records on the basis
that "personal information" and "national security" would be compromised? More like the criminal
activity at 10 Downing St. and the misappropriation of public money for international crime would
be brought to light.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4159032/whitehall-refuses-documents-release/
While I do agree with some of the things Trump has done so far, I cannot agree that he makes
for a good "leader" of our rapidly devolving nation. As much "good" that Trump has done, he's
probably done much worse on other issues and levels. It's really pretty awful all around.
That said, when some people say how much they "miss Obama," I want to either pound my head
into a brick wall and/or throw up. The damage that Obama and his hench men/women did is incalculable.
At least with Trump, we can clearly witness his idiocy and grasp the level of at least some
of his damage.
Not so much with "No drama Obama" the smooth talking viper that we - either unwittingly
or wittingly - clutche to our collective bosom. Obama's many many many lies - all told with smooth
suave assurance - along with his many sins of omission served as cover for what he was doing.
Trump's buffoonery and incessant Twitting at least put his idiocies out on the stage for all to
see (of course, the Republicans do use that as cover for their nefarious deeds behind Trump's
doofus back).
Agree with b. NYT is worthless. Limited hangout for sure.
I likened a Trump presidency to sticking the landing of a crashing US empire. He'll
bring it down without going true believer on us, a la Clinton and ilk who were busy scheduling
the apocalypse.
Trump has not been tested yet with a rapidly deteriorating economy which as we all know is
coming. Something is in the air and Trump will have to face it sooner or later. The weight of
the anger of millions will be behind it...will it be too late? Will Trump finally go MAGA in what
he promised: Glas-Steagall, making trade fair for US interests, dialing back NATO...etc. etc.
I fear he can not articulate the issues at hand, like Roosevelt or Hitler. He is too bumbling.
I guess really we can only hope for an avoidance of WW. Will the world even weep for a third world
USA?
Remember this, The prosecution of a Swedish national accused of terrorist activities in Syria
has collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain's security and intelligence agencies
would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead, the Guardian can reveal.
John McCain was neck deep in supporting Terrorists in Syria he wanted to give them manpads.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) -- Media reported earlier in October that Syrian rebels asked Washington
for Stinger missiles to use them against Russia's military jets. "Absolutely Absolutely I would,"
McCain said when asked whether he would support the delivery of Stinger missiles to the opposition
in Syria.
"We certainly did that in Afghanistan. After the Russians invaded Afghanistan, we provided
them with surface-to-air capability. It'd be nice to give people that we train and equip and send
them to fight the ability to defend themselves. That's one of the fundamental principles of warfare
as I understand it," McCain said.
https://sputniknews.com/us/201510201028835944-us-stingers-missiles-syrian-rebels-mccain/
They will pay sooner or later for their crimes against the Syrians. Add Sarkozy, Cameron and Holland
to the list of criminals hiding under their position.
The US were into regime change in Syria a long time ago..... Robert Ford was US Ambassador
to Syria when the revolt against Syrian president Assad was launched. He not only was a chief
architect of regime change in Syria, but actively worked with rebels to aid their overthrow of
the Syrian government.
Ford assured us that those taking up arms to overthrow the Syrian government were simply moderates
and democrats seeking to change Syria's autocratic system. Anyone pointing out the obviously Islamist
extremist nature of the rebellion and the foreign funding and backing for the jihadists was written
off as an Assad apologist or worse.
Ambassador Ford talked himself blue in the face reassuring us that he was only supporting
moderates in Syria. As evidence mounted that the recipients of the largesse doled out by Washington
was going to jihadist groups, Ford finally admitted early last year that most of the moderates
he backed were fighting alongside ISIS and al-Qaeda. Witness this incredible Twitter exchange
with then-ex Ambassador Ford:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/you-wont-believe-what-former-us-ambassador-robert-s-ford-said-about-al-qaedas-syrian-allies/5504906
Specially Petraeus. A US Army General, and director of the CIA You don't get more 'pillar'
of the State than that! And off he goes doing illegal arms trades, in the billions, see for ex.
Meyssan, as an ex.:
In other countries / times, he'd be shot at dawn as a traitor. But all it shows really is that
the USA does not really have a Gvmt. in the sense of a 'political structure of strong regulatory
importance with 'democratic' participation..' to keep it vague.. It has an elaborate public charade,
a kind of clumsy theatre play, that relies very heavily on the scripted MSM, on ritual, and various
distractions. Plus natch' very vicious control mechanisms at home.. another story.
Meanwhile, off stage, the actors participate and fight and ally in a whole other scene where
'disaster capitalism', 'rapine', 'mafia moves' and the worst impulses in human nature not only
bloom but are institutionalised and deployed world-wide! Covering all this up is getting increasingly
difficult -Trump presidency - one would hope US citizens no not for now.
The other two of course as well, I just find Petraeus emblematic, probably because of all the
BS about his mistress + he once mis-treated classified info or something like that, total irrelevance
spun by the media, which works.
"They will pay sooner or later for their crimes against the Syrians. Add Sarkozy, Cameron
and Holland to the list of criminals hiding under their position."
I humbly disagree, and they sincerely believe they are helping the Syrians (plus other states)
- freedom and democracy against the brutality of Dr. Assad. I believe all these murderers are
sincere doing god works and will all go to heaven. That is one of the reasons why I refuse to
go to heaven even if gods beg me. Fuck it!
My apologies if I offend you or anyone. It's about time we look carefully beside politic and
wealth, what religion does to a human?
b asked : "When will the FBI investigate Messrs Petraeus, Obama and Brennan? Duh, like never...
Most here understand this, I'm sure. The wealthy and the connected puppets never face justice,
for their crimes, committed in the service of their owners.
You can include ALL the POTUS's
and their minions, since the turn of the century. " It's just business, get over it."
6 Look for signs of instigating violent behavior. As children some sociopaths torture defenseless
people and animals. This violence is always instigating, and not defensive violence. They will
create drama out of thin air, or twist what others say. They will often overreact strongly
to minor offenses. If they are challenged or confronted about it, they will point the finger
the other way, counting on the empathic person's empathy and consideration of people to protect
them, as long as they can remain undetected. Their attempt to point the finger the other way,
is both a smokescreen to being detected, and an attempt to confuse the situation.
The link is a pretty good summary. It is easy to find more respectable psychological sources
for the disorder on the internet.
NYT never saw a war (rather an attack by the US, NATO, Israel, UK, on any defenseless nation)
that it did not support. Wiki uses the word "allegedly" in explaining the CIA and Operation Mockingbird.
It just isn't feasible that a secret government agency - gone rogue - with unlimited funding and
manpower could write/edit the news for six media owners with similar war-profiteering motives.
/s
" Here, evolution had hit on the sweetest of solutions. Such perceptions were guaranteed
to produce a faith-dependent species that believed itself to be thoroughly separate from the rest
of the animal kingdom, ...."
Interesting article, but stop reading years ago when struggled to raise a family, make a living
to survive. Debatable Is "sociopath" (Antisocial Personality Disorder) or the genes make humanly
so brutally? Very often hard to fathom the depth of human suffering be it USA, Syria or elsewhere.
Thanks sharing you thought.
What most of the msm and the echo chamber seem to be deliberately missing is all intentional.
The whole Assad must go meme is dead and buried. The western cabal has not acheived their regime
change in Syria. The Russian economy has not sunk to the bottom of the Black sea, the Russians
hacked into my fridge meme has all been debunked and is falling apart. The collusion of all anglo
antlantacist secret agency and governments to destabalize the ME has all come out with an ever
turbulant flow. Iran being the threat of the world ,debunked. Russia invading and hacking the
free world ,debunked.
Hence I expect that the western oligarchs along with their pressitute
and compromised politicians will be bying up alot of bleach. They will be whitewashing for the
next three months all semblance of anything related to their fraudulent existence.
Nurenberg 2, the Hague would be to soft for these vile criminals of humanity. Look how they
had to back track on the Milosevic conviction mind u post death.
Just another day in the office for these criminals of humanity. Gee can't wait until this petro-dollar
ponzi scheme crashes hopefully we can get back o being human again. The emperor has no clothes.
43 The whole Assad must go meme is dead and buried. The western cabal has not acheived their
regime change in Syria. The Russian economy has not sunk to the bottom of the Black sea, the
Russians hacked into my fridge meme has all been debunked and is falling apart. The collusion
of all anglo antlantacist secret agency and governments to destabalize the ME has all come
out with an ever turbulant flow. Iran being the threat of the world ,debunked. Russia invading
and hacking the free world,debunked.
Optimistic. Has Trump been instrumental in these? Perhaps. This would be a good reason for
Zionists to hate him. But how is it that Trump is such a bumbling idiot? Now the Senate has ratfcked
him with recess appointments. And he signed that stupid Russia Sanctions bill.
Seymour Hersh, in his 'Victoria NULAND moment' audio, states categorically BRENNAN conceived
and ran the 'Russian Hack' psyop after Seth RICH DNC leaks.
"... The real power of mass data collection lies in the hand-tailored algorithms capable of sifting, sorting and identifying patterns within the data itself. When enough information is collected over time, governments and corporations can use or abuse those patterns to predict future human behavior. ..."
...We file our taxes. We make phone calls. We send emails. Tax records are used to keep us honest. We agree to broadcast
our location so we can check the weather on our smartphones. Records of our calls, texts and physical movements are filed
away alongside our billing information. Perhaps that data is analyzed more covertly to make sure that we're not terrorists
"" but only in the interest of national security, we're assured.
Our faces and voices are recorded by surveillance cameras and other internet-connected sensors, some of which we now
willingly put inside our homes. Every time we load a news article or page on a social media site, we expose ourselves to
tracking code, allowing hundreds of unknown entities to monitor our shopping and online browsing habits. We agree to cryptic
terms-of-service agreements that obscure the true nature and scope of these transactions.
Biometric information such as fingerprints, retinal scans and DNA helps governments and corporations track people around
the world. In Iraq, United States Army soldiers scan a man's eye to see whether he is a known insurgent. Credit Michael
Kamber for The New York Times
According to a 2015 study from
the Pew Research Center, 91 percent of American adults believe they've lost control over how their personal information
is collected and used. Just how much they've lost, however, is more than they likely suspect.
The real power of mass data collection lies in the hand-tailored algorithms capable of sifting, sorting and identifying
patterns within the data itself. When enough information is collected over time, governments and corporations can use or
abuse those patterns to predict future human behavior. Our data establishes a "pattern of
life " from seemingly harmless digital residue like cellphone tower pings, credit card transactions and web browsing
histories.
The consequences of our being subjected to constant algorithmic scrutiny are often unclear. For instance,
artificial intelligence Silicon
Valley's catchall term for deepthinking and deep-learning algorithms is touted by tech companies as a path to the high-tech
conveniences of the so-called internet of things. This includes digital home assistants, connected appliances and self-driving
cars.
Simultaneously, algorithms are already analyzing social media habits, determining creditworthiness, deciding which job
candidates get called in for an interview and judging whether criminal defendants should be
released on bail
. Other machine-learning systems use automated facial analysis to detect and track emotions, or claim the ability to predict
whether someone will become a criminal based only on their
facial features .
Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers
from around the world.
... ... ...
Such programmatic, machine-driven thinking has become especially dangerous in the hands of governments and the police.
In recent years our military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies have merged in unexpected ways. They harvest
more data than they can possibly manage, and wade through the quantifiable world side by side in vast, usually windowless
buildings called fusion centers
.
Such powerful new relationships have created a foundation for, and have breathed life into, a vast police and surveillance
state. Advanced algorithms have made this possible on an unprecedented level. Relatively minor infractions, or "microcrimes,"
can now be policed aggressively. And with national databases shared among governments and corporations, these minor incidents
can follow you forever, even if the information is incorrect or lacking context.
At the same time, the United States military uses the metadata of countless communications for
drone attacks , using pings emitted from cellphones to track and eliminate targets.
In literature and pop culture, concepts such as "thoughtcrime" and "precrime" have emerged out of dystopian fiction.
They are used to restrict and punish anyone who is flagged by automated systems as a potential criminal or threat, even
if a crime has yet to be committed. But this science fiction trope is quickly becoming reality. Predictive policing algorithms
are already being used to create automated heat maps of future crimes, and like the "manual" policing that came before
them, they overwhelmingly
target
poor and minority neighborhoods .
The world has become like an eerily banal dystopian novel. Things look the same on the surface, but they are not. With
no apparent boundaries on how algorithms can use and abuse the data that's being collected about us, the potential for
it to control our lives is ever-growing.
Our drivers' licenses, our keys, our debit and credit cards are all important parts of our lives. Even our social media
accounts could soon become crucial components of being fully functional members of society. Now that we live in this world,
we must figure out how to maintain our connection with society without surrendering to automated processes that we can
neither see nor control.
This is an article from
World Review: The State
of Democracy , a special section that examines global policy and affairs through the perspectives of thought leaders
and commentators. A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 14, 2017, on Page S3, in The International New
York Times.
In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, Washington pursued its elusive enemies across the
landscapes of Asia and Africa, thanks in part to a massive expansion of its intelligence
infrastructure, particularly of the emerging technologies for digital surveillance, agile
drones, and biometric identification. In 2010, almost a decade into this secret war with its
voracious appetite for information, the
Washington Post
reported
that the national
security state had swelled into a "fourth branch" of the federal government -- with 854,000
vetted officials, 263 security organizations, and over 3,000 intelligence units, issuing 50,000
special reports every year.
Though stunning, these statistics only skimmed the visible surface of what had become
history's largest and most lethal clandestine apparatus. According to classified documents that
Edward Snowden
leaked
in 2013, the nation's 16 intelligence agencies alone had 107,035 employees and a
combined "black budget" of $52.6 billion, the
equivalent
of 10% percent of the vast defense budget.
By sweeping the skies and probing the worldwide web's undersea cables, the National Security
Agency (NSA) could surgically penetrate the confidential communications of just about
any
leader
on the planet, while simultaneously sweeping up
billions
of ordinary messages. For its classified missions, the CIA had access to the Pentagon's Special
Operations Command, with
69,000 elite troops
(Rangers, SEALs,
Air Commandos) and their agile arsenal. In addition to this formidable paramilitary capacity,
the CIA
operated
30 Predator and Reaper drones
responsible
for more than 3,000 deaths in Pakistan and Yemen.
While Americans practiced a collective form of duck and cover as the Department of Homeland
Security's
colored
alerts
pulsed nervously from yellow to red, few paused to ask the hard question: Was all
this security really directed solely at enemies beyond our borders? After half a century of
domestic security abuses -- from the "red scare" of the 1920s through the FBI's illegal
harassment of antiwar protesters in the 1960s and 1970s -- could we really be confident that
there wasn't a hidden cost to all these secret measures right here at home? Maybe, just maybe,
all this security wasn't really so benign when it came to us.
From my own personal experience over the past half-century, and my family's history over
three generations, I've found out in the most personal way possible that there's a real cost to
entrusting our civil liberties to the discretion of secret agencies. Let me share just a few of
my own "war" stories to explain how I've been forced to keep learning and relearning this
uncomfortable lesson the hard way.
On the Heroin Trail
After finishing college in the late 1960s, I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in Japanese history
and was pleasantly surprised when Yale Graduate School admitted me with a full fellowship. But
the Ivy League in those days was no ivory tower. During my first year at Yale, the Justice
Department indicted Black Panther leader Bobby Seale for a local murder and the May Day
protests that filled the New Haven green also shut the campus for a week. Almost
simultaneously, President Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia and student protests closed
hundreds of campuses across America for the rest of the semester.
In the midst of all this tumult, the focus of my studies shifted from Japan to Southeast
Asia, and from the past to the war in Vietnam. Yes, that war. So what did I do about the draft?
During my first semester at Yale, on December 1, 1969, to be precise, the Selective Service cut
up the calendar for a lottery. The first 100 birthdays picked were certain to be drafted, but
any dates above 200 were likely exempt. My birthday, June 8th, was the very last date drawn,
not number 365 but 366 (don't forget leap year) -- the only lottery I have ever won, except for
a Sunbeam electric frying pan in a high school raffle. Through a convoluted moral calculus
typical of the 1960s, I decided that my draft exemption, although acquired by sheer luck,
demanded that I devote myself, above all else, to thinking about, writing about, and working to
end the Vietnam War.
During those campus protests over Cambodia in the spring of 1970, our small group of
graduate students in Southeast Asian history at Yale realized that the U.S. strategic
predicament in Indochina would soon require an invasion of Laos to cut the flow of enemy
supplies into South Vietnam. So, while protests over Cambodia swept campuses nationwide, we
were huddled inside the library, preparing for the next invasion by editing a book of essays on
Laos for the publisher Harper & Row. A few months after that book appeared, one of the
company's junior editors, Elizabeth Jakab, intrigued by an account we had included about that
country's opium crop, telephoned from New York to ask if I could research and write a "quickie"
paperback about the history behind the heroin epidemic then infecting the U.S. Army in
Vietnam.
I promptly started the research at my student carrel in the Gothic tower that is Yale's
Sterling Library, tracking old colonial reports about the Southeast Asian opium trade that
ended suddenly in the 1950s, just as the story got interesting. So, quite tentatively at first,
I stepped outside the library to do a few interviews and soon found myself following an
investigative trail that circled the globe. First, I traveled across America for meetings with
retired CIA operatives. Then I crossed the Pacific to Hong Kong to study drug syndicates,
courtesy of that colony's police drug squad. Next, I went south to Saigon, then the capital of
South Vietnam, to investigate the heroin traffic that was targeting the GIs, and on into the
mountains of Laos to observe CIA alliances with opium warlords and the hill-tribe militias that
grew the opium poppy. Finally, I flew from Singapore to Paris for interviews with retired
French intelligence officers about their opium trafficking during the first Indochina War of
the 1950s.
The drug traffic that supplied heroin for the U.S. troops fighting in South Vietnam was not,
I discovered, exclusively the work of criminals. Once the opium left tribal poppy fields in
Laos, the traffic required official complicity at every level. The helicopters of Air America,
the airline the CIA then ran, carried raw opium out of the villages of its hill-tribe allies.
The commander of the Royal Lao Army, a close American collaborator, operated the world's
largest heroin lab and was so oblivious to the implications of the traffic that he opened his
opium ledgers for my inspection. Several of Saigon's top generals were complicit in the drug's
distribution to U.S. soldiers. By 1971, this web of collusion ensured that heroin, according to
a later
White House survey
of a thousand veterans, would be "commonly used" by 34% of American
troops in South Vietnam.
None of this had been covered in my college history seminars. I had no models for
researching an uncharted netherworld of crime and covert operations. After stepping off the
plane in Saigon, body slammed by the tropical heat, I found myself in a sprawling foreign city
of four million, lost in a swarm of snarling motorcycles and a maze of nameless streets,
without contacts or a clue about how to probe these secrets. Every day on the heroin trail
confronted me with new challenges -- where to look, what to look for, and, above all, how to ask
hard questions.
Reading all that history had, however, taught me something I didn't know I knew. Instead of
confronting my sources with questions about sensitive current events, I started with the French
colonial past when the opium trade was still legal, gradually uncovering the underlying,
unchanging logistics of drug production. As I followed this historical trail into the present,
when the traffic became illegal and dangerously controversial, I began to use pieces from this
past to assemble the present puzzle, until the names of contemporary dealers fell into place.
In short, I had crafted a historical method that would prove, over the next 40 years of my
career, surprisingly useful in analyzing a diverse array of foreign policy controversies -- CIA
alliances with drug lords, the agency's propagation of psychological torture, and our spreading
state surveillance.
The CIA Makes Its Entrance in My Life
Those months on the road, meeting gangsters and warlords in isolated places, offered only
one bit of real danger. While hiking in the mountains of Laos, interviewing Hmong farmers about
their opium shipments on CIA helicopters, I was descending a steep slope when a burst of
bullets ripped the ground at my feet. I had walked into an ambush by agency mercenaries.
While the five Hmong militia escorts whom the local village headman had prudently provided
laid down a covering fire, my Australian photographer
John Everingham
and I flattened ourselves
in the elephant grass and crawled through the mud to safety. Without those armed escorts, my
research would have been at an end and so would I. After that ambush failed, a CIA paramilitary
officer summoned me to a mountaintop meeting where he threatened to murder my Lao interpreter
unless I ended my research. After winning assurances from the U.S. embassy that my interpreter
would not be harmed, I decided to ignore that warning and keep going.
Six months and 30,000 miles later, I returned to New Haven. My investigation of CIA
alliances with drug lords had taught me more than I could have imagined about the covert
aspects of U.S. global power. Settling into my attic apartment for an academic year of writing,
I was confident that I knew more than enough for a book on this unconventional topic. But my
education, it turned out, was just beginning.
Within weeks, a massive, middle-aged guy in a suit interrupted my scholarly isolation. He
appeared at my front door and identified himself as
Tom Tripodi
, senior agent for the Bureau of Narcotics, which later became the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA). His agency, he confessed during a second visit, was worried
about my writing and he had been sent to investigate. He needed something to tell his
superiors. Tom was a guy you could trust. So I showed him a few draft pages of my book. He
disappeared into the living room for a while and came back saying, "Pretty good stuff. You got
your ducks in a row." But there were some things, he added, that weren't quite right, some
things he could help me fix.
Best of all, there was the one about how the Bureau of Narcotics caught French intelligence
protecting the Corsican syndicates smuggling heroin into New York City. Some of his stories,
usually unacknowledged, would appear in my book,
The Politics of Heroin
in Southeast Asia
. These conversations with an undercover operative, who had trained
Cuban exiles for the CIA in Florida and later investigated Mafia heroin syndicates for the DEA
in Sicily, were akin to an advanced seminar, a master class in covert operations.
In the summer of 1972, with the book at press, I went to Washington to testify before
Congress. As I was making the rounds of congressional offices on Capitol Hill, my editor rang
unexpectedly and summoned me to New York for a meeting with the president and vice president of
Harper & Row, my book's publisher. Ushered into a plush suite of offices overlooking the
spires of St. Patrick's Cathedral, I listened to those executives tell me that Cord Meyer, Jr.,
the CIA's deputy director for covert operations, had called on their company's president
emeritus, Cass Canfield, Sr. The visit was no accident, for Canfield, according to an
authoritative history
, "enjoyed prolific links to the world of intelligence, both as a
former psychological warfare officer and as a close personal friend of Allen Dulles," the
ex-head of the CIA. Meyer denounced my book as a threat to national security. He asked
Canfield, also an old friend, to quietly suppress it.
I was in serious trouble. Not only was Meyer a senior CIA official but he also had
impeccable social connections and covert assets in every corner of American intellectual life.
After graduating from Yale in 1942, he served with the marines in the Pacific, writing eloquent
war dispatches published in the
Atlantic Monthly
. He later worked with the U.S.
delegation drafting the U.N. charter. Personally recruited by spymaster Allen Dulles, Meyer
joined the CIA in 1951 and was soon running its International Organizations Division, which, in
the words of that
same history
, "constituted the greatest single concentration of covert political and
propaganda activities of the by now octopus-like CIA," including "
Operation Mockingbird
" that
planted disinformation in major U.S. newspapers meant to aid agency operations. Informed
sources told me that the CIA still had assets inside every major New York publisher and it
already had every page of my manuscript.
As the child of a wealthy New York family, Cord Meyer moved in elite social circles, meeting
and marrying Mary Pinchot, the niece of Gifford Pinchot, founder of the U.S. Forestry Service
and a former governor of Pennsylvania. Pinchot was a breathtaking beauty who later became
President Kennedy's mistress, making dozens of
secret visits
to the White House. When she was found
shot dead
along the banks of a canal in Washington in 1964, the head of CIA
counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton, another Yale alumnus, broke into her home in an
unsuccessful attempt to secure her diary. Mary's sister Toni and her husband,
Washington
Post
editor Ben Bradlee, later found the diary and gave it to Angleton for destruction by
the agency. To this day, her unsolved murder remains a
subject
of
mystery and controversy.
Cord Meyer was also in the
Social Register
of New York's fine families along with
my publisher, Cass Canfield, which added a dash of social cachet to the pressure to suppress my
book. By the time he walked into Harper & Row's office in that summer of 1972, two decades
of CIA service had
changed
Meyer (according to that same authoritative history) from a liberal idealist into
"a relentless, implacable advocate for his own ideas," driven by "a paranoiac distrust of
everyone who didn't agree with him" and a manner that was "histrionic and even bellicose." An
unpublished 26-year-old graduate student versus the master of CIA media manipulation. It was
hardly a fair fight. I began to fear my book would never appear.
To his credit, Canfield refused Meyer's request to suppress the book. But he did allow the
agency a chance to review the manuscript prior to publication. Instead of waiting quietly for
the CIA's critique, I contacted Seymour Hersh, then an investigative reporter for the
New
York Times
. The same day the CIA courier arrived from Langley to collect my manuscript,
Hersh swept through Harper & Row's offices like a tropical storm, pelting hapless
executives with incessant, unsettling questions. The next day, his exposé of the CIA's
attempt at censorship appeared on the paper's
front page
. Other national media organizations followed his lead. Faced with a barrage of
negative coverage, the CIA gave Harper & Row a critique full of
unconvincing
denials
. The book was published unaltered.
My Life as an Open Book for the Agency
I had learned another important lesson: the Constitution's protection of press freedom could
check even the world's most powerful espionage agency. Cord Meyer reportedly learned the same
lesson. According to his
obituary
in the
Washington Post
, "It was assumed that Mr. Meyer would eventually
advance" to head CIA covert operations, "but the public disclosure about the book deal
apparently dampened his prospects." He was instead exiled to London and eased into early
retirement.
Meyer and his colleagues were not, however, used to losing. Defeated in the public arena,
the CIA retreated to the shadows and retaliated by tugging at every thread in the threadbare
life of a graduate student. Over the next few months, federal officials from the Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare turned up at Yale to investigate my graduate fellowship. The
Internal Revenue Service audited my poverty-level income. The FBI tapped my New Haven telephone
(something I learned years later from a class-action lawsuit).
In August 1972, at the height of the controversy over the book, FBI agents told the bureau's
director that they had "conducted [an] investigation concerning McCoy," searching the files
they had compiled on me for the past two years and interviewing numerous "sources whose
identities are concealed [who] have furnished reliable information in the past" -- thereby
producing an 11-page report detailing my birth, education, and campus antiwar activities.
A college classmate I hadn't seen in four years, who served in military intelligence,
magically appeared at my side in the book section of the Yale Co-op, seemingly eager to resume
our relationship. The same week that a
laudatory review
of my book appeared on the front page of the
New York Times Book
Review
, an extraordinary achievement for any historian, Yale's History Department placed
me on academic probation. Unless I could somehow do a year's worth of overdue work in a single
semester, I faced dismissal.
In those days, the ties between the CIA and Yale were wide and deep. The campus residential
colleges screened students, including future CIA Director Porter Goss, for possible careers in
espionage. Alumni like Cord Meyer and James Angleton held senior slots at the agency. Had I not
had a faculty adviser visiting from Germany, the distinguished scholar
Bernhard Dahm
who was a stranger to this
covert nexus, that probation would likely have become expulsion, ending my academic career and
destroying my credibility.
During those difficult days, New York Congressman Ogden Reid, a ranking member of the House
Foreign Relations Committee, telephoned to say that he was sending staff investigators to Laos
to look into the opium situation. Amid this controversy, a CIA helicopter landed near the
village where I had escaped that ambush and flew the Hmong headman who had helped my research
to an agency airstrip. There, a CIA interrogator made it clear that he had better deny what he
had said to me about the opium. Fearing, as he later told my photographer, that "they will send
a helicopter to arrest me, or soldiers to shoot me," the Hmong headman did just that.
At a personal level, I was discovering just how deep the country's intelligence agencies
could reach, even in a democracy, leaving no part of my life untouched: my publisher, my
university, my sources, my taxes, my phone, and even my friends.
Although I had won the first battle of this war with a media blitz, the CIA was winning the
longer bureaucratic struggle. By silencing my sources and denying any culpability, its
officials convinced Congress that it was innocent of any direct complicity in the Indochina
drug trade. During Senate hearings into CIA assassinations by the famed
Church Committee
three years later, Congress accepted the agency's assurance that none of its operatives had
been directly involved in heroin trafficking (an allegation I had never actually made). The
committee's report did confirm the core of my critique, however, finding that "the CIA is
particularly vulnerable to criticism" over indigenous assets in Laos "of considerable
importance to the Agency," including "people who either were known to be, or were suspected of
being, involved in narcotics trafficking." But the senators did not press the CIA for any
resolution or reform of what its own inspector general had called the "particular dilemma"
posed by those alliances with drug lords -- the key aspect, in my view, of its complicity in the
traffic.
During the mid-1970s, as the flow of drugs into the United States slowed and the number of
addicts declined, the heroin problem receded into the inner cities and the media moved on to
new sensations. Unfortunately, Congress had forfeited an opportunity to check the CIA and
correct its way of waging covert wars. In less than 10 years, the problem of the CIA's tactical
alliances with drug traffickers to support its far-flung covert wars was back with a
vengeance.
During the 1980s, as the crack-cocaine epidemic swept America's cities, the agency, as its
own Inspector General later
reported
, allied itself with the
largest drug smuggler in the Caribbean, using his port facilities to ship arms to the Contra
guerrillas fighting in Nicaragua and protecting him from any prosecution for five years.
Simultaneously on the other side of the planet in Afghanistan, mujahedeen guerrillas imposed an
opium tax
on farmers to fund their fight against the Soviet occupation and, with the
CIA's tacit consent
, operated heroin labs along the Pakistani border to supply
international markets. By the mid-1980s, Afghanistan's opium harvest had grown 10-fold and was
providing 60% of the heroin for America's addicts and as much as
90%
in New York City.
Almost by accident, I had launched my academic career by doing something a bit different.
Embedded within that study of drug trafficking was an analytical approach that would take me,
almost unwittingly, on a lifelong exploration of U.S. global hegemony in its many
manifestations, including diplomatic alliances, CIA interventions, developing military
technology, recourse to torture, and global surveillance. Step by step, topic by topic, decade
after decade, I would slowly accumulate sufficient understanding of the parts to try to
assemble the whole. In writing my new book,
In the Shadows of the
American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
, I drew on this research
to assess the overall character of U.S. global power and the forces that might contribute to
its perpetuation or decline.
In the process, I slowly came to see a striking continuity and coherence in Washington's
century-long rise to global dominion. CIA torture techniques emerged at the start of the Cold
War in the 1950s; much of its futuristic robotic aerospace technology had its first trial in
the Vietnam War of the 1960s; and, above all, Washington's reliance on surveillance first
appeared in the colonial Philippines around 1900 and soon became an essential though
essentially illegal tool for the FBI's repression of domestic dissent that continued through
the 1970s.
Surveillance Today
In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, I dusted off that historical method, and used it to
explore the origins and character of domestic surveillance inside the United States.
After occupying the Philippines in 1898, the U.S. Army, facing a difficult pacification
campaign in a restive land, discovered the power of systematic surveillance to crush the
resistance of the country's political elite. Then, during World War I, the Army's "father of
military intelligence," the dour General Ralph Van Deman, who had learned his trade in the
Philippines, drew upon his years pacifying those islands to mobilize a legion of 1,700 soldiers
and 350,000 citizen-vigilantes for an intense surveillance program against suspected enemy
spies among German-Americans, including my own grandfather. In studying Military Intelligence
files at the National Archives, I found "suspicious" letters purloined from my grandfather's
army locker. In fact, his mother had been writing him in her native German about such
subversive subjects as knitting him socks for guard duty.
In the 1950s, Hoover's FBI agents tapped thousands of phones without warrants and kept
suspected subversives under close surveillance, including my mother's cousin Gerard Piel, an
anti-nuclear activist and the publisher of
Scientific American
magazine. During the
Vietnam War, the bureau
expanded its
activities
with an amazing array of spiteful, often illegal, intrigues in a bid to cripple
the antiwar movement with pervasive surveillance of the sort seen in my own FBI file.
Memory of the FBI's illegal surveillance programs was largely washed away after the Vietnam
War thanks to Congressional reforms that required judicial warrants for all government
wiretaps. The terror attacks of September 2001, however, gave the National Security Agency the
leeway to launch renewed surveillance on a previously unimaginable scale. Writing for
TomDispatch
in 2009, I
observed
that coercive methods first tested in
the Middle East were being repatriated and might lay the groundwork for "a domestic
surveillance state." Sophisticated biometric and cyber techniques forged in the war zones of
Afghanistan and Iraq had made a "digital surveillance state a reality" and so were
fundamentally changing the character of American democracy.
Four years later, Edward Snowden's leak of secret NSA documents revealed that, after a
century-long gestation period, a U.S. digital surveillance state had finally arrived. In the
age of the Internet, the NSA could monitor tens of millions of private lives worldwide,
including American ones, via a few hundred computerized probes into the global grid of
fiber-optic cables.
And then, as if to remind me in the most personal way possible of our new reality, four
years ago, I found myself the target yet again of an IRS audit, of TSA body searches at
national airports, and -- as I discovered when the line went dead -- a tap on my office telephone
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Why? Maybe it was my current writing on sensitive
topics like CIA torture and NSA surveillance, or maybe my name popped up from some old database
of suspected subversives left over from the 1970s. Whatever the explanation, it was a
reasonable reminder that, if my own family's experience across three generations is in any way
representative, state surveillance has been an integral part of American political life far
longer than we might imagine.
At the cost of personal privacy, Washington's worldwide web of surveillance has now become a
weapon of exceptional power in a bid to extend U.S. global hegemony deeper into the
twenty-first century. Yet it's worth remembering that sooner or later what we do overseas
always seems to come home to haunt us, just as the CIA and crew have haunted me this last
half-century. When we learn to love Big Brother, the world becomes a more, not less, dangerous
place.
Alfred W. McCoy, a
TomDispatch
regular
, is the Harrington professor of history at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of the now-classic book
The Politics of Heroin: CIA
Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
, which probed the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and
covert operations over 50 years, and the forthcoming
In the Shadows of the
American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
(Dispatch Books, September)
from which this piece is adapted.
(Republished from
TomDispatch
by permission of author or representative)
"In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, I dusted off that historical method, and used
it to explore the origins and character of domestic surveillance inside the United States." -- Alfred McCoy
What about using the historical method to explore the nature of USA's reducing EU nations
to "vassals" – and keeping them in the status of vassals, such that they can be
depended on to undermine their own economies and sovereignty for the sake of USA's global
initiatives?
An interesting question might be whether the NATO-to-Afghanistan highway (truck route for
munitions, etc.), c. 2010, was also, on the back-haul – Afghanistan to EU – the
major supply route for heroin throughout the EU and thus the key to corruption of EU
governments (and of Russia) and domination of those governments by USA's neocon operatives?
(E.g., was/is the distribution system of the "Chocolate King" Petro Poroshenko, President of
Ukraine, delivering something besides just chocolate?)
"Just over one third of all cargo goes on routes dubbed the "northern distribution
network" through Central Asia, and the Caucasus or Russia. " -- Reuters, 2011
Just a thought, speculative, based in part on the assumption that such trucks would not be
subject to narcotics search-and-seizure going across borders.
While I have not served in Cuba, my experience in a number of similar hostile, high
counterintelligence threat countries suggests that this is more likely a surveillance effort
gone wrong, than the use of an offensive sonic weapon.
We have very little experience anywhere in the world with directed attacks designed to
physically harm to our diplomats. However, the use of intrusive technical collection and
surveillance which sometimes causes harm in its own right, is consistent with past practice
in Cuba and elsewhere.
Why don't I believe this was an attack intended to harm diplomats?
Looks like tail wags the dog -- CIA controls the US foreign policy and in the last elections
also played active role in promoting Hillary. A the level of top brass we have
several people mentioned by Giraldi who are probably as dangerous as Allen Dulles was. Brennan
is one example.
The parade of rogues that Philip describes is really
alarming. Each with agenda that directly harms
the USA as a country promoting the interest of military-industrial complex and neocon
faction within the government...
Notable quotes:
"... Indeed, one can start with Tenet if one wants to create a roster of recent CIA Directors who have lied to permit the White House to engage in a war crime. Tenet and his staff knew better than anyone that the case against Saddam did not hold water, but President George W. Bush wanted his war and, by gum, he was going to get it if the CIA had any say in the matter. ..."
"... Back then as now, international Islamic terrorism was the name of the game. It kept the money flowing to the national security establishment in the false belief that America was somehow being made "safe." But today the terror narrative has been somewhat supplanted by Russia, which is headed by a contemporary Saddam Hussein in the form of Vladimir Putin. If one believes the media and a majority of congressmen, evil manifest lurks in the gilded halls of the Kremlin. Russia has recently been sanctioned (again) for crimes that are more alleged than demonstrated and President Putin has been selected by the Establishment as the wedge issue that will be used to end President Donald Trump's defiance of the Deep State and all that pertains to it. The intelligence community at its top level would appear to be fully on board with that effort. ..."
"... Remarkably, he also said that there is only "minimal evidence" that Russia is even fighting ISIS. The statement is astonishing as Moscow has most definitely been seriously and directly engaged in support of the Syrian Arab Army. Is it possible that the head of the CIA is unaware of that? It just might be that Pompeo is disparaging the effort because the Russians and Syrians have also been fighting against the U.S. backed "moderate rebels." That the moderate rebels are hardly moderate has been known for years and they are also renowned for their ineffectiveness combined with a tendency to defect to more radical groups taking their U.S. provided weapons with them, a combination of factors which led to their being denied any further American support by a presidential decision that was revealed in the press two weeks ago. ..."
"... Pompeo's predecessor John Brennan is, however, my favorite Agency leader in the category of totally bereft of his senses. ..."
"... Brennan is certainly loyal to his cause, whatever that might be. At the same Aspen meeting attended by Pompeo, he told Wolf Blitzer that if Trump were to fire special counsel Robert Mueller government officials should "refuse to carry out" his orders. In other words, they should begin a coup, admittedly non-violent (one presumes), but nevertheless including federal employees uniting to shut the government down. ..."
"... And finally, there is Michael Morell, also a former Acting Director, who was closely tied to the Hillary Clinton campaign, apparently driven by ambition to become Director in her administration. Morell currently provides commentary for CBS television and is a frequent guest on the Charlie Rose show. Morell considerably raised the ante on Brennan's pre-electoral speculation that there had been some Russian recruitment of Trump people. He observed in August that Putin, a wily ex-career intelligence officer, "trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them [did exactly that] early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation." ..."
"... Nothing new. In the '50s CIA was making foreign wars and cultivating chaos at home, and blaming all of it on Russia. In the '80s CIA was cultivating anti-nuke groups to undermine Reagan, and blaming it on Russia. CIA has been the primary wellspring of evil for a long time. ..."
"... Yes you read that right and they are going to the rotten core of this coup against the United States by presenting a report stating that the DNC was "Leaked" not hacked. The real hacking came from President Obama's weaponizing of our intelligence agencies against Russia. ..."
"... As has been the case for decades the Deep State allows Presidents and legislators to make minor decisions in our government as long as those decisions do not in any way interfere with the Deep State's goals of total world hegemony and increase in overwhelming power and wealth. Those who make the important decisions in this country are not elected. The elected 'officials' are sycophants of the Deep State. ..."
"... The term is appropriated from the use to describe the mutually loyal corps of Ataturkians in the Turkish military and intelligence services who were united in service to uphold the ideal of Ataturkian secular modernisation. The term implies no public accountability or publicity unnecessary to its purposes. ..."
"... The CIA's source, its birth, is from British secret service. Brit spying. And Brit secret service, long before the official founding of MI5, did exactly the kinds of things you note the CIA has done. ..."
"... The Mossad is another direct fruit of Brit secret service, as is the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency. ..."
"... I am a retired CIA operations officer (something none of the men mentioned by Giraldi are – Brennan was a failed wanna be, couldn't cut it as an ops officer). He is spot on in his comments. The majority of people in the CIA, the ones who do the heavy lifting, are patriotic Americans who are proud of serving their country. I am sure that most voted for Trump as they all know too well the truth about the Clintons and Obama. ..."
"... Giraldi is not the only one to notice the upward progress of the most incompetent yes-men in the Agency. A close look at most of them reveals a track record of little or no operational success balanced by excellent sucking up skills. These characters quickly figured out how to get ahead and doing your job in the field is not it. Of course, most are ego maniacs so they are totally oblivious to their own uselessness. ..."
"... How "Russiagate" began: After the primaries, both Hillary and Donald faced divided political parties even though they had won the nomination. These divisions were worse than the normal situation after contested primaries. On the Democratic side, Hillay had just subverted the will of the voters of her party, who seemed to favor Bernie Sanders over her. Hillay had won with corrupt collusion and rigging amongst the DNC, the higher ranks of the Democratic Party, and major media such as the NYT and CNN. ..."
"... Then, a leak of emails from the DNC HQ publicized her interference in the democratic processes of the Democratic Party. This threatened to ene the Hillary for President campaign right then and there. If the majority of Democrats who'd favored Bernie refused to support Hillary because of her corruption and collusion in denying democracy within the party, she was a sure loser in the fall election. The Hillary camp then immediately started blaming Russia for the exposure of her corruption and rigging of the Democratic process. And that's how "Russiagate" began. ..."
"... Take that bunch of mediocre thinkers, and then make most of them obsessed with their own career advancement above all else. The most dangerous place for a career-obsessed individual is outside the group consensus. ..."
"... So, for instance, Trump should veto the act of war known as the recent sanctions bill. Who cares if it gets overridden? Then he goes back to the voters, who are clearly sick of endless war and who for obvious reasons don't want a nuclear war, and he says this is where I stand. Support me by electing Fill-In-The-Blank to Congress. With the nuclear Doomsday Clock pushing ever closer to midnight, he might just win that fight over the big money and media opposition he's sure to face. ..."
"... Not only has Trump failed to even try to fight the Deep State, but he's also failing to set himself up for success in the next elections. ..."
Long ago, when I was a spear carrying middle ranker at CIA, a colleague took me aside and said
that he had something to tell me "as a friend," that was very important. He told me that his wife
had worked for years in the Agency's Administrative Directorate, as it was then called, where she
had noticed that some new officers coming out of the Career Trainee program had red tags on their
personnel files. She eventually learned from her boss that the tags represented assessments that
those officers had exceptional potential as senior managers. He added, however, that the reverse
appeared to be true in practice as they were generally speaking serial failures as they ascended
the bureaucratic ladder, even though their careers continued to be onward and upward on paper. My
friend's wife concluded, not unreasonably, that only genuine a-holes had what it took to get promoted
to the most senior ranks.
I was admittedly skeptical but some recent activity by former and current Directors and Acting
Directors of CIA has me wondering if something like my friend's wife's observation about senior management
might indeed be true. But it would have to be something other than tagging files, as many of the
directors and their deputies did not come up through the ranks and there seems to be a similar strain
of lunacy at other U.S. government intelligence agencies. It might be time to check the water supply
in the Washington area as there is very definitely something in the kool-aid that is producing odd
behavior.
Now I should pause for a moment and accept that the role of intelligence services is to identify
potential threats before they become active, so a certain level of acute paranoia goes with the job.
But at the same time, one would expect a level of professionalism which would mandate accuracy rather
than emotion in assessments coupled with an eschewing of any involvement in the politics of foreign
and national security policy formulation. The enthusiasm with which a number of senior CIA personnel
have waded into the Trump swamp and have staked out positions that contradict genuine national interests
suggests that little has been learned since CIA Director George Tenet sat behind Secretary of State
Colin Powell in the UN and nodded sagaciously as Saddam Hussein's high crimes and misdemeanors were
falsely enumerated.
Indeed, one can start with Tenet if one wants to create a roster of recent CIA Directors who
have lied to permit the White House to engage in a war crime. Tenet and his staff knew better than
anyone that the case against Saddam did not hold water, but President George W. Bush wanted his war
and, by gum, he was going to get it if the CIA had any say in the matter.
Back then as now, international Islamic terrorism was the name of the game. It kept the money
flowing to the national security establishment in the false belief that America was somehow being
made "safe." But today the terror narrative has been somewhat supplanted by Russia, which is headed
by a contemporary Saddam Hussein in the form of Vladimir Putin. If one believes the media and a majority
of congressmen, evil manifest lurks in the gilded halls of the Kremlin. Russia has recently been
sanctioned (again) for crimes that are more alleged than demonstrated and President Putin has been
selected by the Establishment as the wedge issue that will be used to end President Donald Trump's
defiance of the Deep State and all that pertains to it. The intelligence community at its top level
would appear to be fully on board with that effort.
