OMNI CIVIL LIBERTIES/SURVEILLANCE NEWSLETTER #7, September
11, 2013, for a CULTURE OF PEACE AND
JUSTICE. Compiled by
Dick Bennett. (#1 Jan.
28, 2008; #2 Jan. 22, 2011; #3 Oct. 25, 2011; #4 Jan. 31, 2012; #5 June 9,
2013; #6 July 22, 2013).
My blog: War
Department/Peace Department
My Newsletters:
For an informed and resistant citizenry. See: Bush, CIA, FBI, Drones, National Security State
Index:
Visit OMNI’s Library.
The multifarious methods of oppression employed by
an imperial state would fill an encyclopedia.
One general method is the control of language, and one sub-set covers
rhetorical devices. A specific figure is
euphemism, a powerful way of hiding
folly and depravity. For example, our
government has rebranded US
"I
refuse to live in a country like this, and I'm not leaving"
Michael Moore
Michael Moore
Nos.
3 & 4 at end
Contents of #5 June 9, 2013
Warrantless
Spying: Contact Pryor and Boozman
Lockshin, Credo Action
Friday, BORDC
Massive
National Security Agency Spying
Massive
Surveillance State
NSA
Lying, Has Our Emails
Bromwich,
Secret Surveillance of All Communications in US
Cybersecurity
Act vs. Privacy
Take
Action to Defund the Massive NSA Spy Center
in Utah
Kuzmarov,
Modernizing Repression
McCoy,
Policing the Empire
Huggins,
Political Policing Latin America
Contents #6
July 22, 2013
Ellsberg,
Join ACLU Action
Petition
to President Obama
Jimmy
Carter, US Democracy
SNOWDEN
Greenwald,
Edward Snowden
Majority
Would Prosecute Snowden, Pew
Research Center
William
Blum on Snowden, NSA History, CIA, Whistleblower
Philip Agee (Anti-Empire Report
#118)
Greenwald,
Lack of FISA Oversight
Sign
Petitions on Snowden, NSA, FISA
The Nation, Snowden vs. Surveillance Net
and End of Privacy
Lindorff,
Not China But US is the Great Hacker
Snyder,
“Maincore”: US Martial Law Detainee List
Harris,
The Rise of the America’s Surveillance
State
Surveillance
Cameras
Greenwald,
Future Surveillance
Solomon,
Effective Resistance
New York Times Reports on
Surveillance. For example, Lichtblau (NYT), Data-Gathering Law Widened. ADG (7-6-13) 1A.
Contents #7
Resisting
National Security Abuse
Free
Press Action Fund
Free
Press.net
Rothschild,
US
NSS
Durst,
US
NSS: NSA
NSA
vs. Fourth Amendment
VFP,
Feds Caught in Lies
VFP,
FBI Tapping Phones
Jay
Rosen,NSA Controlling Johns Hopkins
Greenwald,
et al., NSA Intelligence to Israel
Rotenberg
and Barnes, Electronic Privacy
Information Center 
|
RESISTANCE TO BIG BROTHER
Marc Rotenberg, president, and Khaliah
Barnes, counsel, Electronic Privacy Information Center, respond to The Nation articles “The End of
Privacy” (July 8/15), urging
resistance via the public comment on rule-making path required by the Administrative
Procedure Act. EPIC is renewing its
petition weekly and invites us to sign on:
epic.org/NSApetition or #NSApetition. Don’t give up they urge. –Dick
RAY
McGOVERN ARTICLE FORMER INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS AWARD SNOWDEN//PLEASE READ
& RESPOND::NSA Status: Still Spying
PLEASE READ THE INFO BELOW & TAKE ACTION BELOW THE ARTICLES
LINKS.
If you're
tired of hearing people around you ask: "why should I care about the
government surveillance program?" then this video is for you. With the
weight of history behind him, Oliver Stone does an incredible job explaining
why the government's "surveillance machine" should concern every
American.
Watch the video below and if it moves you like it moved me, share it with your friends — it just might convince them that now is the critical time to reclaim our privacy. The video is at this link.
Retired
CIA analyst Ray McGovern writes about Truth Teller Snowden.
TOP
SECRET
The
corporate state’s quest to control all power includes using the military to
carry out domestic policing, which is why I sued the president over Section
1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act. It is imperative to
defend, as the activists did in
Alfred
W. McCoy: Surveillance Blowback: The Making of the
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/15
Government
Accountability Project: Snowden's Whistleblowing a Human Right
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2013/07/12-4
From
Edward Snowden Isn’t on the Run…We Are by Subhankar Banerjee
When the animated debate—“Is Edward Snowden a hero or a traitor?” started, I wrote a piece urging to consider him not as a “hero” or “traitor” but “simply as a teacher—who provided knowledge to expose yet another aspect of the inverted totalitarianism in the We need all our voices of conscience to rise in unison so that Edward’s Snowden’s courageous and immensely important revelations don’t get side stepped by the government, the corporate media, and by the right- and left-wing pundits. Beyond all the important things that Snowden’s leaks have revealed, there is something profound it has brought to light