The most recent inexplicable comments come from the current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, speaking
at the Aspen Institute Security Forum. He began by asserting that Russia had interfered in the U.S.
election
before saying that the logic behind Russia's Middle Eastern strategy is to stay in place in Syria
so Moscow can "stick it to America." He didn't define the "it" so one must assume that "it" stands
for any utensil available, ranging from cruise missiles to dinner forks. He then elaborated, somewhat
obscurely, that "I think they find anyplace that they can make our lives more difficult, I think
they find that something that's useful."
Remarkably, he also said that there is only "minimal evidence" that Russia is even fighting
ISIS. The statement is astonishing as Moscow has most definitely been seriously and directly engaged
in support of the Syrian Arab Army. Is it possible that the head of the CIA is unaware of that? It
just might be that Pompeo is disparaging the effort because the Russians and Syrians have also been
fighting against the U.S. backed "moderate rebels." That the moderate rebels are hardly moderate
has been known for years and they are also renowned for their ineffectiveness combined with a tendency
to defect to more radical groups taking their U.S. provided weapons with them, a combination of factors
which led to their being denied any further American support by a presidential decision that was
revealed in the press two weeks ago.
Pompeo's predecessor John Brennan is, however, my favorite Agency leader in the category of
totally bereft of his senses. In testimony before the House Intelligence Committee back in May,
he suggested that some Trump associates might have been recruited by the Russian intelligence service.
He testified that
"I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions
between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about
because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether
or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals."
In his testimony, Brennan apparently forgot to mention that the CIA is not supposed to keep tabs
on American citizens. Nor did he explain how he had come upon the information in the first place
as it had been handed over by foreign intelligence services, including the British, Dutch and Estonians,
and at least some of it had been sought or possibly inspired by Brennan unofficially in the first
place. Brennan then used that information to request an FBI investigation into a possible Russian
operation directed against potential key advisers if Trump were to somehow get nominated and elected,
which admittedly was a longshot at the time. That is how Russiagate started.
Brennan is certainly loyal to his cause, whatever that might be. At the same Aspen meeting
attended by Pompeo, he
told Wolf Blitzer that if Trump were to fire special counsel Robert Mueller government officials
should "refuse to carry out" his orders. In other words, they should begin a coup, admittedly non-violent
(one presumes), but nevertheless including federal employees uniting to shut the government down.
A lesser known former CIA senior official is
John McLaughlin,
who briefly served as acting Director in 2004. McLaughlin was particularly outraged by Trump's recent
speech to the Boy Scouts, which he described as having the feel "of a third world authoritarian's
youth rally." He added that "It gave me the creeps it was like watching the late Venezuelan [President
Hugo] Chavez."
And finally, there is Michael Morell, also a former Acting Director, who was closely tied
to the Hillary Clinton campaign, apparently driven by ambition to become Director in her administration.
Morell currently provides commentary for CBS television and is a frequent guest on the Charlie Rose
show. Morell considerably raised the ante on Brennan's pre-electoral speculation that there had been
some Russian recruitment of Trump people.
He observed in August that Putin, a wily ex-career intelligence officer, "trained to identify
vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them [did exactly that] early in the primaries. Mr.
Putin played upon Mr. Trump's vulnerabilities In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr.
Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."
I and others noted at the time that Putin and Trump had never met, not even through proxies, while
we also wondered how one could be both unwitting and a recruited agent as intelligence recruitment
implies control and taking direction. Morell was non-plussed, unflinching and just a tad sanctimonious
in affirming that his own intelligence training (as an analyst who never recruited a spy in his life)
meant that "[I] call it as I see it."
One could also cite Michael Hayden and James Clapper, though the latter was not CIA. They all
basically hew to the same line about Russia, often in more-or-less the same words, even though no
actual evidence has been produced to support their claims. That unanimity of thinking is what is
peculiar while academics like Stephen Cohen, Stephen Walt, Andrew Bacevich, and John Mearsheimer,
who have studied Russia in some depth and understand the country and its leadership far better than
a senior CIA officer, detect considerable nuance in what is taking place. They all believe that the
hardline policies current in Washington are based on an eagerness to go with the flow on the comforting
inside-the- beltway narrative that paints Russia as a threat to vital interests. That unanimity of
viewpoint should surprise no one as this is more of less the same government with many of the same
people that led the U.S. into Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. They all have a vested interested in the
health and well-being of a fully funded national security state.
And the other groupthink that seems to prevail among the senior managers except Pompeo is that
they all hate Donald Trump and have done so since long before he won the election. That is somewhat
odd, but it perhaps reflects a fear that Trump would interfere with the richly rewarding establishment
politics that had enabled their careers. But it does not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of CIA
employees. Though it is admittedly unscientific analysis on my part, I know a lot of former and some
current CIA employees but do not know a single one who voted for Hillary Clinton. Nearly all voted
for Trump.
Beyond that exhibition of tunnel vision and sheer ignorance, the involvement of former senior
intelligence officials in politics is itself deplorable and is perhaps symptomatic of the breakdown
in the comfortable bipartisan national security consensus that has characterized the past fifty years.
Once upon time former CIA officers would retire to the Blue Ridge mountains and raise Labradors,
but we are now into something much more dangerous if the intelligence community, which has been responsible
for most of the recent leaks, begins to feel free to assert itself from behind the scenes. As Senator
Chuck Schumer
recently warned "Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community -- they have six ways
from Sunday at getting back at you."
In jumping this fascist nihilist shark, the groupthinkers have closed themselves off from the
logical conclusion to their viewpoint, which is final annihilation.
Brennan, Morell, and Pompeo should better find ways to justify their salaries: the U.S. has
suffered the greatest breach in cybersecurity on their watch:
" an enormous breach of the United States Security Apparatus by as many as 80 Democrat members
of Congress (past and present). We rail on about the Russians and Trump, but t he media avoids
providing nightly updates about these 5 spies that have compromised Congress ."
"In total, Imran's firm was employed by 31 Democrats in Congress, some of whom held extremely
sensitive positions on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House
Committee on Foreign Affair s."
Nothing new. In the '50s CIA was making foreign wars and cultivating chaos at home, and
blaming all of it on Russia. In the '80s CIA was cultivating anti-nuke groups to undermine Reagan,
and blaming it on Russia. CIA has been the primary wellspring of evil for a long time.
And back to reality we have VIPS Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Yes you read that right and they are going to the rotten core of this coup against the
United States by presenting a report stating that the DNC was "Leaked" not hacked. The real hacking
came from President Obama's weaponizing of our intelligence agencies against Russia.
That is war, World War Three and it would seem now that Congress is marching that way, but
the report below hold the key to fighting back.
One of the VIPS is William Binney fomer NSA Technical Director, an important expert. leading
the group is Ray McGovern with some whit and grace, well yes how about some sanity, to which humor
is important to the insight and to stay in the sights of what is clever thievery and worse. Much
worse,
and there is a twinkle in the eye when realize that it is straight forward.
And Congress could stop it tout sweet, but well old habits but they have taken an Oath of Office,
so, so what, yeah they did go after Bernie, so will you challenge your elected officials, either
do their sworn duty or resign, for what this sanctions bill against Russia and Iran is a declaration
of war, not only against Russia and Iran, but a declaration of war against the United States.
for there is no reason to do this against Russia when indeed there are great opportunities to
get along, but war is the insanity as it is sedition and treason. Tell them that,
I wonder if groupthink exists.
In any organisation people know quite well why the organisation exists, what the threats are to
its existence.
If they think about this, I wonder.
The CIA is the USA's secret army, it is not comparable to a real intelligence organisation like
the British MI5.
The CIA is more like WWII SOE, designed to set fire to Europe, Churchill's words.
If indeed Trump changes USA foreign policy, no longer trying to control the world, the CIA is
obsolete, as obsolete as NATO.
" but President George W. Bush wanted his war and, by gum, he was going to get it if the CIA
had any say in the matter."
Not to defend the CIA, but didn't Rumsfeld, doubt the enthusiasm of the CIA for providing the
slanted, bogus, "sexed up" intelligence the Executive required to make its "destroy Iraq now"
case ? So Rumsfeld therefore set up an independent intelligence agency within the Defence Dept
to provide/create the required "intelligence" ?
I think they find anyplace that they can make our lives more difficult, I think they find
that something that's useful."
Yeah, because that's what resource-constrained countries with limited ability to tap the global
capital markets do. Methinks Mr. Pompeo is projecting his and the neocons' fantasies on the Russians.
As has been the case for decades the Deep State allows Presidents and legislators to make minor
decisions in our government as long as those decisions do not in any way interfere with the Deep
State's goals of total world hegemony and increase in overwhelming power and wealth. Those who
make the important decisions in this country are not elected. The elected 'officials' are sycophants
of the Deep State.
Being resistant to jargon and catch phrases it is only slowly that I have accepted that "Deep
State" is not entirely pretentious waffle when used to describe aspects of the US. However I may
not be your only reader PG who would appreciate a clear explanatory description of the American
Deep State and how it works.
Here are some suggested parameters.
The term is appropriated from the use to describe the mutually loyal corps of Ataturkians in
the Turkish military and intelligence services who were united in service to uphold the ideal
of Ataturkian secular modernisation. The term implies no public accountability or publicity unnecessary
to its purposes.
And its origins imply that it is not just one in a number of major influences ln government or
those who vote for it.
So one has to acknowledge that in the US the Deep State has to be different in the important
respect that levers of power are observably wielded by lobbies for the aged, gun owners and sellers,
Israel, Wall Street, bio fuels, sugar and other ag, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, the arms industry,
Disney and other Hollywood and media, health insurers and the medical profession, and I could
go on.
These are all relevant to legal events like votes on impeachment or to hold up appointments.
The CIA and FBI together completely united (and note how disunited 9/11 showed them to be) wouldn't
remotely approach the old Turkish Deep State's ability to stage a coup. Are all of the putative
elements of the Deep State together today as powerful as J.Edgar Hoover with his dirt files on
everyone? (A contrast and compare exercise of today's presumed Deep State configuration and modus
operandi with the simpler Hoover days might shine some light on who does what and how today. And
how effectively).
To avoid lack of focus can a convincing account of the US Deep State be best given in terms
of a plausible scenario for
getting rid of Trump as President and/or
maintaining the lunacy and hubris which has the US wasting its substance on totally unnecessary
antagonistic relations with China and Russia and interference in the ME?
I would read such accounts with great interest. (Handwavers need not apply).
Of course the US Deep State must hate Russia. First, Jews have a very long history of hating Russia and Russians. That never changed. The
USSR was not Russia; the USSR was Marxism replacing Russia. Jews tended to love that. Rich Jews
from across the world, from the US and the UK of most interest to us, sent money to support the
Bolshevik Revolution.
Russia managed to survive the USSR and is slowly coming back around to Russian common sense
from the Christian perspective. Neither Jews nor their WASP BFFs can ever forgive that. They want
Russia to act now to commit cultural and genetic suicide, like Western Europe and the entire Anglosphere
are doing.
@polistraThe CIA's source, its birth, is from British secret service. Brit spying. And Brit secret service,
long before the official founding of MI5, did exactly the kinds of things you note the CIA has
done.
The Mossad is another direct fruit of Brit secret service, as is the Saudi General Intelligence
Presidency.
While there can be no doubt about the crackpots in high positions of the most powerful bureaucracies,
it seems to me that the CIA loonies are merely shock troops for an even worse bunch of evil psychos,
the bankster mafiosi.
But doing so would mean a voluntary end to playing the role of Sauron, determined to find and
wear the One Ring to Rule Them All. The average Elite WASP, and his Jewish BFF, definitely would
prefer to destroy the world, at least outside their gated compounds of endless luxury, than to
step down from that level of global domination.
@Wizard
of Oz Wiz – Here is an article I did on the Deep State two years ago. It was one of the first
in the US media looking at the issue. It would have to be updated now in light of Trump, but much
of what it states is still more-or-less correct.
But we need to make certain that your use of the word 'mafiosi' does not lead anyone to assume
that group has more than a handful of Italians. Jews, WASPs, and continental Germanics each will
outnumber Italians by at least 30 to 1.
I am a retired CIA operations officer (something none of the men mentioned by Giraldi are –
Brennan was a failed wanna be, couldn't cut it as an ops officer). He is spot on in his comments.
The majority of people in the CIA, the ones who do the heavy lifting, are patriotic Americans
who are proud of serving their country. I am sure that most voted for Trump as they all know too
well the truth about the Clintons and Obama.
Giraldi is not the only one to notice the upward progress of the most incompetent yes-men in the
Agency. A close look at most of them reveals a track record of little or no operational success
balanced by excellent sucking up skills. These characters quickly figured out how to get ahead
and doing your job in the field is not it. Of course, most are ego maniacs so they are totally
oblivious to their own uselessness.
Well before he was elected I had a letter delivered to President Trump in which I outlined in
detail what would happen to him if he did not immediately purge the CIA of these assholes. I know
that at least some people on his staff read it but, of course, my advice was ignored. Trump has
paid dearly for not listening to an ordinary CIA guy who wanted to give him a reality brief on
those vicious snakes.
Historical facts teach humanity that Anglo-Saxon group of Nations was built on slavery, thuggery
and theft of other peace loving Civilizations.
We Slavs are the New "niggers", hate is the glue that holds you "toGether".
People of color have been successfully conditioned and practice it as well.
Time will tell how well it holds when balloon bursts and 99% gets called to serve as cannon fodder.
Terrorizing UNARMED and WEAKER is not true test of "superiority" and "exceptionalism".
Tiny, extremely tiny minority of Anglo-Saxons and Satraps understand this.
How "Russiagate" began: After the primaries, both Hillary and Donald faced divided political parties even though they
had won the nomination. These divisions were worse than the normal situation after contested primaries.
On the Democratic side, Hillay had just subverted the will of the voters of her party, who seemed
to favor Bernie Sanders over her. Hillay had won with corrupt collusion and rigging amongst the
DNC, the higher ranks of the Democratic Party, and major media such as the NYT and CNN.
Then, a leak of emails from the DNC HQ publicized her interference in the democratic processes
of the Democratic Party. This threatened to ene the Hillary for President campaign right then
and there. If the majority of Democrats who'd favored Bernie refused to support Hillary because
of her corruption and collusion in denying democracy within the party, she was a sure loser in
the fall election. The Hillary camp then immediately started blaming Russia for the exposure of her corruption
and rigging of the Democratic process. And that's how "Russiagate" began.
My old brain that was alive in the 60′s, remembers the lyric.
But the first link I find on Google's youtube is a version that removes the above lyric, instead
just echoing the title endlessly. That's the modern world .. all real content removed from what you find on the internet.
It probably does as do group psychoses and group fantasies.. Anyone who's ever served in a beuaracracy
knows that groupthink exists.
Take a bunch of mediocre minds. And, they do exist, as Garrison Keiler once famously made a
joke out of with his line Welcome to Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average.
Take that bunch of mediocre thinkers, and then make most of them obsessed with their own career
advancement above all else. The most dangerous place for a career-obsessed individual is outside
the group consensus. If everyone is wrong, then there is safety in the group. After all, if they
are wrong, so was everyone else in the organization. Thus they are immune to attack and censure
for being wrong. But if someone takes a position outside of the group consensus, that can be a
career-ending move if they are wrong, as now everyone else will be in the I-told-U-So camp. And
even if they are correct, they will still be hated and shunned just for being the person who pointed
out to the group that they are wrong.
So, you take your typical average mind, and not only do they not have any great insights of
their own, but they tend to stick to the group out of sheer survival and then when you take a
mass of these mediocre minds you have 'groupthink'.
If only Trump would really clean the swamp - particularly the neo-cons and other traitors and
globalists. One can dream ....
What we've learned from Trump is that 'Draining the Swamp' will
take more than an individual. It will take a political movement.
One sees this on the fringes of politics. Someone gets the idea of running for President, and
they point out all that is wrong. But, they focus only on their own campaign, their own goal,
and they thus gloss over the fact that they'll be outnumbered and powerless even if they win.
Seen this often on the Left. The most recent example is Bernie Sanders. Likewise, had Bernie
been elected President, he too would face an entrenched establishment and media with only a small
fraction of the Congress supporting him.
Change has to be built from the bottom up. There are no shortcuts. Electing a Trump, or a Nader
or a Bernie does not lead to real change. Step one is to build the political movement such that
it has real voting block power and which has already won voting majorities in the legislature
before the movement achieves the election of a President.
What Trump has needed to be doing for this first two years is to form clear divisions that
he could then take to his voters in the mid-term elections. He's needed to lay out his own agenda.
So what if he loses votes in Congress? He then takes that agenda back to the voters in 2018 with
a nationwide slate of Congressional candidates who support that agenda and runs a midterm campaign
asking the voters to help him drain that swamp.
So, for instance, Trump should veto the act of war known as the recent sanctions bill. Who
cares if it gets overridden? Then he goes back to the voters, who are clearly sick of endless
war and who for obvious reasons don't want a nuclear war, and he says this is where I stand. Support
me by electing Fill-In-The-Blank to Congress. With the nuclear Doomsday Clock pushing ever closer
to midnight, he might just win that fight over the big money and media opposition he's sure to
face.
Not only has Trump failed to even try to fight the Deep State, but he's also failing to set
himself up for success in the next elections.
It is a serious error to consider President Trump "naive."
What we are seeing now is The Donald's role in the serial Zionist THEATER. Think deeper about the motive behind Mr. Giraldi's choice to use the Orwellian word "Groupthink"
in characterizing the CIA zeitgeist? In the classic work "1984," one observes Big Brother as the catalyst in control of the proles'
thought pattern & subsequent action.
To rise & FALL as a POTUS is a matter of theater and the American proles are entertained by
the political for either 4 or 8 years and the Zionists get their next Chosen actor/actress dramatically
sworn in on a bible.
Mr. Trump is neither naive nor stupid. Sheldon Adelson would not donate $millioms to any POTUS
wannabe who could not effectively lead the American Groupthink tradition. Subsequently, the politcal
horror show is brought to you in the understandable form of the perptually elusive Deep State
which gets annual Academy Award.
McGovern thinks that it was Brennan boys who hacked into DNC as a part of conspiracy to implicate
Russia and to secure Hillary win. One of the resons was probably that DNC servers were not well protected
and there were other hacks, about whihc NSA know. So the sad state of DNC internet security needed to
be swiped under the carpet and that's why CrowdStike was hired.
NSA created 7 million lines of code for penetration and that includes those that were pablished
by Wikileaks and designed to imitate that attackers are coming (and using the language) from: China,
North Korea, Iran and Russia.
Also NSA probably intercepts and keeps all Internet communications for a month or two so if it
was a hack NSA knows who did it and what was stolen
But the most unexplainable part was that fact that FBI was denied accessing the evidence. I
always think that thye can dictate that they need to see in such cases, but obviously this was not
the case.
Notable quotes:
"... She couldn't pack a school gymnasium while Trumps rallies were packed with 10's of thousands. ..."
Love the rest of the talk, but no way did Hillary win. No way did she get the popular vote.
The woman was calling for war and reinstating the draft on men and women. She couldn't
pack a school gymnasium while Trumps rallies were packed with 10's of thousands.
"Aaron Barlow: The Russian hacking nonsense is a tin foil hat conspiracy right up there with Reptilians
and Aliens."
Notable quotes:
"... Snowden is a patriot. Only an individual that has integrity can do what Snowden did. He saw something that was wrong and blew the whistle on it, it was as simple as that, he knew the consequences very well. ..."
this guy is smart. well informed, super intellectual capacity. He chooses his words very wisely
and well calculated. His interview is brain enlightening.
This right here.. is a fucking man... he gave up allllll the high life gave up allllll the
money. all the BS to give the people what the fuck they needed to hear
Snowden is a patriot. Only an individual that has integrity can do what Snowden did. He
saw something that was wrong and blew the whistle on it, it was as simple as that, he knew the
consequences very well.
She is anti-trump. She is sent from the elite. She don't give a damn about him. 100% she is
untrustworthy. Snowden is a threat to the deep state. Her questions clearly are from the democrats.
The "journalist" who is interviewing Edward is a freedom hating, elitist worshipping mainstream
media harlot.
Those who are ignorant of history are bound to repeat it. The people who founded this country
left Britain due to a corrupt, tyrannical government. The US government is far more corrupt today
then England was in the 1700s.
The 4th amendment has been butchered by the tyrannical, elitist dictators who are running this
broken country. Today, the mainstream media is firmly controlled by a few, highly deranged elitists
who are in league with the rancid, stinking pieces of fecal matter who run the US. The republic
that was created by English "traitors" was supposed to be a sanctuary for freedom and human rights.
The republic they created is dead and gone. It may look the same on the surface, but this country
is much too far gone to ever recover. It never ceases to amaze me just how ignorant of history
and the Constitution the average American is. The citizens are ignorant, bordering on stupid.
The evidence is everywhere, yet millions of weak-minded sheeple cannot see what lies directly
in front of their eyes. The level of cognitive dissonance displayed by the average American is
pitiful, and I will feel no pity when they realize that they were living in a country whose leaders
were following the same game plan as Adolph Hitler... to the letter.
People believe that their political party, the party to which they give their allegiance, is
the "good" party. Republicans and Democrats are one and the same. The two party system is simply
a two headed snake that will lead the US into tyranny. The US is hated around the world because
it has assumed the role of the world's arrogant, renegade cop. A country that was not to be "entangled
in foreign affairs", now has military bases in nearly every corner of the earth. Those who open
their mouths to defend the snakes in power will be taught a great lesson once the elitists' plans
come to fruition. It's difficult to feel sorry for the people who believe the endless lies that
are spoken by those in power.
These fools won't see the truth until their heads lie under the blade of the guillotine. Anyone
who puts security before freedom and privacy deserves to be placed behind concrete walls and barbed
wire, where they will remain "safe" from the fictitious enemies who cause them to pathetically
cower in fear. The destiny of this country is that of Rome. Unfortunately, the masses do not know
or understand the true history of this world. The putrid stench of ignorance covers the majority
of the American populous. Snowden exposed the government's evil secrets, helping preserve freedom
and liberty in the United States. Those who chastise Snowden deserve what is coming: The death
of freedom under the hands of evil tyrants.
Watching Gen. Clapper state, UNDER OATH, that the NSA was not and is not indiscriminately reading,
storing, and intercepting the private communications of every American citizen, made me feel physically
ill.
The fact that he chose to tell a straight-out lie (in light of the information supplied to
us by Edward Snowden, who exposed this illegal and unconstitutional internal spying program) -
watching him choose to speak a brazen lie, spoken in complete disregard for his office, the NSA's
mandate (and its limits), his military career leading to his appointment as head of the NSA, the
Constitutional trust placed in him, and the laws which make a direct lie - under oath - to a Senate
Intelligence Committee (composed of the people WE elected to represent us) a FELONY - mean that
Gen. CLAPPER should be in prison for Perjury.
This is the applicable Constitutional U.S. Code, section 1621: "§ 1621. Perjury generally:
Whoever! (1) having taken an oath before a competent tribunal, officer, or person, in any case
in which a law of the United States authorizes an oath to be administered, that he will testify,
declare, depose, or certify truly, or that any written testimony, declaration, deposition, or
certificate by him subscribed, is true, willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes
any material matter which he does not believe to be true; or (2) in any declaration, certificate,
verification, or statement under penalty of perjury as permitted under section 1746 of title 28,
United States Code, willfully subscribes as true any material matter which he does not believe
to be true; - is guilty of perjury and shall, except as other-wise expressly provided by law,
be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. This section is applicable
whether the statement or subscription is made within or without the United States."
Five years in prison, for lying to Congress about your indiscriminate spying on innocent U.S.
citizens, Gen. Clapper, and then your filthy, despicable use of the U.S. Constitution (and our
rights to privacy within it), as toilet paper when you lied directly to Senator Ron Wyden
@ 61:00 under oath, when he asked "Does the NSA collect ANY type of data - at all - on millions,
or hundreds of millions of Americans?" and you answered, with no hesitation or remorse, "No sir,"
you committed Perjury, by any definition of the above U.S. code.
Attempting to clarify, senator Wyden asked, "It does not?," and you answered, "Not wittingly.
There are cases where they might inadvertently collect, but NOT WITTINGLY."
Could the lie have been any more damning, or abhorrent in a supposed Democracy? Is it any wonder
why people like Gen. Clapper want Snowden - who PROVED that this was a lie, and exposed a completely
illegal and unconstitutional program which Clapper was then in charge of - thrown in prison, and
silenced permanently? Trump speaks of "draining the swamp." He could start with the NSA, and all
of it's illegal activities, and work his way through every Intelligence Agency and the Military/Industrial
Organizations and Corporations which together, represent the greatest threat ever to our liberties
and to the Constitution - which is just hanging by a thread because of people and programs like
this, and work his way down.
But he won't. Why? Because he, like the rest of us, has seen the Zapruder film. It's much easier
- and safer - to kill the messenger. This is what makes Snowden, in today's world, a hero who,
unlike the rest of these cowards and traitors, will be remembered well by history - for whatever
that is worth to the man now. Thank God there are still people willing to sacrifice "their lives,
their fortunes, and their sacred honor" for the purpose of protecting what remains of the tattered
remnants of our Constitutionally-protected freedoms from government, and tyranny.
The US probably still surveys innocent everyday Americans by the millions. Not to prevent terrorism,
but to have political and economic control, as Snowden has said. Watch the movie Snowden. Very
enlightening.
I really liked this interview, and have much love for my fellow American Edward Snowden. He
did the right thing. Whoever posted this video under the title "EDWARD SNOWDEN EXPOSES DONALD
TRUMP" is kind of a dumbass. One tiny opinion is not equivalent to an expose', and this had nothing
to do with Trump. Quit making click bait asshole
have to say .... balls of steal. left his own life behind to let "us" know what its really
like. we were not there he was.. i love my country but dont think U.S.A. is not doing these things.
First time in my 45 years i question things like this...he makes an amazing point....if someone
questions they go to jail. Thats BS. questions make us a better Democracy. A better country...god
bless you Edward i hope it works out for you brother.
SHOCKING - TRUELY SHOCKING HOW UNBELIEVABLE DUMB THIS WOMAN IS. Is she really the best American
journalism could send? I have to critisize Snowden too - for once (excuse me Eddy!): Why did he
agree to meet such a ridiculous dummy? The interview - at least this dumb gooses part . was bodering
on being comical. If Snowden`s intellegence were given the factor 100 - nobody would be able to
give this truely uneducated, superficial and naive woman a number higher than room-temperature.
In Celsius, that is! Hard to watch and difficult to understand why Snowden agreed to meet a completely
shallow elderly Mom!
SHOCKING - TRUELY SHOCKING HOW UNBELIEVABLE DUMB THIS WOMAN IS. Is she really the best American
journalism could send? I have to critisize Snowden too - for once (excuse me Eddy!): Why did he
agree to meet such a ridiculous dummy? The interview - at least this dumb gooses part . was bodering
on being comical. If Snowden`s intellegence were given the factor 100 - nobody would be able to
give this truely uneducated, superficial and naive woman a number higher than room-temperature.
In Celsius, that is! Hard to watch and difficult to understand why Snowden agreed to meet a completely
shallow elderly Mom!
This is a very interesting interview to be sure, and I personally, have great admiration for
this man, as I'm sure much of the world does, and all the more so after watching the movie concerning
his life in which we see how the CIA made his life a living hell for many years if not a decade
or so, and may have even, brought this condition with his seizures and everything, assuming this
movie was an accurate portrayal of his life, but there is precious little here about trump.
I was hoping he had some juicy info he was going to share but that does not seem so. Regardless,
the man should be pardoned and allowed to get on with his life.
Government must know that it can never be all powerful and do whatever it damn will pleases,
at home or abroad either. So for that reason the man is a hero for sure. He says; "we will not
torture you." Wow. Not sure if he's joking there or serious but if he's serious then that is extremely
disturbing indeed. Respectfully. All My Best. Out.
Ray McGovern raise important fact: DNC hide evidence from FBI outsourcing everything to CrowdStrike.
This is the most unexplainable fact in the whole story. One hypotheses that Ray advanced here that there
was so many hacks into DNC that they wanted to hide.
Another important point is CIA role in elections, and specifically
John O. Brennan behaviour.
Brennan's 25 years with the CIA included work as a Near East and South Asia analyst and as station chief
in Saudi Arabia.
McGovern thing that Brennon actually controlled Obama. And in his opinion Brennan was the
main leaker of Trump surveillance information.
Notable quotes:
"... Do really think the Deep State cares about the environment. Trump is our only chance to damage Deep State. McGovern is wrong... DNC were from Seth Rich, inside DNC. Murdered for it. McGovern is wrong... i could go on and on but suffice it to say his confidence is way to high. He is wrong. ..."
I really like Ray... I watch and listen , he seems to use logic, reason and facts in his assessments..
I'm surprised CIA and the deep state allow him to operate ... stay safe Ray...
McGovern, you idiot. To try to put Trump on Hillary's level is complete stupidity. The war
with Russia or nothing was avoided with a Trump victory. Remember the NATO build up on the Russian
border preparing for a Hillary win? Plus, if Hillary won, justice and law in the USA would be
over with forever. The Germans dont know sht about the USA to say their little cute phrase. Trump
is a very calm mannered man and his hands on the nuke button is an issue only to those who watch
the fake MSM. And no the NSA has not released anything either. Wrong on that point too.
The German expression of USA having a choice between cholera and plague is ignorant. McGovern
is wrong ....everyone knew HRC was a criminal. McGovern is wrong... Jill Stein in not trustworthy.
A vote for Jill Stein was a vote away from Trump. If Jill Stein or HRC were elected their would
be no environment left to save. Do really think the Deep State cares about the environment.
Trump is our only chance to damage Deep State. McGovern is wrong... DNC were from Seth Rich, inside
DNC. Murdered for it. McGovern is wrong... i could go on and on but suffice it to say his confidence
is way to high. He is wrong.
Another month or so and the DHS may offer a color-coding system to help the sheeple understand
various levels of confidence. Green - Moderate Confidence Blue - High Confidence Yellow - Very
High Confidence Orange - Extremely High Confidence Red - Based on Actual Fact
The last category may be one of the signs of the apocalypse.
You wouldn't know it, based on the endless cries for more money coming from the
military
politicians , and
the president , but these are the best of times for the Pentagon. Spending on the Department
of Defense alone is already well in excess of half a trillion dollars a year and counting. Adjusted
for inflation, that means it's
higher
than at the height of President Ronald Reagan's massive buildup of the 1980s and is now nearing
the post-World War II funding peak. And yet that's barely half the story. There are hundreds of billions
of dollars in "defense" spending that aren't even counted in the Pentagon budget.
Under the circumstances, laying all this out in grisly detail!and believe me, when you dive into
the figures, they couldn't be grislier!is the only way to offer a better sense of the true costs
of our wars past, present, and future, and of the funding that is the lifeblood of the national security
state. When you do that, you end up with no less than 10 categories of national security spending
(only one of which is the Pentagon budget). So steel yourself for a tour of our nation's trillion-dollar-plus
"national security" budget. Given the Pentagon's penchant for wasting money and our government's
record of engaging in dangerously misguided wars without end, it's clear that a large portion of
this massive investment of taxpayer dollars isn't making anyone any safer.
1) The Pentagon Budget
The Pentagon's "base" or regular budget contains the costs of the peacetime training, arming,
and operation of the U.S. military and of the massive civilian workforce that supports it!and if
waste is your Eden, then you're in paradise.
The department's budget is awash in waste, as you might expect from the only major federal agency
that has
never passed an audit . For example, last year a
report by the Defense Business Board, a Pentagon advisory panel, found that the Department of
Defense could save $125 billion over five years just by trimming excess bureaucracy. And a new
study by the Pentagon's Inspector General indicates that the department has ignored hundreds
of recommendations that could have saved it more than $33.6 billion.
The Pentagon can't even get an accurate count of the number of private contractors it employs,
but the
figure is certainly in the range of 600,000 or higher, and many of them carry out tasks that
might far better be handled by government employees. Cutting that enormous contractor work force
by just 15 percent, only a start when it comes to eliminating the unnecessary duplication involved
in hiring government employees and private contractors to do the same work, would
save an easy $20 billion annually.
And the items mentioned so far are only the most obvious examples of misguided expenditures at
the Department of Defense. Even larger savings could be realized by scaling back the Pentagon's global
ambitions, which have caused nothing but trouble in the last decade and a half as the U.S. military
has waged devastating and counterproductive wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere across
the Greater Middle East and Africa. An analysis by Ben Friedman of the conservative Cato Institute
estimates that the Pentagon could
reduce its projected spending by one trillion dollars over the next decade if Washington
reined in its interventionist instincts and focused only on America's core interests.
Donald Trump, of course, ran for president as a businessman who would clean house and institute
unprecedented efficiencies in government. Instead, on entering the Oval Office, he's done a superb
job of ignoring chronic problems at the Pentagon,
proposing instead to give that department a hefty raise: $575 billion next year. And yet his
expansive military funding plans look relatively mild compared to the desires of the gung-ho members
of the armed services committees in the
House and
Senate . Democrats and Republicans alike want to hike the Pentagon budget to at least $600 billion
or more. The legislative fight over a final number will play out over the rest of this year. For
now, let's just use Trump's number as a placeholder.
Pentagon Budget: $575 billion
2) The War Budget
The wars of this century, from Iraq to Afghanistan and beyond, have largely been paid for through
a special account that lies outside the regular Pentagon budget. This war budget!known in the antiseptic
language of the Pentagon as the "Overseas Contingency Operations" account, or OCO!
peaked at more than $180
billion at the height of the Bush administration's intervention in Iraq.
As troop numbers in that country and Afghanistan have plummeted from
hundreds of thousands to
about 15,000 , the war budget, miraculously enough, hasn't fallen at anywhere near the same pace.
That's because it's not even subject to the modest
caps on the Pentagon's regular
budget imposed by Congress back in 2011, as part of a deal to keep the government open.
In reality, over the past five years, the war budget has become a slush fund that pays for tens
of billions of dollars in Pentagon expenses that have nothing to do with fighting wars. The Trump
administration wants
$64.6 billion for that boondoggle budget in fiscal year 2018. Some in Congress would like to
hike it another
$10 billion . For consistency, we'll again use the Trump number as a baseline.
War Budget: $64.6 Billion
Running Total: $639.6 Billion
3) Nuclear Warheads (and more)
You might think that the most powerful weapons in the U.S. arsenal -- nuclear warheads -- would
be paid for out of the Pentagon budget. And you would, of course, be wrong. The cost of researching,
developing, maintaining, and
"modernizing"
the American arsenal of
6,800 nuclear
warheads falls to an obscure agency located inside the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear
Security Administration, or NNSA. It also works on naval nuclear reactors, pays for the environmental
cleanup of nuclear weapons facilities, and funds the nation's three nuclear weapons laboratories,
at a total annual cost of more than
$20 billion per year.
Department of Energy (nuclear): $20 Billion
Running total: $659.6 billion
4) "Other Defense"
This catchall category encompasses a number of flows of defense-related funding that go to agencies
other than the Pentagon. It totals about
$8 billion per year . In recent years, about
two-thirds of this money has gone to pay for the homeland security activities of the FBI, accounting
for more than half of that agency's annual budget.
"Other Defense": $8 Billion
Running Total: $677.6 billion
The four categories above make up what the White House budget office considers total spending
on "national defense." But I'm sure you won't be shocked to learn that their cumulative $677.6 billion
represents far from the full story. So let's keep right on going.
5) Homeland Security
After the 9/11 attacks, Congress created a mega-agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
It absorbed 22 then-existing entities ,
all involved in internal security and border protection, creating the sprawling cabinet department
that now has 240,000 employees . For
those of you keeping score at home, the agencies and other entities currently
under the umbrella
of DHS include the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Law Enforcement
Training Center, the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, United States Citizenship and Immigration
Services, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency, the Transportation Security Agency, the
U.S. Secret Service, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), and the Office of Intelligence
Analysis (the only one of America's 17 intelligence agencies to fit under the department's rubric).
How many of these agencies actually make us safer? That would be a debatable topic, if anyone
were actually interested in such a debate. ICE!America's deportation force!has, for instance, done
far more to
cause suffering than to protect us from criminals or terrorists. On the other hand, it's reassuring
to know that there is an office charged with determining whether there is a nuclear weapon or radioactive
"dirty bomb" in our midst.
While it's hard to outdo the Pentagon, DHS has its own record of
dubious expenditures on items large and small. They range from $1,000 fees for employees to attend
conferences at spas to the purchase of bagpipes for border protection personnel to the payment of
scores of remarkably fat salaries to agency bureaucrats. On the occasion of its tenth anniversary
in 2013, Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-SC)
excoriated the department as "rife with waste," among other things, pointing to a report by the
DHS inspector general that it had misspent over $1 billion.
DHS was supposed to provide a better focus for efforts to protect the United States from internal
threats. Its biggest problem, though, may be that it has become a magnet for increased funding for
haphazard, misplaced, and often simply dangerous initiatives. These would, for instance, include
its program
to supply grants to local law enforcement agencies to help them buy military-grade equipment
to be
deployed
not against terrorists, but against citizens protesting the injustices perpetrated by the very
same agencies being armed by DHS.
The Trump administration has
proposed spending
$50 billion on DHS in FY 2018.
Homeland Security: $50 Billion
Running Total: $717.6 Billion
6) Military Aid
U.S. government-run military aid programs have proliferated rapidly in this century. The United
States now has
scores of arms and training programs serving more than
140 countries
. They cost more than
$18 billion per year , with
about 40
percent of that total located in the State Department's budget. While the Pentagon's share has
already been accounted for, the $7 billion at State!which can ill afford to pay for such programs
with the Trump administration seeking to
gut the rest of its budget!has not.
Military Aid at the State Department: $7 Billion
Running Total: $724.6 Billion
7) Intelligence
The United States government has
16 separate intelligence agencies : the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); the National Security
Agency (NSA); the Defense Intelligence Agency; the FBI; the State Department Bureau of Intelligence
and Research; the Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence Analysis; the Drug Enforcement
Administration Office of National Security Intelligence; the Treasury Department Office of Intelligence
and Analysis; the Department of Energy Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; the National
Reconnaissance Office; the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency; Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance,
and Reconnaissance; Army Military Intelligence; the Office of Naval Intelligence; Marine Corps Intelligence;
and Coast Guard Intelligence. Add to these the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI),
which is supposed to coordinate this far-flung intelligence network, and you have a grand total of
17 agencies.
The U.S. will spend more than $70 billion
on intelligence this year, spread across all these agencies. The bulk of this funding is contained
in the Pentagon budget!including the budgets of the CIA and the NSA (believed to be hidden under
obscure line items there). At most, a few billion dollars in additional expenditures on intelligence
fall outside the Pentagon budget and since, given the secrecy involved, that figure can't be determined,
let's not add anything further to our running tally.
Intelligence: $70 Billion (mostly contained inside the Pentagon budget)
Running Total: $724.6 Billion
8) Supporting Veterans
A steady uptick of veterans generated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has dramatically increased
the costs of supporting such vets once they come home, including the war wounded, some of whom will
need medical care for life. For 2018, the Veterans Administration has requested over
$186 billion for its budget, more than
three
times what it was before the 2001 intervention in Afghanistan.
Veterans: $186 billion
Running Total: $910.6 Billion
9) Military Retirement
The trust fund set up to cover pensions for military retirees and their survivors doesn't have
enough money to pay out all the benefits promised to these individuals. As a result, it is supplemented
annually by an appropriation from the general revenues of the government. That supplement has by
now reached roughly
$80 billion per year
Military Retirement: $80 Billion
Running Total: $990.6 Billion
10) Defense Share of Interest on the Debt
It's no secret that the U.S. government regularly runs at a deficit and that the total national
debt is growing. It may be more surprising to learn that the interest on that debt runs at roughly
$500 billion per year . The Project on Government Oversight
calculates the share of the interest on that debt generated by defense-related programs at more
than $100 billion annually.
Defense Share of the Interest on the Debt: $100 billion
Grand Total: $1.09 Trillion
That final annual tally of nearly $1.1 trillion to pay for past wars, fund current wars, and prepare
for possible future conflicts is roughly double the already staggering $575 billion the Trump administration
has proposed as the Pentagon's regular budget for 2018. Most taxpayers have no idea that more than
a trillion dollars a year is going to what's still called "defense," but these days might equally
be called national in security.
So the next time you hear the president, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, or a hawkish lawmaker claim that the U.S. military is practically collapsing from a lack
of funding, don't believe it for a second. Donald Trump may finally have put plutocracy in the Oval
Office, but a militarized version of it has long been ensconced in the Pentagon and the rest of the
national security state. In government terms, make no mistake about it, the Pentagon & Co. are the
one percent.
"... Azerbaijan's Silk Way Airlines transported hundreds of tons of weapons under diplomatic cover to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan Congo ..."
"... A British spy. An Arizona senator. And one inflammatory dossier on Donald Trump. The connection between them is starting to unravel... ..."
"... there are indications that McCain was the one who hired the company which created the infamous Steele dossier. ..."
"... Document hack could imperil subs in Oz, India, other countries ..."
"... The Trump-Russia Dossier (by political treason stabbing the nominee of his own Party; ignoring the words of Reagan) ..."
"... the first part of your post reaffirms my comment in the previous thread about the usa, saudi arabia/gccs and israel being the terrorists that the world would be a lot better place without... " ..."
"... in an exceptional country, there is no accountability... according to obama, you have to move on and not dwell on the past, lol... ..."
"... the mountain of evidence you provide daily, as proof of the corporate empire's malignancy, is therapeutic and empowering, but, until this information reaches the bulk of the U$A's masses we're all just treading water here. ..."
"... The last thing McCain has to worry about is prosecution or even criticism for fomenting war crimes. ..."
"... "The team has carried out painstaking research cataloging serial numbers and tracing the routes. They found crates of ammunition and rockets manufactured in factories in eastern Europe. These were bought by the governments of the US and Saudi Arabia." ..."
"... A British spy. An Arizona senator. And one inflammatory dossier on Donald Trump. The connection between them is starting to unravel... ..."
"... I suspected during the Prez Campaign that Trump had McCain well and truly scoped when he said (of Satan's Mini-Me) "I like my war "heroes" not to get captured." ..."
"... This story says a lot for China & Russia's approach to long-term Strategic Diplomacy. I imagine that they both know all this stuff and a helluva lot more, but they go to all the summits, prattle about Our AmeriKKKan Friends, and then presumably laugh their asses off when the summit is over. Xi & Putin seem to truly believe that the blowback from all this Yankee Duplicity will eventually do as much harm to the American Dream as an Ru/Cn Military Solution. ..."
"... Criminal activity under diplomatic cover should be prosecuted. They can pretend they didn't find out until it was too late. Or they can claim that they were letting it happen in order to track the players. Those excuses have been used for all kinds of cover for nefarious activites like Pakistan's AQ Khan NukeMart to distribute nuclear technology and materials. (See Deception and United States and the Islamc Bomb books) And there's Fast & Furious. In the end the cover comes from the political top of the trash heap. ..."
"... Sounds familiar? Iranian industrialization and westernization happened during the Shah. That is part of above story. Same story in Saudi Arabia . ..."
"... My suspicion is that this "reversal" was also made in the USA as a consequence of the strategy to use Islam as a "green belt" against the Soviet Union. ..."
Azerbaijan's Silk Way Airlines transported hundreds of tons of weapons under diplomatic
cover to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan Congo
the weapons and ammunition are usual from east Europe (Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Ukraine
...)
the contracts are with U.S. companies themselves hired by the CIA and/or Pentagon as well
as with Saudi and Israeli companies
offloading during unusual "fueling stops" allowed to disguise the real addressee of the
loads
With lots of details from obtained emails.
Ten thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition to al-Qaeda and other Takfiris in Syria also
came first from Libya by ship, then on
at least 160 big cargo flights via Saudi Arabia and Qatar to Turkey and during the last years
by
various
ships under U.S. contracts from
mostly east-European
countries.
---
With all the Trump-Russia nonsense flowing around one person's involvement in the creation of
the issue deserves more scrutiny:
The first story is a muti-billion dollar illegal business network that potentially encompasses
not only the CIA, but also several governments, the Clinton Foundation, David Patreus, investors
(many of whom hold government positions) and God knows what else. It's possibly the greatest scam
the world has ever seen.
It would be nice to have a comprehensive list of sponsors of those fake lucrative speeches such
front persons and puppets as Clintons, Saakashvili, Kwaśniewski, ... have been giving. The Business Round Tables that Quigley and Sutton wrote about that live off wars and misery.
There is an amazing amount of detailed information from reliable sources on the U.S. sponsored,
Saudi paid arms deliveries to terrorist in Syria, originating from the eastern parts of the European
Union. I have collected some of the best sources here:
McCain and the Trump-Russia Dossier
The third time is the Charm.I am reminded McCain can do no wrong: His service to his country (it's alleged, by aiding the enemy);
The Keating Five; (I dindu nuttin wrong)
The Trump-Russia Dossier (by political treason stabbing the nominee of his own Party; ignoring
the words of Reagan). McCain, once again, will be excused and forgiven. His actions were due to illness – the most
aggressive cancer of the brain. How is that so?
thanks b.. the first part of your post reaffirms my comment in the previous thread about the usa,
saudi arabia/gccs and israel being the terrorists that the world would be a lot better place without...
"the contracts are with U.S. companies themselves hired by the CIA and/or Pentagon as well as
with Saudi and Israeli companies.."
Thanks b, the mountain of evidence you provide daily, as proof of the corporate empire's malignancy,
is therapeutic and empowering, but, until this information reaches the bulk of the U$A's masses
we're all just treading water here.
@2: The last thing McCain has to worry about is prosecution or even criticism for fomenting war
crimes. The cancer is real and he will be lauded for his courage and lionized if he dies. But
should he survive he will carry on as usual with no apologies and no criticism.
"The team has carried out painstaking research cataloging serial numbers and tracing the routes.
They found crates of ammunition and rockets manufactured in factories in eastern Europe. These
were bought by the governments of the US and Saudi Arabia."
Whether or not the arming and financing of ISIS groups was "accidental" or "deliberate" remains
something of an open question; most likely the actual US policy from c.2011-2012 onwards was to
give support to anyone trying to overthrow Assad's government regardless of affiliation. The architects
of this plan? Clinton & McCain seem to be right at the center of it, with plenty of neocon/neolib
supporters in Congress & the State Department/CIA/Pentagon (Nuland/Morrell/Carter etc.)
Sorry b .... the "Reason" article is complete nonsense. I've covered the details the last two
weeks. The "dodgy dossier" was shared by Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, with the British MI6
and the FBI starting in August 2016. That's why I claim it's not RussiaGate but IC-Gate. A complot
by the Intelligence Community of the UK and US. McCain is just a distraction of the true effort
to dump Trump.
A British spy. An Arizona senator. And one inflammatory dossier on Donald Trump. The
connection between them is starting to unravel...
there are indications that McCain was the one who hired the company which created the
infamous Steele dossier.
there is evidences that he distributed it to the CIA, FBI and to the media.
the issue is now in front of a British court.
Christopher Steele and Sir Andrew Wood worked in a British spy nest in Moscow during the Yeltsin
years of the 90s.
Is RussiaGate Really IC-Gate
Did MI6/CIA Collude with Chris Steele to Entrap Trump?
'Sir' Andrew Wood as spy chief in Moscow
Fusion GPS linked to UAE Sheikh and Rubio Donor
Peter W. Smith Tapped Alt-Right to Access Dark Net for Clinton emails – linked to Charles
C. Johnson – Stephen Bannon - Andrew Auernheimer, a hacker who goes by the alias 'Weev', "exiled"
to the Ukraine
Thanks, b. Love the lede... 350 "diplomatic" flights transporting weapons for ter'rists - Trud
What a slimy little cur John McCain (Satan's Mini-Me) turns out to be. Guess how surprised
I'm not that the little skunk is up to his eyeballs in weapons proliferation & profiteering, not
to mention that old Yankee favourite Gun-barrel "Diplomacy".
I suspected during the Prez Campaign that Trump had McCain well and truly scoped when he said
(of Satan's Mini-Me) "I like my war "heroes" not to get captured."
This story says a lot for China & Russia's approach to long-term Strategic Diplomacy. I imagine
that they both know all this stuff and a helluva lot more, but they go to all the summits, prattle
about Our AmeriKKKan Friends, and then presumably laugh their asses off when the summit is over.
Xi & Putin seem to truly believe that the blowback from all this Yankee Duplicity will eventually
do as much harm to the American Dream as an Ru/Cn Military Solution.
Thanks again for the excellent journalism b even though it reads like the trash on the rags in
the grocery stores they make you look at while you check out.
I just hold out hope that the great unraveling continues and quickens its pace.
Criminal activity under diplomatic cover should be prosecuted. They can pretend they didn't find
out until it was too late. Or they can claim that they were letting it happen in order to track
the players. Those excuses have been used for all kinds of cover for nefarious activites like
Pakistan's AQ Khan NukeMart to distribute nuclear technology and materials. (See Deception and
United States and the Islamc Bomb books) And there's Fast & Furious. In the end the cover comes
from the political top of the trash heap.
The Dem/anti-Trump attempts to get dirt on Trump via Russians doesn't get play in the MSM.
Nor does the content of the emails. They call the tune and the media plays on.
@james 8
[Reported by Independent.co.uk, New York Post and the Guardian.co.uk] McCain admitted he handed
the dossier to Comey."
NYPost: McCain "I gave Russia blackmail dossier on Trump to the FBI"
Senator John McCain passed documents to the FBI director, James Comey, last month alleging
secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow and that Russian intelligence had personally
compromising material on the president-elect himself
Yes, there will be no accountability in the U.S. for the exceptional ones. However, the British
courts setting aside "special relationships" may take a different view that McCain has a case
to answer.
The link suggests that the subs involved in the scandal are perhaps OK, and no hack compromised
their worthiness in a possible military conflict. Neither there were any fatal accidents. The
only losses in manpower (but quite a few) are among people engaged in the financial transactions
that delivered them to various fleets.
Although there are possible danger to security, because bribery is used to blackmail involved
in recruitment of spies.
I hope the conspiracy theories are wrong, and that McInsane will soon suffer a well-deserved painful
death.
BTW, I'm a long-time Arizonan, and I'm proud to say I've never voted for this traitor and have
also signed the recall petitions against him.
I apologize for never contributing anything substantial but just emanating verbal support.
I hope this site has some mirrored archives. This is in its entirety a work of contemporary history
(sorry my english's not good enough... mirror this site and give it some dumb ancestor of ours
to read in 20, 50, 100 years, y'know).
I'm a broke lowlife but next time around I'll send some money.
damn I regret every cent I've spent on mainstream newspapers, although the last time I've done
so has been years ago and maybe back then, they weren't so bad, but then again, they probably
were and I just didn't notice.
The dog that didn't bark in the arms shipment story is the absense of Qatar in the list of recipient
countries. It also seems that, whilst most (80%) were shipped through SA/UAE, more arms were shipped
through Jordan (11%) than through Turkey (7%).
Bulgaria may also have been the location of military level training sites for foreigners. An
intriguing report from June 2015 noted that an American was killed along with 2 foreigners (German
and Canadian) in a grenade launcher accident of a PMC training center at Anevo, Bulgaria. The
site was run by an company Algans (or Alguns).
There are links to the infamous US military $500 million training program in which an unknown
number of 'carefully vetted moderate rebels' were trained and all but 5 of them 'defected' to
al Qaeda.
"This story says a lot for China & Russia's approach to long-term Strategic Diplomacy. I imagine
that they both know all this stuff and a helluva lot more" Hoarsewhisperer @13
The docs indicate the Balkans arm supply route took off in 2012. It will have brought in many
billions of USD to the relatively poor east European countries. Before the Gulenist(?) shoot down
of the Russian Su-24, Russia had been trying to get Turkey and Bulgaria interested in South Stream.
I suspect Russia did indeed know the details of the arms shipment, and certainly knew about Turkey's
cut of the ISIS oil sales. I suspect this deal may have been an attempt to wean the two off the
terrorism funding spigot. This failed as the Bulgarian government is totally owned by the US.
Erdogan's ego was manipulated by his Zionist handlers and eventually his stalling killed interest
at theat time. The Russians would know this background too, but the deal had to be tried. If it
had worked, then the Bulgarian arms train would possibly have been stopped and the Turkish border
closed several years ago. This would have greatly cramped the capabilities of ISIS, simplifying
the task of eliminating them. I suspect the Russians also knew it wouldn't pan out but it was
certainly worth a shot whilst they was busily obtaining intelligence on the terrorists, and secretly
negotiating the logistics, overflight access etc for what was to become its base at Hymeim.
The statement was followed by a publication of the Bulgarian Trud newspaper that mentioned
the Arcus arms company as the producer of some arms produced in Bulgaria under Russian licenses,
which were found by journalists in eastern Aleppo.
Craven McCain has been teflon for his entire political career and he was teflon when he wrecked
airplanes in the navy. McCain is just a teflon guy. Untouchable. Probably has "dossiers" on anybody
that can damage him.
But we do know that Islamic Republic is a creature of the British. (Longstanding history between
the worldly priests of Iran and the defunct British Empire. Read up.)
This is huge. An absolute outrage. The first real Trump concession to Putin that undermines
U.S. security directly. https://t.co/h9WR4brHHK -- Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) July 19, 2017
@2 I have no doubt that McCain's medical condition is real. I well remember the news stories in
early June when McCain put up a bizarre performance during testimony by James Comey - asking questions
that simply didn't make any sense whatsoever and leaving everyone utterly gob-smacked regarding
McCain's mental state.
OMG. the Washington Borg's house newspaper has woken up to Trump's surrender to Putin on
Syria.
Trump's breathtaking surrender to Russia
But once again, President Trump, after extended personal contact with Vladimir Putin and
the complete surrender to Russian interests in Syria, acts precisely as though he has been
bought and sold by a strategic rival. The ignoble cutoff of aid to American proxies means that
"Putin won in Syria," as an administration official was quoted by The Post.
Concessions without
reciprocation, made against the better judgment of foreign policy advisers, smack more of payoff
than outreach. If this is what Trump's version of "winning" looks like, what might further
victory entail? The re- creation of the Warsaw Pact? The reversion of Alaska to Russian control?
Although this opinion article was posted a couple of days ago, there been no shitstorm near Trump
about it since suggesting that Trump's one-man distraction/disinformation smokescreen is firing
successfully on all cylinders.
'We're bad day away from Russians asking, 'Why are you still in Syria?' – top US commander
A US special operations commander has admitted that an extended US stay in Syria runs contrary
to international law and that Russia would be entirely justified in questioning its presence
there.
At the Aspen Security Forum on Friday, Special Operations Command chief Army General, Raymond
Thomas was asked whether American forces will remain in Syria, after Islamic State (IS, formerly
ISIS/ISIL) is defeated, possibly, to support the Kurdish forces in the north of the country.
Thomas acknowledged that American forces are fighting in a sovereign Syria, where they will
likely "have no ability to stay" if that presence is questioned "in terms of international
law," Thomas said, replying to the Washington Post journalist's question.
Although I'm sure that the State Department/Pentagon lawyers are looking for a reason to stay.
By the time of Richard Nixon's arrival in office in January 1969, Iran was already America's
single-largest arms purchaser. Whilst this is notable in and of itself, it is vastly overshadowed
by what followed. By late 1972 Nixon leveraged U.S. Middle Eastern regional policy primarily
around the focal point of a militarily strong, pro-American Iran.
Sounds familiar? Iranian industrialization and westernization happened during the Shah. That is part of above
story. Same story in
Saudi Arabia
.
In Saudi Arabia, the 1960s, and especially the 1970s, had been years of explosive development,
liberal experimentation, and openness to the West. A reversal of this trend came about abruptly
in 1979, the year in which the Grand Mosque in Mecca came under attack by religiously motivated
critics of the monarchy, and the Islamic Republic of Iran was established.
My suspicion is that this "reversal" was also made in the USA as a consequence of the strategy
to use Islam as a "green belt" against the Soviet Union.
"... tells the story of the corruption Melvin A. Goodman observed within the intelligence agency and what he did to expose it. NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake says this book "serves in the public interest as a warning and wake-up call for what's at stake and why we cannot trust the CIA or the intelligence establishment to do the right thing." Click here to order a copy today by making a donation to Truthout! ..."
"... In this excerpt, , former CIA intelligence analyst Melvin A. Goodman ponders the meanings of the words whistleblower, dissident and contrarian, how they apply to himself and others, and whether the CIA can ever be repaired or rebuilt. ..."
"... The Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA ..."
"... The Failure of Intelligence ..."
"... Copyright (2017) by Melvin A. Goodman. Not be reprinted without permission of the publisher, City Lights Books. ..."
In this excerpt, , former CIA intelligence analyst Melvin A. Goodman ponders the meanings
of the words whistleblower, dissident and contrarian, how they apply to himself and others, and whether
the CIA can ever be repaired or rebuilt.
Whistleblowers. Dissidents. Contrarians.
The terms are used synonymously by pundits and the public, and I've been all three at one time
or another in order to expose improprieties and illegalities in the secret government, and to inform
the American public of policies that compromise the freedom and security of US citizens and weaken
US standing in the global community.
I have never liked the terms contrarian or dissident. I've always believed that my criticism should
be conventional wisdom. The term whistleblower is more complex because it often raises questions
of patriotism or sedition. Chelsea Manning received commutation from her 35-year prison sentence
for revealing so-called secrets that documented the terror and violence of the baseless US war in
Iraq. Members of the Bush administration who launched the invasion of Iraq in 2003 are considered
honorable members of our society, although their acts involved the corruption of intelligence; caused
the death of thousands of US soldiers and foreign civilians; terrorized civilian populations; perpetrated
the criminal use of torture and abuse; sanctioned use of secret prisons and extraordinary rendition;
and caused the destabilization of the region that has set the stage for strategic advances by Al
Qaeda and ISIS.
Edward Snowden, if he had remained in the United States, would have faced an even longer prison
sentence because he revealed the massive NSA surveillance program that was illegal and immoral, and
that violated the Fourth Amendment protection against illegal seizures and searches. Manning and
Snowden admit to breaking US laws, but their actions were never as serious as the law-breaking, including
massive violations of privacy, that they exposed.
The debate over whether Snowden was a traitor is fatuous. As a result of Snowden's revelations,
we learned that the National Security Agency logged domestic phone calls and emails for years, recorded
the metadata of correspondence between Americans, and, in some cases, exploited the content of emails.
The case against Private Manning was similarly fatuous. Manning provided evidence of the US cover-up
of torture by our Iraqi allies; a US Army helicopter opening fire on a group of civilians, including
two Reuters journalists; and the use of an air strike to cover up the execution of civilians. Some
of these acts were war crimes.
There is no more compelling evidence of the unconscionable behavior of US personnel in Iraq than
the callous dialogue between the crew members of the helicopter regarding the civilian deaths and
particularly the firing on those Iraqis who came to recover the dead bodies of Iraqi civilians. Manning's
documents exposed this behavior, but her efforts were ridiculed by former secretary of defense Robert
Gates, who described it as examining war by "looking through a straw."
To make matters worse, American journalists have criticized their colleagues (Julian Assange of
WikiLeaks and Glenn Greenwald [then of The Guardian]) who brought the Snowden-Manning revelations
to the attention of the public. David Gregory, then host of the venerable "Meet the Press" on NBC,
asked Greenwald "to the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden ... why shouldn't you ...
be charged with a crime?" Jeffrey Toobin, a lawyer who labors for CNN and The New Yorker, called
Snowden a "grandiose narcissist who belongs in prison" and referred to Greenwald's partner, David
Miranda, who was detained by British authorities for nine hours under anti-terror laws, the equivalent
of a "drug mule."
The king of calumny is Michael Grunwald, a senior correspondent for Time, who wrote on Twitter
that he couldn't "wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange." The
New York Times also targeted Assange, although the paper cooperated with WikiLeaks in 2010 in publishing
reams of information from Private Manning's revelations. Of course, if Time or the New York Times
had broken these stories, they would have built new shelves to hold their Pulitzer Prizes. Their
hypocrisy was exposed by David Carr of the New York Times, who expressed shock at finding Assange
and Greenwald "under attack, not just from a government bent on keeping its secrets, but from friendly
fire by fellow journalists."
I didn't reveal abuses as great as those revealed by Manning and Snowden or Daniel Ellsberg, but
I do claim status as a whistleblower because of my revelations before the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence during confirmation hearings for Bob Gates, who was nominated by President George
H.W. Bush in 1991 to be director of central intelligence. According to US law, the term "whistleblower"
applies to anyone who "reasonably believes" he or she is disclosing a violation of law or gross mismanagement,
gross waste, or abuse of authority. My testimony documented for the first time the intentional distortion
of intelligence by CIA director William Casey and Deputy Director Gates in order to serve the agenda
of Ronald Reagan and his administration.
Bob Gates was an old friend, but the friendship ended when he routinely distorted intelligence
throughout the 1980s as deputy director for intelligence and deputy director of the CIA. In destroying
the political culture of the CIA, he created a toxic and corrupt environment at the Agency, and the
Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA detention and torture reminds us that the Agency hasn't
recovered.
Being a contrarian was easy and natural for me. In fact, no one should think about entering the
intelligence profession without good contrarian instincts. Such instincts would include an innate
skepticism, the doubting of conventional wisdom and a willingness to challenge authority, which translates
to an ability to tell truth to power. These contrarian instincts are essential to the success of
any intelligence organization. As Rogers and Hammerstein would have it, it was "doing what comes
naturally!"
My book The Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA was the first insider
account from an intelligence analyst regarding the skewed and politicized assessments of the CIA's
Directorate of Intelligence -- the Agency's analytic arm. I also exposed the strategic failure of
covert actions that were never intended to be a part of President Harry Truman's CIA. I wrote the
book for many reasons, including the need to describe the inability of journalists to take into account,
let alone understand, the dangers of politicization and the actions of CIA directors such as Casey,
Gates, and more recently Goss and Tenet. The political pliancy of these directors fully compromised
the intelligence mission of the CIA, and it was political pliancy that made directors such as Gates
and Tenet so attractive to Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II.
For the past quarter century, my testimony and writings have exposed the failure to honor President
Truman's purpose in creating a CIA to provide policymakers with accurate, unbiased accounts of international
developments, and have highlighted the CIA's readiness to cater to the White House. This view is
not original with me; in fact, it was President Truman who first acknowledged that the CIA he created
in 1947 had gotten off the tracks under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy in the
1950s and early 1960s.
In December 1963, less than a month after the assassination of President Kennedy, Truman wrote
an op-ed for the Washington Post to document the wrongs of the CIA. He concluded that his efforts
to "create the quiet intelligence arm of the Presidency" had been subverted by a "sinister" and "mysterious"
agency that was conducting far too many clandestine activities in peacetime. I lectured at the Truman
Library in the summer of 2014, and found a note in Truman's hand that stated the CIA was not designed
to "initiate policy or to act as a spy organization. That was never the intention when it was organized."
In The Failure of Intelligence , I documented the CIA's resistance to reform and the
corruption in both the analytical and operational directorates. I made a case for starting over at
the CIA, not dissimilar from the case made by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan 25 years ago as a member
of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Not every agency or department of government can
be reformed, and it is possible that the intricate web of habits, procedures, and culture places
the CIA in the non-reformable category. Once the political culture of an institution such as the
CIA has been broken, it is extremely difficult -- if not impossible -- to rebuild or repair it.
"... Devine argued that dismantling ISIS's command structure is crucial for minimizing the danger it presents, much like al Qaeda before them. "We killed three-fourths of their leadership," he said of al Qaeda. "We have to do the same thing with ISIS. "We have to destroy their refuge over there. When they start to lose, their recruiting numbers start to fall." ..."
"... My guess is that Iran have done a deal with Putin in that once ISIS is swept away Iran gets to build a gas pipeline through Iraq (which it controls) and through Syria into Europe. Russia is allowing Iran into the European gas market because Bandar threatened Sochi, and Putin wants to end the House of Saud in retaliation. Two weeks from now the world is going to make laws that pushes countries towards natural gas and away from coal and oil. ..."
"... I would say that's accurate, since the U.S. put ISIS there to block the Iran - Iraq - Syria pipeline. When Russia destroys ISIS, the previously planned pipeline can proceed. It has nothing to do with Russian 'permission' - Putin expects someone to eventually be sending gas up from the Middle East once the slaughter stops. He doesn't care who it is or how much. It's not going to displace more than a fraction of the Russian supply to Europe. Syria rejected the Qatari pipeline for its own reasons - probably because Qatar was planning on killing Assad and replacing him with a Western stooge well before the Qatari-Turkey pipeline was announced. In fact, the announcement was pretty much an insult to Syria. Qatar quite arrogantly announced that they WOULD be building the pipeline through Syria without bothering to ask them. ..."
"... Putin negotiates with everyone. He was even talking with Israel about helping them with the Leviathan pipeline. The U.S. seems to favor 'regime change' as the preferred strategy to expand its oil interests where it has no business doing so. ..."
"... The CIA serves no master, it is the fucking master. It does deals that are anti American, and they don't care, because America is just a sugar daddy to them. We are the chumps who pay their bills, while they put half of all honest Americans on their enemies list. ..."
"... CIA is international, not American. They are the hit men for the biggest corporations on earth, and most especially the biggest energy firms. Oil and CIA go together, and there is the Saudi connection. ..."
"... CIA is the lead agent if world Islamic extremism, they don't fight it, they nurture it! Their long term goal is to use mass Islamic terror armies to do what the CIA and Corporate masters want done. Need a police state in America? Do a hit on America 9/11. Need to eliminate Russia? Create ISIS and direct them against Russia's allies. And you can take it from there. It will continue on as before. Nobody left has the power to take down the CIA terror rings. ..."
"... No shit, sherlock, and it's because of you and the most vile mass murderer of all time, the CIA (and DIA, and NSA, and FBI, etc.), but predominantly the CIA and the Pentagon, that ISIS and such exists today! Whether it was Allen Dulles coordinating the escape of endless number of mass murderering Nazis, who would end up in CIA-overthrown countries, aiding and abetting their secret police (Example: Walter Rauff, who was responsible for at least 200,000 deaths, ending up as an advisor to Augusto Pinochet's secret police or DINA) or the grandson of the first chairman of the Bank for International Settlements, Richard Helms and his MKULTRA, you devils are to blame. ..."
"I have never felt more uncomfortable than I do today," warns former CIA Director
Jack Devine, saying that, with "frankly uncivilized" ISIS, there is a greater risk of violence
worldwide than ever before.
"I think this is the most dangerous time in terms of sustained violence,"
he said on "The Cats Roundtable" in an interview airing Sunday on New York's AM-970.
"I have never felt more uncomfortable than I do today," he told host John Catsimatidis. "Some
percentage of the world today is always either unbalanced or radicalized. When you have a small
group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they can, we're all
vulnerable."
Devine cited the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as an unprecedented threat in terms of
its wanton disregard for human life...
"I dealt with terrorists in South America in the 1970s, but they never attacked innocent
women and children indiscriminately," he said.
"You have a group in ISIS today that is frankly uncivilized. These folks could
get stronger and stronger. We basically have to destroy ISIS over there," Devine said.
Devine argued that dismantling ISIS's command structure is crucial for minimizing the danger
it presents, much like al Qaeda before them. "We killed three-fourths of their leadership," he
said of al Qaeda. "We have to do the same thing with ISIS. "We have to destroy their refuge over
there. When they start to lose, their recruiting numbers start to fall."
Devine, who mainly served during the Cold War, said ISIS is a scourge without parallel
because it has no concern for self-preservation.
"There is nothing that can be compared with nuclear weapons and their use," he said of tensions
between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.
"[But] people felt safe in the sense there was countervailing balance," he
added. "Early in our contest with the Russians, it was clear we had checks and balances."
Finally Devine admits...
"If there's blame to be put, it's on our failure to have done that by this point."
Selected Skeptical Comments
i_call_you_my_base
"I dealt with terrorists in South America in the 1970s..."
"And by dealt I mean trained and funded."
Looney
John Kerry to the MSM:
Do not use "Al Qaeda" or "Al Nustra" - just call them "Allies" (pronounced Al Lies). ;-)
Looney
Vatican_cameo
"I have never felt more uncomfortable than I do today," he told host John Catsimatidis. "Some
percentage of the world today is always either unbalanced or radicalized. When you have a small
group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."
By small group he means CIA, Right? I thought he would have been a little clearer.
Occident Mortal
My guess is that Iran have done a deal with Putin in that once ISIS is swept away Iran
gets to build a gas pipeline through Iraq (which it controls) and through Syria into Europe. Russia
is allowing Iran into the European gas market because Bandar threatened Sochi, and Putin wants
to end the House of Saud in retaliation. Two weeks from now the world is going to make laws that
pushes countries towards natural gas and away from coal and oil.
Paveway IV
"...once ISIS is swept away Iran gets to build a gas pipeline through Iraq (which it controls)
and through Syria into Europe..."
I would say that's accurate, since the U.S. put ISIS there to block the Iran - Iraq - Syria
pipeline. When Russia destroys ISIS, the previously planned pipeline can proceed. It has nothing
to do with Russian 'permission' - Putin expects someone to eventually be sending gas up from the
Middle East once the slaughter stops. He doesn't care who it is or how much. It's not going to
displace more than a fraction of the Russian supply to Europe. Syria rejected the Qatari pipeline
for its own reasons - probably because Qatar was planning on killing Assad and replacing him with
a Western stooge well before the Qatari-Turkey pipeline was announced. In fact, the announcement
was pretty much an insult to Syria. Qatar quite arrogantly announced that they WOULD be building
the pipeline through Syria without bothering to ask them.
The U.S. blocked the first Iran pipeline (called the Persian Pipeline) FROM IRAN to Iraq in
2010 by forcing the Swiss company that partnered with Iran to back out due to Israeli - ooops,
'Western' sanctions on Iran. The second Iran-sourced NG pipeline from Iran through Iraq and Syria
- called the Friendship Pipeline - was agreed to in 2012 by the countries involved. That's when
the U.S. launched it's failed coup attempt in Syria and let its ISIS mad-dogs loose in Iraq. Tyler
usually refers to this by the derogatory label of "Islamic Pipeline" - a snide label that Kagan-PNAC
and Western oil companies used. Tyler never refers to the Western-backed Qatari pipeline as the
Jihadi Pipeline, nor does he refer to the Kirkuk-Haifa oil pipeline as the Jewish Pipeline. I'm
not sure about the inconsistency - maybe he's trying to make some point.
Putin negotiates with everyone. He was even talking with Israel about helping them with
the Leviathan pipeline. The U.S. seems to favor 'regime change' as the preferred strategy to expand
its oil interests where it has no business doing so.
goldhedge
The CIA guy doesn't mention the House of Saud.
Pfft.
Jack Burton
Good catch! And there never do.
CIA and House of Saud have done a long term deal to look out for each other in this world.
The CIA serves no master, it is the fucking master. It does deals that are anti American,
and they don't care, because America is just a sugar daddy to them. We are the chumps who pay
their bills, while they put half of all honest Americans on their enemies list.
CIA is international, not American. They are the hit men for the biggest corporations on
earth, and most especially the biggest energy firms. Oil and CIA go together, and there is the
Saudi connection.
CIA is the lead agent if world Islamic extremism, they don't fight it, they nurture it!
Their long term goal is to use mass Islamic terror armies to do what the CIA and Corporate masters
want done. Need a police state in America? Do a hit on America 9/11. Need to eliminate Russia?
Create ISIS and direct them against Russia's allies. And you can take it from there. It will continue
on as before. Nobody left has the power to take down the CIA terror rings.
"I dealt with terrorists in South America in the 1970s, but they never attacked
innocent women and children indiscriminately," he said.
No shit, sherlock, and it's because of you and the most vile mass murderer of all time,
the CIA (and DIA, and NSA, and FBI, etc.), but predominantly the CIA and the Pentagon, that ISIS
and such exists today!
Whether it was Allen Dulles coordinating the escape of endless number of mass murderering Nazis,
who would end up in CIA-overthrown countries, aiding and abetting their secret police (Example:
Walter Rauff, who was responsible for at least 200,000 deaths, ending up as an advisor to Augusto
Pinochet's secret police or DINA) or the grandson of the first chairman of the Bank for International
Settlements, Richard Helms and his MKULTRA, you devils are to blame.
Recommended reading (to better understand why the USA is known as the Great Satan):
Funny how these fucks can come out and say this kind of shit and get away with it. The fucker's
basically pleading guilty to murder, FFS.
Ms No
They didn't kill anybody in South America my ass.... The school of Americas, Operation Condor,
Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Guatamala, El Salvador .... who the hell are they
kidding? The CIA has always been covered and nobody ever cared.
Perimetr
"If there's blame to be put. . ."
It's on the CIA for running its global terrorist operations, funded by the $1 trillion dollars
a year coming from its Afghanistan heroin operation.
sirs and madams,
.
"Christmas celebration this year is going to be a charade because the whole world is at war. We
are close to Christmas. There will be lights, there will be parties, bright trees, even Nativity
scenes – all decked out – while the world continues to wage war.
It's all a charade. The world has not understood the way of peace. The whole world is at war.
A war can be justified, so to speak, with many, many reasons, but when all the world as it is
today, at war, piecemeal though that war may be-a little here, a little there-there is no justification.
What shall remain in the wake of this war, in the midst of which we are living now? What shall
remain? Ruins, thousands of children without education, so many innocent victims, and lots of
money in the pockets of arms dealers."
The discovery of America by Europe had to happen. The savages had to be eliminated and The
Revolutionary War had to happen. Slavery had to begin, and after it, segregation had to begin,
but, what must be, will be, slavery and segregation had to end. Old School colonization of poor
nations had to happen. The Boer War had to happen. The Spanish American War had to happen. The
Main had to be sunk. WWI had to happen. Calvary charges had to end. Totalitarian Communism had
to happen. Germany's 20's depression had to happen, reactionary jingoism had to happen, and Kristallnacht
and the Reichstag fire had to happen. The Allies had to win WWII, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to
be publicity stunts, and the Cold War had to begin. JFK had to be wacked, the Vietnam War had
to happen, the FED still was happening. Civil Rights laws had to be passed. Recognition of China
had to happen, going off the gold standard had to happen, and Nixon had to be kicked out of office.
Corporate Globalization had to begin. After Carter an actor had to be President. Unions had to
be stifled. Perestroika and glasnost had to happen. The Berlin Wall had to come down. The MIC
had to find another enemy, and suddenly 9/11 had to happen.
Over population has to happen, poisoning the environment has to happen, and the NWO has to
happen.
Ladies and gentlemen, the NWO is here, and there is nothing you can do, and nothing you could
have done to stop it.
Edit. I see none of our supposed enemies 'truth bombing' 9/11, 7/7, and the 13th Paris attacks.
I see no trade embagoes, I see no arguments in the Security Council over the illegality of US/Nato
bombing in Syria.
blindman
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/jimmy-carter-is-correct-t_b_79...
Jimmy Carter Is Correct That the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy
Posted: 08/03/2015 11:48 am EDT
.
On July 28, Thom Hartmann interviewed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at the very end
of his show (as if this massive question were merely an afterthought), asked him his opinion of
the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheon decision, both decisions by the five
Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret
money (including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns. Carter
answered:
It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's
just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations
for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators
and congress members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff
to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the
election is over. ... At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon
this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has
a great deal more to sell." ...
.
it is the money "system", man.
blindman
corporations and hoodwink powers ride on the indifference of the damned, the silence of the
dead and doomed.
Dinero D. Profit
The Satus Quo can rely upon the loyalty of their employees, Congress, the military, the military
industrial contractors, their workers and family members, the crime control establishment, all
Uniersity professors and employees, and every employee of all publically traded companies, and
every person employed by the MSM.
The dead and doomed are irrelevant. If you have an establishment job, you'll obey and ask no
vital questions.
Dick Buttkiss
Sunnis and Shiites hate each other far more than they hate Christians, Jews, or anyone else. If
it weren't for oil, the USG wouldn't give a flyiing fuck if they anihilated each other. Instead,
it conspires with them in ways far beyond its ability to comprehend, much less navigate. Thus
is the US ship of state heading for the shoals of its destruction, the only question being how
much of the country and the outside world it takes down with it.
ross81
thats bullshit Western propaganda that Shiites hate Sunnis and vice versa. In the same way that
the Brits stirred up Protestant hatred of Catholics in Ulster for centuries, the US/Israel/Saudi
does the same with Sunnis vs Shiites on a much bigger scale in the Middle East. Divide and Conquer.
geno-econ
This is getting scary in that one or two more attacks will result in travel freezes, flow of Middle
East oil and result in huge increase in military as well as Homeland security costs. A depression
or economic collapse a real possibility Perhaps time for a Peace Conference of all interested
parties. The US started this shit and should be the first to call for a Peace Conference. Macho
talk will only make things worse.
moonmac
We can print trillions out of thin air at the drop of a hat but we can't kill a small group of
terrorists. Got it!
sgt_doom
Or, we pour billions of dollars every year into the CIA, NSA, and DIA, and only a poor old fart
such as myself can figure out that Bilal Erdogan is the ISIS connection to oil trading (Turkish
president, Erdogan's son) and Erdogan's daughter is with ISIS?
GRDguy
Ex-CIA boss gets it wrong, again.
"When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone
they can, we're all vulnerable."
should be:
"When you have a small group of financial sociopaths willing to lie-to, steal-from and kill
anyone they can, we're all vulnerable."
and you'll probably be punished, jailed or shot for tryin' to protect yourself and your family.
Ban KKiller
War profiteer. That is it. Along wth James Comey, James Clapper, Jack Welch and the list is almost
endless...
BarnacleBill
"When you have a small group of people who are willing to lose their lives and kill anyone they
can, we're all vulnerable."
Simply take out the word "their", and the description perfectly fits the CIA, MI6 and their
like. For them, it's all a business deal, nothing more - a massive slum-clearance project. Destroy
people's houses, provide accommodation and food, ship them somewhere else; do it again and again
until the money-printing machine conks out. It's money for old rope.
And, yes, we're all vulnerable. The man got that right.
Duc888
"You get the politicians you deserve."
CIA types are appointed, not elected.
Duc888
I do not know if there are any Catherine Austin Fitts fans on this web site but this is definitely
worth the time. The FEDGOV came after her non stop for 6 years when she worked for HUD under Bush
Sr. If nothing else this lady is tenacious. In this presentation she uncorks exactly HOW the deep
black budgets are paid for...and it ain't your tax dollars. What she uncovered while at HUD was
simply amazing..... and she made an excellent point. At the top... it's NOT "fraud" because that's
how it was all deigned right from the get go after wwII. It brings to mind the funny computer
saying....."it's a feature, not a bug".
She digs right into how the CIA was funded... Truly amazing stuff. ...of course the dick head
brigade will come along here and deride her because of the conference she is speaking at.... well,
who the fuck cares, her presentation is excellent and filled with facts.
Yes it is 1 hour 20 minutes long but imho it is well worth the watch...
"... Efforts to break into Apple products by government security researchers started as early as 2006, a year before Apple introduced its first iPhone and continued through the launch of the iPad in 2010 and beyond, The Intercept said. ..."
CIA researchers have worked for nearly a decade to break the security protecting Apple (AAPL.O)
phones and tablets, investigative news site The Intercept reported on Tuesday, citing documents obtained
from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The report cites top-secret U.S. documents that suggest U.S. government researchers had created
a version of XCode, Apple's software application development tool, to create surveillance backdoors
into programs distributed on Apple's App Store.
The Intercept has in the past published a number of reports from documents released by whistleblower
Snowden. The site's editors include Glenn Greenwald, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work in reporting
on Snowden's revelations, and by Oscar-winning documentary maker Laura Poitras.
It said the latest documents, which covered a period from 2006 to 2013, stop short of proving
whether U.S. intelligence researchers had succeeded in breaking Apple's encryption coding, which
secures user data and communications.
Efforts to break into Apple products by government security researchers started as early as
2006, a year before Apple introduced its first iPhone and continued through the launch of the iPad
in 2010 and beyond, The Intercept said.
Breeching Apple security was part of a top-secret program by the U.S. government, aided by British
intelligence researchers, to hack "secure communications products, both foreign and domestic" including
Google Android phones, it said.
Silicon Valley technology companies have in recent months sought to restore trust among consumers
around the world that their products have not become tools for widespread government surveillance
of citizens.
Last September, Apple strengthened encryption methods for data stored on iPhones, saying the changes
meant the company no longer had any way to extract customer data on the devices, even if a government
ordered it to with a search warrant. Silicon Valley rival Google Inc (GOOGL.O)
said shortly afterward that it also planned to increase the use of stronger encryption tools.
Both companies said the moves were aimed at protecting the privacy of users of their products
and that this was partly a response to wide scale U.S. government spying on Internet users revealed
by Snowden in 2013.
An Apple spokesman pointed to public statements by Chief Executive Tim Cook on privacy, but declined
to comment further.
"I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country
to create a backdoor in any of our products or services," Cook wrote in a statement on privacy and
security published last year. "We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will."
Leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron have expressed
concern that turning such privacy-enhancing tools into mass market features could prevent governments
from tracking militants planning attacks. The CIA did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Today, July
6th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes documents from the BothanSpy and Gyrfalcon
projects of the CIA. The implants described in both projects are designed to intercept and
exfiltrate SSH credentials but work on different operating systems with different attack
vectors.
BothanSpy is an implant that targets the SSH client program Xshell on the Microsoft
Windows platform and steals user credentials for all active SSH sessions. These credentials are
either username and password in case of password-authenticated SSH sessions or username,
filename of private SSH key and key password if public key authentication is used.
BothanSpy can exfiltrate the stolen credentials to a CIA-controlled server (so the
implant never touches the disk on the target system) or save it in an enrypted file for later
exfiltration by other means. BothanSpy is installed as a Shellterm 3.x extension on
the target machine.
Gyrfalcon is an implant that targets the OpenSSH client on Linux platforms
(centos,debian,rhel,suse,ubuntu). The implant can not only steal user credentials of active SSH
sessions, but is also capable of collecting full or partial OpenSSH session traffic. All
collected information is stored in an encrypted file for later exfiltration. It is installed
and configured by using a CIA-developed root kit (JQC/KitV) on the target machine.OutlawCountry 30 June, 2017 Today, June 30th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes documents from
the OutlawCountry project of the CIA that targets computers running the Linux
operating system. OutlawCountry allows for the redirection of all outbound network
traffic on the target computer to CIA controlled machines for ex- and infiltration purposes.
The malware consists of a kernel module that creates a hidden netfilter table on a Linux
target; with knowledge of the table name, an operator can create rules that take precedence
over existing netfilter/iptables rules and are concealed from an user or even system
administrator.
The installation and persistence method of the malware is not described in detail in the
document; an operator will have to rely on the available CIA exploits and backdoors to inject
the kernel module into a target operating system. OutlawCountry v1.0 contains one
kernel module for 64-bit CentOS/RHEL 6.x; this module will only work with default kernels.
Also, OutlawCountry v1.0 only supports adding covert DNAT rules to the PREROUTING
chain. Elsa 28 June, 2017 Today, June 28th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes documents from the
ELSA project of the CIA. ELSA is a geo-location malware for WiFi-enabled
devices like laptops running the Micorosoft Windows operating system. Once persistently
installed on a target machine using separate CIA exploits, the malware scans visible WiFi
access points and records the ESS identifier, MAC address and signal strength at regular
intervals. To perform the data collection the target machine does not have to be online or
connected to an access point; it only needs to be running with an enabled WiFi device. If it is
connected to the internet, the malware automatically tries to use public geo-location databases
from Google or Microsoft to resolve the position of the device and stores the longitude and
latitude data along with the timestamp. The collected access point/geo-location information is
stored in encrypted form on the device for later exfiltration. The malware itself does not
beacon this data to a CIA back-end; instead the operator must actively retrieve the log file
from the device - again using separate CIA exploits and backdoors.
The ELSA project allows the customization of the implant to match the target
environment and operational objectives like sampling interval, maximum size of the logfile and
invocation/persistence method. Additional back-end software (again using public geo-location
databases from Google and Microsoft) converts unprocessed access point information from
exfiltrated logfiles to geo-location data to create a tracking profile of the target device.
Leaked DocumentsELSA User Manual Brutal Kangaroo 22 June, 2017 Today, June 22nd 2017, WikiLeaks publishes documents from
the Brutal Kangaroo project of the CIA. Brutal Kangaroo is a tool suite for
Microsoft Windows that targets closed networks by air gap jumping using thumbdrives. Brutal
Kangaroo components create a custom covert network within the target closed network and
providing functionality for executing surveys, directory listings, and arbitrary
executables.
The documents describe how a CIA operation can infiltrate a closed network (or a single
air-gapped computer) within an organization or enterprise without direct access. It first
infects a Internet-connected computer within the organization (referred to as "primary host")
and installs the BrutalKangeroo malware on it. When a user is using the primary host
and inserts a USB stick into it, the thumbdrive itself is infected with a separate malware. If
this thumbdrive is used to copy data between the closed network and the LAN/WAN, the user will
sooner or later plug the USB disk into a computer on the closed network. By browsing the USB
drive with Windows Explorer on such a protected computer, it also gets infected with
exfiltration/survey malware. If multiple computers on the closed network are under CIA control,
they form a covert network to coordinate tasks and data exchange. Although not explicitly
stated in the documents, this method of compromising closed networks is very similar to how
Stuxnet worked.
The Brutal Kangaroo project consists of the following components: Drifting
Deadline is the thumbdrive infection tool, Shattered Assurance is a server tool
that handles automated infection of thumbdrives (as the primary mode of propagation for the
Brutal Kangaroo suite), Broken Promise is the Brutal Kangaroo
postprocessor (to evaluate collected information) and Shadow is the primary
persistence mechanism (a stage 2 tool that is distributed across a closed network and acts as a
covert command-and-control network; once multiple Shadow instances are installed and
share drives, tasking and payloads can be sent back-and-forth).
CherryBlossom provides a means of monitoring the Internet activity of and
performing software exploits on Targets of interest. In particular,
CherryBlossom is focused on compromising wireless networking devices, such as wireless
routers and access points (APs), to achieve these goals. Such Wi-Fi devices are commonly used
as part of the Internet infrastructure in private homes, public spaces (bars, hotels or
airports), small and medium sized companies as well as enterprise offices. Therefore these
devices are the ideal spot for "Man-In-The-Middle" attacks, as they can easily monitor, control
and manipulate the Internet traffic of connected users. By altering the data stream between the
user and Internet services, the infected device can inject malicious content into the stream to
exploit vulnerabilities in applications or the operating system on the computer of the targeted
user.
The wireless device itself is compromized by implanting a customized CherryBlossom
firmware on it; some devices allow upgrading their firmware over a wireless link, so no
physical access to the device is necessary for a successful infection. Once the new firmware on
the device is flashed, the router or access point will become a so-called FlyTrap . A
FlyTrap will beacon over the Internet to a Command & Control server referred to as
the CherryTree . The beaconed information contains device status and security
information that the CherryTree logs to a database. In response to this information,
the CherryTree sends a Mission with operator-defined tasking. An operator can
use CherryWeb , a browser-based user interface to view Flytrap status and
security info, plan Mission tasking, view Mission -related data, and perform
system administration tasks.
Missions may include tasking on Targets to monitor, actions/exploits to
perform on a Target , and instructions on when and how to send the next beacon. Tasks
for a Flytrap include (among others) the scan for email addresses , chat
usernames , MAC addresses and VoIP numbers in passing network traffic to
trigger additional actions, the copying of the full network traffic of a Target , the
redirection of a Target 's browser (e.g., to Windex for browser exploitation) or the
proxying of a Target 's network connections. FlyTrap can also setup VPN
tunnels to a CherryBlossom -owned VPN server to give an operator access to clients on
the Flytrap 's WLAN/LAN for further exploitation. When the Flytrap detects a
Target , it will send an Alert to the CherryTree and commence any
actions/exploits against the Target . The CherryTree logs Alerts to
a database, and, potentially distributes Alert information to interested parties (via
Catapult ). Leaked Documents
CherryBlossom -- System Req Spec (CDRL-10)
CherryBlossom -- Quick Start Guide WiFi
Devices
CherryBlossom -- Installation Guide CherryBlossom --
Operating Environment (S//NF) See morePandemic 1 June, 2017 Today, June 1st 2017, WikiLeaks publishes documents from the
"Pandemic" project of the CIA, a persistent implant for Microsoft Windows machines that share
files (programs) with remote users in a local network. "Pandemic" targets remote users by
replacing application code on-the-fly with a trojaned version if the program is retrieved from
the infected machine. To obfuscate its activity, the original file on the file server remains
unchanged; it is only modified/replaced while in transit from the pandemic file server before
being executed on the computer of the remote user. The implant allows the replacement of up to
20 programs with a maximum size of 800 MB for a selected list of remote users (targets).
As the name suggests, a single computer on a local network with shared drives that is
infected with the "Pandemic" implant will act like a "Patient Zero" in the spread of a disease.
It will infect remote computers if the user executes programs stored on the pandemic file
server. Although not explicitly stated in the documents, it seems technically feasible that
remote computers that provide file shares themselves become new pandemic file servers on the
local network to reach new targets. Leaked DocumentsPandemic 1.1 (S/NF) Pandemic 1.1-RC1
(S/NF) Pandemic 1.1-RC1
-- IVVRR Checklist Pandemic 1.0
(S/NF) Pandemic 1.0 -- IVVRR
Checklist See moreAthena 19 May, 2017 Today, May 19th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes documents from the
"Athena" project of the CIA. "Athena" - like the related "Hera" system - provides remote beacon
and loader capabilities on target computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system
(from Windows XP to Windows 10). Once installed, the malware provides a beaconing capability
(including configuration and task handling), the memory loading/unloading of malicious payloads
for specific tasks and the delivery and retrieval of files to/from a specified directory on the
target system. It allows the operator to configure settings during runtime (while the implant
is on target) to customize it to an operation.
According to the documentation (see Athena Technology
Overview ), the malware was developed by the CIA in cooperation with Siege Technologies , a self-proclaimed cyber
security company based in New Hampshire, US. On their website, Siege Technologies states that
the company " ... focuses on leveraging offensive cyberwar technologies and
methodologies to develop predictive cyber security solutions for insurance, government and
other targeted markets. ". On November 15th, 2016 Nehemiah
Security announced the acquisition of Siege Technologies.
In an email from HackingTeam (published by WikiLeaks here ), Jason Syversen, founder
of Siege Technologies with a background in cryptography and hacking, " ... said he set out
to create the equivalent of the military's so-called probability of kill metric, a statistical
analysis of whether an attack is likely to succeed. 'I feel more comfortable working on
electronic warfare,' he said. 'It's a little different than bombs and nuclear weapons -- that's
a morally complex field to be in. Now instead of bombing things and having collateral damage,
you can really reduce civilian casualties, which is a win for everybody.' " Leaked
DocumentsAthena v1.0 User Guide Athena Technology
Overview Athena
(Design) Athena
(Demo) Athena
(Design/Engine) See moreAfterMidnight 12 May, 2017 Today, May 12th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes "AfterMidnight" and
"Assassin", two CIA malware frameworks for the Microsoft Windows platform.
"AfterMidnight" allows operators to dynamically load and execute malware payloads on a
target machine. The main controller disguises as a self-persisting Windows Service DLL and
provides secure execution of "Gremlins" via a HTTPS based Listening Post (LP) system called
"Octopus". Once installed on a target machine AM will call back to a configured LP on a
configurable schedule, checking to see if there is a new plan for it to execute. If there is,
it downloads and stores all needed components before loading all new gremlins in memory.
"Gremlins" are small AM payloads that are meant to run hidden on the target and either subvert
the functionality of targeted software, survey the target (including data exfiltration) or
provide internal services for other gremlins. The special payload "AlphaGremlin" even has a
custom script language which allows operators to schedule custom tasks to be executed on the
target machine.
"Assassin" is a similar kind of malware; it is an automated implant that provides a simple
collection platform on remote computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system. Once
the tool is installed on the target, the implant is run within a Windows service process.
"Assassin" (just like "AfterMidnight") will then periodically beacon to its configured
listening post(s) to request tasking and deliver results. Communication occurs over one or more
transport protocols as configured before or during deployment. The "Assassin" C2 (Command and
Control) and LP (Listening Post) subsystems are referred to collectively as" The Gibson" and
allow operators to perform specific tasks on an infected target.. Leaked DocumentsAfterMidnight v1.0
Users Guide AlphaGremlin v0.1.0
Users Guide AfterMidnight Diagrams Assassin v1.4 Users
Guide Assassin v1.3 Users
Guide See moreArchimedes 5 May, 2017 Today, May 5th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes "Archimedes", a tool
used by the CIA to attack a computer inside a Local Area Network (LAN), usually used in
offices. It allows the re-directing of traffic from the target computer inside the LAN through
a computer infected with this malware and controlled by the CIA. This technique is used by the
CIA to redirect the target's computers web browser to an exploitation server while appearing as
a normal browsing session.
The document illustrates a type of attack within a "protected environment" as the the tool
is deployed into an existing local network abusing existing machines to bring targeted
computers under control and allowing further exploitation and abuse. Leaked DocumentsArchimedes 1.0 User
Guide Archimedes 1.3
Addendum Archimedes 1.2
Addendum Archimedes 1.1
Addendum Fulcrum User Manual
v0.62 See moreScribbles 28 April, 2017 Today, April 28th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes the documentation
and source code for CIA's "Scribbles" project, a document-watermarking preprocessing system to
embed "Web beacon"-style tags into documents that are likely to be copied by Insiders,
Whistleblowers, Journalists or others. The released version (v1.0 RC1) is dated March, 1st 2016
and classified SECRET//ORCON/NOFORN until 2066.
Scribbles is intended for off-line preprocessing of Microsoft Office documents. For reasons
of operational security the user guide demands that "[t]he Scribbles executable, parameter
files, receipts and log files should not be installed on a target machine, nor left in a
location where it might be collected by an adversary."
According to the documentation, "the Scribbles document watermarking tool has been
successfully tested on [...] Microsoft Office 2013 (on Windows 8.1 x64), documents from Office
versions 97-2016 (Office 95 documents will not work!) [and d]ocuments that are not be locked
forms, encrypted, or password-protected". But this limitation to Microsoft Office documents
seems to create problems: "If the targeted end-user opens them up in a different application,
such as OpenOffice or LibreOffice, the watermark images and URLs may be visible to the
end-user. For this reason, always make sure that the host names and URL components are
logically consistent with the original content. If you are concerned that the targeted end-user
may open these documents in a non-Microsoft Office application, please take some test documents
and evaluate them in the likely application before deploying them."
Security researches and forensic experts will find more detailed information on how
watermarks are applied to documents in the source code, which is included in this publication
as a zipped archive. Leaked DocumentsScribbles v1.0 RC1 -
User Guide Scribbles (Source
Code) Scribbles v1.0 RC1
- IVVRR Checklist Scribbles
v1.0 RC1 - Readiness Review Worksheet Weeping Angel 21 April, 2017 Today, April 21st 2017, WikiLeaks publishes the User Guide
for CIA's "Weeping Angel" tool - an implant designed for Samsung F Series Smart Televisions.
Based on the "Extending" tool from the MI5/BTSS, the implant is designed to record audio from
the built-in microphone and egress or store the data.
The classification marks of the User Guide document hint that is was originally written by
the british MI5/BTSS and later shared with the CIA. Both agencies collaborated on the further
development of the malware and coordinated their work in Joint Development Workshops. Leaked
DocumentsExtending - User Guide Hive 14 April, 2017 Today, April 14th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes six documents from the
CIA's HIVE
project created by its "Embedded Development Branch"
(EDB).
HIVE is a back-end infrastructure malware with a public-facing HTTPS interface which is used
by CIA implants to transfer exfiltrated information from target machines to the CIA and to
receive commands from its operators to execute specific tasks on the targets. HIVE is used
across multiple malware implants and CIA operations. The public HTTPS interface utilizes
unsuspicious-looking cover domains to hide its presence.
Anti-Virus companies and forensic experts have noticed that some possible state-actor
malware used such kind of back-end infrastructure by analyzing the communication behaviour of
these specific implants, but were unable to attribute the back-end (and therefore the implant
itself) to operations run by the CIA. In a recent
blog post by Symantec , that was able to attribute the "Longhorn" activities to the CIA
based on the Vault 7 , such
back-end infrastructure is described:
For C&C servers, Longhorn typically configures
a specific domain and IP address combination per target. The domains appear to be registered by
the attackers; however they use privacy services to hide their real identity. The IP addresses
are typically owned by legitimate companies offering virtual private server (VPS) or webhosting
services. The malware communicates with C&C servers over HTTPS using a custom underlying
cryptographic protocol to protect communications from identification.
Grasshopper is provided with a variety of modules that can be used by a CIA operator as
blocks to construct a customized implant that will behave differently, for example maintaining
persistence on the computer differently, depending on what particular features or capabilities
are selected in the process of building the bundle. Additionally, Grasshopper provides a very
flexible language to define rules that are used to "perform a pre-installation survey of the
target device, assuring that the payload will only [be] installed if the target has the right
configuration". Through this grammar CIA operators are able to build from very simple to very
complex logic used to determine, for example, if the target device is running a specific
version of Microsoft Windows, or if a particular Antivirus product is running or not.
Grasshopper allows tools to be installed using a variety of persistence mechanisms and
modified using a variety of extensions (like encryption). The requirement list of the Automated
Implant Branch (AIB) for Grasshopper puts special attention on PSP avoidance , so that any
Personal Security Products like 'MS Security Essentials', 'Rising', 'Symantec Endpoint'
or 'Kaspersky IS' on target machines do not detect Grasshopper elements.
One of the persistence mechanisms used by the CIA here is 'Stolen Goods' - whose "components
were taken from malware known as Carberp, a suspected Russian organized crime rootkit."
confirming the recycling of malware found on the
Internet by the CIA. "The source of Carberp was published online, and has allowed AED/RDB to
easily steal components as needed from the malware.". While the CIA claims that "[most] of
Carberp was not used in Stolen Goods" they do acknowledge that "[the] persistence method, and
parts of the installer, were taken and modified to fit our needs", providing a further example
of reuse of portions of publicly available malware by the CIA, as observed in their analysis of leaked
material from the italian company "HackingTeam" .
Marble does this by hiding ("obfuscating") text fragments used in CIA malware from visual inspection. This is the digital
equivallent of a specalized CIA tool to place covers over the english language text on U.S.
produced weapons systems before giving them to insurgents secretly backed by the CIA.
Marble forms part of the CIA's anti-forensics approach and the
CIA's Core
Library of malware code. It is " [D]esigned to allow for flexible and easy-to-use
obfuscation " as " string obfuscation algorithms (especially those that are unique) are
often used to link malware to a specific developer or development shop. "
The Marble source code also includes a deobfuscator to reverse CIA text obfuscation.
Combined with the revealed obfuscation techniques, a pattern or signature emerges which can
assist forensic investigators attribute previous hacking attacks and viruses to the CIA. Marble
was in use at the CIA during 2016. It reached 1.0 in 2015.
The source code shows that Marble has test examples not just in English but also in Chinese,
Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi. This would permit a forensic attribution double game, for
example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator was not American English,
but Chinese, but then showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic
investigators even more strongly to the wrong conclusion, --- but there are other
possibilities, such as hiding fake error messages.
The Marble Framework is used for obfuscation only and does not contain any vulnerabilties or
exploits by itself. Leaked DocumentsMarble Framework (Source Code) Dark Matter 23 March, 2017 Today, March 23rd 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 "Dark
Matter", which contains documentation for several CIA projects that infect Apple Mac firmware
(meaning the infection persists even if the operating system is re-installed) developed by the
CIA's Embedded Development Branch (EDB). These documents explain the techniques used by CIA to
gain 'persistence' on Apple Mac devices, including Macs and iPhones and demonstrate their use
of EFI/UEFI and firmware malware.
Among others, these documents reveal the "Sonic Screwdriver" project which, as explained by
the CIA, is a "mechanism for executing code on peripheral devices while a Mac laptop or desktop
is booting" allowing an attacker to boot its attack software for example from a USB stick "even
when a firmware password is enabled". The CIA's "Sonic Screwdriver" infector is stored on the
modified firmware of an Apple Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter.
"DarkSeaSkies" is "an implant that persists in the EFI firmware of an Apple MacBook Air
computer" and consists of "DarkMatter", "SeaPea" and "NightSkies", respectively EFI,
kernel-space and user-space implants.
Documents on the "Triton" MacOSX malware, its infector "Dark Mallet" and its EFI-persistent
version "DerStarke" are also included in this release. While the DerStarke1.4 manual released
today dates to 2013, other Vault 7 documents show that as of 2016 the CIA continues to rely on
and update these systems and is working on the production of DerStarke2.0 .
Also included in this release is the manual for the CIA's "NightSkies 1.2" a
"beacon/loader/implant tool" for the Apple iPhone. Noteworthy is that NightSkies had reached
1.2 by 2008, and is expressly designed to be physically installed onto factory fresh iPhones.
i.e the CIA has been infecting the iPhone supply chain of its targets since at least 2008.
While CIA assets are sometimes used to physically infect systems in the custody of a target
it is likely that many CIA physical access attacks have infected the targeted organization's
supply chain including by interdicting mail orders and other shipments (opening, infecting, and
resending) leaving the United States or otherwise.
So, secure your systems people. Attackers potentially trying to use these tools still need to
somehow get a shell on your system in order to install this stuff.
Detecting on your system
As far as detecting on your system, that's going to be tough since:
The instructions note to name the script something before uploading/running it
We don't have a copy of any of the scripts they're talking about
But - we do know a couple things..
It runs in the background. A simple 'ps' will show you the processes and you should be able
to spot something unfamiliar running, and kill it
history file gone would indicate that 'something' happened.. not necessarily this though.
if you find evidence of the 'CIA' JQC/KitV root kit on your system which may be tough..
"... Many "never-Trumpers" of both parties see the deep state's national security bureaucracy as
their best hope to destroy Trump and thus defend constitutional government, but those hopes are misguided.
..."
"... As Michael Glennon, author of National Security and Double Government, pointed out in a June
2017 Harper's essay, if "the president maintains his attack, splintered and demoralized factions within
the bureaucracy could actually support - not oppose - many potential Trump initiatives, such as stepped-up
drone strikes, cyberattacks, covert action, immigration bans, and mass surveillance." ..."
"... Corraborative evidence of Valentine's thesis is, perhaps surprisingly, provided by the CIA's
own website where a number of redacted historical documents have been published. Presumably, they are
documents first revealed under the Freedom of Information Act. A few however are copies of news articles
once available to the public but now archived by the CIA which has blacked-out portions of the articles.
..."
"... This led to an investigation by New Times in a day when there were still "investigative reporters,"
and not the government sycophants of today. Based on firsthand accounts, their investigation concluded
that Operation Phoenix was the "only systematized kidnapping, torture and assassination program ever
sponsored by the United States government. . . . Its victims were noncombatants." At least 40,000 were
murdered, with "only" about 8,000 supposed Viet Cong political cadres targeted for execution, with the
rest civilians (including women and children) killed and "later conveniently labeled VCI. Hundreds of
thousands were jailed without trial, often after sadistic abuse." The article notes that Phoenix was
conceived, financed, and directed by the Central Intelligence Agency ..."
"... But the article noted that one of the most persistent criticisms of Phoenix was that it resulted
"in the arrest and imprisonment of many innocent civilians." These were called "Class C Communist offenders,"
some of whom may actually have been forced to commit such "belligerent acts" as digging trenches or
carrying rice. It was those alleged as the "hard core, full-time cadre" who were deemed to make up the
"shadow government" designated as Class A and B Viet Cong. ..."
"... Ironically, by the Bush administration's broad definition of "unlawful combatants," CIA officers
and their support structure also would fit the category. But the American public is generally forgiving
of its own war criminals though most self-righteous and hypocritical in judging foreign war criminals.
But perhaps given sufficient evidence, the American public could begin to see both the immorality of
this behavior and its counterproductive consequences. ..."
"... Talleyrand is credited with saying, "They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing." Reportedly,
that was borrowed from a 1796 letter by a French naval officer, which stated, in the original language:
Personne n'est corrigé; personne n'a su ni rien oublier ni rien appendre. In English: "Nobody has been
corrected; no one has known to forget, nor yet to learn anything." That sums up the CIA leadership entirely.
..."
Douglas Valentine has once again added to the store of knowledge necessary for American citizens
to understand how the U.S. government actually works today, in his most recent book entitled
The CIA As Organized Crime . (Valentine previously wrote The Phoenix Program ,
which should be read with the current book.)
The US "deep state" – of which the CIA is an integral part – is an open secret now and the Phoenix
Program (assassinations, death squads, torture, mass detentions, exploitation of information) has
been its means of controlling populations. Consequently, knowing the deep state's methods is the
only hope of building a democratic opposition to the deep state and to restore as much as possible
the Constitutional system we had in previous centuries, as imperfect as it was.
Princeton University political theorist Sheldon Wolin described the US political system in place
by 2003 as "inverted totalitarianism." He reaffirmed that in 2009 after seeing a year of the Obama
administration. Correctly identifying the threat against constitutional governance is the first step
to restore it, and as Wolin understood, substantive constitutional government ended long before Donald
Trump campaigned. He's just taking unconstitutional governance to the next level in following the
same path as his recent predecessors. However, even as some elements of the "deep state" seek to
remove Trump, the President now has many "deep state" instruments in his own hands to be used at
his unreviewable discretion.
Many "never-Trumpers" of both parties see the deep state's national security bureaucracy as
their best hope to destroy Trump and thus defend constitutional government, but those hopes are misguided.
After all, the deep state's bureaucratic leadership has worked arduously for decades to subvert
constitutional order.
As Michael Glennon, author of National Security and Double Government, pointed out in a June
2017 Harper's essay, if "the president maintains his attack, splintered and demoralized factions
within the bureaucracy could actually support - not oppose - many potential Trump initiatives, such
as stepped-up drone strikes, cyberattacks, covert action, immigration bans, and mass surveillance."
Glennon noted that the propensity of "security managers" to back policies which ratchet up levels
of security "will play into Trump's hands, so that if and when he finally does declare victory, a
revamped security directorate could emerge more menacing than ever, with him its devoted new ally."
Before that happens, it is incumbent for Americans to understand what Valentine explains in his book
of CIA methods of "population control" as first fully developed in the Vietnam War's Phoenix Program.
Hating the US
There also must be the realization that our "national security" apparatchiks - principally but
not solely the CIA - have served to exponentially increase the numbers of those people who hate the
US.
Some of these people turn to terrorism as an expression of that hostility. Anyone who is at all
familiar with the CIA and Al Qaeda knows that the CIA has been Al Qaeda's most important "combat
multiplier" since 9/11, and the CIA can be said to have birthed ISIS as well with the mistreatment
of incarcerated Iraqi men in US prisons in Iraq.
Indeed, by following the model of the Phoenix Program, the CIA must be seen in the Twenty-first
Century as a combination of the ultimate "Murder, Inc.," when judged by the CIA's methods such as
drone warfare and its victims; and the Keystone Kops, when the multiple failures of CIA policies
are considered. This is not to make light of what the CIA does, but the CIA's misguided policies
and practices have served to generate wrath, hatred and violence against Americans, which we see
manifested in cities such as San Bernardino, Orlando, New York and Boston.
Pointing out the harm to Americans is not to dismiss the havoc that Americans under the influence
of the CIA have perpetrated on foreign populations. But "morality" seems a lost virtue today in the
US, which is under the influence of so much militaristic war propaganda that morality no longer enters
into the equation in determining foreign policy.
In addition to the harm the CIA has caused to people around the world, the CIA works tirelessly
at subverting its own government at home, as was most visible in the spying on and subversion of
the torture investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The subversion of democracy
also includes the role the CIA plays in developing and disseminating war propaganda as "information
warfare," upon the American people. This is what the Rand Corporation under the editorship of Zalmay
Khalilzad has described as "conditioning the battlefield," which begins with the minds of the American
population.
Douglas Valentine discusses and documents the role of the CIA in disseminating pro-war propaganda
and disinformation as complementary to the violent tactics of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. Valentine
explains that "before Phoenix was adopted as the model for policing the American empire, many US
military commanders in Vietnam resisted the Phoenix strategy of targeting civilians with Einsatzgruppen-style
'special forces' and Gestapo-style secret police."
Military Commanders considered that type of program a flagrant violation of the Law of War. "Their
main job is to zap the in-betweeners – you know, the people who aren't all the way with the government
and aren't all the way with the Viet Cong either. They figure if you zap enough in-betweeners, people
will begin to get the idea," according to one quote from The Phoenix Program referring to
the unit tasked with much of the Phoenix operations.
Nazi Influences
Comparing the Phoenix Program and its operatives to "Einsatzgruppen-style 'special forces' and
Gestapo-style secret police" is not a distortion of the strategic understanding of each. Both programs
were extreme forms of repression operating under martial law principles where the slightest form
of dissent was deemed to represent the work of the "enemy." Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the
Nazi Occupation of Europe by Philip W. Blood describes German "Security Warfare" as practiced in
World War II, which can be seen as identical in form to the Phoenix Program as to how the enemy is
defined as anyone who is "potentially" a threat, deemed either "partizans" or terrorists.
That the Germans included entire racial categories in that does not change the underlying logic,
which was, anyone deemed an internal enemy in a territory in which their military operated had to
be "neutralized" by any means necessary. The US military and the South Vietnamese military governments
operated under the same principles but not based on race, rather the perception that certain areas
and villages were loyal to the Viet Cong.
This repressive doctrine was also not unique to the Nazis in Europe and the US military in Vietnam.
Similar though less sophisticated strategies were used against the American Indians and by the imperial
powers of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, including by the US in its newly acquired
territories of the Philippines and in the Caribbean. This "imperial policing," i.e., counterinsurgency,
simply moved to more manipulative and, in ways, more violent levels.
That the US drew upon German counterinsurgency doctrine, as brutal as it was, is well documented.
This is shown explicitly in a 2011 article published in the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
entitled German Counterinsurgency Revisited by Charles D. Melson. He wrote that in 1942, Nazi commander
Heinrich Himmler named a deputy for "anti-bandit warfare," (Bevollmachtigter fur die Bandenkampfung
im Osten), SS-General von dem Bach, whose responsibilities expanded in 1943 to head all SS and police
anti-bandit units and operations. He was one of the architects of the Einsatzguppen "concept of anti-partisan
warfare," a German predecessor to the "Phoenix Program."
'Anti-Partisan' Lessons
It wasn't a coincidence that this "anti-partisan" warfare concept should be adopted by US forces
in Vietnam and retained to the present day. Melson pointed out that a "post-war German special forces
officer described hunter or ranger units as 'men who knew every possible ruse and tactic of guerrilla
warfare. They had gone through the hell of combat against the crafty partisans in the endless swamps
and forests of Russia.'"
Consequently, "The German special forces and reconnaissance school was a sought after posting
for North Atlantic Treaty Organization special operations personnel," who presumably included members
of the newly created US Army Special Forces soldiers, which was in part headquartered at Bad Tolz
in Germany, as well as CIA paramilitary officers.
Just as with the later Phoenix Program to the present-day US global counterinsurgency, Melson
wrote that the "attitude of the [local] population and the amount of assistance it was willing to
give guerilla units was of great concern to the Germans. Different treatment was supposed to be accorded
to affected populations, bandit supporters, and bandits, while so-called population and resource
control measures for each were noted (but were in practice, treated apparently one and the same).
'Action against enemy agitation' was the psychological or information operations of the
Nazi
period. The Nazis believed that, 'Because of the close relationship of guerilla warfare
and politics, actions against enemy agitation are a task that is just as important as interdiction
and combat actions. All means must be used to ward off enemy influence and waken and maintain a clear
political will.'"
This is typical of any totalitarian system – a movement or a government – whether the process
is characterized as counterinsurgency or internal security. The idea of any civilian collaboration
with the "enemy" is the basis for what the US government charges as "conspiracy" in the Guantanamo
Military Commissions.
Valentine explains the Phoenix program as having been developed by the CIA in 1967 to combine
"existing counterinsurgency programs in a concerted effort to 'neutralize' the Vietcong infrastructure
(VCI)." He explained further that "neutralize" meant "to kill, capture, or make to defect." "Infrastructure"
meant civilians suspected of supporting North Vietnamese and Vietcong soldiers. Central to the Phoenix
program was that its targets were civilians, making the operation a violation of the Geneva Conventions
which guaranteed protection to civilians in time of war.
"The Vietnam's War's Silver Lining: A Bureaucratic Model for Population Control Emerges" is the
title of Chapter 3. Valentine writes that the "CIA's Phoenix program changed how America fights its
wars and how the public views this new type of political and psychological warfare, in which civilian
casualties are an explicit objective." The intent of the Phoenix program evolved from "neutralizing"
enemy leaders into "a program of systematic repression for the political control of the South Vietnamese
people. It sought to accomplish this through a highly bureaucratized system of disposing of people
who could not be ideologically assimilated." The CIA claimed a legal basis for the program in "emergency
decrees" and orders for "administrative detention."
Lauding Petraeus
Valentine refers to a paper by David Kilcullen entitled Countering Global Insurgency. Kilcullen
is one of the so-called "counterinsurgency experts" whom General David Petraeus gathered together
in a cell to promote and refine "counterinsurgency," or COIN, for the modern era. Fred Kaplan, who
is considered a "liberal author and journalist" at Slate, wrote a panegyric to these cultists entitled,
The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War. The purpose of this
cell was to change the practices of the US military into that of "imperial policing," or COIN, as
they preferred to call it.
But Kilcullen argued in his paper that "The 'War on Terrorism'" is actually a campaign to counter
a global insurgency. Therefore, Kilcullen argued, "we need a new paradigm, capable of addressing
globalised insurgency." His "disaggregation strategy" called for "actions to target the insurgent
infrastructure that would resemble the unfairly maligned (but highly effective) Vietnam-era Phoenix
program."
He went on, "Contrary to popular mythology, this was largely a civilian aid and development program,
supported by targeted military pacification operations and intelligence activity to disrupt the Viet
Cong Infrastructure. A global Phoenix program (including the other key elements that formed part
of the successful Vietnam CORDS system) would provide a useful start point to consider how Disaggregation
would develop in practice."
It is readily apparent that, in fact, a Phoenix-type program is now US global policy and - just
like in Vietnam - it is applying "death squad" strategies that eliminate not only active combatants
but also civilians who simply find themselves in the same vicinity, thus creating antagonisms that
expand the number of fighters.
Corraborative evidence of Valentine's thesis is, perhaps surprisingly, provided by the CIA's
own website where a number of redacted historical documents have been published. Presumably, they
are documents first revealed under the Freedom of Information Act. A few however are copies of news
articles once available to the public but now archived by the CIA which has blacked-out portions
of the articles.
The Bloody Reality
One "sanitized" article - approved for release in 2011 - is a partially redacted New Times article
of Aug. 22, 1975, by Michael Drosnin. The article recounts a story of a US Army counterintelligence
officer "who directed a small part of a secret war aimed not at the enemy's soldiers but at its civilian
leaders." He describes how a CIA-directed Phoenix operative dumped a bag of "eleven bloody ears"
as proof of six people killed.
The officer, who recalled this incident in 1971, said, "It made me sick. I couldn't go on with
what I was doing in Vietnam. . . . It was an assassination campaign . . . my job was to identify
and eliminate VCI, the Viet Cong 'infrastructure' – the communist's shadow government. I worked directly
with two Vietnamese units, very tough guys who didn't wear uniforms . . . In the beginning they brought
back about 10 percent alive. By the end they had stopped taking prisoners.
"How many VC they got I don't know. I saw a hell of a lot of dead bodies. We'd put a tag on saying
VCI, but no one really knew – it was just some native in black pajamas with 16 bullet holes."
This led to an investigation by New Times in a day when there were still "investigative reporters,"
and not the government sycophants of today. Based on firsthand accounts, their investigation concluded
that Operation Phoenix was the "only systematized kidnapping, torture and assassination program ever
sponsored by the United States government. . . . Its victims were noncombatants." At least 40,000
were murdered, with "only" about 8,000 supposed Viet Cong political cadres targeted for execution,
with the rest civilians (including women and children) killed and "later conveniently labeled VCI.
Hundreds of thousands were jailed without trial, often after sadistic abuse." The article notes that
Phoenix was conceived, financed, and directed by the Central Intelligence Agency, as Mr. Valentine
writes.
A second article archived by the CIA was by the Christian Science Monitor, dated Jan. 5, 1971,
describing how the Saigon government was "taking steps that could help eliminate one of the most
glaring abuses of its controversial Phoenix program, which is aimed against the Viet Cong political
and administrative apparatus." Note how the Monitor shifted blame away from the CIA and onto the
South Vietnamese government.
But the article noted that one of the most persistent criticisms of Phoenix was that it resulted
"in the arrest and imprisonment of many innocent civilians." These were called "Class C Communist
offenders," some of whom may actually have been forced to commit such "belligerent acts" as digging
trenches or carrying rice. It was those alleged as the "hard core, full-time cadre" who were deemed
to make up the "shadow government" designated as Class A and B Viet Cong.
Yet "security committees" throughout South Vietnam, under the direction of the CIA, sentenced
at least 10,000 "Class C civilians" to prison each year, far more than Class A and B combined. The
article stated, "Thousands of these prisoners are never brought to court trial, and thousands of
other have never been sentenced." The latter statement would mean they were just held in "indefinite
detention," like the prisoners held at Guantanamo and other US detention centers with high levels
of CIA involvement.
Not surprisingly to someone not affiliated with the CIA, the article found as well that "Individual
case histories indicate that many who have gone to prison as active supporters of neither the government
nor the Viet Cong come out as active backers of the Viet Cong and with an implacable hatred of the
government." In other words, the CIA and the COIN enthusiasts are achieving the same results today
with the prisons they set up in Iraq and Afghanistan.
CIA Crimes
Valentine broadly covers the illegalities of the CIA over the years, including its well-documented
role in facilitating the drug trade over the years. But, in this reviewer's opinion, his most valuable
contribution is his description of the CIA's participation going back at least to the Vietnam War
in the treatment of what the US government today calls "unlawful combatants."
"Unlawful combatants" is a descriptive term made up by the Bush administration to remove people
whom US officials alleged were "terrorists" from the legal protections of the Geneva Conventions
and Human Rights Law and thus to justify their capture or killing in the so-called "Global War on
Terror." Since the US government deems them "unlawful" – because they do not belong to an organized
military structure and do not wear insignia – they are denied the "privilege" of belligerency that
applies to traditional soldiers. But – unless they take a "direct part in hostilities" – they would
still maintain their civilian status under the law of war and thus not lose the legal protection
due to civilians even if they exhibit sympathy or support to one side in a conflict.
Ironically, by the Bush administration's broad definition of "unlawful combatants," CIA officers
and their support structure also would fit the category. But the American public is generally forgiving
of its own war criminals though most self-righteous and hypocritical in judging foreign war criminals.
But perhaps given sufficient evidence, the American public could begin to see both the immorality
of this behavior and its counterproductive consequences.
This is not to condemn all CIA officers, some of whom acted in good faith that they were actually
defending the United States by acquiring information on a professed enemy in the tradition of Nathan
Hale. But it is to harshly condemn those CIA officials and officers who betrayed the United States
by subverting its Constitution, including waging secret wars against foreign countries without a
declaration of war by Congress. And it decidedly condemns the CIA war criminals who acted as a law
unto themselves in the torture and murder of foreign nationals, as Valentine's book describes.
Talleyrand is credited with saying, "They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing." Reportedly,
that was borrowed from a 1796 letter by a French naval officer, which stated, in the original language:
Personne n'est corrigé; personne n'a su ni rien oublier ni rien appendre. In English: "Nobody has
been corrected; no one has known to forget, nor yet to learn anything." That sums up the CIA leadership
entirely.
Douglas Valentine's book is a thorough documentation of that fact and it is essential reading
for all Americans if we are to have any hope for salvaging a remnant of representative government.
Todd E. Pierce retired as a Major in the US Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps in November
2012. His most recent assignment was defense counsel in the Office of Chief Defense Counsel, Office
of Military Commissions. This originally appeared at
ConsortiumNews.com .
The U.S. intelligence community is
vast , composed of
17 distinct organizations
each operating under its own shroud of secrecy.
Oversight of these agencies generally falls to the Department of Defense or Congress, leaving
the average citizen with precious little knowledge of how they operate.
Funded by largely classified budgets, it's difficult to assess how much the U.S. annually spends
on these clandestine operations, but
one 2012 estimate pegs the
cost at about $75 billion.
The following slides highlight the expansive reach of the U.S. intelligence community.
The Central Intelligence Agency spies on foreign governments and organizes covert ops. screenshot
The CIA is the most well-known U.S. spying agency, formed by the passage of the National Security
Act of 1947. The agency has its roots with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) that operated
during World War II.
Headquarters : Langley, Va.
Mission : CIA collects, analyzes, and disseminates intelligence gathered on foreign nations.
This comes through signals and human intelligence sources.
Budget : Classified. On their
website
, the CIA states, "neither the number of employees nor the size of the Agency's budget can,
at present, be publicly disclosed. A common misconception is that the Agency has an unlimited
budget, which is far from true."
the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion.
The National Security Agency was once so secretive it was jokingly called 'No Such Agency.'
NSA Headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland
NSA
Budget : Classified. Some estimate the NSA is actually the largest intelligence organization
in the world -
three times the size of the CIA. The headquarters alone takes up 6.3 million square feet -
around the same size as the Pentagon - with 112 acres of parking spaces,
reports the Washington Post.
The Defense Intelligence Agency works to understand what foreign militaries will do before
they do it. DIA its overseas spy network
to collect first-hand intelligence.
Headquarters : Washington, D.C.
Mission : The DIA serves as the lead intelligence agency for the Dept. of Defense, coordinating
analysis and collection of intelligence on foreign militaries, in addition to surveillance and
reconnaissance operations. The DIA is the common link between military and national intelligence
agencies.
Budget : Classified. The DIA does not reveal budget information, although they
do say they have more than 16,500
men and women working for them and are under DoD and congressional oversight.
The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research provides diplomats the necessary
tools for effective foreign policy.
The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) has ties to the
Office of Strategic Services from World War II, but was transferred to State after the war.
INR now
reports directly to the Secretary of State, harnessing intelligence from all sources and offering
independent analysis of global events and real-time insight.
Headquarters : Washington, D.C.
Mission : This agency serves as the Secretary of State's
primary advisor on intelligence matters, and gives support to other policymakers, ambassadors,
and embassy staff.
Air Force Intelligence provides reconnaissance for US ground troops.
Formerly known as the Air Intelligence Agency, the agency is now known as the Air Force ISR
- Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance. Air Force intelligence was established
in 1948 to
get information to troops on the ground, and most recently, the ISR has collected that intelligence
from aerial drones.
Headquarters : Lackland Air Force Base, Texas
Mission : Air Force ISR collects and analyzes intelligence on foreign nations and hostile forces,
both in and out of combat zones. They also conduct electronic and photographic surveillance, and
provide weather and mapping data to troops in the field.
Budget :
Unknown . The budget of ISR apparently falls under the Air Force's Operation & Maintenance
budget, which includes other areas outside of the agency's scope such as flying operations and
logistics. That number for 2012, however, was just over $46 million.
The FBI's National Security Branch oversees counterterrorism and intelligence gathering.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation's
National Security Branch (NSB) was
established in 2005
, combining resources that include counterterrorism, counter-intelligence, weapons of mass
destruction, and intelligence under a single FBI leader.
Headquarters : Washington, D.C.
Mission : Formed after 9/11 and the Iraq WMD commission - when intelligence agencies were not
sharing data with each other - the NSB integrates intel on national security and criminal threats
from a variety of sources that are often intertwined in order to protect U.S. interests.
Budget : Total FBI budget was approximately $8.1 billion in 2012, which included an increase
of $119 million "to enhance our counterterrorism, computer intrusions, and other programs,"
according to their
website.
Army Intelligence and Security Command offers essential intel to troops on the battlefield.
Army intelligence has been around since spies worked for the Continental Army in
1775 , but the U.S.
Army's Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) was established
in 1977 to
become the major unifying command of army intelligence.
Headquarters : Fort Belvoir, Va.
Mission : INSCOM provides commanders on the ground with information they may need on the battlefield:
intercepted enemy radio communications, maps, ground imagery, and information on force structure
and numbers.
The Department of Energy, Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence gathers information
on foreign nuclear weapons.
Surprisingly, the Energy Department
even has an intelligence service.
The Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence focuses on technical intelligence on nuclear
weapons and nonproliferation, nuclear energy (especially foreign), and energy security.
Headquarters : Washington, D.C.
Mission : The Dept. of Energy doesn't have the ability to conduct foreign intelligence, instead
relying on information passed to
them by other agencies (such as the CIA or NSA). If it involves weapons of mass destruction,
the DoE offers up the analytical expertise.
Budget : Unknown. Like other government budgets, the intelligence activity is not specifically
mentioned, although it may fall under "Atomic Energy Defense Activities" which had a total budget
of more than
$16 billion in 2012.
Coast Guard Intelligence provides information on maritime security and homeland defense.
Coast Guard Intelligence (CGI) was formed in
1915 and now falls under
the Dept. of Homeland Security, providing information on maritime and port security, search and
rescue, and counter-narcotics.
Headquarters : Washington, D.C.
Mission : Although CGI is
technically an intelligence agency, its primary mission is as an investigative arm of the
Coast Guard. CGI special agents "conduct criminal, counterintelligence and personnel security
investigations within the Coast Guard's area of responsibility," with the majority being criminal
offenses violating military law, according to the Coast Guard's official
website . However, the
Coast Guard
does have specialists conducting analysis and collection of intelligence.
Budget : Unknown. Like the Army, the budget has some overlap, although the 2014 budget request
includes $60
million for C4ISR systems, an acronym for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence,
Surveillance and Reconnaissance.
CGI headquarters is relatively small, only employing
about 280 .
The Treasury's Office of Intelligence and Analysis collects terrorism and financial intelligence.
The Office of Intelligence and Analysis is fairly new,
established in 2004 by the Intelligence Authorization Act. OIA's focus is mainly on providing
information to combat terrorism and illicit financial transactions.
Headquarters : Washington, D.C.
Mission : OIA safeguards the U.S. financial system "against illicit use and combating rogue
nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction proliferators, money launderers,
drug kingpins, and other national security threats,"
according to DNI.
The Drug Enforcement Administration hunts down illegal drugs.
The DEA has been gathering intelligence for anti-drug operations since its establishment in
1973 . The agency collects
and provides intelligence to other law enforcement agencies and helps with investigations.
Headquarters : El Paso, Texas
Mission : DEA assists local and federal law enforcement in conducting major drug investigations,
along with developing "information that leads to seizures and arrests, and provid[ing] policy
makers with drug trend information upon which programmatic decisions can be based,"
according to their website.
The Marine Corps Intelligence Activity monitors the Corp's battlefields.
Like Army intelligence, the Marine Corps provides their own agency to collect and analyze information
for troops on the ground. This includes map making, radio intercepts, human intelligence, and
counter-intelligence.
Headquarters : Quantico, Va.
Mission : The
primary function of Marine IA is to give tactical and operational intelligence to battlefield
commanders. They also serve as the "go-to" unit for the Commandant of the Marine Corps on understanding
intel.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency provides advanced mapping for military forces.
Having its roots from the
1972
formation of the Defense Mapping Agency and formerly known as
NIMA , the agency was renamed the
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in
2003 . The
agency has the task of collecting and understanding Earth's physical and man-made attributes.
Using advanced imagery (mainly from satellites), it was NGA watching Osama bin Laden's compound
in Pakistan.
Headquarters : Ft. Belvoir, Va.
Mission : NGA
employs cartographers
and analysts that collect and generate information about the Earth. This data is used in navigation,
national security, military operations, and humanitarian aid efforts.
Budget : Classified
. NGA employs approximately 14,500 government civilians.
The National Reconnaissance Office is responsible for America's spy satellites.
While the NGA is responsible for gaining information from satellite data, the National Reconnaissance
Office - created secretly in
1961 and not acknowledged
until 1992 - is in charge with satellite design, building, launch, and maintenance.
Headquarters : Chantilly, Va.
Mission : NRO gives its mission as "innovative overhead intelligence systems for national security."
Simply put, the
NRO provides their "customers" at the CIA, DoD, and elsewhere with technologically advanced
spy satellites.
The Office of Naval Intelligence provides information on the world's oceans to sailors everywhere.
The Office of Naval Intelligence was established in
1882
for "the purpose of collecting and recording naval information" that could be useful in war and
peace. Like other military intelligence services, ONI gives maritime commanders information they
need on foreign forces.
Headquarters : Washington, D.C.
Mission : ONI gathers intelligence and moves it rapidly to decision makers. "We produce maritime
intelligence on weapons and technology proliferation and smuggling and illicit maritime activities
that directly supports the U.S. Navy, joint war fighters and national decision makers and agencies,"
according to
their website.
The Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis looks for information
on any potential threats to the US.
The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis works primarily on
homeland threats - collecting and analyzing information, and sharing intelligence with local
and federal law enforcement through the use of "
fusion
centers ."
Headquarters : Washington, D.C.
Mission : They work on four main areas: understanding threats through analysis, collecting
information relevant to homeland security, sharing that information with the agencies that need
it, and managing the homeland security enterprise,
according to DNI.
Budget : Classified. In a Congressional Research Service
report , it was noted
that "DNI does not publicly disclose details about the intelligence budget, but ... reported that
the aggregate amount appropriated to the [national intelligence program] for FY2009 was $49.8
billion."
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is where all the intelligence should come
together for delivery to the president.
Established in
2004 , the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) manages the efforts of the
entire U.S. intelligence community. Director
James R. Clapper
serves as the principal advisor to the president as well as the National Security and Homeland
Security Councils.
Headquarters : Washington, D.C.
Mission : The DNI has
two main missions: to lead intelligence integration, and "forge an intelligence community
that delivers the most insightful intelligence possible."
Budget : The specifics of the office itself are unknown, but the total aggregate amount for
the national intelligence program is
more than $48 billion.
- 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies are working on intelligence, counterterrorism,
or homeland security in the U.S.
- Just
the NSA alone is contracting with more than 250 companies on intelligence work, including
big names like Northrop Grumman and SAIC.
- Many intelligence agencies are doing redundant work, such as 51 federal and military organizations
that track the flow of money in and out of terror networks.
- One reason why those intelligence budgets are classified: millions of dollars in
so-called "ghost money" given to foreign governments.
"... Lots of people out there (Hello lurkers!) know that the Pork Pie News Networks are either feeding them unadulterated bs or lying by omission so actually make a real effort to find out more – whether they agree with it or not – but are faced with having to wade through rivers of f/ktard commenters. It is dispiriting to say the least. ..."
"... That may well be the idea, particularly those organizations that want to hose a and discredit alternative media sites (sic the JTRIG program and the likes of Brigade 77 and digilogues that have been running for years). If you can hack it, you probably think a) does this make sense? b) who is bono? c) timing, timing, timing.. d) is anything logically missing from the picture/story? e) if so, what conclusions can we draw from that? etc. It's not easy. ..."
"... Once upon a time we had newspaper columnists to do our thinking for us who we would religiously read. Now it is each one for themselves. What a pain in the ass. Fortunately we have the Kremlin Stooge and a bunch of other sites to help! :-) ..."
"... Don't miss the link to TTG's comment on leaks at Sic Semper Tyrannis! ..."
"... Yet again, you do not get this kind of information from the Pork Pie News Networks, the same ones who cosy up to the security services in return for juicy tidbits and also rubbish 'alternative news/websites/blogs'. ..."
"... the notion of compartmentalized operational security and broad state electronic surveillance of the population are mutually exclusive. ..."
He's one of a handful of good commenters there among the nutbags, antisemites, conspiracy theorists
etc. It's one of the things that really bugs me about great (supposedly) alternative news/opinion/blogs.
They always get immediately contaminated by all sorts of narcissistic 'tards who just want to
s/t the bed for everyone else, particularly the flyby trolls. Lots of people out there (Hello
lurkers!) know that the Pork Pie News Networks are either feeding them unadulterated bs or lying
by omission so actually make a real effort to find out more – whether they agree with it or not
– but are faced with having to wade through rivers of f/ktard commenters. It is dispiriting to
say the least.
That may well be the idea, particularly those organizations that want to hose a and discredit
alternative media sites (sic the JTRIG program and the likes of Brigade 77 and digilogues that
have been running for years). If you can hack it, you probably think a) does this make sense?
b) who is bono? c) timing, timing, timing.. d) is anything logically missing from the picture/story?
e) if so, what conclusions can we draw from that? etc. It's not easy.
Once upon a time we had newspaper columnists to do our thinking for us who we would religiously
read. Now it is each one for themselves. What a pain in the ass. Fortunately we have the Kremlin
Stooge and a bunch of other sites to help! :-)
My only thoughts are, wouldn't such info be compartmentalized (standard operating procedure,
innit?), i.e. a 'translator' would not have free and unlimited access, but rather have
access to only very specific highly secret info? If there are that many translators out there,
then compartmentalization would work very well. It is totally counter intuitive, nay stupid
, to allow free range to anyone but the top of the top. More people, more chance of leaks,
accidents or incomptence.
Don't miss the link to TTG's comment on leaks at Sic Semper Tyrannis!
Yet again, you do not get this kind of information from the Pork Pie News Networks, the
same ones who cosy up to the security services in return for juicy tidbits and also rubbish 'alternative
news/websites/blogs'.
Indeed it is; Secret and Top secret information is made available to those who
(1) are cleared
to the appropriate level, and
(2) have the need to know.
It's "and". Not "or". Top Secret information may not be viewed by anyone with a Top Secret
security clearance – only by those who need to know that information to carry out their duties
related to it.
Information may actually specify, "Top Secret – Eyes Only" in which the personnel holding a
Top Secret clearance who may view the material are either listed, or it is restricted only to
the addressee.
I dunno, because that whole Snowden thing revealed a lot of holes in the American security apparatus.
Snowden himself was surprised just how much stuff he was able to access, and he was just a contractor
at the time, not even a permanent employee.
Well, yes, because the notion of compartmentalized operational security and broad state electronic
surveillance of the population are mutually exclusive.
But to the very best of my knowledge Snowden did not reveal any secrets of America's defense
systems, its operational structure, its past military operations or its future plans in that area,
if he knew them. The damaging information he disclosed all related to American spying on foreign
leaders and the American electorate
"... "They have been misled and they are not analyzing the information in its entirety. We have talked about it with former President Obama and with several other officials. No one ever showed me any direct evidence. When we spoke with President Obama about that, you know, you should probably better ask him about it – I think he will tell you that he, too, is confident of it. But when he and I talked I saw that he, too, started having doubts. At any rate, that's how I saw it." ..."
"... As I noted in a Jan. 20 article about Obama's news conference two days earlier, "Did President Barack Obama acknowledge that the extraordinary propaganda campaign to blame Russia for helping Donald Trump become president has a very big hole in it, i.e., that the US intelligence community has no idea how the Democratic emails reached WikiLeaks? For weeks, eloquent obfuscation – expressed with 'high confidence' – has been the name of the game, but inadvertent admissions now are dispelling some of the clouds. ..."
"... "Hackers may be anywhere," Putin said. "There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can't you imagine such a scenario? In the middle of an internal political fight, it was convenient for them, whatever the reason, to put out that information. And put it out they did. And, doing it, they made a reference to Russia. Can't you imagine it happening? I can. ..."
"... "Let us recall the assassination of President Kennedy. There is a theory that Kennedy's assassination was arranged by the United States special services. If this theory is correct, and one cannot rule it out, so what can be easier in today's context, being able to rely on the entire technical capabilities available to special services than to organize some kind of attacks in the appropriate manner while making a reference to Russia in the process. " ..."
"... The capabilities shown in what WikiLeaks calls the "Vault 7" trove of CIA documents required the creation of hundreds of millions of lines of source code. At $25 per line of code, that amounts to about $2.5 billion for each 100 million code lines. But the Deep State has that kind of money and would probably consider the expenditure a good return on investment for "proving" the Russians hacked into Democratic Party emails. ..."
"... In other words, it is altogether possible that the hacking attributed to Russia was actually one of several "active measures" undertaken by a cabal consisting of the CIA, FBI, NSA and Clapper – the same agencies responsible for the lame, evidence-free report of Jan. 6, that Clapper and Brennan acknowledged last month was not the consensus view of the 17 intelligence agencies. ..."
"... There is also the issue of the forensics. Former FBI Director James Comey displayed considerable discomfort on March 20, explaining to the House Intelligence Committee why the FBI did not insist on getting physical access to the Democratic National Committee's computers in order to do its own proper forensics, but chose to rely on the examination done by the DNC's private contractor, Crowdstrike. ..."
"... The firm itself has conflicts of interests in its links to the pro-NATO and anti-Russia think tank, the Atlantic Council, through Dmitri Alperovitch, who is an Atlantic Council senior fellow and the co-founder of Crowdstrike. ..."
"... Given the stakes involved in the Russia-gate investigation – now including a possible impeachment battle over removing the President of the United States – wouldn't it seem logical for the FBI to insist on its own forensics for this fundamental predicate of the case? Or could Comey's hesitancy to demand access to the DNC's computers be explained by a fear that FBI technicians not fully briefed on CIA/NSA/FBI Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted? ..."
To prove their chops, mainstream media stars can't wait to
go head-to-head with a demonized foreign leader, like Vladimir Putin, and let him have it, even if
their "facts" are wrong, as Megyn Kelly showed
NBC's Megyn Kelly wielded one of Official Washington's most beloved groupthinks to smack Russian
President Vladimir Putin over his denials that he and his government were responsible for hacking
Democratic emails and interfering with the U.S. presidential election.
In her June 2 interview with Putin, Kelly noted that all "17 intelligence agencies" of the US
government concurred in their conclusion of Russian guilt and how could Putin suggest that they all
are "lying." It's an argument that has been used to silence skeptics for months and apparently is
so useful that no one seems to care that it isn't true.
For instance, on May 8, in testimony before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, former Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper conceded publicly that the number of intelligence agencies involved
in the assessment was three, not 17, and that the analysts assigned to the project from CIA, FBI
and NSA had been "handpicked."
On May 23, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, former CIA Director John Brennan
confirmed Clapper's account about the three agencies involved. "It wasn't a full interagency community
assessment that was coordinated among the 17 agencies," Brennan acknowledged.
But
those public admissions haven't stopped Democrats and the mainstream media from continuing to
repeat the false claim. In
comments on May 31, failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton repeated the canard, with a
flourish, saying: "Seventeen agencies, all in agreement, which I know from my experience as a Senator
and Secretary of State, is hard to get."
A couple of days later, Kelly revived the myth of the consensus among the 17 intelligence agencies
in her interview with the Russian president. But Putin passed up the opportunity to correct her,
replying instead:
"They have been misled and they are not analyzing the information in its entirety. We have
talked about it with former President Obama and with several other officials. No one ever showed
me any direct evidence. When we spoke with President Obama about that, you know, you should probably
better ask him about it – I think he will tell you that he, too, is confident of it. But when he
and I talked I saw that he, too, started having doubts. At any rate, that's how I saw it."
As I noted in a
Jan. 20 article about Obama's news conference two days earlier, "Did President Barack Obama acknowledge
that the extraordinary propaganda campaign to blame Russia for helping Donald Trump become president
has a very big hole in it, i.e., that the US intelligence community has no idea how the Democratic
emails reached WikiLeaks? For weeks, eloquent obfuscation – expressed with 'high confidence' – has
been the name of the game, but inadvertent admissions now are dispelling some of the clouds.
"At President Obama's Jan. 18 press conference, he admitted as much: 'the conclusions of the intelligence
community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting
or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked .'" [Emphasis
added]
Explaining the Technology
More importantly, Putin in his interview with Kelly points out that "today's technology" enables
hacking to be "masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one can understand the origin" of the
hack. "And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any individual that everyone will
think that they are the exact source of that attack. Modern technology is very sophisticated and
subtle and allows this to be done. And when we realize that we will get rid of all the illusions.
"
Later, when Kelly came back to the issue of hacking, Putin expanded on the difficulty in tracing
the source of cyber attacks.
"Hackers may be anywhere," Putin said. "There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States
who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can't you imagine such a scenario?
In the middle of an internal political fight, it was convenient for them, whatever the reason, to
put out that information. And put it out they did. And, doing it, they made a reference to Russia.
Can't you imagine it happening? I can.
"Let us recall the assassination of President Kennedy. There is a theory that Kennedy's assassination
was arranged by the United States special services. If this theory is correct, and one cannot rule
it out, so what can be easier in today's context, being able to rely on the entire technical capabilities
available to special services than to organize some kind of attacks in the appropriate manner while
making a reference to Russia in the process. "
Kelly: "Let's move on."
However carefully Megyn Kelly and her NBC colleagues peruse The New York Times, they might well
not know WikiLeaks' disclosure on March 31 of original CIA documents showing that the agency had
created a program allowing it to break into computers and servers and make it look like others did
it by leaving telltale signs (like Cyrillic markings, for example).
The capabilities shown in what WikiLeaks calls the
"Vault 7" trove of CIA documents required
the creation of hundreds of millions of lines of source code. At $25 per line of code, that amounts
to about $2.5 billion for each 100 million code lines. But the Deep State has that kind of money
and would probably consider the expenditure a good return on investment for "proving" the Russians
hacked into Democratic Party emails.
In other words, it is altogether possible that the hacking attributed to Russia was actually
one of several "active measures" undertaken by a cabal consisting of the CIA, FBI, NSA and Clapper
– the same agencies responsible for the lame, evidence-free report of Jan. 6, that Clapper and Brennan
acknowledged last month was not the consensus view of the 17 intelligence agencies.
There is also the issue of the forensics. Former FBI Director James Comey displayed considerable
discomfort on March 20, explaining to the House Intelligence Committee why the FBI did not insist
on getting physical access to the Democratic National Committee's computers in order to do its own
proper forensics, but chose to rely on the examination done by the DNC's private contractor, Crowdstrike.
The firm itself has conflicts of interests in its links to the pro-NATO and anti-Russia think
tank, the Atlantic Council, through Dmitri Alperovitch, who is an Atlantic Council
senior fellow and the
co-founder of Crowdstrike.
Strange Oversight
Given the stakes involved in the Russia-gate investigation – now including a possible impeachment
battle over removing the President of the United States – wouldn't it seem logical for the FBI to
insist on its own forensics for this fundamental predicate of the case? Or could Comey's hesitancy
to demand access to the DNC's computers be explained by a fear that FBI technicians not fully briefed
on CIA/NSA/FBI Deep State programs might uncover a lot more than he wanted?
Comey was asked again about this curious oversight on June 8 by Senate Intelligence Committee
Chair Richard Burr:
BURR: "And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate – did you ever
have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide
you the data that they had collected?"
COMEY: "In the case of the DNC, and, I believe, the DCCC, but I'm sure the DNC, we did not have
access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class
entity, that had done the work. But we didn't get direct access."
BURR: "But no content?"
COMEY: "Correct."
BURR: "Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?"
COMEY: "It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks – the people who were my folks at the
time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand
the intrusion by the spring of 2016."
Burr demurred on asking Comey to explain what amounts to gross misfeasance, if not worse. Perhaps,
NBC could arrange for Megyn Kelly to interview Burr to ask if he has a clue as to what Putin might
have been referring to when he noted, "There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who
very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia."
Given the congressional intelligence "oversight" committees' obsequiousness and repeated "high
esteem" for the "intelligence community," there seems an even chance that – no doubt because of an
oversight – the CIA/FBI/NSA deep-stage troika failed to brief the Senate "oversight committee" chairman
on WikiLeaks "Vault 7" disclosures – even when WikiLeaks publishes original CIA documents.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour
in inner-city Washington. He was an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst for a total
of 30 years and now servers on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
(VIPS). Reprinted with permission from Consortium
News .
"... Targeting telco and ISP systems administrators goes well outside the bounds of "national security."
These people aren't suspected terrorists. They're just people inconveniently placed between the NSA
and its goal of " collecting it all ." ..."
"... The NSA's own documents say that QUANTUMHAND "exploits the computer of a target that uses Facebook."
The man-on-the-side attack impersonates a server , not the site itself. The NSA denies impersonating,
but that's not what The Intercept said or what its own documents state. This animated explanation, using
the NSA's Powerpoint presentation, shows what the attack does -- it tips the TURBINE servers, which
then send the malware payload before the Facebook servers can respond. ..."
"... To the end user, it looks as though Facebook is just running slowly. ..."
"... When the NSA says it doesn't impersonate sites, it truly doesn't. It injects malware by beating
Facebook server response time. It doesn't serve up faux Facebook pages; it simply grabs the files and
data from compromised computers. ..."
"... The exploit is almost wholly divorced from Facebook itself. The social media site is an opportunity
for malware deployment, and the NSA doesn't need to impersonate a site to achieve its aims. This is
the NSA maintaining deniability in the face of damning allegations -- claiming something was said that
actually wasn't and resorting to (ultimately futile) attempts to portray journalists as somehow less
trustworthy than the agency. ..."
"... At this point, the mere fact that the NSA denies doing something is almost enough to convince
me that they are doing it. I'm trying not to be paranoid. They just make it so difficult. ..."
"... considering how much access they seemed to have I think it is entirely possible for them to
do that. And the criminal energy to do it definitely there as well. ..."
"... And there is still the question if Facebook and similar sites might be at least funded, if
not run by intelligence agencies altogether. If that is the case that would put this denial in an entirely
different light. It would read "We don't impersonate companies. We ARE the companies."... ..."
"... Max level sophistry. I wonder if anyone at the NSA even remembers what the truth is, it's been
coated in so many layers of bullshit. ..."
"... As for its "national security directive," it made a mockery of that when it proudly announced
in its documents that "we hunt sys admins." ..."
The recent leaks published at Glenn Greenwald's new home, The Intercept, detailed the NSA's
spread of malware around the world, with a stated goal of sabotaging "millions" of computers.
As was noted then, the NSA hadn't issued a comment. The GCHQ, named as a co-conspirator, had already
commented, delivering the usual spiel about legality, oversight and directives -- a word salad that
has pretty much replaced "no comment" in the intelligence world.
The NSA has now issued a formal statement on the leaks, denying everything -- including something
that wasn't even alleged. In what has become the new "no comment" on the NSA side, the words "appropriate,"
"lawful" and "legitimate" are trotted out, along with the now de rigueur accusations that everything
printed (including, apparently, its own internal documents) is false.
Recent media reports that allege NSA has infected millions of computers around the world with
malware, and that NSA is impersonating U.S. social media or other websites, are inaccurate. NSA
uses its technical capabilities only to support lawful and appropriate foreign intelligence operations,
all of which must be carried out in strict accordance with its authorities. Technical capability
must be understood within the legal, policy, and operational context within which the capability
must be employed.
First off, for the NSA to claim that loading up "millions" of computers with malware is somehow targeted
(and not "indiscriminate") is laughable. As for its "national security directive," it made a mockery
of that when it proudly announced in its documents that "we hunt sys admins."
Targeting telco and ISP systems administrators goes well outside the bounds of "national security."
These people aren't suspected terrorists. They're just people inconveniently placed between the NSA
and its goal of "
collecting it all ."
Last, but not least, the NSA plays semantic games to deny an accusation that was never made, calling
to mind Clapper's denial of a
conveniently horrendous translation of a French article on its spying efforts there.
NSA does not use its technical capabilities to impersonate U.S. company websites.
This "denial" refers to this portion of The Intercept's article.
In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site
as a launching pad to infect a target's computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive... In
one man-on-the-side technique, codenamed QUANTUMHAND, the agency disguises itself as a fake Facebook
server. When a target attempts to log in to the social media site, the NSA transmits malicious
data packets that trick the target's computer into thinking they are being sent from the real
Facebook. By concealing its malware within what looks like an ordinary Facebook page, the NSA
is able to hack into the targeted computer and covertly siphon out data from its hard drive.
The NSA's own documents say that QUANTUMHAND "exploits the computer of a target that uses Facebook."
The man-on-the-side attack impersonates a server , not the site itself.
The NSA denies impersonating, but that's not what The Intercept said or what its own documents
state. This animated explanation, using the NSA's Powerpoint presentation, shows what the attack
does -- it tips the TURBINE servers, which then send the malware payload before the Facebook servers
can respond.
To the end user, it looks as though Facebook is just running slowly.
When the NSA says it doesn't impersonate sites, it truly doesn't. It injects malware by beating
Facebook server response time. It doesn't serve up faux Facebook pages; it simply grabs the files
and data from compromised computers.
The exploit is almost wholly divorced from Facebook itself. The social media site is an opportunity
for malware deployment, and the NSA doesn't need to impersonate a site to achieve its aims. This
is the NSA maintaining deniability in the face of damning allegations -- claiming something was said
that actually wasn't and resorting to (ultimately futile) attempts to portray journalists as somehow
less trustworthy than the agency.
NSA does not use its technical capabilities to impersonate U.S. company websites.
At this point, the mere fact that the NSA denies doing something is almost enough to convince
me that they are doing it. I'm trying not to be paranoid. They just make it so difficult.
Anonymous Coward , 14 Mar 2014 @ 9:48am
Re: Denial = Confirmation?
considering how much access they seemed to have I think it is entirely possible for them
to do that. And the criminal energy to do it definitely there as well.
By now you have to assume the worst when it comes to them, and once the truth comes out it
tends to paint and even worse picture then what you could imagine.
And there is still the question if Facebook and similar sites might be at least funded,
if not run by intelligence agencies altogether. If that is the case that would put this denial
in an entirely different light. It would read "We don't impersonate companies. We ARE the companies."...
I can not stress this poster's sentiment, as well as voiced in the article itself, of the CHILDISH
semantic games the alphabet spooks will play... they WILL (metaphorically speaking) look you straight
in the eye, piss on your leg, and INSIST it is raining; THEN fabricate evidence to 'prove' it
was rain...
In my readings about the evil done in our name, with our money, *supposedly* to 'protect and
serve' us, by the boys in black, you can NOT UNDERESTIMATE the most simplistic, and -to repeat
myself -- CHILDISH ways they will LIE AND DISSEMBLE...
They are scum, they are slime, they are NOT the best and the brightest, they are the worst
and most immoral...
YOU CAN NOT OVERSTATE THEIR MORAL VACUITY...
we do NOT deserve these pieces of shit...
Anonymous Coward , 14 Mar 2014 @ 11:17am
We know that the NSA, with the cooperation of the companies involved, has equipment co-located
at major backbones and POPs to achieve the goals for QUANTUMHAND, QUANTUMINSERT, and etc.
At what point will we start confronting these companies and pressuring them to discontinue
such cooperation? I know it's no easy task, but just as much as the government is reeling from
all the public pressure, so too will these companies if we press their hands. Make it affect their
bottom line.
Anonymous Coward , 14 Mar 2014 @ 1:49pm
is techdirt an hack target?
this page of your site tries to run scripts from
google
amazonaws
twitter
facebook
ajax.googleapis
techdirt
and install cookies from
techdirt
imigur
and request resources from
rp-api
vimeo
and install/use tracking beacons from
facebook connect
google +1
gravitar
nativo
quantcast
redit
repost.us
scorecard research beacon
twitter button.
...and who knows what else would run if all that was allowed to proceed. (I'm not going to
run them to find out the 2nd level stuff)
for all the great reporting techdirt does on spying/tracking/privacy- you need to get you shit
together already with this site; it seams like you're part of the problem. Please explain the
technical facts as to why these same types of hacks couldn't be done to your readers through this
clusterfuck of off site scripts/beacons/cookies/resources your forcing on people to ignorant to
know how to block them.
As for its "national security directive," it made a mockery of that when it proudly
announced in its documents that "we hunt sys admins."
Well, heck, that's easy. Since the computers of the sys admins are just means to an ends, simply
define "target" in a way that excludes anyone whose computers are compromised as a means to an
end.
Anonymous mouse , 14 Mar 2014 @ 1:56pm
I seem to remember some articles about why people who don't use Facebook are suspect. To wit,
Are these possible signs that the NSA and GHCQ planted those stories?
Anonymous Coward , 14 Mar 2014 @ 3:49pm
The fun has yet to really begin
On April 8th, this year, Microsoft will stop installing new security patches from Windows XP,
leaving computers running it totally vulnerable to such hacks. Anybody want to place bets on the
fact that the alphabet soup agencies of our wonderful gummint are going to be first in line to
exploit them? Just think what NSA could do with 300,000,000+ computers to play with!
"... I'm sure the number of American's spied upon is pretty damning and might actually cause some blowback (especially if it's 90-100% of the population as I suspect), which could put its use in jeopardy. ..."
"... the Postal Service has confirmed that it takes a photograph of the outside of every letter and package mailed in the United States and occasionally provides the photos to law enforcement agencies. ..."
"... It's obvious that they somehow accessed nearly all communications of Americans at one point or another. Even if technically they didn't look at much of the data. ..."
Then, yesterday, there was a public Senate Intelligence Committee hearing over the issue of the 702
renewal. While most of the press is focused on the
refusal of those testifying to say whether President Trump had spoken to them about various investigations
concerning Russia, there was something else concerning that was brought up. Coats, despite his earlier
promises and the promises of his office, is now saying that it would be impossible to give a number.
Not surprisingly, for the folks in Congress who have been insisting on getting this number (and
giving it to the public), this... did not sit well. When it was Senator Wyden's turn to question
the panel, he
went off on Coats for going back on his word.
This morning you went back on that promise and you said that even putting together a sampling,
a statistical estimate, would jeopardize national security. I think that is a very, very damaging
position to stake out.
Later in that exchange, there was this exchange (which, if you watch it, involved both men being
fairly testy with each other):
Wyden: Can the government use FISA 702 to collect communications it knows are entirely domestic?
Coats: Not to my knowledge. It would be against the law.
As Marcy Wheeler points out, that exchange may prove to be similar to Wyden's now infamous question
to Coats' predecessor, Clapper, about whether or not the NSA collected information on millions of
Americans (the "not wittingly" response, which was later shown to be completely bogus). Wheeler points
out that for Coats to actually believe that, it would appear that
he doesn't know how 702 is actually used , even though he signed a memo about this very thing.
Wheeler points to the recent FISC opinion reauthorizing 702 data collection that states that if the
Director of the NSA signs a waiver for all of the domestic collections, then the NSA can still collect
a wholly domestic communication under 702. That FISC opinion cites a March 30th memo that Coats would
have signed as the justification for this argument. So for him to now say that it's illegal for the
very thing his own memo from March says is okay... seems like a serious problem.
And Wyden's not the only one upset about this. Since this was a Senate hearing, Rep. Conyers wasn't
there, but he put out a
blistering statement calling Coats' statements "unacceptable."
The intelligence community has-for many months-expressly promised members of both parties
that they would deliver this estimate to us in time to inform our debate on the reauthorization
of Section 702. As late as last August, we had discussed and approved the specific methodologies
that the NSA might use to make good on their promise.
Today, Director Coats announced that the estimate is 'infeasible' and will not be forthcoming.
I find that outcome unacceptable.
Over the course of the last year, we believed we had worked past the excuses we are offered
today. The nation's leading civil liberties organizations see no threat to privacy in this project,
and have said so publicly. The agencies demonstrated to us how they might perform this analysis
without significant diversion of resources. I am deeply disappointed in a return to these old
talking points.
Section 702 is built on trust. It will be more difficult to find that trust as we move forward
with the debate.
As we discussed earlier this week, a bunch of Senators have already been pushing a
permanent renewal of 702 with no changes at all. As the debate heats up on the renewal of Section
702 ahead of its expiration later this year, we're going to need Congress to hold the intelligence
community to its promise to reveal at least some data on how these programs impact Americans'
communications.
Until these Senators start actually holding these guys accountable and not renew their authority
of Section 702, these hearings are just bluster. I like Wyden and what he's doing (it seems single
handedly), but unfortunately it doesn't mean much to the NSA. Withholding the information won't
change any politicians views of it and its 'necessity', so they might as well err on the side
of caution.
I'm sure the number of American's spied upon is pretty damning and might actually
cause some blowback (especially if it's 90-100% of the population as I suspect), which could put
its use in jeopardy.
Plus those who don't use electronic-based forms of communication, but who have friends and
relatives who do, and who mention them in emails and on Facebook.
Also those who pay their grocery bills with a credit or debit card. Purchase history is occasionally
requested by police.
Also people not into ebooks, but who check out books from the library.
Don't forget travel details, for those who cross a border. Or fly. Or pay for gas and meals
with a credit / debit card.
Or who use local transit. My city switched to electronic fare cards a few months ago. Naturally,
it was just revealed that the private travel history of bus riders is being handed to police without
requiring a warrant.
But hey, there's still non-electronic communication like snail mail. That hardly ever gets
opened. Although the Postal Service
has confirmed that it takes a photograph of the outside of every letter and package mailed
in the United States and occasionally provides the photos to law enforcement agencies.
James T , 8 Jun 2017 @ 10:44am
They can't
It's obvious that they somehow accessed nearly all communications of Americans at one
point or another. Even if technically they didn't look at much of the data.
If true then they certainly wouldn't want to say we spied on everyone. That would damage their
position which is that they are being responsible Intelligence agencies.
Anonymous Coward , 8 Jun 2017 @ 12:06pm
Infeasible to justify funding for an office that can't even justify itself
If the office cannot even compute a rough estimate, then it is either uncooperative or supremely
incompetent. In either case, it is infeasible to continue funding such an entity. Funding for
continued operation of the surveillance programs should be stripped until such time as it can
comply with simple oversight requirements.
A former U.S. intelligence contractor tells Circa he walked away with more than 600 million
classified documents on 47 hard drives from the National Security Agency and the CIA, a haul
potentially larger than Edward Snowden's now infamous breach.
And now he is suing former FBI Director James Comey and other government figures, alleging the
bureau has covered up evidence he provided them showing widespread spying on Americans that
violated civil liberties.
The suit, filed late Monday night by Dennis Montgomery, was assigned to the same federal judge
who has already ruled that some of the NSA's collection of data on Americans violates the U.S.
Constitution's Fourth Amendment, setting up an intriguing legal proceeding in the nation's
capital this summer.
Montgomery says the evidence he gave to the FBI chronicle the warrantless collection of phone,
financial and personal data and the unmasking of identities in spy data about millions of
Americans.
... ... ...
Montgomery alleges that more than 20 million American identities were illegally unmasked -
credit reports, emails, phone conversations and Internet traffic, were some of the items the NSA
and CIA collected.
He said he returned the hard drives to the FBI, a fact confirmed in government documents reviewed
by Circa.
"They're doing this domestic surveillance on Americans, running a project on U.S. soil,"
Montgomery alleged. He did not disclose the classified name of the project but said he revealed
all aspects of the project during his interview with the FBI.
"Can you imagine what someone can do with the information they were collecting on Americans, can
you imagine that kind of power."
Officials with the FBI and CIA declined to comment due to current and pending litigation.
... ... ...
The FBI contacts with Montgomery were encouraged by a senior status federal judge, who
encouraged the two sides to meet rather than allow for any of the classified materials to leak,
according to interviews Circa conducted.
Montgomery's lawsuit, which included his lawyer, the well-known conservative activist Larry
Klayman, alleges Montgomery provided extensive evidence to the FBI of illegal spying on Americans
ranging from judges to businessman like the future President Donald Trump.
The suit did not offer specifics of any illegal spying, but it accused the bureau of failing
to take proper actions to rectify Montgomery's concerns.
Montgomery divulged to the FBI a "pattern and practice of conducting illegal, unconstitutional
surveillance against millions of Americans, including prominent Americans such as the chief
justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, other justices, 156 judges, prominent businessmen, and others
such as Donald J. Trump, as well as Plaintiffs themselves," Montgomery and Klayman alleged in
their suit.
"Plaintiffs were assured that the FBI, under Defendant Comey, would conduct a full
investigation into the grave instances of illegal and unconstitutional activity set forth by
Montgomery. However, the FBI, on Defendant Comey's orders, buried the FBI's investigation because
the FBI itself is involved in an ongoing conspiracy to not only conduct the aforementioned
illegal, unconstitutional surveillance, but to cover it up as well," the suit added.
Klayman and Montgomery also alleged that they have evidence that they themselves have been
improperly spied upon by U.S. intelligence. The suit named numerous other defendants as well,
including current NSA Director Mike Rogers, former CIA Director John Brennan and even former
President Barack Obama.
Looks more and more like psyop operation -- a part of a Neo-McCarthyism propaganda campaign.
Notable quotes:
"... So why even go out of your way to leak these supposedly worthless documents to the press in the first place? Who benefits? ..."
"... Deep state benefits - analysis(?) is leaked which show as you say no proof, but it keeps the anti-russia propaganda going for another month or so - just as the anti-trump deep state and media wants. Sigh. ..."
"... P.S if any of you get a chance try to catch the interview on RT where German journo, who is unfortunately dead, states categorically that CIA and his bosses would instruct him on what to write and how to write it. ..."
"... If Reality Leigh Winner goes to trial and receives serious prison time, then The Intercept was wrong, but until then I'll think she's a Clintonist useful idiot. ..."
"... That would be Udo Ulfkotte. He used to work for FAZ. You have to take into account that he tried to live from writing books after FAZ and conspiracy theories do sell. ..."
"... Greenwald and Poitras are now the only two people with full access to the complete cache of NSA files ... just Glenn and Laura at the for-profit journalism company created by the founder of eBay. ..."
"... CIA Agents Caught Red Handed Trolling Alternative Media Sites http://humansarefree.com/2017/06/cia-agents-caught-red-handed-trolling.html I think we talked about this years ago, in regards to Israeli paid trolls, but we've gone so far into the Panopticon control grid, what difference does it make. ..."
"... I also think, it is possible that Hillary Clinton and Putin had a very personal not so private war after Hillary announced that she would do everything to prevent a realignment of Post Soviet States. And employing Victoria Nuland to achieve just that. ..."
"... ...which of course how psyops works. Because this leak will fuel more of the Trump/Russian conspiracies and hatred in the MSM. ..."
"... Are you from one of those USG "perception management" projects? Well, if you are, American taxpayers should be pissed off if this is all the "best and brightest" can come up with. The USG IC has an annual budget of $65 billion so if this is a black op., they have more than enough money to be able to afford the arrest of the "leaker" and even pay for her to get decently lawyered up. ..."
"... This whole episode smacks of a psy-op to me. If - and this is a big if - the Russians did hack into any voting systems, I'd be more willing to believe it was to collect evidence of malfeasance on the part of our own government than it would have been to manipulate the results themselves. ..."
"... Important to note is that Putin just mentioned in his interview with Megyn Kelly that it doesn't matter who's president of the United States because no matter what, the policy remains the same. That's a pretty direct indictment of the integrity of US elections, so what better time to up the ante with respect to the obvious lies about Russian interference in our elections than right after Putin calls our elections Kabuki theater? ..."
"... Well for one she is not a whistleblower, she is another anti-Trump neocon working for the deep state. She I believe leaked material just to attack Trump and Russia even more with info, as we have seen so many times now past months. She nor we as readers have any idea if there is any truth to the claim to start with. So why leak it? Well obviously, like past months, some groups in our society benefit from this greatly. ..."
"... I haven't trusted The Intercept since they ran their hit piece on Tulsi Gabbard. ..."
"... Ghostship. True enough. But knowing it is still different from effectively dealing with it. The elite/CIA controlled mass media still has a lot of power to persuade people as do the corporations that finance political elections. As well as the people who make money from arms sales. These people who may be loosely referred to as 'deep state' don't want to give up any of that power/money. ..."
"... She follows a neocon agenda (war against afghanistan, war against Syria, hatered against Russia, hatred against foreign policy that Trump have i.e), she works for the deep state, she leak deep state material to smear her "enemies". ..."
"... Who are those who spread this bs to the MSM about Trump and Russia constantly for past months? Where does it come from if not from the deep state groups? ..."
"... Omidyar being behind the Intercept has always been an iffy proposition at best, and it has never sat well that Greenwald is apparently satisfied with such an arrangement. ..."
"... And you just know Mark Ames will have a piece up bashing Omidyar, Greenwald and Scahill. Speaking of Scahill, other than a weekly podcast, what exactly does he do for the Intercept? ..."
"... Greenwald is a self-serving hack and the Intercept functions alongside outlets like DemocracyNow! to provide a Democrat-friendly perspective on the world to people who think they are very "progressive". They will never challenge the fundamental precepts of US imperialism and the oligarchic powers behind it, or truly rock the boat. ..."
"... There's a chance they got played. As noted, the documents don't actual show evidence of actual interference with voting system beyond data gathering. ..."
"... Alternatively, the document was prepared in such a way that it was actually politically harmless but it could snare the leaker who would be triumphantly and publicly "executed". That can improve the discipline in the shop. ..."
"... This is silly nonsense. There is no difference at all between the neocons and the neolibs (the neolords). They come from exactly the same place and believe in exactly the same thing. Specifically, they are atychiphobs; they cannot endure any form of failure. So they always must attach themselves to whatever they perceive as the winning side. And ultimately rule the rest of the losing world. For them that's all there is; Hillary is an example, and most rich individuals also. They would absolutely prefer death to loserdom. So of course they have no concerns at all about the fate of the losers. They are all the same. ..."
"... Sounds like a con job from start to finish. Along the lines of bellingcat, SOHR ect. Just another method of disseminating propaganda. ..."
"... this whole thing is such a circus! and yes, the NSA has access to far more info than these stupid documents allude to, not to mention that the US has got to have some massive access to Russian data. ..."
"... I should add: If Putin were directly responsible for hacking anything, Clinton should kiss Putin's who-cares-what for waiting until AFTER the primaries. She got to be part of the final coin-toss. ..."
"... really, why is this NSA document even considered whistle-blowing? ..."
"... Setting aside the antics of the Intercept, let's consider how preposterous this story is at face value. She's basically a translator for a few Middle Eastern languages. So she's reading email or web sites or listening to phone calls and doing her translating thing. It's not like she's a high-level analyst preparing briefings for the National Intelligence director - she's a damn low-level translator (no offense to NSA translators out there). ..."
"... If Winner DID manage to stumble upon a Top Secret memo on her work network unrelated to her job, then her supervisor would have known it within minutes. Everything anybody does is constantly monitored and logged, right down to the keystroke. SHE would know that. In fact, she would be fired for not reporting this impossible access to top secret information immediately. She would be further punished for even having the document linger on her screen for more than a second or two. There's a reason they put TOP SECRET at the very top of every page. Classified documents also have their own security/surveillance/monitoring mechanisms. The document itself (or the document management system) knows or is told who is allowed to read it or even see that it exists. It would record her access, even if all the other security and monitoring software the agency had failed completely. So you get the idea. Even if she saw this document (unlikely) and did NOT report the inappropriate access, she would eventually be frog-walked out of the building before the end of the day. ..."
"... Top Secret documents (and their networks) do not allow you to print them at all, and certainly not on some random office printer. ..."
"... All modern printers and copy machines have an invisible watermark that identifies the time/date you printed a page and the serial number of the machine. If she copied it somewhere, then they copy can be traced to a certain machine and date/time. She's busted either way if the feds got their hands on it, and SHE KNOWS THAT. ..."
"... Sorry - but unless someone can prove she has an extra chromosome or two, I have to believe this is a charade. She won't go to jail because she's in on it with the NSA and it's not a real Top Secret document anyway. NO intelligence agency will ever verify or deny something you show them is either legitimate or Top Secret, so even that part is wrong. If you call them to ask about a document you have, they will politely put you on hold so they can dispatch some DHS thugs to kick in your door and retrieve said document - without telling you anything either way. ..."
"... I tend to agree with the hint, hint - #RealityWinner is an obvious PsyOp. Her employer probably had a deal for her - agree to be "used", play the part in a little prosecution game we'll have going, make sure you leak to Cook - and don't worry, you'll be well rewarded in the end. ..."
"... The timing of this leak and the choice of media outlet is very convenient for the Establishment Dems/Deep State Russia investigation. Leaking to the Intercept, which has credibility in the alternative media, would be a convenient way to get the story covered in the MSM and leftist media. It certainly helps to distract Berners from the Seth Rich story. Some interns at the Intercept did a sloppy job checking up on their source. ..."
"... thank you for this. i left a comment on that article yesterday about how dumb the technical aspects were and apparently you noticed as well (i also mentioned stuxnet as an example of what an effective and professional attack would actually look like). ..."
"... as i also mentioned: hillary won durham by a WIDE margin (almost 100k votes). seems like any "hacking" worked to her advantage, not trump's. ..."
"... i've been reading douglas valentine's book on the phoenix program and other CIA criminality https://www.amazon.com/CIA-Organized-Crime-Illegal-Operations/dp/0997287012 ..."
"... It looks like a real half-arsed psyops -- here is the "Russia did it" smoking gun we've all been waiting for and it gets sorta rolled out but not trumpeted hysterically. Why the Intercept? Why not the NYtimes or wapo? ..."
"... It's becoming more difficult daily to find something that doesn't stink. I see it as an attempt to further bury the censored NBC interview with Putin where he explained several hard truths, one of which I alluded to yesterday. Compare vid here, http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/06/nbc-edited-out-putins-hard-truths-heres.html with uncensored one here, which includes transcript, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/54688 ..."
Yesterday The Intercept
published a leaked five page NSA analysis about alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S.
elections. Its reporting outed the leaker of the NSA documents. That person, R.L. Winner, has now
been arrested and is likely to be jailed for years if not for the rest of her life.
FBI
search (pdf) and
arrest warrant
(pdf) applications unveil irresponsible behavior by the Intercept 's reporters and editors
which neglected all operational security trade-craft that might have prevented the revealing of the
source. It leaves one scratching the head if this was intentional or just sheer incompetence. Either
way - the incident confirms what
skeptics had long determined : The Intercept is not a trustworthy outlet for leaking
state secrets of public interests.
The Intercept was created
to privatize the National
Security Agency documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The documents proved that
the NSA is hacking and copying nearly all electronic communication on this planet, that it was breaking
laws that prohibited spying on U.S. citizen and that it sabotages on a large scale various kinds
of commercial electronic equipment. Snowden gave copies of the NSA documents to a small number of
journalists. One of them was Glenn Greenwald who now works at The Intercept . Only some
5% of the pages Snowden allegedly acquired and gave to reporters have been published. We have no
idea what the unpublished pages would provide.
The Intercept , a subdivision of First Look Media, was founded by Pierre Omidyar, a major
owner of the auctioning site eBay and its PayPal banking division. Omidyar is a billionaire and "philanthropist"
who's (tax avoiding) Omidyar Network foundation
is "investing" for "returns". Its microcredit project for farmers in India, in cooperation with people
from the fascists RSS party,
ended in an epidemic of suicides when the farmers were unable to pay back. The Omidyar Network
also funded (fascist) regime change groups in Ukraine in cooperation with USAID. Omidyar had
cozy relations with the Obama White House. Some of the held back NSA documents likely
implicate Omidyar's PayPal.
The Intercept was funded with some $50 million from Omidyar. It
first hires were Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras - all involved in publishing the
Snowden papers and other leaks. Its first piece was based on documents from the leaked the NSA stack.
It has since published on this or that but not in a regular media way. The Intercept pieces
are usually heavily editorialized and tend to have a mainstream "liberal" to libertarian slant. Some
were highly partisan
anti-Syrian/pro-regime change propaganda . The website
seems to have no regular publishing schedule
at all. Between one and five piece per day get pushed out, only few of them make public waves. Some
of its later prominent hires (Ken Silverstein, Matt Taibbi) soon left and
alleged that the place was run in a chaotic atmosphere and with improper and highly politicized
editing. Despite its rich backing and allegedly high pay for its main journalists (Greenwald is said
to receive between 250k and 1 million per year) the Intercept is
begging for
reader donations .
Yesterday's published story (with bylines of four(!) reporters)
begins :
Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier
and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last
November's presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained
by The Intercept.
The NSA "intelligence report" the Intercept
publishes along the piece does NOT show that "Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack
". The document speaks of "cyber espionage operations " - i.e someone looked and maybe copied
data but did not manipulate anything. Espionage via computer networks is something every nation in
this world (and various private entities) do all the time. It is simply the collection of information.
It is different from a "cyberattack" like
Stuxnet which was intended to
create large damage,
That girl's social media accounts is filled with neocon propaganda and anti-Trump posts. Intercept
is really really stupid for spreading this deepstate pro-war desinformation.
Wikileaks twitter account has good comment on it. It is clear that The Intercept is a way to coopt
hackers and leakers. She possibly would not have been arrested with Democrats in power. The New
York Times and the Intercept have a campaign to leak to US sources so that whistleblowing is not
treason.
I take it that there's not even the slightest or far reaching bit of evidence at all in the leaked
documents that implicates Russia (or the US government) of any mischief.
So why even go out of your way to leak these supposedly worthless documents to the press
in the first place? Who benefits?
Deep state benefits - analysis(?) is leaked which show as you say no proof, but it keeps
the anti-russia propaganda going for another month or so - just as the anti-trump deep state and
media wants. Sigh.
Thanks for this. Even before reading this account, I was inclined to think "fake news" because
the Deep State is such a prolific and relentless generator of propaganda. And also, I think we're
pretty much screwed regardless of who is in power. My only hope is that it all doesn't end up
in mushroom-clouds.
It was obvious that The Intercept became a US Inteligence Industry pawn the minute it started
to denounce Al Assad on 2016. It was too good to be true from the beginning. Snowden should say
something about "his friends" Greenwald and Poitras !! As far as it is descrived in the above
article, the R J Winner affaire could be just another Psy Op by the Langley People
Its interesting how Assange and Wikileaks support this deep-state leaker. Why?
Assange supports all leakers, regardless of what they leak or to whom. Any other stance would
amount to shooting himself in the foot.
On another note, what is extraordinary is to see a Deep State leaker busted by the Deep State.
How batty is that? I mean, she was only trying to help them against "big bad Russia", wasn't she?
So?
Yes the intercept gave them self away when Greenwald wrote a piece denouncing the Syrian government
and the SAA back in 2015. He occasionally has sane and progressive expressions like when he speaks
against the fascist state of Israel. He gave himself away again on the propaganda outlet Democracy
now. He was eluding to the fact of Russian collusion with the recent POTUS elections and the Flyn
fiasco. Here again he gave himself away. He is bought and paid for by the elite like most journo's
in our deluded western countries.
P.S if any of you get a chance try to catch the interview on RT where German journo, who
is unfortunately dead, states categorically that CIA and his bosses would instruct him on what
to write and how to write it.
although a fan of the intercept at first, i soured when they announced they were spying on
their readership. never trust a billionaire. betrayal is the only route to billionaire status.
greenwald and poitras at the oscars turned my stomach. not a word about chelsea manning
or any of the others ... greenwald and poitras were the 'stars'.
now, no matter this winner is a loser or no, they've betrayed another one of the people
who've put them where they are. they're cannibals.
since i stopped reading the intercept i was unaware of their support for al-cia-duh and
the jihadists in syria. that just stinks.
Maybe someone at The Intercept thought this was an attempt by the NSA (not the "deep state, there
isn't one") to burn them, so they toss the document back at the NSA to see what happens.
Why The Intercept? If you read most Clintonist blogs, you'll quickly realise that Greenwald
is up there with Assange and Putin as satanic (Trumpist) agents, so an Internet-aware Clintonist
sending documents to The Intercept or Wikileaks suggests some other purpose than simply leaking
information adverse to Trump.
Most Clintonists have jumped on this NSA "document" as further solid proof of Putin's culpability
which just happened to be "leaked" at about the same time a favourable interview with Putin was
being broadcast on the MSM.
If Reality Leigh Winner goes to trial and receives serious prison time, then The Intercept
was wrong, but until then I'll think she's a Clintonist useful idiot.
Actually Wikileaks/Assange have no idea if this info is even true. Who leaks this? Well obviously
the same propagandists we heard past 6 months that want the world to think Russia and Trump won
the election/the pathetic accusation that Russia somehow ruled the election to Trump. As far as
we know the leaks could not only lack evidence but it could also be pure fake. So no, I dont see
why Wikileaks and Assange would support this. But thats me.
Posted by: falcemartello | Jun 6, 2017 7:51:05 AM | 14
That would be Udo Ulfkotte. He used to work for FAZ. You have to take into account that
he tried to live from writing books after FAZ and conspiracy theories do sell.
Of course everybody the US, Russia, Qatar, companies have a PR greyzone trying to influence
public opinion.
Posted by: Ghostship | Jun 6, 2017 7:55:51 AM | 16
Read the @intercept they even agreed with the NSA to redact the stuff. The solution is obvious
but I don't hear anybody calling for it: Paper ballots. It is simple, works and is fast if you
have a good counting system in place. Lots of countries still use it.
Accepting that leakers could be fake would destroy the business model. But no, if it was fake
they would not go the extra effort to arrest a leaker who will be supplied good lawyers, I suppose.
Greenwald and Poitras are now the only two people with full access to the complete cache
of NSA files ... just Glenn and Laura at the for-profit journalism company created by the founder
of eBay.
Whistleblowing has traditionally served the public interest. In this case, it is about to serve
the interests of a billionaire starting a for-profit media business venture. This is truly unprecedented.
Never before has such a vast trove of public secrets been sold wholesale to a single billionaire
as the foundation of a for-profit company.
and who sold them? not edward snowden ... he gave them away ... to the two 'operators' who
sold them to omidyar.
after death, devastation, and destruction outright ... deceit it the usofa's main growth industry.
and hey, 'progressives' can do it too! and still huff and puff themselves up - among their temporary,
transactional 'friends' anyway - with righteousness indignation.
Thats whats called desinformation or psyops., you already for example seems claim that this
is true facts that have been leaked, but we dont know that. Or do you actually believe the
whole Russia-Trump-hacking-claims we heard past months?
It is a document about what someone in the NSA believes , it is completely meaningless.
Greenwald and Scahill are kind of distancing themselves from the article. The document is just
enough to cause headlines that convince trusting people that Russia hacked the election. Arresting
the leaker makes sure everybody heard about it. Who wrote it by the way
Matthew Cole, Richard Esposito, Sam Biddle, Ryan Grim
They need 4 people to publish a document and burn a source?
I assume Russia has a cyber capacity in its defense portfolio, like everybody else.
The most likely scenario is Hillary Clinton and Julian Assange having a very personal private
war after the state department leaks. I also think, it is possible that Hillary Clinton and
Putin had a very personal not so private war after Hillary announced that she would do everything
to prevent a realignment of Post Soviet States. And employing Victoria Nuland to achieve just
that.
What do politicians in the US think - that they can attack without anybody trying to hit back?
>>>>> Posted by: somebody | Jun 6, 2017 8:08:44 AM | 19
Posted by: Ghostship | Jun 6, 2017 7:55:51 AM | 16
Read the @intercept they even agreed with the NSA to redact the stuff.
Well that's a big fat F in Black Ops 101 for you.
The Intercept just returns the document to the NSA - end of.
The Intercept asks the NSA to review and redact the document - it keeps going. Returning the
received document rather than a re-typed one might raise questions within the NSA but could be
put down to operator error at The Intercept but re-typed documents would get The Intercept no
further in working out what's actually happening.
I'm not sure if this is what is happening but the whole thing is weird.
Posted by: somebody | Jun 6, 2017 8:11:10 AM | 20
But no, if it was fake they would not go the extra effort to arrest a leaker who will be supplied
good lawyers, I suppose.
Are you from one of those USG "perception management" projects? Well, if you are, American
taxpayers should be pissed off if this is all the "best and brightest" can come up with. The USG
IC has an annual budget of $65 billion so if this is a black op., they have more than enough money
to be able to afford the arrest of the "leaker" and even pay for her to get decently lawyered
up.
But that's not what's really important here. WikiLeaks and Assange say they have no responsibility
for the content they leak, and that no one has evidence that the sources of the DNC leak are
Russian. But these leaks and tweets damage WikiLeaks' credibility. If they're not scrutinizing
their own leaks on the base level of their content, it's not hard to imagine that WikiLeaks
could unwittingly become part of someone else's agenda (like, say, a Russian one). "If you
are a legitimate leaker, why go with WikiLeaks? You go with The Intercept or the New York Times,
like they did with the Panama Papers" says Nicholas Weaver, a computer scientist at UC Berkeley
who studies the organization. "Wikileaks is a pastebin for spooks, and they're happy to be
used that way."
One would think that all parties would be interested in this news. The Dems, of course, want to
make Russian links. But doesn't Trump want to use this to prove his theory that the popular vote
was wrong? Let's not turn this into a game where everyone interprets things based on ideology.
The whole dang point is that someone was trying to infiltrate our voting system. Maybe they failed,
maybe it was just a reconnaissance mission, but it happened. That is news.
Moon is obviously showing extreme bias. Instead of trying to figure out and analyze the implications
he uses this as a way to score points. Points against the Intercept. Points against the Dems,
and so on. How tiring.
This whole episode smacks of a psy-op to me. If - and this is a big if - the Russians did
hack into any voting systems, I'd be more willing to believe it was to collect evidence of malfeasance
on the part of our own government than it would have been to manipulate the results themselves.
Important to note is that Putin just mentioned in his interview with Megyn Kelly that it
doesn't matter who's president of the United States because no matter what, the policy remains
the same. That's a pretty direct indictment of the integrity of US elections, so what better time
to up the ante with respect to the obvious lies about Russian interference in our elections than
right after Putin calls our elections Kabuki theater?
More diversion folks. The real elephant in the room is the U$A electoral system. It's rotten to
it's core. Regardless of ANY information coming from ANY source, the corporate overlords OWN the
voting systems at the national level here in the U$A. SO, we here in the U$A, can believe whoever
we want to, but, our votes, at least at national level, are meaningless.
P.S- Read around folks, but, watch what people do, not what the say.
Well for one she is not a whistleblower, she is another anti-Trump neocon working for the
deep state. She I believe leaked material just to attack Trump and Russia even more with info,
as we have seen so many times now past months. She nor we as readers have any idea if there is
any truth to the claim to start with. So why leak it? Well obviously, like past months, some groups
in our society benefit from this greatly.
The article even says that NO EVIDENCE has been presented: "While the document provides rare window
into the NSA's understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying
"raw" intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to
be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the documentbecause a single
analysis is not necessarily definitive."
she is another anti-Trump neocon working for the deep state
Three points:
1. She is not a neo-con, she's a neo-lib/liberal interventionist/R2P liberal/Clintonist. There
is a big difference between neo-cons and neo-libs/liberal interventionists/R2P liberals/Clintonists.
The neo-cons do it because they can, the latter, who are far more dangerous, do it "for the greater
good" although they rarely ask the people who it's being done for what they think and they have
a far greater degree of "religious"certainty about what they're doing.
To paraphrase Putin in his recent interview, "why would he interfere in American elections as
he gets the same foreign policy crap regardless of which side wins?"
2. The neo-cons lost big time in Iraq and as a result have little real power in Washington
beyond being disruptive.
3. There is no deep state in the United States now because it's totally visible, and since
both the neo-cons and the neo-libs/liberal interventionists/R2P liberals/Clintonists have the
same objective there is no need for secrecy or conspiracies. If anyone needs to revive the "deep
state" it's the Trumpists.
All these conspiracy theories are a waste of time and energy because there is so much real
dangerous crap going on that needs to be attended to first.
Ghostship. True enough. But knowing it is still different from effectively dealing with it.
The elite/CIA controlled mass media still has a lot of power to persuade people as do the corporations
that finance political elections. As well as the people who make money from arms sales. These
people who may be loosely referred to as 'deep state' don't want to give up any of that power/money.
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk
his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?
Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that
matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine
the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy,
or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice,
the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have
to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism
and exposing the country to danger."
Assuming the neocons and neolibs represent different interests is the same as assuming the democrats
and republicans represent different masters. Divide and conquer is the name of the game, and until
we can come together and agree on who the real enemy is, they'll continue eating our lunch with
impunity.
She follows a neocon agenda (war against afghanistan, war against Syria, hatered against
Russia, hatred against foreign policy that Trump have i.e), she works for the deep state, she
leak deep state material to smear her "enemies".
Who are those who spread this bs to the MSM about Trump and Russia constantly for past
months? Where does it come from if not from the deep state groups?
This is easy to tell but difficult to snuff out in the end. Once Hillary and co. started railing
against paid Kremlin-trolls on alt-right and various forum sites, you knew that it was something
that they had been doing for quite sometime and, indeed, had been losing the battle. At that point,
it was best to throw up their hands and concoct the victim-story, even though we TPTB probably
pioneered the tactics (color revolutions, ngos, etc.).
Perhaps there were Kremlin agents on our boards. Perhaps there are some here. But truth, or
a slightly biased truth, still stands in their corner, so I refuse to complain about Russia agents.
The CIA OTOH. They can GTFO.
i used to like greenwald long before his time at the intercept... the intercept smelt funny
right from the beginning.. i haven't followed it, in spite of having enjoyed reading greenwald
when he was more independent..
this whole story stinks to high heaven.. something is weird about the whole thing.. can't put
my finger on it.. seems like more bs basically.. the usa is bonkers at this point..
@8 opereta... i see it similar to you..
@43 uncle scam... some of those folks are still around, but more of them are not..
As you say, appalling tradecraft by both the leaker and the recipient. I would have thought even
a cursory security check before giving her any security clearance would have unearthed her extreme
views on social media.
Some general thoughts on the subject of leaks from the Trump administration -
Excellent article. A warning to heed and I hope it gets out far and wide. Omidyar being behind
the Intercept has always been an iffy proposition at best, and it has never sat well that Greenwald
is apparently satisfied with such an arrangement.
What a circus of distraction that grabs for public attention; its chief element is distraction,--
and its goal is distraction. In the end, Trump will probably go farther to accommodate the deep
state, since what it aims to destroy is any chance for improvement of relations with Russia. This
a PSYOPS extravaganza. The moronic level of political debate is not going to improve with the
introduction of Reality Winner ( whose name sounds a bit silly, in this context).
The confirmed partisans will wolf down such farce without even tasting it. These absurd pratfalls
will stop abruptly when the risk to our survival becomes obvious; but something on the order of
a miracle would need to happen soon, to avert disaster. Trump's base will loudly congratulate
him, whatever concessions he makes to survive politically; and the rationally unmoored Dems will
sign on to any confidence game if it gets the results they are after.
Certainly, a closer observation of the details can help. Thanks to the author of this article,
our host, and those who have commented. The alternative is for life to become a work of fiction.
Outstanding reporting, b. I saw a report on the microlending "phenomenon" in India on PBS a
long time ago. It was heralded then. I'll have to dive into your link to survey the damage. Thx
again.
Hey b, John Kiriakou chimed in saying "@theintercept should be ashamed of itself. Matthew Cole
burns yet another source. It makes your entire organization untrustworthy"
And you just know Mark Ames will have a piece up bashing Omidyar, Greenwald and Scahill.
Speaking of Scahill, other than a weekly podcast, what exactly does he do for the Intercept?
Greenwald is a self-serving hack and the Intercept functions alongside outlets like DemocracyNow!
to provide a Democrat-friendly perspective on the world to people who think they are very "progressive".
They will never challenge the fundamental precepts of US imperialism and the oligarchic powers
behind it, or truly rock the boat.
There's a chance they got played. As noted, the documents don't actual show evidence of actual
interference with voting system beyond data gathering. But now we have a leaker who's social
media bills her as part of the resistance. And in this environment, how are the optics going to
look like prosecuting someone who is being passed off as having leaked evidence of malfeasance?
I think they rushed too quickly to publish.
Nice to see so many finally coming to the realisation that Greenwald, Poitras and the Intercept
are disinfo operatives.... Waiting for the rest of you to begin questioning The Snowjob too.
"From the Russian attempts to redraw international borders by force, to Iran destabilizing
the Middle East, and to the global threat of terrorism, which affects people everywhere. It
seems that the world has become much more dangerous today than ever since the fall of communism,
about a quarter of a century ago,"- he said at a meeting of vice-president.
Actually, it is a good question how Winner got the access to the file. "Top Secret" is actually
a low level of secrecy, without specific restriction who "needs to know" it. Practical problem
for the wanna be leaker is to find "a needle in the haystack". Probably the chain of folders had
self-explanatory names, which is like posting in on the billboard for all and sundry working for
NSA. That in itself can be "leaking with a borrowed hand".
The content does not seem to be secret in the sense of revealing "sources and methods", just
a scrubbed analysis with conclusions. A major part of the mission of intelligence agency to to
careful draw conclusions from the gathered data so they are useful to the decision makers: access
to information allows to engage in disinformation. But what to do with the obsolete analysis,
prepared for the PDM, previous decision maker? Post it on a billboard, if you still like PDM.
Alternatively, the document was prepared in such a way that it was actually politically
harmless but it could snare the leaker who would be triumphantly and publicly "executed". That
can improve the discipline in the shop.
Poor girl. But those Intercept people, why they did not at least re-type the document before
showing it to anyone?
This is silly nonsense. There is no difference at all between the neocons and the neolibs
(the neolords). They come from exactly the same place and believe in exactly the same thing. Specifically,
they are atychiphobs; they cannot endure any form of failure. So they always must attach themselves
to whatever they perceive as the winning side. And ultimately rule the rest of the losing world.
For them that's all there is; Hillary is an example, and most rich individuals also. They would
absolutely prefer death to loserdom. So of course they have no concerns at all about the fate
of the losers. They are all the same.
And speaking of psyops and propaganda, the Deep State (of course there is a deep state (the
neolords) whom common selves cannot comprehend) is now in the business of producing psyoperative
YouTube videos. See if you can spot the subliminal propaganda in this one (hint -- it is not at
all about how Russians perceive Americans):
"How on Earth do these kids ( Winner) manage to get that kind of jobs?"
Exactly! I thought you had to be very special, bright and so on to get this kind of jobs here
we have a 25 year old girl, that is named...Reality Winner and she has social media where she
posts alot of selfies of herself and have a twitter feed like high school student. She seems quite
dorky to me. That she has already been in and out of the air force is even more bizarre. This
is the kind of morons ruling this world.
The Intercept article is as inept as the NSA document! it's mostly a cartoon, and things like
guessing corporate emails are hardly espionage - they are normal ways of figuring out how to contact
people in the professional world, NOT a security threat. Phishing them ought to be illegal, but
clearly the FBI doesn't give a crap until it happens to Clinton's campaign chair. At least it
is SO common that normal people KNOW not to fall for it. what a bunch of drivel! If the NSA had
any actual intelligence that the origin of the emails was Russia, you would think that might be
part of the explanation, but the cartoon only says "probably within"...
Then the Intercept spends pages (and pages) arguing for more $$ for the NSA (!) and to centralize
control of US elections to the federal level where all this 'insecurity' can be properly controlled
by responsible people (like the NSA, or the POTUS).
Topping that off was Amy Goodman showing an interview with a Clinton mouthpiece trumpeting
propaganda that this whole "Russian" scheme is a way to get contact info of registered voters
to aim "fake news" at them....... anybody here who is a registered voter knows that the minute
you sign up you are permanently on the list for daily piles of glossy lies from PACS and nightly
phone surveys about what crafted message would work 'if the election were held today'. Where I
live, the Dems have so much money that they poll the crap out of us during city-level campaigns.
(and after the election they can't be bothered with what their voters care about.)
this whole thing is such a circus! and yes, the NSA has access to far more info than these
stupid documents allude to, not to mention that the US has got to have some massive access to
Russian data.
I should add: If Putin were directly responsible for hacking anything, Clinton should kiss
Putin's who-cares-what for waiting until AFTER the primaries. She got to be part of the final
coin-toss.
really, why is this NSA document even considered whistle-blowing?
The firewall set up by (or at least 'persuaded' by) the U.S. intelligence to toss out a few
useless Snowden scraps to the peons? Why would the Intercept NOT report report this to their intel
masters? Does anyone here really think 1) the Intercept has NOT been compromised since day one,
2) everybody and and everything at the Intercept is NOT closely monitored by the intel community?
They probably have a department just for the Intercept. So whether the Intercept actually ratted
out Winner is irrelevant - the NSA probably knows what flavor of coffee the mail guy at the Intercept
was holding when he picked up the previously examined mail. The only way any Top Secret document
is making its way to the Intercept is if the NSA or FBI created and mailed the document themselves.
And if the alleged journalist did not report receipt of the document to the FBI, then THEY would
face jail time if the FBI found it during a raid.
How did Winner come about this information?
Setting aside the antics of the Intercept, let's consider how preposterous this story is
at face value. She's basically a translator for a few Middle Eastern languages. So she's reading
email or web sites or listening to phone calls and doing her translating thing. It's not like
she's a high-level analyst preparing briefings for the National Intelligence director - she's
a damn low-level translator (no offense to NSA translators out there).
Why on earth would someone in that position have ANY Top Secret memos on Russian hackers or
the election. Do people really think there is (at her workplace) a network-accessible folder labeled
'Top Secret' that anyone with a Top Secret clearance can browse through? No - that's not how it
works. Does anyone think they have a 'Top Secret' mailing list to distribute memos? Nope. In fact,
can ANYONE give me the least plausible reason why some nobody Arabic-language translator would
ever even be able to SEE a Top Secret memo regarding a subject she has absolutely no involvement
with?
Computers at Intel Agencies
If Winner DID manage to stumble upon a Top Secret memo on her work network unrelated to
her job, then her supervisor would have known it within minutes. Everything anybody does is constantly
monitored and logged, right down to the keystroke. SHE would know that. In fact, she would be
fired for not reporting this impossible access to top secret information immediately. She would
be further punished for even having the document linger on her screen for more than a second or
two. There's a reason they put TOP SECRET at the very top of every page. Classified documents
also have their own security/surveillance/monitoring mechanisms. The document itself (or the document
management system) knows or is told who is allowed to read it or even see that it exists. It would
record her access, even if all the other security and monitoring software the agency had failed
completely. So you get the idea. Even if she saw this document (unlikely) and did NOT report the
inappropriate access, she would eventually be frog-walked out of the building before the end of
the day.
Printing
I won't belabor the point, but everything from all the security, monitoring and logging items
above apply moreso for printing anything. Top Secret documents (and their networks) do not
allow you to print them at all, and certainly not on some random office printer. Presuming
she did the impossible and get a Top Secret document printed out (which would all be logged),
how did she get it out of her controlled-access area and the building itself? Hide it in her purse?
Tell the guard, "I'm taking this folder of top secret stuff home to work on, but it's OK -
I have a top secret clearance..."
All modern printers and copy machines have an invisible watermark that identifies the time/date
you printed a page and the serial number of the machine. If she copied it somewhere, then they
copy can be traced to a certain machine and date/time. She's busted either way if the feds got
their hands on it, and SHE KNOWS THAT.
Impossible Conclusion
Now given all the above and her knowledge of how all that works, does anyone think she's STILL
going to naively print out and mail a hard copy of Top Secret information to a known compromised,
well-monitored news site... because she doesn't like Trump??
Sorry - but unless someone can prove she has an extra chromosome or two, I have to believe
this is a charade. She won't go to jail because she's in on it with the NSA and it's not a real
Top Secret document anyway. NO intelligence agency will ever verify or deny something you show
them is either legitimate or Top Secret, so even that part is wrong. If you call them to ask about
a document you have, they will politely put you on hold so they can dispatch some DHS thugs to
kick in your door and retrieve said document - without telling you anything either way.
Why would she do this then? Well, if she knew she wasn't really going to be tried to go
to prison and the NSA is 'in' on it, then I'm sure there's a large check waiting for her somewhere.
How much do you think it would take to buy out a translator from her crappy .gov job? Plus, she
gets to stick it to Trump and those evil Russians. It's a win-win!
Maybe I'm too cynical nowadays, but this whole thing is preposterous beyond belief. Am I the
only one that thinks this whole thing stinks to high heaven? I'm amazed the bar is so low for
these fabrications.
I tend to agree with the hint, hint - #RealityWinner is an obvious PsyOp. Her employer
probably had a deal for her - agree to be "used", play the part in a little prosecution game we'll
have going, make sure you leak to Cook - and don't worry, you'll be well rewarded in the end.
Why her? the name, of course - sends a nice message. And her youth - get a little sympathy
going. from a gullible public (not any of us though).
The timing of this leak and the choice of media outlet is very convenient for the Establishment
Dems/Deep State Russia investigation. Leaking to the Intercept, which has credibility in the alternative
media, would be a convenient way to get the story covered in the MSM and leftist media. It certainly
helps to distract Berners from the Seth Rich story. Some interns at the Intercept did a sloppy
job checking up on their source.
thank you for this. i left a comment on that article yesterday about how dumb the technical
aspects were and apparently you noticed as well (i also mentioned stuxnet as an example of what
an effective and professional attack would actually look like). the thought that a
macro in a word file (who lets those run by default anyway?) could pivot into some elaborate firmware/hardware
exploit is just dumb. even the article mentions that machines and procedures vary from state to
state and even city to city. seems like a lot of work to put into changing votes for a few thousand
people.
as i also mentioned: hillary won durham by a WIDE margin (almost 100k votes). seems
like any "hacking" worked to her advantage, not trump's.
and he makes a lot of the points you do here regarding the intercept. as much as i respect
greenwald, he and the other top tier hires don't need that site. they've got enough leverage to
start their own site or even just stick to facebook and/or twitter and then "third party" out
to big sites. this would give them exposure without tying them down to one billionaire with his
own agendas and biases.
glenn used to have some oddly toxic opinions (anti-chavez whining and supposed initial support
for the iraq war) and came around. he's not a dummy. i also doubt he has any malevolent intentions
given his charitable work in brazil and what seems like genuine concern for "the law" and privacy
and etc.
the documents were trusted to him and a few others. there was a reason for that. every non-journalist
(and i include many intercept writers in that group) since is just a parasite using him and the
documents as a host. time to swat them away and be truly indie. (not holding my breath).
side note: "reality winner"? wow. when i first saw the headlines i thought she was a former
contestant on "big brother" or something. we'll see how much vocal support she gets from the democrats.
again - not holding breath.
It looks like a real half-arsed psyops -- here is the "Russia did it" smoking gun we've all
been waiting for and it gets sorta rolled out but not trumpeted hysterically. Why the Intercept?
Why not the NYtimes or wapo? Just like the dossier a few months ago, generated some smoke
but in the end its a weak petard. Did Sessions tamp it down?
Anonymous Hippopotamus | Jun 6, 2017 4:38:46 PM |
84
@77 paveway... thanks.. you are preaching to the choir here.. none of the story adds up, but the
intercept is one bs outfit plain and simple..
@78/79 merlin.. thanks.. we see it much the same!
this ''russia did it memo'' is so friggin' boring... the usa has lost it's creative imagination
if it ever had one to begin with... hollywood is over and one with.. give it up hollywash..
@82 I remember reading that some crazy number, like 6 million people have security clearances.
That's a lot of people that signed up to keep quiet. I guess a lot of it relates to basic military
stuff, or controlled technology like aircraft parts or whatever.
She speaks Farsi and Pashto, I bet she's CIA who's been promised a lot of $$$ after she serves
a short prison term. It's my guess that what she provided to The Intercept was given to her after
it was manufactured or "doctored". The info published by The Intercept should be considered as
suspicious.
Marym@93 - Thanks. I hesitated to just say 'Iranian' because that didn't seem quite right, but
'Arabic' is obviously wrong. Hey, I'm American. I couldn't even tell you where Farsiland or Pastonia
are on a map. I think... somewhere by Italy? No, wait...
@95 Sounds right. She won't get the full Chelsea Manning treatment. Just a naive patriotic young
American girl who did the right thing. Obviously she was tricked into using that copier. Couple
of months and she''ll get a job at Fox.
@98 ....which she will turn down for a better offer at CNN.
Remember when Greenwald's Brazilian boyfriend was being held by the authorities and accused of
smuggling information from Snowden? Then he got released. Hmm.
Wonder if there was some sort of agreement to the effect that if Greenwald played ball, possible
prosecution against said boyfriend would be held in abeyance. This is a tactic employed by government
lawyers in some cases when they want something. Like a slow-walking of releases from Snowden's
revelations, for instance. And maybe some other dirty business when wanted by the powers that
be, like this "leak" that the NSA thought something could be true , but with the leak not
containing any proof or any supporting raw intelligence.
Holding a sword over the head of the boyfriend might be just the ticket. And couple that with
speculation that Snowden's documents contained revelations about Greenwald's boss, Pierre Omidyar.
Maybe an offer that Greenwald and company could not refuse.
Speculation on my part, of course. But not the first time that such tactics have been deployed.
Another well-placed, well-timed leak from WaPo. Un-named intelligence official in play again. Is
Russian embassy bugged and all diplomatic correspondence intercepted ? Looks like those guys outdid
STASI. the standard question arises: "cuo bono".
If true, that means that the way information was obtained is iether already known by Russian, or
this channel will be closed really soon. Form the text of the article it looks like the USA is able
to read Russian diplomatic communication. Unless this is yet another disinformation, that means that
the USA obtained the keys used by the embassy for incoding dypolicic communication, or have a modle
who provided this communication by downloading already decoded archive or something like that. Which
actually violates Vienna convention and makes the USA rogue nation not that different from GDR ot the
USSR.
While it is unclear " what Kislyak would have had to gain by falsely characterizing his contacts
with Kushner to Moscow" it is clear who benefit from this revelation. But even if true why to reveal
such an important information for such a minor case. Trump folded. What else "deep state" wants from
him ? Are Hillary friends in State Department and a couple of other intelligence agencies really crazy
about the revenge ?
More questions then answers
Notable quotes:
"... But officials said that it's unclear what Kislyak would have had to gain by falsely characterizing
his contacts with Kushner to Moscow, particularly at a time when the Kremlin still saw the prospect
of dramatically improved relations with Trump. ..."
"... The FBI closely monitors the communications of Russian officials in the United States, and
maintains near-constant surveillance of its diplomatic facilities. The National Security Agency monitors
the communications of Russian officials overseas. ..."
"... 'according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports'. This isn't any sort of verification.
Another manufactured news media story. ..."
"... The Washington Post should not even believed with there track record. They should identify
there source that is leaking anything they can get there hands. Never about anything else accept fake
news. The jokers on here keep on drinking the koolaid that the WP prints! ..."
"... Always jump to conclusions as always without the facts. They gave up on Trump now they go after
some one else. You fools talk about Watergate and have no proof about any of this except what the Washington
Trash prints! ..."
Jared Kushner and Russia's ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a
secret and secure communications channel between Trump's transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian
diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring,
according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.
Ambassador Sergei Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, then President-elect
Trump's son-in-law and confidant, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower,
according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said
Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.
The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser.
The White House disclosed the fact of the meeting only in March, playing down its significance.
But people familiar with the matter say the FBI now considers the encounter, as well as another meeting
Kushner had with a Russian banker, to be of investigative interest.
Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications
gear at its embassy or consulate - a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as
well as the Trump team.
Neither the meeting nor the communications of Americans involved were under U.S. surveillance,
officials said.
The White House declined to comment. Robert Kelner, a lawyer for Flynn, declined to comment. The
Russian embassy did not respond to requests for comment.
Russia at times feeds false information into communication streams it suspects are monitored as
a way of sowing misinformation and confusion among U.S. analysts. But officials said that it's
unclear what Kislyak would have had to gain by falsely characterizing his contacts with Kushner to
Moscow, particularly at a time when the Kremlin still saw the prospect of dramatically improved relations
with Trump.
Kushner's apparent interest in establishing a secret channel with Moscow, rather than rely on
U.S. government systems, has added to the intrigue surrounding the Trump administration's relationship
with Russia.
To some officials, it also reflects a staggering naivete.
The FBI closely monitors the communications of Russian officials in the United States, and
maintains near-constant surveillance of its diplomatic facilities. The National Security Agency monitors
the communications of Russian officials overseas.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that though Russian diplomats have secure
means of communicating with Moscow, Kushner's apparent request for access to such channels was extraordinary.
"How would he trust that the Russians wouldn't leak it on their side?" said one former senior
intelligence official. The FBI would know that a Trump transition official was going in and out of
the embassy, which would cause "a great deal" of concern, he added. The entire idea, he said, "seems
extremely naïve or absolutely crazy."
The discussion of a secret channel adds to a broader pattern of efforts by Trump's closest advisors
to obscure their contacts with Russian counterparts. Trump's first national security adviser, Flynn,
was forced to resign after a series of false statements about his conversations with Kislyak. Attorney
General Jeff Sessions recused himself from matters related to the Russia investigation after it was
revealed that he had failed to disclose his own meetings with Kislyak when asked during congressional
testimony about any contact with Russians.
Kushner's interactions with Russians - including Kislyak and an executive for a Russian bank under
U.S. sanctions - were not acknowledged by the White House until they were exposed in media reports.
It is common for senior advisers of a newly elected president to be in contact with foreign leaders
and officials. But new administrations are generally cautious in their handling of interactions with
Moscow, which U.S. intelligence
... ... ....
In addition to their discussion about setting up the communications channel, Kushner, Flynn and
Kislyak also talked about arranging a meeting between a representative of Trump and a "Russian contact"
in a third country whose name was not identified, according to the anonymous letter.
The Post reported in April that Erik Prince, the former founder of Blackwater private security
firm and an informal adviser to the Trump transition team, met on Jan. 11 - nine days before Trump's
inauguration - in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean with a representative of Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
Tom Lewis · Longs, South Carolina
"Jared Kushner and Russia's ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up
a secret and secure communications channel between Trump's transition team and the Kremlin, using
Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions
from monitoring" .... pretty stiff accusation with this as the news media's source ... 'according
to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports'. This isn't any sort of verification. Another
manufactured news media story.
Paul Schofield · San Diego, California
Everyone knew about this, and it happens with every transition team, and it was done AFTER
Trump won the election, but if it gets the Liberals' panties in a bunch, and CNN more viewers,
the angry Clintonites can scream impeachment for a few hours tonight..... suckers!
Jerry Reich · Arnold, Missouri
The Washington Post should not even believed with there track record. They should identify
there source that is leaking anything they can get there hands. Never about anything else accept
fake news. The jokers on here keep on drinking the koolaid that the WP prints!
Always jump to conclusions as always without the facts. They gave up on Trump now they
go after some one else. You fools talk about Watergate and have no proof about any of this except
what the Washington Trash prints!
"... Just consider the accusations that have been leveled at the president: ..."
"... He has committed treason by befriending Russia and other enemies of America. ..."
"... He has subjugated America's interests to Moscow. ..."
"... President Donald Trump? No, President John F. Kennedy. What lots of Americans don't realize,
because it was kept secret from them for so long, is that what Trump has been enduring from the national-security
establishment, the mainstream press, and the American right-wing for his outreach to, or "collusion
with," Russia pales compared to what Kennedy had to endure for committing the heinous "crime" of reaching
out to Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union in a spirit of peace and friendship. They hated him for
it. They abused him. They insulted him. They belittled him. They called him naïve. They said he was
a traitor. All of the nasties listed above, plus more, were contained in an advertisement and a flier
that appeared in Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963, the day that Kennedy was assassinated.
They can be read here and here . Ever since then, some people have tried to make it seem like the advertisement
and flier expressed only the feelings of extreme right-wingers in Dallas. That's nonsense. They expressed
the deeply held convictions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the conservative movement, and many
people within the mainstream media and Washington establishment. In June 1963, Kennedy threw down the
gauntlet in a speech he delivered at American University, now entitled the " Peace Speech ." It was
one of the most remarkable speeches ever delivered by an American president. It was broadcast all across
the communist Soviet Union, the first time that had ever been done. ..."
"... Kennedy wasn't dumb. He knew what he was up against. He had heard Eisenhower warn the American
people in his Farewell Address about the dangers to their freedom and democratic way of life posed by
the military establishment. After Kennedy had read the novel Seven Days in May, ..."
"... Kennedy didn't stop with his Peace Speech. He also began negotiating a treaty with the Soviets
to end above-ground nuclear testing, an action that incurred even more anger and ire within the Pentagon
and the CIA. ..."
"... By this time, Kennedy's war with the national-security establishment was in full swing. He
had already vowed to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds after its perfidious
conduct in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. By this time, he had also lost all confidence in the military after
it proposed an all-out surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, much as Japan had done at Pearl
Harbor, after the infamous plan known as Operation Northwoods, which proposed terrorist attacks and
plane hijackings carried out by U.S. agents posing as Cuban communists, so as to provide a pretext for
invading Cuba, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the military establishment accused him of appeasement
and treason for agreeing not to ever invade Cuba again. ..."
"... What Kennedy didn't know was that his "secret" negotiations with the Soviet and Cuban communists
weren't so secret after all. As it turns out, it was a virtual certainty that the CIA (or NSA) was listening
in on telephone conversations of Cuban officials at the UN in New York City, much as the CIA and NSA
still do today, during which they would have learned what the president was secretly doing behind their
backs. ..."
"... In response to the things that were said in that advertisement and flier about him being a
traitor for befriending Russia, he told his wife Jackie on the morning he was assassinated: "We are
heading into nut country today." Of course, as he well knew, the nuts weren't located only in Dallas.
They were also situated throughout the U.S. national-security establishment ..."
"... For more information, attend The Future of Freedom Foundation's one-day conference on June
3, 2017, entitled " The National Security State and JFK " at the Washington Dulles Marriott Hotel. ..."
Just consider the accusations that have been leveled at the president:
He has betrayed the Constitution, which he swore to uphold.
He has committed treason by befriending Russia and other enemies of America.
He has subjugated America's interests to Moscow.
He has been caught in fantastic lies to the American people, including personal ones, like
his previous marriage and divorce.
President Donald Trump? No, President John F. Kennedy. What lots of Americans don't realize,
because it was kept secret from them for so long, is that what Trump has been enduring from the national-security
establishment, the mainstream press, and the American right-wing for his outreach to, or "collusion
with," Russia pales compared to what Kennedy had to endure for committing the heinous "crime" of
reaching out to Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union in a spirit of peace and friendship.
They hated him for it. They abused him. They insulted him. They belittled him. They called him
naïve. They said he was a traitor.
All of the nasties listed above, plus more, were contained in an advertisement and a flier that
appeared in Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963, the day that Kennedy was assassinated. They
can be read here and
here .
Ever since then, some people have tried to make it seem like the advertisement and flier expressed
only the feelings of extreme right-wingers in Dallas. That's nonsense. They expressed the deeply
held convictions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the conservative movement, and many people
within the mainstream media and Washington establishment.
In June 1963, Kennedy threw down the gauntlet in a speech he delivered at American University,
now entitled the "
Peace
Speech ." It was one of the most remarkable speeches ever delivered by an American president.
It was broadcast all across the communist Soviet Union, the first time that had ever been done.
In the speech, Kennedy announced that he was bringing an end to the Cold War and the mindset of
hostility toward Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union that the U.S. national-security establishment
had inculcated in the minds of the American people ever since the end of World War II.
It was a radical notion and, as Kennedy well understood, a very dangerous one insofar as he was
concerned. The Cold War against America's World War II partner and ally had been used to convert
the United States from a limited-government republic to a national-security state, one consisting
of a vast, permanent military establishment, the CIA, and the NSA, along with their broad array of
totalitarian-like powers, such as assassination, regime change, coups, invasions, torture, surveillance,
and the like. Everyone was convinced that the Cold War - and the so-called threat from the international
communist conspiracy that was supposedly based in Russia - would last forever, which would naturally
mean permanent and ever-increasing largess for what Kennedy's predecessor, President Dwight Eisenhower,
had called the "military-industrial complex."
Suddenly, Kennedy was upending the Cold War apple cart by threatening to establish a relationship
of friendship and peaceful coexistence with Russia, the rest of the Soviet Union, and Cuba.
Kennedy knew full well that his actions were considered by some to be a grave threat to "national
security." After all, don't forget that it was Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz's outreach to the
Soviets in a spirit of friendship that got him ousted from power by the CIA and presumably targeted
for assassination as part of that regime-change operation. It was Cuban leader Fidel Castro's outreach
to the Soviets in a spirit of friendship that made him the target of Pentagon and CIA regime-change
operations, including through invasion, assassination, and sanctions. It was Congo leader's Patrice
Lamumba's outreach to the Soviets in a spirit of friendship that got him targeted for assassination
by the CIA. It would be Chilean President Salvador Allende's outreach to the Soviets in a spirit
of friendship that got him targeted in a CIA-instigated coup in Chile that resulted in Allende's
death.
Kennedy wasn't dumb. He knew what he was up against. He had heard Eisenhower warn the American
people in his Farewell Address about the dangers to their freedom and democratic way of life posed
by the military establishment. After Kennedy had read the novel Seven Days in May, which
posited the danger of a military coup in America, he asked friends in Hollywood to make it into a
movie to serve as a warning to the American people. In the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
when the Pentagon and the CIA were exerting extreme pressure on Kennedy to bomb and invade Cuba,
his brother Bobby told a Soviet official with whom he was negotiating that the president was under
a severe threat of being ousted in a coup. And, of course, Kennedy was fully mindful of what had
happened to Arbenz, Lamumba, and Castro for doing what Kennedy was now doing - reaching out to the
Soviets in a spirit of friendship.
In the eyes of the national-security establishment, one simply did not reach out to Russia, Cuba,
or any other "enemy" of America. Doing so, in their eyes, made Kennedy an appeaser, betrayer, traitor,
and a threat to "national security."
Kennedy didn't stop with his Peace Speech. He also began negotiating a treaty with the Soviets
to end above-ground nuclear testing, an action that incurred even more anger and ire within the Pentagon
and the CIA. Yes, that's right - they said that "national security" depended on the U.S. government's
continuing to do what they object to North Korea doing today - conducting nuclear tests, both above
ground and below ground.
Kennedy mobilized public opinion to overcome fierce opposition in the military, CIA, Congress,
and the Washington establishment to secure passage of his Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
He then ordered a partial withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, and told close aides that he would
order a complete pull-out after winning the 1964 election. In the eyes of the U.S. national-security
establishment, leaving Vietnam subject to a communist takeover would pose a grave threat to national
security here in the United States.
Worst of all, from the standpoint of the national-security establishment, Kennedy began secret
personal negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro to bring
an end to America's Cold War against them. That was considered to be a grave threat to "national
security" as well as a grave threat to all the military and intelligence largess that depended on
the Cold War.
By this time, Kennedy's war with the national-security establishment was in full swing. He
had already vowed to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds after its perfidious
conduct in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. By this time, he had also lost all confidence in the military
after it proposed an all-out surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, much as Japan had done
at Pearl Harbor, after the infamous plan known as Operation Northwoods, which proposed terrorist
attacks and plane hijackings carried out by U.S. agents posing as Cuban communists, so as to provide
a pretext for invading Cuba, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the military establishment
accused him of appeasement and treason for agreeing not to ever invade Cuba again.
What Kennedy didn't know was that his "secret" negotiations with the Soviet and Cuban communists
weren't so secret after all. As it turns out, it was a virtual certainty that the CIA (or NSA) was
listening in on telephone conversations of Cuban officials at the UN in New York City, much as the
CIA and NSA still do today, during which they would have learned what the president was secretly
doing behind their backs.
Kennedy's feelings toward the people who were calling him a traitor for befriending Moscow and
other "enemies" of America? In response to the things that were said in that advertisement and
flier about him being a traitor for befriending Russia, he told his wife Jackie on the morning he
was assassinated: "We are heading into nut country today." Of course, as he well knew, the nuts weren't
located only in Dallas. They were also situated throughout the U.S. national-security establishment.
For more information, attend The Future of Freedom Foundation's one-day conference on June
3, 2017, entitled "
The National Security
State and JFK " at the Washington Dulles Marriott Hotel.
"... Over the last thirty years the power of the Manufacturing and Infrastructure concerns has fallen
dramatically. So now we have a government dominated by Banking and Distribution, think Goldman Sacks
and Walmart. ..."
"... According to former CIA director Richard Helms, when Allen Dulles was tasked in 1946 to "draft
proposals for the shape and organization of what was to become the Central Intelligence Agency," he
recruited an advisory group of six men made up almost exclusively of Wall Street investment bankers
and lawyers. ..."
"... Dulles himself was an attorney at the prominent Wall Street law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell.
Two years later, Dulles became the chairman of a three-man committee which reviewed the young agency's
performance. ..."
"... So we see that from the beginning the CIA was an exclusive Wall Street club. Allen Dulles himself
became the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence in early 1953. ..."
"... The current Democratic Party was handed two golden opportunities and blew both of them. Obama
blew the 2008 financial crisis. And Hillary Clinton blew the 2016 election. ..."
"... Neoliberal Democrats seek to create the same tribablist/identity voting block on the left that
the republicans have on the right. The is why people like sanjait get totally spastic when progressives
criticize the party. ..."
Among the rich I think there were three groups based on where their wealth and interests laid.
Banking/Insurance industry.
Distribution/logistics.
Manufacturing and Infrastructure.
Over the last thirty years the power of the Manufacturing and Infrastructure concerns has
fallen dramatically. So now we have a government dominated by Banking and Distribution, think
Goldman Sacks and Walmart.
"Over the last thirty years the power of the Manufacturing and Infrastructure concerns has fallen
dramatically. So now we have a government dominated by Banking and Distribution, think Goldman
Sacks and Walmart."
This trend does not apply to Military-industrial complex (MIC). MIC probably should be listed
separately. Formally it is a part of manufacturing and infrastructure, but in reality it is closely
aligned with Banking and insurance.
CIA which is the cornerstone of the military industrial complex to a certain extent is an enforcement
arm for financial corporations.
According to former CIA director Richard Helms, when Allen Dulles was tasked in 1946
to "draft proposals for the shape and organization of what was to become the Central Intelligence
Agency," he recruited an advisory group of six men made up almost exclusively of Wall Street
investment bankers and lawyers.
Dulles himself was an attorney at the prominent Wall Street law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell.
Two years later, Dulles became the chairman of a three-man committee which reviewed the young
agency's performance.
The other two members of the committee were also New York lawyers. For nearly a year, the
committee met in the offices of J.H. Whitney, a Wall Street investment firm.
According to Peter Dale Scott, over the next twenty years, all seven deputy directors of
the agency were drawn from the Wall Street financial aristocracy; and six were listed in the
New York social register.
So we see that from the beginning the CIA was an exclusive Wall Street club. Allen Dulles
himself became the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence in early 1953.
The prevalent myth that the CIA exists to provide intelligence information to the president
was the promotional vehicle used to persuade President Harry Truman to sign the 1947 National
Security Act, the legislation which created the CIA.iv
But the rationale about serving the president was never more than a partial and very imperfect
truth...
The current Democratic Party was handed two golden opportunities and blew both of them. Obama
blew the 2008 financial crisis. And Hillary Clinton blew the 2016 election.
If you have a tool and the tool it broken you try to fix it. One doesn't pretend there is nothing
wrong.
The difference between neoliberal democrats and progressives is they differ on what's wrong.
Neoliberal Democrats seek to create the same tribablist/identity voting block on the left
that the republicans have on the right. The is why people like sanjait get totally spastic when
progressives criticize the party.
Progressives seek to create an aggressive party that represents the interests of working class
and petite bourgeoisie. That is why you see progressives get spastic when the corporate democrats
push appeasement policies.
"... I found it an odd mix of straight-talk and naivete. The NSA can't spy on Americans without
a warrant? Go ahead, pull the other one. ..."
"... This caught my eye earlier. Had to come back to it. Especially after reading Mike Whitney's
latest http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/seth-rich-craig-murray-and-the-sinister-stewards-of-the-national-security-state/
. In it, he details how seriously Clapper, Brennan et al. take those "laws and procedures." ..."
"... Taking a recent and relevant example, remember the ICA, the "Intelligence Community Assessment"?
Whitney quotes a Fox news article detailing the many ways in which it's production varied sharply from
normal procedures. And of course there was all that "stove-piping" of "intel" that helped make the bogus
case for the 2003 war of aggression against Iraq ..."
"... Glad you liked it. Lily Tomlin applies: "No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to
keep up." ..."
"... Excellent post, except for the bit, as some other readers have commented, about American intelligence
agencies being law abiding. Europe, and much of the world, crumbled without resistance in the face of
the tech juggernauts because of the PR fetishization of anything that came out of silicon valley. ..."
This piece is absolutely fantastic! Not to nit pick, but I do disagree with the author about
the following passage:
Even if you think our intelligence agencies are evil, they're a lawful evil. They have to
follow laws and procedures, and the people in those agencies take them seriously.
But there are no such protections for non-Americans outside the United States. The NSA would
have to go to court to spy on me; they can spy on you anytime they feel like it.
We know from the Church and Pike committees that this is patently false, and I highly doubt
that this has changed much since then, especially in light of Iran-Contra and the made-up intel
used to justify the Iraq invasion.
I know I probably sound like a broken record as I often cite the Church and Pike reports in
my NC comments, but they're just so little known and so important that I feel compelled to do
so.
I encourage the entire commenteriat to at least skim some of these documents to get a better
understanding of the kinds of sickening things perpetrated by the intel community in the past
and then ask yourself if the veil of secrecy that surrounds them is to keep secrets from the enemy
or to keep the American public from vomiting.
I found it an odd mix of straight-talk and naivete. The NSA can't spy on Americans without
a warrant? Go ahead, pull the other one. Talking about the "collapse of representative government"
as if we've ever had one. All very cute, and very silly.
His suggestions for putting the brakes on are good, but insufficient. My ideas as to how to
go about, "connecting the tech industry to reality. Bringing its benefits to more people, and
bringing the power to make decisions to more people," is here:
Imagine a political party with no national platform-a party where local rank-and-file members
select candidates from among themselves, and dictate the policies those candidates will support.
[2] Imagine a political party whose candidates are transparent; one that guarantees every member
an equal voice in shaping the actual policy proposals-and the votes-of their representatives.
Imagine a political party whose focus is on empowering the rank-and-file members, instead of
the charismatic con-artists we call politicians. Imagine a political party that runs on direct
democracy, from bottom to top: open, transparent and accountable . we'll need an app maybe
two
The app already exists, actually, and it's called Loomio. Podemos uses it, along with a lot
of other people:
I had the same reaction to that passage, at least initially. However what I think the author
might mean by this is that to have the means to combat this evil 2 things are necessary:
o Laws and/or procedures that place limitations on the actions of these agencies – NSA, CIA,
DHS etc.
o and, much much more important, the means to ensure those laws/procedures are *enforced* as
to both statute and intent.
USians have at least the first part even if the second, enforcement, has rotted to the extent
of being no more than a cruel joke. non-USian have neither.
Note that the lack of enforcement thing extends far beyond the IC agencies into anti-trust,
environmental regulation, Sarbanes-Oxley, etc. etc.. Even the ludicrous botch called Dodd-Frank
could work marginally better if there was some attempt to actually enforce it.
That bit about tech workers defying management to protest Trump's travel ban seems demonstrably
untrue, as the companies want that human capital pipeline kept open, and they can simultaneously
wrap themselves in muliti-cultural virtue as they defend their employment practices.
Also, and I know people here will disagree or think it irrelevant, but the "They're not bad
people," thing is wrong; I think people such as Thiel, Kalanick, Zuckerberg, Ellison, add-your-own-candidates,
seem like pretty awful people doing a lot of awful things, whatever their brilliance, business
acumen, and relentlessness.
Finally, while as a union guy I was pleased to see the importance he gave it, the idea of tech
workers unionizing in this country seems like social science fiction, whatever their European
counterparts might hopefully do.
I, too, stumbled / choked when I read those paragraphs. They are provably false in so many
dimensions I hardly know where to begin. It made it hard to read past.
I will try again because so many commenters are so positive. But the author's credibility sinks
when a piece starts with such blindness or misinformation or pandering.
On the one hand, it's probably some pandering, because he knows he is being watched. We all
throw that same bone once in a while. From Vergil, it is called "a sop to Cerberus." On the other
hand, he is correct, too: it is a "lawful evil" because it functions using tax money, which is
money extorted by force with the sanction of law, rather than "chaotic evil," which is money extorted
by force or fraud without that sanction. So in that positive-law-philosophy way of thinking, he
has a point, even if it's a pandering point.
Taking a recent and relevant example, remember the ICA, the "Intelligence Community Assessment"?
Whitney quotes a Fox news article detailing the many ways in which it's production varied sharply
from normal procedures. And of course there was all that "stove-piping" of "intel" that helped
make the bogus case for the 2003 war of aggression against Iraq .
I appreciate the author's point: it would be harder to surveil a particular American than a
European. I'm sure rank & file people by & large respect law and procedure. But don't worry, if
there's a political will to get you, there's a way. Ask Chelsea Manning.
Whitney concludes by quoting an especially apt question posed by Michael Glennon in the May
issue of Harper's: "Who would trust the authors of past episodes of repression as a reliable safeguard
against future repression?"
People who think they're immune to said repression, for one. Or who don't know or believe it
happened/is happening at all. IOW political elites and most Americans, that's who. I think there's
a good chance the soft coup will work, and most Americans would even accept a President-General.
So while I see the author's point, I see it this way. They take laws and procedures seriously
like I take traffic laws seriously. Only their solution is to corrupt law enforcement, not follow
the law.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - President
George W. Bush
Mike Whitney's article you linked to was interesting. George Webb's ongoing YouTube series
is going further still, as he is uncovering numerous anomalies with Seth Rich's death and the
circumstances and "investigation". It turns out that nothing in this story is what it seems (the
"school play" scenario).
Disturbingly, there are similarities and patterns that connect up with numerous other patterns
discussed earlier in this 208-day (so far) odyssey, which started with looking at irregularities
around oil pipelines and drugs shipments, and ended up including numerous additional criminal
enterprises, all with direct links to high-up government staff and political staff from both major
parties, with links among key participants going back over decades in some cases.
To return to your observation–knowing what I know now–personal as well as second-hand, I don't
think it's harder to surveil an american than a european. The compromises of law enforcement,
justice and intelligence and rogue contractors have no international boundaries. The way the compromises
are done vary depending on local methods, and the degree of public awareness may vary, but the
actuality and ease–no different overall.
Eight, nine and ten in this household. I don't use any Google-stuff and have hard-deleted my
Facebook account. At least they told me had, I should ask a friend to check to see if I am still
there ;)
But we all know that a Linux user is worth only 3/5 of a regular user, so we are back to 6.
Writing this from a 2003 vintage Pentium 4 machine running Linux Mint 17.
8. Built this thing myself 5 years ago. It's a quad core on an MSI mobo. Or maybe I only count
as a half, since it's a dual boot with Linux Mint 17.3/Win7 Pro.
A history lesson. The PC brought freedom from the IT department, until networking enslaved
us again. The freedom was temporary, we were originally supposed to be serfs of a timeshare system
connected to a mainframe. France was ahead of the US in that, they had MiniTel. But like everything
French is was efficient but static. In Europe, like in the US, the PC initially liberated, and
then with networking, enslaved. Arpanet was the predecessor of the Internet it was a Cold War
system of survivable networking, for some people. The invention of HTTP and the browser at CERN
democratized the Arpanet. But it also greatly enabled State-sponsored snooping.
We are now moving to cloud storage and Chrome-books which will restore the original vision
of a timeshare system connected to a mainframe, but at a higher technical standard. What was envisioned
in 1968 will be achieved, but later than planned, and in a round about way. We are not the polity
we used to be. In 1968 this would have been viewed by the public with suspicion. But after 50
years later the public will view this as progress.
One thing just as dangerous and limiting as the idealized past of the conservative mindset
is the idealized sense of progress of the the liberal mindset.
SV tech owners (think about) . . . the cool toys they'll spend profits on . . . run by chuckle
heads . . . identify with progressive values . . . they want to help . . . run by a feckless leadership
accountable to no one . . .
Can't send them to Mars quick enough, I say.
." Even if you think our intelligence agencies are evil, they're a lawful evil. They have to
follow laws and procedures, and the people in those agencies take them seriously."
The real kneeslapper was. . . American government (also) run by chuckle heads . . . what happens
when these two groups . . . join forces?
Knock me over with a feather, let us know when that happens. How many Friedman units will we have
to wait?
"And outside of Russia and China, Google is the world's search engine."
How can this be? I don't use it except very rarely; my wife does, but complains about it bitterly,
and so do people here at NC, presumably tech-savvy. My wife is using it out of pure habit; what
about the rest of them?
"Given this scary state of the world, with ecological collapse just over the horizon, and a
population sharpening its pitchforks, "
And unfortunately, that's the likeliest solution. (The family blogging "L" on this keyboard doesn't
work right, so make some allowances.)
Despite my nitpicks above, this is a very important speech and a frightening issue. In particular,
I've long been concerned that so much organizing depends on giant corporations like Faceborg and
Twitter. They have no reason to be our friends, and some important reasons, like this speech,
to be our enemies. Do we have a backup if FB and Google decide to censor the Internet for serious?
Excellent post, except for the bit, as some other readers have commented, about American
intelligence agencies being law abiding. Europe, and much of the world, crumbled without resistance
in the face of the tech juggernauts because of the PR fetishization of anything that came out
of silicon valley.
The laxity of lawmakers and regulators was partly because of their unwillingness to be seen
as standing in the way of "progress". A public drunk on the need to be in with the new, "disruptive"
kids on the block who were "changing the world" would have teamed up with the disruptors to run
rough shod over any oversight mechanisms proposed by regulators. Hence the silicon valley PR machine
always prioritises the general public as the first targets of intellectual capture, because an
intellectually captured public loath to give up the benefits and convenience of "progress and
disruption" is a powerful weapon in the arsenal of tech giants in their global war against regulation.
And the insidious nature of the damage of overreach by these tech giants isn't just limited to
online interactions anymore, but the real world is also now experiencing disruption in the true
sense of the word with gig economy companies reshaping the dynamics of entire markets and squeezing
the most vulnerable members of society to the periphery of said markets, if not pushing them out
entirely. In my own city of cape town south africa, a housing crisis is brewing as locals are
being squeezed out of the housing market because landlords profit more from airbnb listings than
making their properties available for long term rentals. Asset prices are being pushed up as "investors"
compete to snap up available inventory to list on airbnb. And city officials seem more interested
in celebrating cape town's status as "one of the top airbnb destinations" than actually protecting
the interests of their own citizens. Intellectual capture, and the need to be "in with the cool
disruptive kids" is infecting even public sector organizations with severe consequences for the
public at large, but the public is blind to this as they've binged on the "disruption, changing
the world" cool-aid
While individuals might derive value from "this stuff", the tech companies providing the stuff
use said value, allied with massive amounts of PR spin to render regulators impotent in providing
safe guards to stop the techies from morphing from value providers into something akin to encroachers
for profit/power/control (e.g. encroaching upon our right to privacy by selling off our data).
Providing value to the public shouldn't be used as a cloak under which the dagger used to erode
our rights is hidden
In the links today, there is a Guardian story on Tesla workers with the quote: "Everything
feels like the future but us."
I'm reminded of another Guardian article about an ideology underpinning the grievances in Notes
From An Emergency. It's imperative to understand the that the system we find ourselves in is a
belief system – an ideology – and the choices to be made in regards to challenging it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/11/accelerationism-how-a-fringe-philosophy-predicted-the-future-we-live-in/
An excerpt:
"Accelerationists argue that technology, particularly computer technology, and capitalism, particularly
the most aggressive, global variety, should be massively sped up and intensified – either because
this is the best way forward for humanity, or because there is no alternative. Accelerationists
favour automation. They favour the further merging of the digital and the human. They often favour
the deregulation of business, and drastically scaled-back government. They believe that people
should stop deluding themselves that economic and technological progress can be controlled. They
often believe that social and political upheaval has a value in itself.
Accelerationism, therefore, goes against conservatism, traditional socialism, social democracy,
environmentalism, protectionism, populism, nationalism, localism and all the other ideologies
that have sought to moderate or reverse the already hugely disruptive, seemingly runaway pace
of change in the modern world "
Be sure to catch such quotes as this:
"We all live in an operating system set up by the accelerating triad of war, capitalism and emergent
AI," says Steve Goodman, a British accelerationist
That should remind one of this:
"Musk is persuaded that we're living in a simulation, and he or a fellow true believer has hired
programmers to try to hack it ."
Yes I know, it's ridiculous. And we use them to "protect" us he claims. But about the only
place where "protect" makes any sense in his whole argument is actually Amazon. It is pretty safe
to buy from Amazon (or using Amazon-pay) if you fear a credit card being hacked from on online
purchase. That much has some truth.
But how does using Facebook protect anyone? How does Google protect anyone? Ok Android security
is a different debate, but I really don't understand how issues of "security" etc. applies to
using a Google search as opposed to any other.
The right wing in Britain seems to have come up with an authoritarian solution: "Theresa May
is planning to introduce huge regulations on the way the internet works, allowing the government
to decide what is said online."
Lost me right at the opening by bringing up the popular vote and the bemoaning of a "broken"
system. We are a federal republic of states and I'd prefer to keep it that way. Ensuring that
the executive has the support of the populations of some minimal number of states is a good thing
in my view.
that's when I bailed too. What drek. If a reader has half a mind, they slip and fall on a greasy
doo doo in the first 15 seconds? No way can I stand to wade through the rest of what seems like
a tortured screed (although I did speed read it). Turns out, I may agree in a minor way with some
points, but I'll never know. I have time to waste in the real world, and I can't waste it if I'm
reading somebody's internet screed about Donald Trump. God Good almighty. Enough.
Authors watch your words. They matter! LOL. And always remember - sometimes less is more. Not
NC's finest post evah. And post author's shouldn't refer to people's heads on pikes in their hotel
room as being something they wouldn't object to. I mean really. That's not even junior high school
humor. I give this post a 2.3 on a scale of 1-10. 1 is unbearable. 3 is readable. 10 is genius.
The people who run Silicon Valley identify with progressive values
Nope. There are some true progressives in the industry, yes, but they're few and far between.
Understanding the dominant mindset in Silicon Valley is vital to understanding why there hasn't
been pushback on all this. Sure, they like their neoliberal IdPol as it appeals to their meritocracy
worship (hence the protests against the travel ban), but not with any intersectionality, especially
with regards to women (the red pill/MRA mind virus infects a lot of brains in SV). Socio-economics,
though, it's heavy on the libertarianism, albeit with some support for utopian government concepts
like UBI, plus a futurist outlook out of that Rationality cult; Yudkowsky and his LessWrong nonsense
have influence over a lot of players, big and small, in the bay area. So what you get is a bunch
of people deluded into thinking they're hyperlogical while giving themselves a free pass on the
begged question of where their "first principles" emerged out of. It's not just their sci-fi bubble
that needs a poppin', it's their Rothbardian/Randite one as well.
+1,000
"The people who run Silicon Valley identify with progressive values"
True! I've seen some smoking weed while talking machine language and screwing half of humanity
The points you raise are accurate. And even long before those things existed, Silicon Valley
arose as conscious, deliberate high-level government strategy (or beyond-government deep state).
The sources of new technology and funding have been deliberately obscured, at least as far
as the general public debate goes. It has nothing to do with "innovation" and "entrepreneurship".
It is amazing to see all countries around the world hop onto the innovation, let's-imitate-Silicon-Valley
bandwagon, with no awareness that SV was no accident of a few smart/lucky individual entrepreneurs.
NOBODY has to join buttBook, review slimy effing GIGGLE, and especially use MICROSWIFT; ALTERNATIVES
are easy and often more effective and especially annoying to the rich slime.
When Balmer was Billy-Boy's Ceo he actually preached that Linux was a nefarious plot to deprive
clowns like him of their well deserved "emoluments". Fortuneately, all he has to do now is sell
beer and hot dogs, and make sure the cheerleaders keep their clothing on. Good job for him.
Decide NOT to be a lemming; instead be a BOLSHIE and hit 'em hard. YOU and the whole internet
will benefit.
I think some of the naivete of this talk is based on a superficial knowledge of American history.
Things like his remark about the Women's DC March – "America is not used to large demonstrations
" Oh really.
The writer, though intelligent, is apparently unaware of massive demos during the Vietnam War,
the Civil Rights movement, the anti-Iraq war marches, the Bonus March etc etc. Perhaps his ignorance
is a function of age, and perhaps the fact he was not born here, vis a vis his name.
I will reply to an almost tangential little something which Maciej Ceglowski wrote near the
beginning of his piece.
" 65.8 million for Clinton
63.0 million for Trump
This was the second time in sixteen years that the candidate with fewer votes won the American
Presidency. There is a bug in the operating system of our democracy, one of the many ways that
slavery still casts its shadow over American politics."
Really? A bug in the operating system of our democracy? That sounds like something a Clintonite
would say. It sounds like something that many millions of Clintonites DID say, over and over and
over again.
Clinton got more popular votes? She got almost all of them in California. So Mr. Ceglowski
thinks Clinton should be President based on that? That means Mr. Ceglowski wants the entire rest
of America to be California's colonial possession, ruled by a President that California picked.
And don't think we Midwestern Deplorables don't understand exACTly how Ceglowski thinks and what
Ceglowski thinks of us out here in Deploristan.
Some Clinton supporters are smarter than that. Some were not surprised. Michael Moore was not
surprised. He predicted that we Deploristani Midwesterners would make Trump President whether
the digitally beautiful people liked it or not. Did Mr. Ceglowski support Clinton? Did the "tech
workers in short-lived revolt" support Clinton? And did they support NAFTA back in the day? You
thought you would cram Trade Treason Clinton down our throat? Well, we flung Trade Patriot Trump
right back in your face.
"... Today, it seems, the best description of the FBI's main activity is corporate enforcer for the white-collar mafia known as Wall Street. There is an analogy to organized crime, where the most powerful mobsters settled disputes between other gangs of criminals. Similarly, if a criminal gang is robbed by one of its own members, the mafia would go after the guilty party; the FBI plays this role for Wall Street institutions targeted by con artists and fraudsters. Compare and contrast a pharmaceutical company making opiates which is targeted by thieves vs. a black market drug cartel targeted by thieves. In one case, the FBI investigates; in the other, a violent vendetta ensues (such as street murders in Mexico). ..."
"... The FBI executives are rewarded for this service with lucrative post-retirement careers within corporate America – Louis Freeh went to credit card fraudster, MBNA, Richard Mueller to a corporate Washington law firm, WilmerHale, and Comey, before Obama picked him as Director, worked for Lockheed Martin and HSBC (cleaning up after their $2 billion drug cartel marketing scandal) after leaving the FBI in 2005. ..."
"... Some say they have a key role to play in national security and terrorism – but their record on the 2001 anthrax attacks is incredibly shady and suspicious. The final suspect, Bruce Ivins, is clearly innocent of the crime, just as their previous suspect, Steven Hatfill was. Ivins, if still alive, could have won a similar multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit against the FBI. All honest bioweapons experts know this to be true – the perpetrators of those anthrax letters are still at large, and may very well have had close associations with the Bush Administration itself. ..."
"... Comey's actions over the past year are certainly highly questionable, as well. Neglecting to investigate the Clinton Foundation ties to Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments and corporations, particularly things like State Department approval of various arms deals in which bribes may have been paid, is as much a dereliction of duty as neglecting to investigate Trump ties to Russian business interests – but then, Trump has a record of shady business dealings dating back to the 1970s, of strange bankruptcies and bailouts and government sales that the FBI never looked at either. ..."
I made the mistake of listening to NPR last week to find out what Conventional Wisdom had to say
about Trump firing Comey, on the assumption that their standardized Mister-Rogers-on-Nyquil voice
tones would rein in the hysteria pitch a little. And on the surface, it did-the NPR host and guests
weren't directly shrieking "the world is ending! We're all gonna die SHEEPLE!" the way they were
on CNN. But in a sense they were screaming "fire!", if you know how to distinguish the very minute
pitch level differences in the standard NPR Nyquil voice.
The host of the daytime NPR program asked his guests how serious, and how "unprecedented" Trump's
decision to fire his FBI chief was. The guests answers were strange: they spoke about "rule of law"
and "violating the Constitution" but then switched to Trump "violating norms"-and back again, interchanging
"norms" and "laws" as if they're synonyms. One of the guests admitted that Trump firing Comey was
100% legal, but that didn't seem to matter in this talk about Trump having abandoned rule-of-law
for a Putinist dictatorship. These guys wouldn't pass a high school civics class, but there they
were, garbling it all up. What mattered was the proper sense of panic and outrage-I'm not sure anyone
really cared about the actual legality of the thing, or the legal, political or "normative" history
of the FBI.
For starters, the FBI hardly belongs in the same set with concepts like "constitutional" or "
rule of law." That's because the FBI was never established by a law. US Lawmakers refused to approve
an FBI bureau over a century ago when it was first proposed by Teddy Roosevelt. So he ignored Congress,
and went ahead and set it up by presidential fiat. That's one thing the civil liberties crowd hates
discussing - how centralized US political power is in the executive branch, a feature in the constitutional
system put there by the holy Founders.
In the late 1970s, at the tail end of our brief Glasnost, there was a lot of talk in Washington
about finally creating a
legal charter for the FBI -70 years after its founding. A lot of serious ink was spilled trying
to transform the FBI from an extralegal secret police agency to something legal and defined. If you
want to play archeologist to America's recent history, you can find this in the New York Times' archives,
articles with headlines like
"Draft of Charter for F.B.I. Limits Inquiry Methods" :
The Carter Administration will soon send to Congress the first governing charter for the Federal
Bureau of Investigation. The proposed charter imposes extensive but not absolute restrictions
on the bureau's employment of controversial investigative techniques, .including the use of informers,
undercover agents and covert criminal activity.
The charter also specifies the duties and powers of the bureau, setting precise standards and
procedures for the initiation ,and conduct of investigations. It specifically requires the F.B.I.
to observe constitutional rights and establishes safeguards against unchecked harassment, break‐ins
and other abuses.
followed by the inevitable lament, like this editorial from the Christian Science Monitor a year
later, "Don't Forget the
FBI Charter". Which of course we did forget-that was Reagan's purpose and value for the post-Glasnost
reaction: forgetting. As historian Athan Theoharis
wrote , "After 1981, Congress never seriously considered again any of the FBI charter proposals."
The origins of the FBI have been obscured both because of its dubious legality and because of
its original political purpose-to help the president battle the all-powerful American capitalists.
It wasn't that Teddy Roosevelt was a radical leftist-he was a Progressive Republican, which sounds
like an oxymoron today but which was mainstream and ascendant politics in his time. Roosevelt was
probably the first president since Andrew Jackson to try to smash concentrated wealth-power, or at
least some of it. He could be brutally anti-labor, but so were the powerful capitalists he fought,
and all the structures of government power. He met little opposition pursuing his imperial Social
Darwinist ambitions outside America's borders-but he had a much harder time fighting the powerful
capitalists at home against Roosevelt's most honorable political obsession: preserving forests, parks
and public lands from greedy capitalists. An early FBI memo to Hoover about the FBI's origins explains,
"Roosevelt, in his characteristic dynamic fashion, asserted that the plunderers of the public
domain would be prosecuted and brought to justice."
According to New York Times reporter Tim Wiener's Enemies: A History of the FBI , it
was the Oregon land fraud scandal of 1905-6 that put the idea of an FBI in TR's hyperactive mind.
The scandal involved leading Oregon politicians helping railroad tycoon Edward Harriman illegally
sell off pristine Oregon forest lands to timber interests, and it ended with an Oregon senator and
the state's only two House representatives criminally charged and put on trial-along with dozens
of other Oregonians. Basically, they were raping the state's public lands and forests like colonists
stripping a foreign country-and that stuck in TR's craw.
TR wanted his attorney general-Charles Bonaparte (yes, he really was a descendant of that
Bonaparte)-to make a full report to on the rampant land fraud scams that the robber barons were
running to despoil the American West, and which threatened TR's vision of land and forest conservation
and parks. Bonaparte created an investigative team from the US Secret Service, but TR thought their
report was a "whitewash" and proposed a new separate federal investigative service within Bonaparte's
Department of Justice that would report only to the Attorney General.
Until then, the US government had to rely on private contractors like the notorious, dreaded Pinkerton
Agency, who were great at strikebreaking, clubbing workers and shooting organizers, but not so good
at taking down down robber barons, who happened to also be important clients for the private detective
agencies.
In early 1908, Attorney General Bonaparte wrote to Congress asking for the legal authority (and
budget funds) to create a "permanent detective force" under the DOJ. Congress rebelled, denouncing
it as a plan to create an American okhrana . Democrat Joseph Sherley wrote that "spying
on men and prying into what would ordinarily be considered their private affairs" went against "American
ideas of government"; Rep. George Waldo, a New York Republican, said the proposed FBI was a "great
blow to freedom and to free institutions if there should arise in this country any such great central
secret-service bureau as there is in Russia."
So Congress's response was the opposite, banning Bonaparte's DOJ from spending any funds at all
on a proposed FBI. Another Congressman wrote another provision into the budget bill banning the DOJ
from hiring Secret Service employees for any sort of FBI type agency. So Bonaparte waited until Congress
took its summer recess, set aside some DOJ funds, recruited some Secret Service agents, and created
a new federal detective bureau with 34 agents. This was how the FBI was born. Congress wasn't notified
until the end of 1908, in a few lines in a standard report - "oh yeah, forgot to tell you-the executive
branch went ahead and created an American okhrana because, well, the ol' joke about dogs
licking their balls. Happy New Year!"
The sordid history of America's extralegal secret police-initially named the Bureau of Investigation,
changed to the FBI ("Federal") in the 30's, is mostly a history of xenophobic panic-mongering, illegal
domestic spying, mass roundups and plans for mass-roundups, false entrapment schemes, and planting
what Russians call "kompromat"- compromising information about a target's sex life-to blackmail or
destroy American political figures that the FBI didn't like.
The first political victim of J Edgar Hoover's kompromat was Louis Post, the assistant secretary
of labor under Woodrow Wilson. Post's crime was releasing over 1,000 alleged Reds from detention
facilities near the end of the FBI's Red Scare crackdown, when they jailed and deported untold thousands
on suspicion of being Communists. The FBI's mass purge began with popular media support in 1919,
but by the middle of 1920, some (not the FBI) were starting to get a little queasy. A legal challenge
to the FBI's mass purges and exiles in Boston ended with a federal judge denouncing the FBI. After
that ruling, assistant secretary Louis Post, a 71-year-old well-meaning progressive, reviewed the
cases against the last 1500 detainees that the FBI wanted to deport, and found that there was absolutely
nothing on at least 75 percent of the cases. Post's review threatened to undo thousands more FBI
persecutions of alleged Moscow-controlled radicals.
So one of the FBI's most ambitious young agents, J Edgar Hoover, collected kompromat on Post and
his alleged associations with other alleged Moscow-controlled leftists, and gave the file to the
Republican-controlled House of Representatives-which promptly announced it would hold hearings to
investigate Post as a left subversive. The House tried to impeach Post, but ultimately he defended
himself. Post's lawyer compared his political persecutors to the okhrana (Russia, again!):
"We in America have sunk to the level of the government of Russia under the Czarist regime," describing
the FBI's smear campaign as "even lower in some of their methods than the old Russian officials."
Under Harding, the FBI had a new chief, William Burns, who made headlines blaming the terror bombing
attack on Wall Street of 1920 that killed 34 people on a Kremlin-run conspiracy. The FBI claimed
it had a highly reliable inside source who told them that Lenin sent $30,000 to the Soviets' diplomatic
mission in New York, which was distributed to four local Communist agents who arranged the Wall Street
bombing. The source claimed to have personally spoken with Lenin, who boasted that the bombing was
so successful he'd ordered up more.
The only problem was that the FBI's reliable source, a Jewish-Polish petty criminal named Wolf
Lindenfeld, turned out to be a bullshitter-nicknamed "Windy Linde"-who thought his fake confession
about Lenin funding the bombing campaign would get him out of Poland's jails and set up in a comfortable
new life in New York.
By 1923, the FBI had thoroughly destroyed America's communist and radical labor movements-allowing
it to focus on its other favorite pastime: spying on and destroying political opponents. The FBI
spied on US Senators who supported opening diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union: Idaho's William
Borah, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee; Thomas Walsh of the Judiciary Committee, and
Burton K Wheeler, the prairie Populist senator from Montana, who visited the Soviet Union and pushed
for diplomatic relations. Harding's corrupt Attorney General Dougherty denounced Sen. Wheeler as
"the Communist leader in the Senate" and "no more a Democrat than Stalin, his comrade in Moscow."
Dougherty accused Sen. Wheeler of being part of a conspiracy "to capture, by deceit and design, as
many members of the Senate as possible and to spread through Washington and the cloakrooms of Congress
a poison gas as deadly as that which sapped and destroyed brave soldiers in the last war."
Hoover, now a top FBI official, quietly fed kompromat to journalists he cultivated, particularly
an AP reporter named Richard Whitney, who published a popular book in 1924, "Reds In America" alleging
Kremlin agents "had an all-pervasive influence over American institutions; they had infiltrated every
corner of American life." Whitney named Charlie Chaplin as a Kremlin agent, along with Felix Frankfurter
and members of the Senate pushing for recognition of the Soviet Union. That killed any hope for diplomatic
recognition for the next decade.
Then the first Harding scandals broke-Teapot Dome, Veterans Affairs, bribery at the highest rungs.
When Senators Wheeler and Walsh opened bribery investigations, the FBI sent agents to the senators'
home state to drum up false bribery charges against Sen. Wheeler. The charges were clearly fake,
and a jury dismissed the charges. But Attorney General Dougherty was indicted for fraud and forced
to resign, as was his FBI chief Burns-but not Burns' underling Hoover, who stayed in the shadows.
"We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in
sex-life scandals and plain blackmail This must stop."
With the Cold War, the FBI became obsessed with homosexuals as America's Fifth Column under Moscow's
control. Homosexuals, the FBI believed, were susceptible to Kremlin kompromat-so the FBI collected
and disseminated its own kompromat on alleged American homosexuals, supposedly to protect America
from the Kremlin. In the early 1950s, Hoover launched the Sex Deviates Program to spy on American
homosexuals and purge them from public life. The FBI built up 300,000 pages of files on suspected
homosexuals and contacted their employers, local law enforcement and universities to "to drive homosexuals
from every institution of government, higher learning, and law enforcement in the nation," according
to Tim Weiner's book Enemies. No one but the FBI knows exactly how many Americans' lives and careers
were destroyed by the FBI's Sex Deviants Program but Hoover-who never married, lived with his mother
until he was 40, and traveled everywhere with his
"friend" Clyde Tolson .
In the 1952 election, Hoover was so committed to helping the Republicans and Eisenhower win that
he compiled and disseminated a 19-page kompromat file alleging that his Democratic Party rival Adlai
Stevenson was gay. The FBI's file on Stevenson was kept in the Sex Deviants Program section-it included
libelous gossip, claiming that Stevenson was one of Illinois' "best known homosexuals" who went by
the name "Adeline" in gay cruising circles.
In the 1960s, Hoover and his FBI chiefs collected kompromat on the sex lives of JFK and Martin
Luther King. Hoover presented some of his kompromat on JFK to Bobby Kennedy, in a concern-trollish
way claiming to "warn" him that the president was opening himself up to blackmail. It was really
a way for Hoover to let the despised Kennedy brothers know he could destroy them, should they try
to Comey him out of his FBI office. Hoover's kompromat on MLK's sex life was a particular obsession
of his-he now believed that African-Americans, not homosexuals, posed the greatest threat to become
a Kremlin Fifth Column. The FBI wiretapped MLK's private life, collecting tapes of his affairs with
other women, which a top FBI official then mailed to Martin Luther King's wife, along with a note
urging King to commit suicide.
FBI letter anonymously mailed to Martin Luther King Jr's wife, along with kompromat sex tapes
After JFK was murdered, when Bobby Kennedy ran for the Senate in 1964, he recounted another disturbing
FBI/kompromat story that President Johnson shared with him on the campaign trail. LBJ told Bobby
about a stack of kompromat files - FBI reports "detailing the sexual debauchery of members of the
Senate and House who consorted with prostitutes." LBJ asked RFK if the kompromat should be leaked
selectively to destroy Republicans before the 1964 elections. Kennedy recalled,
"He told me he had spent all night sitting up and reading the files of the FBI on all these
people. And Lyndon talks about that information and material so freely. Lyndon talks about everybody,
you see, with everybody. And of course that's dangerous."
Kennedy had seen some of the same FBI kompromat files as attorney general, but he was totally
opposed to releasing such unsubstantiated kompromat-such as, say, the Trump piss files-because doing
so would "destroy the confidence that people in the United States had in their government and really
make us a laughingstock around the world."
Imagine that.
Which brings me to the big analogy every hack threw around last week, calling Trump firing Comey
"Nixonian." Actually, what Trump did was more like the very opposite of Nixon, who badly wanted to
fire Hoover in 1971-2, but was too afraid of the kompromat Hoover might've had on him to make the
move. Nixon fell out with his old friend and onetime mentor J Edgar Hoover in 1971, when the ailing
old FBI chief refused to get sucked in to the Daniel Ellsberg/Pentagon Papers investigation, especially
after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New York Times. Part of the reason Nixon created his
Plumbers team of black bag burglars was because Hoover had become a bit skittish in his last year
on this planet-and that drove Nixon crazy.
Nixon called his chief of staff Haldeman:
Nixon: I talked to Hoover last night and Hoover is not going after this case [Ellsberg] as
strong as I would like. There's something dragging him.
Haldeman: You don't have the feeling the FBI is really pursuing this?
Nixon: Yeah, particularly the conspiracy side. I want to go after everyone. I'm not so interested
in Ellsberg, but we have to go after everybody who's a member of this conspiracy.
Hoover's ambitious deputies in the FBI were smelling blood, angling to replace him. His number
3, Bill Sullivan (who sent MLK the sex tapes and suicide note) was especially keen to get rid of
Hoover and take his place. So as J Edgar was stonewalling the Daniel Ellsberg investigation, Sullivan
showed up in a Department of Justice office with two suitcases packed full of transcripts and summaries
of illegal wiretaps that Kissinger and Nixon had ordered on their own staff and on American journalists.
The taps were ordered in Nixon's first months in the White House in 1969, to plug up the barrage
of leaks, the likes of which no one had ever seen before. Sullivan took the leaks from J Edgar's
possession and told the DOJ official that they needed to be hidden from Hoover, who planned to use
them as kompromat to blackmail Nixon.
Nixon decided he was going to fire J Edgar the next day. This was in September, 1971. But the
next day came, and Nixon got scared. So he tried to convince his attorney general John Mitchell to
fire Hoover for him, but Mitchell said only the President could fire J Edgar Hoover. So Nixon met
him for breakfast, and, well, he just didn't have the guts. Over breakfast, Hoover flattered Nixon
and told him there was nothing more in the world he wanted than to see Nixon re-elected. Nixon caved;
the next day, J Edgar Hoover unceremoniously fired his number 3 Bill Sullivan, locking him out of
the building and out of his office so that he couldn't take anything with him. Sullivan was done.
The lesson here, I suppose, is that if an FBI director doesn't want to be fired, it's best to
keep your kompromat a little closer to your chest, as a gun to hold to your boss's head. Comey's
crew already released the piss tapes kompromat on Trump-the damage was done. What was left to hold
back Trump from firing Comey? "Laws"? The FBI isn't even legal. "Norms" would be the real reason.
Which pretty much sums up everything Trump has been doing so far. We've learned the past two decades
that we're hardly a nation of laws, at least not when it comes to the plutocratic ruling class. What
does bind them are "norms"-and while those norms may mean everything to the ruling class, it's an
open question how much these norms mean to a lot of Americans outside that club.
The USA doesn't have a legal basis either, it is a revolting crown colony of the British Empire.
Treason and heresy all the way down. Maybe the British need to burn Washington DC again?
Wondered how Comey thought he could get away with his conviction and pardon of Sec Clinton.
Seems like part of the culture of FBI is a "above and beyond" the law mentality.
Back in the early 1970s a high school friend moved to Alabama because his father was transferred
by his employer.
My friend sent a post card describing among other things the fact that Alabama had done away
with the requirement of a math class to graduate high school, and substituted a required class
called "The Evils of Communism" complete with a text-book written by J. Edgar Hoover; Masters
of Deceit.
In Dallas,Texas my 1959 Civics class had to read the same book. We all were given paperback
copies of it to take home and read. It was required reading enacted by Texas legislature.
So I'd guess you weren't fooled by any of those commie plots of the sixties, like the campaigns
for civil rights or against the Vietnamese war.
I can't really brag, I didn't stop worrying about the Red Menace until 1970 or so, that's when
I started running into returning vets who mostly had no patience for that stuff.
We've learned the past two decades that we're hardly a nation of laws, at least not when
it comes to the plutocratic ruling class. What does bind them are "norms"
Or as David Broder put it (re Bill Clinton): he came in and trashed the place and it wasn't
his place.
It was David Broder's place. Of course the media play a key role with all that kompromat since
they are the ones needed to convey it to the public. The tragedy is that even many of the sensible
in their ranks such as Bill Moyers have been sucked into the kompromat due to their hysteria over
Trump. Ames is surely on point in this great article. The mistake was allowing secret police agencies
like the FBI and CIA to be created in the first place.
Sorry, my initial reaction was that people who don't know the difference between "rein" and
"reign" are not to be trusted to provide reliable information. Recognizing that as petty, I kept
reading, and presently found the statement that Congress was not informed of the founding of the
FBI until a century after the fact, which seems implausible. If in fact the author meant the end
of 1908 it was quite an achievement to write 2008.
Interesting to the extent it may be true, but with few sources, no footnotes, and little evidence
of critical editing who knows what that may be?
Who he is is irrelevant. I don't take things on faith because "the Pope said" or because Mark
Ames said. People who expect their information to be taken seriously should substantiate it.
So anything the FBI does to get rid of him must by definition be ok! Besides, surely our civic-minded
IC would never use their power on the Good Guys™!
Ah yes, the voice of "caution." And such attention to the lack of footnotes, in this day when
the curious can so easily cut and paste a bit of salient text into a search engine and pull up
a feast of parse-able writings and video, from which they can "judiciously assess" claims and
statements. If they care to spend the time, which is in such short supply among those who are
struggling to keep up with the horrors and revelations people of good will confront every blinking
day
Classic impeachment indeed. All from the height of "academic rigor" and "caution." Especially
the "apologetic" bit about "reign" vs "rein." Typos destroy credibility, don't they? And the coup
de grass (sic), the unrebuttable "plausibility" claim.
One wonders at the nature of the author's curriculum vitae. One also marvels at the yawning
gulf between the Very Serious Stuff I was taught in grade and high school civics and history,
back in the late '50s and the '60s, about the Fundamental Nature Of Our Great Nation and its founding
fathers and the Beautiful Documents they wrote, on the one hand, and what we mopes learn, through
a drip-drip-drip process punctuated occasionally by Major Revelations, about the real nature of
the Empire and our fellow creatures
PS: My earliest memory of television viewing was a day at a friend's house - his middle-class
parents had the first "set" in the neighborhood, I think an RCA, in a massive sideboard cabinet
where the picture tube pointed up and you viewed the "content" in a mirror mounted to the underside
of the lid. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5onSwx7_Cn0
The family was watching a hearing of Joe McCarthy's kangaroo court, complete with announcements
of the latest number in the "list of known Communists in the State Department" and how Commyanism
was spreading like an unstoppable epidemic mortal disease through the Great US Body Politic and
its Heroic Institutions of Democracy. I was maybe 6 years old, but that grainy black and white
"reality TV" content had me asking "WTF?" at a very early age. And I'd say it's on the commentor
to show that the "2008" claim is wrong, by something other than "implausible" as drive-by impeachment.
Given the content of the original post, and what people paying attention to all this stuff have
a pretty good idea is the general contours of a vast corruption and manipulation.
Interesting article on the history of the FBI, although the post-Hoover era doesn't get any
treatment. The Church Committee hearings on the CIA and FBI, after the exposure of notably
Operation CHAOS (early
60s to early 70s) by the CIA and
COINTELPRO(late 1950s to
early 1970s) by the FBI, didn't really get to the bottom of the issue although some reforms
were initiated.
Today, it seems, the best description of the FBI's main activity is corporate enforcer for
the white-collar mafia known as Wall Street. There is an analogy to organized crime, where the
most powerful mobsters settled disputes between other gangs of criminals. Similarly, if a criminal
gang is robbed by one of its own members, the mafia would go after the guilty party; the FBI plays
this role for Wall Street institutions targeted by con artists and fraudsters. Compare and contrast
a pharmaceutical company making opiates which is targeted by thieves vs. a black market drug cartel
targeted by thieves. In one case, the FBI investigates; in the other, a violent vendetta ensues
(such as street murders in Mexico).
The FBI executives are rewarded for this service with lucrative post-retirement careers within
corporate America – Louis Freeh went to credit card fraudster, MBNA, Richard Mueller to a corporate
Washington law firm, WilmerHale, and Comey, before Obama picked him as Director, worked for Lockheed
Martin and HSBC (cleaning up after their $2 billion drug cartel marketing scandal) after leaving
the FBI in 2005.
Maybe this is legitimate, but this only applies to their protection of the interests of large
corporations – as the 2008 economic collapse and aftermath showed, they don't prosecute corporate
executives who rip off poor people and middle-class homeowners. Banks who rob people, they aren't
investigated or prosecuted; that's just for people who rob banks.
When it comes to political issues and national security, however, the FBI has such a terrible
record on so many issues over the years that anything they claim has to be taken with a grain
or two of salt. Consider domestic political activity: from the McCarthyite 'Red Scare' of the
1950s to COINTELPRO in the 1960s and 1970s to targeting of environmental groups in the 1980s and
1990s to targeting anti-war protesters under GW Bush to their obsession with domestic mass surveillance
under Obama, it's not a record that should inspire any confidence.
Some say they have a key role to play in national security and terrorism – but their record
on the 2001 anthrax attacks is incredibly shady and suspicious. The final suspect, Bruce Ivins,
is clearly innocent of the crime, just as their previous suspect, Steven Hatfill was. Ivins, if
still alive, could have won a similar multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit against the FBI.
All honest bioweapons experts know this to be true – the perpetrators of those anthrax letters
are still at large, and may very well have had close associations with the Bush Administration
itself.
As far as terrorist activities? Many of their low-level agents did seem concerned about the
Saudis and bin Laden in the late 1990s and pre-9/11 – but Saudi investigations were considered
politically problematic due to "geostrategic relationships with our Saudi allies" – hence people
like John O'Neil and Coleen Rowley were sidelined and ignored, with disastrous consequences. The
Saudi intelligence agency role in 9/11 was buried for over a decade, as well. Since 9/11, most
of the FBI investigations seem to have involved recruiting mentally disabled young Islamic men
in sting operations in which the FBI provides everything needed. You could probably get any number
of mentally ill homeless people across the U.S., regardless of race or religion, to play this
role.
Comey's actions over the past year are certainly highly questionable, as well. Neglecting to
investigate the Clinton Foundation ties to Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments and corporations,
particularly things like State Department approval of various arms deals in which bribes may have
been paid, is as much a dereliction of duty as neglecting to investigate Trump ties to Russian
business interests – but then, Trump has a record of shady business dealings dating back to the
1970s, of strange bankruptcies and bailouts and government sales that the FBI never looked at
either.
Ultimately, this is because FBI executives are paid off not to investigate Wall Street criminality,
nor shady U.S. government activity, with lucrative positions as corporate board members and so
on after their 'retirements'. I don't doubt that many of their junior members mean well and are
dedicated to their jobs – but the fish rots from the head down.
As far as terrorist activities? Many of their low-level agents did seem concerned about
the Saudis and bin Laden in the late 1990s and pre-9/11 – but Saudi investigations were considered
politically problematic due to "geostrategic relationships with our Saudi allies" – hence people
like John O'Neil and Coleen Rowley were sidelined and ignored, with disastrous consequences.
The Clinton Administration had other priorities. You know, I think I'll let ex-FBI Director
Freeh explain what happened when the FBI tried to get the Saudis to cooperate with their investigation
into the bombing of the Khobar Towers.
"That September, Crown Prince Abdullah and his entourage took over the entire 143-room Hay-Adams
Hotel, just across from Lafayette Park from the White House, for six days. The visit, I figured,
was pretty much our last chance. Again, we prepared talking points for the president. Again,
I contacted Prince Bandar and asked him to soften up the crown prince for the moment when Clinton,
-- or Al Gore I didn't care who -- would raise the matter and start to exert the necessary pressure."
"The story that came back to me, from "usually reliable sources," as they say in Washington,
was that Bill Clinton briefly raised the subject only to tell the Crown Prince that he certainly
understood the Saudis; reluctance to cooperate. Then, according to my sources, he hit Abdullah
up for a contribution to the still-to-be-built Clinton presidential library. Gore, who was
supposed to press hardest of all in his meeting with the crown Prince, barely mentioned the
matter, I was told." -Louis J. Freeh, My FBI (2005)
In my defense I picked the book up to see if there was any dirt on the DNC's electoral funding
scandal in 1996. I'm actually glad I did. The best part of the book is when Freeh recounts running
into a veteran of the Lincoln Brigade and listens to how Hoover's FBI ruined his life despite
having broken no laws. As if a little thing like laws mattered to Hoover. The commies were after
our precious bodily fluids!
I'm not sure there are many functioning norms left within the national political leadership.
Seemed to me Gingrich started blowing those up and it just got worse from there. McConnell not
allowing Garland to be considered comes to mind
Thanks to Mark Ames now we know what Pres. Trump meant when he tweeted about his tapes with
AG Comey. Not some taped conversation between Pres. Trump & AG Comey but bunch of kompromat tapes
that AG Comey has provided Pres. Trump that might not make departing AG Comey looked so clean.
"... And I have yet to hear a mainstream journo challenge or question that word or ask what could
be at stake that requires protective secrecy even as the U.S. government seemingly threatens to collapse
around Michael Flynn, America's national security advisor for three weeks, and his relationship to Russia.
Is there really any there there? ..."
"... I'm not suggesting that there isn't, or that it's all fake news. Trump and pals are undoubtedly
entwined financially with Russian oligarchs, which of course is deeply problematic. And maybe there's
more. And maybe some of that "more" is arguably classified for a valid reason, but I want, at the very
least, to know why it's classified. What I read and hear feels, instead, like collusion: journalists
unquestioningly honoring bureaucratic keep-out signs as objective, even sacred, stopping points. Public
knowledge must go no further because . . . you know, national security. But the drama continues! ..."
"... And this is troubling to me because, for starters, nations built on secrecy are far more unstable
than those that aren't. ..."
"... The United States is engaged in endless war, at unbelievable and never-discussed cost, to no
end except destruction in all directions. Those who have launched and perpetuated the wars remain the
determiners of what's classified and what isn't. And Russia lurks silently in the background as a new
Cold War gestates. And the media participate not in reporting the news but promoting the drama. ..."
"... Occasionally this has not been the case. Remember the Pentagon Papers? Daniel Ellsberg photocopied
a multi-thousand-page secret history of the Vietnam War in 1971 and handed it over to the New York Times.
It was classified! But papers printed it. And Sen. Mike Gravel later read portions of the text aloud
at a Senate subcommittee hearing. ..."
"... "These portions," notes history.com , "revealed that the presidential administrations of Harry
S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had all misled the public about
the degree of US involvement in Vietnam, from Truman's decision to give military aid to France during
its struggle against the communist-led Viet Minh to Johnson's development of plans to escalate the war
in Vietnam as early as 1964, even as he claimed the opposite during that year's presidential election."
..."
"... Our own government, in short, is as untrustworthy as the governments of our allies and our
enemies. Government officials left to operate free of public scrutiny – bereft of public input – have
proven themselves over and over to be shockingly shortsighted and cold-blooded in their decision-making,
and indifferent to the impact they have on the future. ..."
"... "It is nearly a truism," writes Jeffrey Sachs , "that US wars of regime change have rarely
served America's security needs. Even when the wars succeed in overthrowing a government, as in the
case of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Moammar Khadafy in Libya, the result
is rarely a stable government, and is more often a civil war. ..."
Classified America: Why Is the US Public Allowed To Know So Little?
by Robert Koehler
, May 13, 2017
Print This | Share This
For a journalist – especially one covering government and politics – the most suspicious, least
trustworthy word in the language ought to be: "classified."
As the drama continues to swirl around Russiagate, or whatever the central controversy of the
Trump administration winds up being known as, that word keeps popping up, teasingly, seductively:
"It appeared that there was a great deal more (former acting Attorney General Sally) Yates wished
she could share," the
Washington Post informed us the other day, for instance, "but most of the information surrounding
everything that happened remains classified."
And the drama continues! And I have yet to hear a mainstream journo challenge or question
that word or ask what could be at stake that requires protective secrecy even as the U.S. government
seemingly threatens to collapse around Michael Flynn, America's national security advisor for three
weeks, and his relationship to Russia. Is there really any there there?
I'm not suggesting that there isn't, or that it's all fake news. Trump and pals are undoubtedly
entwined financially with Russian oligarchs, which of course is deeply problematic. And maybe there's
more. And maybe some of that "more" is arguably classified for a valid reason, but I want, at the
very least, to know why it's classified. What I read and hear feels, instead, like collusion:
journalists unquestioningly honoring bureaucratic keep-out signs as objective, even sacred, stopping
points. Public knowledge must go no further because . . . you know, national security. But the drama
continues!
And this is troubling to me because, for starters, nations built on secrecy are far more unstable
than those that aren't. Job #1 of a free, independent media is the full-on, continuous challenge
to government secrecy. Such a media understands that it answers to the public, or rather, that it's
a manifestation of the public will. Stability and freedom are not the result of private tinkering.
And peace is something created openly. The best of who we are is contained in the public soul, not
bequeathed to us by unfathomably wise leaders.
So I cringe every time I hear the news stop at the word "classified." Indeed, in the Trump era,
it seems like a plot device: a way to maintain the drama. ". . . there was a great deal more Yates
wished she could share, but most of the information surrounding everything that happened remains
classified."
Stay tuned, and keep your imaginations turned to high! This is Russia we're talking about. They
messed with our election. They "attacked" us in cyberspace. We'd tell you more about how bad things
are, but . . . you know, national security.
If nothing else, this endless retreat behind the word "classified" is a waste of the Trump presidency.
This administration's recklessness is opening all sorts of random doors on national secrets that
need airing. It's not as though the country was sailing along smoothly and keeping the world safe
and peaceful till Donald Trump showed up.
Trump could well be making a bad situation worse, but, as
William Hartung pointed out: "After all, he inherited no less than seven conflicts from Barack
Obama: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen."
The United States is engaged in endless war, at unbelievable and never-discussed cost, to
no end except destruction in all directions. Those who have launched and perpetuated the wars remain
the determiners of what's classified and what isn't. And Russia lurks silently in the background
as a new Cold War gestates. And the media participate not in reporting the news but promoting the
drama.
Occasionally this has not been the case. Remember the Pentagon Papers? Daniel Ellsberg photocopied
a multi-thousand-page secret history of the Vietnam War in 1971 and handed it over to the New York
Times. It was classified! But papers printed it. And Sen. Mike Gravel later read portions of the
text aloud at a Senate subcommittee hearing.
"These portions," notes
history.com
, "revealed that the presidential administrations of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John
F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had all misled the public about the degree of US involvement in
Vietnam, from Truman's decision to give military aid to France during its struggle against the communist-led
Viet Minh to Johnson's development of plans to escalate the war in Vietnam as early as 1964, even
as he claimed the opposite during that year's presidential election."
Our own government, in short, is as untrustworthy as the governments of our allies and our
enemies. Government officials left to operate free of public scrutiny – bereft of public input –
have proven themselves over and over to be shockingly shortsighted and cold-blooded in their decision-making,
and indifferent to the impact they have on the future.
"It is nearly a truism," writes
Jeffrey Sachs , "that US wars of regime change have rarely served America's security needs. Even
when the wars succeed in overthrowing a government, as in the case of the Taliban in Afghanistan,
Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Moammar Khadafy in Libya, the result is rarely a stable government, and
is more often a civil war. A 'successful' regime change often lights a long fuse leading to
a future explosion, such as the 1953 overthrow of Iran's democratically elected government and installation
of the autocratic Shah of Iran, which was followed by the Iranian Revolution of 1979."
All of this, and so much more, preceded Trump. He's only the tail end of our troubles.
By pushing the envelope CIA essentially armed terrorists is effective techniques of avoiding electronic
eavedropping....
Notable quotes:
"... Terrorists now know that using cell phones is dangerous, that transferring money using commercial accounts can be detected, that moving around when a drone is overhead can be fatal, and that communicating by computer is likely to be intercepted and exposed even when encrypted. ..."
"... So they rely on couriers to communicate and move money while also avoiding the use of the vulnerable technologies whenever they can, sometimes using public phones and computers only when they are many miles away from their operational locations, and changing addresses, SIM cards, and telephone numbers frequently to confuse the monitoring. ..."
America's high-tech spies aren't equipped to penetrate low-tech terrorist organizations
Terrorists now know that using cell phones is dangerous, that transferring money using commercial
accounts can be detected, that moving around when a drone is overhead can be fatal, and that communicating
by computer is likely to be intercepted and exposed even when encrypted.
So they rely on couriers to communicate and move money while also avoiding the use of the
vulnerable technologies whenever they can, sometimes using public phones and computers only when
they are many miles away from their operational locations, and changing addresses, SIM cards, and
telephone numbers frequently to confuse the monitoring.
Technical intelligence has another limitation: while it is excellent on picking up bits and pieces
and using sophisticated computers to work through the bulk collection of chatter, it is largely unable
to learn the intentions of terrorist groups and leaders. To do that you need spies, ideally someone
who is placed in the inner circle of an organization and who is therefore privy to decision making.
Since 9/11 U.S. intelligence has had a poor record in recruiting agents to run inside terrorist
organizations-or even less toxic groups that are similarly structured-in places like Afghanistan,
Iraq, and Syria. Information collected relating to the internal workings of al-Qaeda, the Taliban,
dissident Sunni groups in Iraq, and now ISIS has been, to say the least, disappointing. To be fair
this is often because security concerns
limit the ability
of American case officers to operate in areas that are considered too dangerous,
which is generally speaking where the terrorist targets are actually located. Also, hostile groups
frequently run their operations through franchise arrangements where much of the decision making
is both local and funded without large cash transfers from a central organization, making the activity
hard to detect.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National
Interest.
Gabbard is right to be skeptical of the usefulness and righteousness of missile strikes, but deeply
stupid to carry water for the denials by Assad and the Russian state media about complicity for
the chemical weapons attacks.
Anne, real skepticism is when you question your own heroes and assumptions.
it's obvious that Conway was reading about the wikileaks
release of the CIA's Vault 7, which shows they have the
capability of remotely turning over the counter smart phones
and TVs into spying devices...the release was widely covered
in the foreign press, not so much here..
1) The CIA has the ability to break into Android and
iPhone handsets, and all kinds of computers. The US
intelligence agency has been involved in a concerted effort
to write various kinds of malware to spy on just about every
piece of electronic equipment that people use. That includes
iPhones, Androids and computers running Windows, macOS and
Linux.
2) Doing so would make apps like Signal, Telegram and
WhatsApp entirely insecure Encrypted messaging apps are only
as secure as the device they are used on – if an operating
system is compromised, then the messages can be read before
they encrypted and sent to the other user. WikiLeaks claims
that has happened, potentially meaning that messages have
been compromised even if all of the usual precautions had
been taken.
3) The CIA could use smart TVs to listen in on
conversations that happened around them. One of the most
eye-catching programmes detailed in the documents is "Weeping
Angel". That allows intelligence agencies to install special
software that allows TVs to be turned into listening devices
– so that even when they appear to be switched off, they're
actually on.
4) The agency explored hacking into cars and crashing
them, allowing 'nearly undetectable assassinations'
5) The CIA hid vulnerabilities that could be used by
hackers from other countries or governments Such bugs were
found in the biggest consumer electronics in the world,
including phones and computers made Apple, Google and
Microsoft. But those companies didn't get the chance to fix
those exploits because the agency kept them secret in order
to keep using them, the documents suggest.
6) More information is coming. The documents have still
not been looked through entirely. There are 8,378 pages of
files, some of which have already been analyzed but many of
which hasn't. When taken together, those "Vault 7" leaks will
make up the biggest intelligence publication in history,
WikiLeaks claimed.
Am I alone in thinking that Preet
Bharara, the just fired US Attorney for Southern District of New York, would be the ideal Special
Prosecutor of the Trump - Russia investigation
Bharara did not push back against "too big to prosecute" and sat out the biggest white collar
crime wave in the history of the world, so why is he such a saint?
I don't think you considered the bigger picture here which includes in Bharara's case his bosses
to whom he would have to had run any cases up the flag pole for approval and Obama and Company
were not at the time into frying Wall Street for their crimes b/c they were into restarting the
Bush/Cheney damaged, almost ruined, US and global Economy.
If you did not noticed Vault 7 scandal completely overtook everything else now. This is a
real game changer.
Just think, how many million if not billion dollars this exercise in removing the
last traces of democracy from the USA and converting us into a new Democratic Republic of Germany,
where everybody was controlled by STASI, cost. And those money were spend for what ?
BTW the Stasi was one of the most hated and feared institutions of the East German government.
If this is not the demonstration of huge and out of civil control raw power of "deep state"
I do not know what is.
If you are not completely detached from really you should talk about Vault 7. This is huge,
Snowden size scandal that is by the order of magnitude more important for the country then all
those mostly fake hints on connections of Trump and, especially "Russian hacking".
Tell me who stole the whole arsenal of CIA hacking tools with all the manuals? Were those
people Russians?
If not, you should print your last post, shred is and eat it with borsch ;-).
In the world of intelligence false flag operations is a standard tactics. Now what ? Difficult
situation for a Midwesterner...
libezkova -> libezkova...
Another difficult to stomach hypothesis:
"Boris and Natasha" version of hacking might well be a false flag operation. How about developing
Russian-looking hacking tools in CIA? To plant fingerprints and get the warrant for monitoring
Trump communications.
VAULT 7: CIA Staged Fake Russian Hacking to Set Up Trump - Russian Cyber-Attack M.O. As False
Flag
"The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy. Means are important, as ends. Crisis
makes it tempting to ignore the wise restraints that make men free. But each time we do so, each
time the means we use are wrong, our inner strength, the strength which makes us free, is lessened."
- Sen. Frank Church
WikiLeaks Press Release
Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency. Code-named "Vault 7" by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential
documents on the agency.
The first full part of the series, "Year Zero", comprises 8,761 documents and files from an
isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley,
Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties
and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.
Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses,
trojans, weaponized "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation.
This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code,
gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated
among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has
provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.
"Year Zero" introduces the scope and direction of the CIA's global covert hacking program,
its malware arsenal and dozens of "zero day" weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S.
and European company products, include Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows
and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.
Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security
Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very
different type of covert, globe-spanning force - its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency's
hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA
(its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA's hacking capacities.
CIA corrupted, fasle flags, FBI, inversion, kellyanne conway, Left wing protest,
legacy of ashes, Obama is CIA, Obama spying, Pompeo, Snowden, Tillerson, Vault 7, wiretapping
H. Clyde Disney March 9, 2017 at 12:54 pm
Dr. Pieczenik, I tried watching this interview on the InfoWars site. It was Un-watchable.
Alex interrupts you and all his guests so often that I am embarrassed for both him and his
guests. I do enjoy InforWars, but it is getting hard for me to sit through a show, even when
he has people like you and Roger Stone. Very distracting
Have you, or anybody else ever diplomatically brought this up to him?
Dr. Steve, you should make your own videos more often.
Kathleen Rossi March 9, 2017 at 6:55 pm
I absolutely agree. With all due respect for Alex, he can't keep quiet long enough for you
to finish your sentence. He takes you off point and on to other things that DON'T MATTER or
have been long past discussed and we leave your video's knowing no more then when we started.
I can barely stand watching any of his videos any longer. This is NOT about how great Alex and
InfoWars is, it is about getting this important info out to the public.
There are MANY outlets out there that paved the way for where we are today and many would
love to interview you and actually let you talk! Please do more personal video's if you are
serious about getting this info out there.
InfoWars is fast becoming unbearable and I speak for a lot of people. Thank You.
Paul Garozzo March 9, 2017 at 4:18 pm
Doc, you are an inspiration to us and by far the most credible & knowledgeable person
speaking in the alt media or of course anywhere. Your the right stuff! Would love to hear you
interview with Shaun at sgtreport.com.
He has a growing following and said he would love to have you on uninterrupted. Please
consider and thanks for all you do.
"... Trump at least seems to have a problem with him or his associates being spied on lately. ..."
"... Nothing can be done because the intelligence services are in the privileged position of being able to sabotage anybody's political career. So everyone keeps going through the motions of simulating free will while actually only doing as they're told. And it will only get worse so brace for it. ..."
"... So essentially, the 3 letter agencies are not accountable to the US government. They can lie, cheat and hide information at will without any kind of consequence. They are running the show. ..."
"... The US people has completely lost control over their governance. The constitution is a totally empty shell. ..."
"... You would need more then just IP's to make that determination - anyone with a VPN can have an American IP address, same with TOR exit nodes. ..."
"... The heads of these agencies knows if they ever say any number, that will be the end due to outrage. There is little to be gained, unless they are sent to prison. If I were a senator, I'd give immunity to some of the whistle blowers to find the truth. Give them a chance to testify about their bosses. ..."
"... If they're scanning the backbone, AND checking the main sites people go to, that's pretty danged close to everybody. ..."
"... The evasiveness is deceptive in and of itself. When the NSA says it "would require the Intelligence Community to conduct exhaustive analysis of every unknown identifier in order to determine whether they are being used inside or outside the U.S." that's because they don't even count the data as "collected" unless an analyst looked at it. Recorded? Doesn't count. Searched by computer programs for keywords or pattern matching? Doesn't count. A human looked at it? Ok, that counts. ..."
"... By our definition, which says if you put the data in your database and use it when running searches, that data has been collected, there's no doubt the number is nearly the same as the US population, discounting only people with no online presence (e.g. infants). ..."
In 2013, a National Security Agency contractor named Edward Snowden revealed US surveillance programs
that involved the massive and warrantless gathering of Americans' electronic communications. Two
of the programs, called
Upstream and
Prism , are allowed under
Section 702 of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act. That section expires at year's end, and President Donald Trump's administration,
like his predecessor's administration, wants the law renewed so those snooping programs can continue.
That said, even as the administration
seeks renewal
of the programs , Congress and the public have been left in the dark regarding questions surrounding
how many Americans' electronic communications have been ensnared under the programs. Congress won't
be told in a classified setting either, despite repeated requests.
If a government employee is not answering questions to the comittees regarding these issues, what
measures can the comitties take to force an answer? Can they impeach, or compel testimony? Can
they throw somebodies ass in jail until the question gets answered? 3033 posts | registered 9/20/2006
Thing is, we all know two things:
1) the number is 300 million +
2) the "esteemed" members of congress are singled out for special surveillance
As a result, the only possible outcome is the same procedure as all the previous times: congress
rolls over. As should everyone's eyes who is watching this elaborate kabuki performance... 3189
posts | registered 7/7/2006
Yeah, you're not going to see anybody in the Federal Government really stopping this, no matter
their party.
Trump at least seems to have a problem with him or his associates being spied on lately.
Not sure how he feels about ordinary Americans /s. 1635 posts | registered 10/1/2013
If a government employee is not answering questions to the comittees regarding these issues,
what measures can the comitties take to force an answer? Can they impeach, or compel testimony?
Can they throw somebodies ass in jail until the question gets answered?
Nothing can be done because the intelligence services are in the privileged position of being
able to sabotage anybody's political career. So everyone keeps going through the motions of simulating
free will while actually only doing as they're told. And it will only get worse so brace for it.
If a government employee is not answering questions to the comittees regarding these issues,
what measures can the comitties take to force an answer? Can they impeach, or compel testimony?
Can they throw somebodies ass in jail until the question gets answered?
The lack of overnight issue was attempted in the 1970's with the Church Committee.
The American people don't know and don't care to know. John Conyers really need to focus on
the things that matter, like stopping Detroit from sinking into the abyss; getting jobs for
his constituents; lowering the amount of kids being born out of wedlock and preventing them
from killing each other over trivial things like clothes and being disrespected.
So essentially, the 3 letter agencies are not accountable to the US government. They can lie,
cheat and hide information at will without any kind of consequence. They are running the show.
The US people has completely lost control over their governance. The constitution is a totally
empty shell.
So essentially, the 3 letter agencies are not accountable to the US government.
The US people has completely lost control over their governance. The constitution is a totally
empty shell.
Its more that staff feel Congress has no oversight as who they work for did not get established
by Congress. The question of oversight authority was used to avoid questions until the 1970's.
Small nitpick to the author. You do know that having that particular picture on there constitutes
a spillage for every single DoD and Federal employee that clicks on the article to read it
right?
And this is exactly why it should stay up. These agencies behavior is creating this for themselves.
No over sight no funding, who ever signs the check is on the hook. The fed budget needs to reflect
this. Someone signed off on authority to operate.
I would assume that they're collecting IP addresses along with this traffic. Couldn't that
be used to generate at least a rough estimate of the number of US citizens targeted? Is there
another way to generate a good estimate?
You would need more then just IP's to make that determination - anyone with a VPN can have
an American IP address, same with TOR exit nodes.
This number would be completely useless. You'd have to cross reference the IP with a bunch
of other data and that leads to a catch-22: you'd have to maintain a database of American data
to be able to detect when you have American data so you can not keep it except what you have in
your database of American data that you use to detect American data so you can not keep it.
So essentially, the 3 letter agencies are not accountable to the US government. They can lie,
cheat and hide information at will without any kind of consequence. They are running the show.
The US people has completely lost control over their governance. The constitution is a totally
empty shell.
Vast bureaucracies have a life of their own, detached from the earthly proclivities of democractic
transitions.
Still, US spies say they don't track the number of Americans caught in this dragnet, in part
to protect Americans' privacy. Performing this task would require spies to de-anonymize phone
numbers and IP addresses to determine whether they're American, according to April Doss, a
former NSA lawyer who testified (PDF) before the House Judiciary Committee on March 1.
This seems to imply that they're reading the request to "get the count of Americans monitored"
extremely literally, interpreting it as "get the exact number of Americans".
The NSA has some very good mathematicians - they should easily be able to give a pretty highly
accurate estimate using the sample data they already have from when they've de-anonymized targeted
persons.
You are literally saying that 5 million people are bad. You sound retarded.
I think he literally said the agencies' behavior is bad, which is literally not the same thing
as saying everyone who works for them is. Are you a DoD or Federal employee?
Still, US spies say they don't track the number of Americans caught in this dragnet, in part
to protect Americans' privacy. Performing this task would require spies to de-anonymize phone
numbers and IP addresses to determine whether they're American, according to April Doss, a former
NSA lawyer who testified (PDF) before the House Judiciary Committee on March 1.
This seems to imply that they're reading the request to "get the count of Americans monitored"
extremely literally, interpreting it as "get the exact number of Americans".
The NSA has some very good mathematicians - they should easily be able to give a pretty highly
accurate estimate using the sample data they already have from when they've de-anonymized targeted
persons, +/-10%.
This estimate I'm sure was rolling around in the head of someone at the table.
The whole point of the system is to provide information that they're requesting, literally how
computers work.
Stonewalling Congress needs to be a good way to find an agency with out funding or mandate.
Instead it's more like Kanye stealing the mic at the grammys, but with more chest medals.
Do you have some context for 5 million people, this comment is an island not found on any map.
The 5.1 million people number? Its amount of people who held some US government security clearance
as of around 2013. Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, Gov staff, Contractors as a total.
We should send them to Guantanamo Bay until they talk and cut their funding 50%. The US
Govt is supposed to work FOR US citizens. Something has gone wrong. People need to be held accountable.
Spying on everyone is NOT ok without an individual, specific, tied-to-location, warrant signed
by a judge outside some secret court.
PERIOD.
The heads of these agencies knows if they ever say any number, that will be the end due
to outrage. There is little to be gained, unless they are sent to prison. If I were a senator,
I'd give immunity to some of the whistle blowers to find the truth. Give them a chance to testify
about their bosses.
Seems like it would be a minor exercise to analyze a valid sample of their intercepts and to project
with enough accuracy to answer the question.
A cynic might suspect that the answer to, "How many Americans' electronic communications have
been ensnared under the programs?" may well be, "All of them."
The American people don't know and don't care to know. John Conyers really need to focus on
the things that matter, like stopping Detroit from sinking into the abyss; getting jobs for
his constituents; lowering the amount of kids being born out of wedlock and preventing them
from killing each other over trivial things like clothes and being disrespected.
I agree with a part of your sentiment but feel, maybe wrongly, that you are also hiding racism
behind those words.
The part that I agree with - most people don't care enough about spying programs or which 3
letter agency is scanning their ass. You can probably get 100 million Americans to sign a petition
on facebook or twitter or your neighborhood supermarket and only because those are low investment
options. There is nothing wrong with such an existential position; I am guilty of that for most
part of the day. If the scanning keeps me "safe" and I have nothing to hide, why bother?
Now, you will get a lot more people involved if such scanning led to prosecution for the little
technical crimes we do every day of our life; until then this will continue if only with another
name. 139 posts | registered 5/9/2012
I would assume that they're collecting IP addresses along with this traffic. Couldn't that
be used to generate at least a rough estimate of the number of US citizens targeted? Is there
another way to generate a good estimate?
"Another way to generate a good estimate?" Certainly. Go to the US Census Bureau. They can get
you real close. Or just google it. As of 2014, it was 318.4million
If they're scanning the backbone, AND checking the main sites people go to, that's pretty
danged close to everybody.
I'm sure Feinstein has her rubber stamp out. There is no request from NSA/CIA that she doesn't
love.
Grrrrrr...
Don't vote for her again, I know I won't. Just got an email from Feinstein's office today with
a laundry list of ways she is opposing Trump and his picks, no mention of national security issues.
Im sure that Feinstein and the current Administration will come together on National Security
- in their view its about "protecting American's" which I read as "covering my ass on my watch".
If a government employee is not answering questions to the comittees regarding these issues,
what measures can the comitties take to force an answer? Can they impeach, or compel testimony?
Can they throw somebodies ass in jail until the question gets answered?
They could start cutting budgets, but that won't happen.
"Congress and the public have been left in the dark regarding questions surrounding how many Americans'
electronic communications have been ensnared under the programs."
how is this acceptable? how are these programs still running period? where is the outcry?
why wont they tell? because its not about "dragnet casualties," they're not accidentally spying
on Americans, they've got a system they use to spy on who they want when they want to
Its insane that these organizations can lie to the people, to their own gov't, and not get torn
down
Its amount of people who held some US government security clearance as of around 2013.
Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, Gov staff, Contractors as a total. And how many of them are
responsible for signing off on carte blanche spying on Americans with 0 oversight. Since
clearance is on a need to know basis, did that many people need to know? I see you looking to
divide and conquer here, you just end up sounding guilty. 5.1 million people wanted a paycheck
while serving their country and deserve one. Around 500 elected officials are letting a select
few ruin all of this for rest of us because rules are 'unamerican.'
This is what happens 20 years after 'rules kill jobs' the same business leaders who didn't need
rules 'cause jobs' now don't need rules as government appointees.
I would assume that they're collecting IP addresses along with this traffic. Couldn't that
be used to generate at least a rough estimate of the number of US citizens targeted? Is there
another way to generate a good estimate?
We cannot provide an answer to your request, Senator, simply because we don't know the answer.
Should we ever embark upon data analysis that would provide the answer you're seeking, such action
would constitute an unnecessary and unwarranted intrusion on the privacy of U.S. persons; without
specific statutory authorization, it would likely also be unlawful, since it would be both intrusive
and unrelated to any need for foreign intelligence gathering.
And we don't want to act in any manner that may be regarded as unlawful ... unless Congress were
to provide authorization for us to do so ...
Then there is the matter of resource allocation: current budgets constrain us from embarking upon
such a program of data analysis, in terms of both the hardware and human resources that such a
program would require.
Estimates on the additional funding that such a program would require have been developed, however
these budgetary requirements cannot be released to Congress, as they are classified. Should Congress
decide to provide both authorization and funding for such a program, we can advise on the number
of zeros ( "0" ) that the funding authorization should include.
In summary, Senator, it would appear that "the ball is entirely in your court" so to speak ...
The evasiveness is deceptive in and of itself. When the NSA says it "would require the Intelligence
Community to conduct exhaustive analysis of every unknown identifier in order to determine whether
they are being used inside or outside the U.S." that's because they don't even count the data
as "collected" unless an analyst looked at it. Recorded? Doesn't count. Searched by computer programs
for keywords or pattern matching? Doesn't count. A human looked at it? Ok, that counts.
By this definition, they should be able to produce a deceptively low number, perhaps thousands
to tens of thousands per year.
By our definition, which says if you put the data in your database and use it when running
searches, that data has been collected, there's no doubt the number is nearly the same as the
US population, discounting only people with no online presence (e.g. infants).
In any case, the fact that they have prevaricated about this for the past 6 years makes pretty
clear that the answer will not look good. It's time to end these programs. If they want them renewed,
the replacements will need real oversight.
"... The CIA reports show the USG developing vulnerabilities in US products, then intentionally keeping the holes open. Reckless beyond words. ..."
"... Evidence mounts showing CIA & FBI knew about catastrophic weaknesses in the most-used smartphones in America, but kept them open -- to spy. ..."
"... So the CIA was doing the NSA's job, dropped the ball and let the weapons out to the world. I wonder if they were using these "tools" domestically outside of their mandate? As an agency you couldn't be more incompetent. Does anyone understand how much security they (CIA) have just compromised? This is so serous it's insane. ..."
"... The issue is now all that software is running on nearly every computer out there. Every computer in the current paradigm is considered a security risk. ..."
"... Android is Linux based as well as the routers that have been reportedly compromised use Linux as a Operating system. Nothing has been spared. ..."
"... Now if IBM Mainframes are compromised it means, Banks, Insurance, and other behemoths (they mostly use IBM Main Frames for their back-end functions) maybe ticking time bombs. Scary shit. ..."
While it has been
superficially covered by much of the press - and one can make the argument that what Julian Assange
has revealed is more relevant to the US population, than constant and so far unconfirmed speculation
that Trump is a puppet of Putin - the fallout from the Wikileaks' "Vault 7" release this morning
of thousands of documents demonstrating the extent to which the CIA uses backdoors to hack smartphones,
computer operating systems, messenger applications and internet-connected televisions, will be profound.
As evidence of this, the
WSJ cites an intelligence source who said that " the revelations were far more significant than
the leaks of Edward Snowden ."
Mr. Snowden's leaks revealed names of programs, companies that assist the NSA in surveillance
and in some cases the targets of American spying. But the recent leak purports to contain highly
technical details about how surveillance is carried out. That would make them far more revealing
and useful to an adversary, this person said. In one sense, Mr. Snowden provided a briefing book
on U.S. surveillance, but the CIA leaks could provide the blueprints.
Speaking of Snowden, the former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower, who now appears to have a
"parallel whisteblower" deep inside the "Deep State", i.e., the source of the Wikileaks data - also
had some thoughts on today's CIA dump.
In a series of tweets, Snowden notes that "what @Wikileaks has here is genuinely a big deal",
and makes the following key observations "If you're writing about the CIA/@Wikileaks story, here's
the big deal: first public evidence USG secretly paying to keep US software unsafe " and adds that
"the CIA reports show the USG developing vulnerabilities in US products, then intentionally keeping
the holes open. Reckless beyond words ."
He then asks rhetorically "Why is this dangerous?" and explains " Because until closed, any hacker
can use the security hole the CIA left open to break into any iPhone in the world. "
His conclusion, one which many of the so-called conspiratorial bent would say was well-known long
ago: " Evidence mounts showing CIA & FBI knew about catastrophic weaknesses in the most-used smartphones
in America, but kept them open -- to spy. "
To which the increasingly prevalent response has become: "obviously."
Still working through the publication, but what
@Wikileaks has here is genuinely a big
deal. Looks authentic.
If you're writing about the CIA/ @Wikileaks
story, here's the big deal: first public evidence USG secretly paying to keep US software unsafe.
pic.twitter.com/kYi0NC2mOp
Why is this dangerous? Because until closed, any hacker can use the security hole the CIA left
open to break into any iPhone in the world. https://t.co/xK0aILAdFI
Evidence mounts showing CIA & FBI knew about catastrophic weaknesses in the most-used smartphones
in America, but kept them open -- to spy. https://t.co/mDyVred3H8
So the CIA was doing the NSA's job, dropped the ball and let the weapons out to the world.
I wonder if they were using these "tools" domestically outside of their mandate? As an agency
you couldn't be more incompetent. Does anyone understand how much security they (CIA) have just
compromised? This is so serous it's insane.
Why do you think the geek community decided to go develop their own tools in parallel (Linux,
BitCoin, DevOps platforms, etc)? We knew, we complained, we got shut down. The issue is now all
that software is running on nearly every computer out there. Every computer in the current paradigm
is considered a security risk.
It also means the insurance industry now has to pull out of all insurance guarantees on engineered
systems with an ISO certification for every industry. It's a fucked up mess that's going to cost
tens of trillions of dollars to migrate and patch every existing system on the planet.
Android is Linux based as well as the routers that have been reportedly compromised use Linux
as a Operating system. Nothing has been spared. I believe IOS is UNix based (or IOS is just IOS)
so that one is compromised as well. Now if UNIX is compromised that means (potentially) that IBM
mainframes are compromised.
Now if IBM Mainframes are compromised it means, Banks, Insurance,
and other behemoths (they mostly use IBM Main Frames for their back-end functions) maybe ticking
time bombs. Scary shit.
"... The elephant in the room is not privacy problems. It is blackmail for various purposes. ..."
"... This makes he US Government totally dysfunctional. the spread of such spy technique has created chaos. Latest news is that Democrats paid some hackers for not revealing their server information. ..."
"... I don't think this can be stopped. But we need more open discussion about blackmailing and thus protection from such methods. An elected President or Official should not have their private life discussed by the Media. It should be banned ..."
"... And Clinton never feared anything, probably because the CIA was in her pocket and could get the goods on anybody even Loretta Lynch. ..."
That the CIA has reached into the lives of all Americans through its wholesale gathering of the
nation's "haystack" of information has already been reported.
It is bad enough that the government spies on its own people. It is equally bad that the CIA,
through its incompetence, has opened the cyberdoor to anyone with the technological skills and connections
to spy on anyone else.
The constant erosion of privacy at the hands of the government and corporations has annihilated
the concept of a "right to privacy," which is embedded in the rationale of the First, Third, Fourth,
Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
It is becoming increasingly clear that we are sliding down the slippery slope toward totalitarianism,
where private lives do not exist.
We have entered a condition of constitutional crisis that requires a full-throated response from
the American people.
Before you label Kucinich as being overly-dramatic, you may want to note that Bill Binney – the
high-level NSA executive who created the agency's mass surveillance program for digital information,
the 36-year NSA veteran widely who was the senior technical director within the agency and managed
thousands of NSA employees –
told Washington's Blog that America has already become a police state.
And Thomas Drake – one of the top NSA executives, and Senior Change Leader within the NSA –
told us the same thing.
And Kirk Wiebe – a 32-year NSA veteran who received the Director CIA's Meritorious Unit Award
and the NSA's Meritorious Civilian Service Award – agrees (tweet via Jesselyn Radack, attorney for
many national security whistleblowers, herself a Department of Justice whistleblower):
It's not just NSA officials Two former
U.S. Supreme Court Justices have warned that America is sliding into tyranny.
The elephant in the room is not privacy problems. It is blackmail for various purposes.
We have many indications that politicians, judges, officials and even other intel organizations
are being blackmailed, and destroyed using lucid information from their private life.
This makes he US Government totally dysfunctional. the spread of such spy technique has
created chaos. Latest news is that Democrats paid some hackers for not revealing their server
information.
I don't think this can be stopped. But we need more open discussion about blackmailing
and thus protection from such methods. An elected President or Official should not have their
private life discussed by the Media. It should be banned.
Democrats like PGL are big defenders of the surveillance state and hate on Wikileaks. Why is
that? B/c they're anti-democratic and authoritarian. The NSA tapped Angela Merkel's phone. Way
to alienate our allies.
C.I.A. Scrambles to Contain Damage From WikiLeaks Documents
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, SCOTT SHANE and ADAM GOLDMAN
MARCH 8, 2017
WASHINGTON - The C.I.A. scrambled on Wednesday to assess and contain the damage from the release
by WikiLeaks of thousands of documents that cataloged the agency's cyberspying capabilities, temporarily
halting work on some projects while the F.B.I. turned to finding who was responsible for the leak.
Investigators say that the leak was the work not of a hostile foreign power like Russia but
of a disaffected insider, as WikiLeaks suggested when it released the documents Tuesday. The F.B.I.
was preparing to interview anyone who had access to the information, a group likely to include
at least a few hundred people, and possibly more than a thousand.
An intelligence official said the information, much of which appeared to be technical documents,
may have come from a server outside the C.I.A. managed by a contractor. But neither he nor a former
senior intelligence official ruled out the possibility that the leaker was a C.I.A. employee.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation into
classified information. The C.I.A. has refused to explicitly confirm the authenticity of the documents,
but it all but said they were genuine Wednesday when it took the unusual step of putting out a
statement to defend its work and chastise WikiLeaks.
The disclosures "equip our adversaries with tools and information to do us harm," said Ryan
Trapani, a spokesman for the C.I.A. He added that the C.I.A. is legally prohibited from spying
on individuals in the United States and "does not do so."
The leak was perhaps most awkward for the White House, which found itself criticizing WikiLeaks
less than six months after the group published embarrassing emails from John D. Podesta, the campaign
chairman for Hillary Clinton, prompting President Trump to declare at the time, "I love WikiLeaks."
Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, said the release of documents "should be something
that everybody is outraged about in this country."
There was, he added, a "massive, massive difference" between the leak of classified C.I.A.
cyberspying tools and personal emails of political figures.
The documents, taken at face value, suggest that American spies had designed hacking tools
that could breach almost anything connected to the internet - smartphones, computers, televisions
- and had even found a way to compromise Apple and Android devices. But whether the C.I.A. had
successfully built and employed them to conduct espionage remained unclear on Wednesday.
A number of cybersecurity experts and hackers expressed skepticism at the level of technical
wizardry that WikiLeaks claimed to uncover, and pointed out that much of what was described in
the documents was aimed at older devices that have known security flaws. One document, for instance,
discussed ways to quickly copy 3.5-inch floppy disks, a storage device so out of date that few
people younger than 35 have probably used one.
One indication that the documents did not contain information on the most highly sensitive
C.I.A. cyberespionage programs was that none of them appeared to be classified above the level
of "secret/noforn," which is a relatively low-level of classification.
The disclosures "equip our adversaries with tools and information to do us harm," said Ryan
Trapani, a spokesman for the C.I.A. He added that the C.I.A. is legally prohibited from spying
on individuals in the United States and "does not do so."
The leak was perhaps most awkward for the White House, which found itself criticizing WikiLeaks
less than six months after the group published embarrassing emails from John D. Podesta, the campaign
chairman for Hillary Clinton, prompting President Trump to declare at the time, "I love WikiLeaks."
Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, said the release of documents "should be something
that everybody is outraged about in this country."
There was, he added, a "massive, massive difference" between the leak of classified C.I.A.
cyberspying tools and personal emails of political figures.
The documents, taken at face value, suggest that American spies had designed hacking tools
that could breach almost anything connected to the internet - smartphones, computers, televisions
- and had even found a way to compromise Apple and Android devices. But whether the C.I.A. had
successfully built and employed them to conduct espionage remained unclear on Wednesday.
A number of cybersecurity experts and hackers expressed skepticism at the level of technical
wizardry that WikiLeaks claimed to uncover, and pointed out that much of what was described in
the documents was aimed at older devices that have known security flaws. One document, for instance,
discussed ways to quickly copy 3.5-inch floppy disks, a storage device so out of date that few
people younger than 35 have probably used one.
One indication that the documents did not contain information on the most highly sensitive
C.I.A. cyberespionage programs was that none of them appeared to be classified above the level
of "secret/noforn," which is a relatively low-level of classification.
On Feb. 16, WikiLeaks released what appeared to be a C.I.A. document laying out intelligence
questions about the coming French elections that agency analysts wanted answers to, either from
human spies or eavesdropping. When WikiLeaks released the cyberspying documents on Tuesday, it
described the earlier document as "an introductory disclosure."
Maybe, but the FBI is not prohibited and I'm sure they have access to the same tools the CIA has.
Peter K. - Are you comfortable with Wikileaks telling the world (and therefore the "bad guys")
exactly what we've been using to gather information and showing them how they can use the same
tools? Do you think that hurts America's security?
I'll grant you that there have been times I've been for some of the Wikileaks disclosures,
but on the whole (and expecially this), it harms our security.
The surveillance state is a deep subject. Without the military hegemony for which it is emblematic
would we then even have a threat of terrorism? The domestic surveillance state does little else
save maybe some counter-espionage against the other nuclear powers.
OTOH, it gave us the recently ended TV series "Person of Interest," which almost makes up for
the violations of our Bill of Rights (illegal search and potentially seizure). I kind of like
people knowing how automobile technology can be hacked to remotely control the family car. If
not for the competition to develop self-driving cars then I doubt most of the Wi-Fi enabled interfaces
would facilitate remote control, but rather just monitoring. It sounds like the game of grand
theft auto is about to be profoundly revised.
"The surveillance state is a deep subject. Without the military hegemony for which it is emblematic
would we then even have a threat of terrorism? The domestic surveillance state does little else
save maybe some counter-espionage against the other nuclear powers."
Agreed. We've interfered with impudence in the affairs of Central/South America and the Middle
East. We've assassinated leaders of other countries and propped up our little puppets in their
places. We staged a revolution to create the country of Panama, simply because we wanted to dig
a canal.
However, You're arguing the past. The question is, now that we're where we are, how do we proceed?
All of these people who now hate us, because of the evils we've done aren't simply going to stop
if we say "we're not going to spy on you anymore".
Paraphrasing Shakespere - "The evil countries do lives after them. The good is oft interr'd
within their bones. Thus let it be with the U.S.A" won't make terrorists think about our foreign
aid programs, or disaster relief for places like Haiti".
The primary function of the federal government should be to protect the welfare of it's people,
and obstensibly tools like the ones the CIA developed (and subsequently leaked) were there to
find out what the bad guys were doing. We are now less safe as a direct result of the leak.
"...The question is, now that we're where we are, how do we proceed?..."
[Your point there is well taken. However, it is still a question with no implicit answer that
cannot be alternatively argued. So, the other way to say this is that we have as a nation done
very bad things. There will be a price to pay for it. How do we want to pay for it? How long do
we want to keep paying for it? Stated another way then there is still no implicit answer that
cannot be alternatively argued. It is why I usually avoid such matters. Without a crystal ball
then we answer correctly. I just was inquiring to see how far that you were considering. I have
no argument against you since you seem to understand the quagmire well enough. I will stick with
easier topics such as constitutional reform of the political system, a piece of cake in comparison.]
So, to paraphrase you; we're screwed. It's simply a question of how badly we're screwed and when.
I agree. Which is why I'm no fun at parties anymore. I would argue that people who don't understand
how screwed we are, are much happier than those who do understand.
Totally agreed. Yet I cling to hope. Donald Trump has achieved more in organizing progressives
in just four months than I have seen done over the collective period since 1968.
the oceans mean no one without a huge navy* or ICBM's (why sputnik was a problem) can affect the
US. Military spending outside of nuclear warning and MAD is low payback.
The terrorists know we won't nuke Mecca, hell we are paying Mecca's defenders to keep terrorists
in Syria.
* occupying the US would be dealing with 120M guns in hands of angered civilians....... the
Japanese general staff thought they would find 80M behind blades of grass...........
I don't think republicans would like the idea of a liberal spying on them any more than we would
with a conservative spying on us. Trump is at a whole new level because of his Nixonian paranoia
plus his need for revenge plus his penchant for "punching down".
Having said that, there are safeguards in place to ensure that the FBI can't spy on just anyone.
You need a FISA warrant which needs to be approved by a FISA judge. President Cheeto can't just
order it to be done. Well, he could, but the FBI should refuse.
"... the code tracking system of the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence has more than 5,000 registered users. ..."
"... Such is the scale of the CIA's undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook ..."
"... The documents, which appear to have been acquired at least several months ago, detail exploits (or techniques to expose vulnerabilities) for a wide variety of desktop and mobile operating systems, including Android, iOS, Windows, Linux and the server operating system Solaris. ..."
"... The documents appear to have been extracted from an internal CIA wiki website that was established to provide authorized users download access to the malware programs and also to instruct users on how to deploy them. ..."
"... an archive of the software and its documentation had been circulating among fo
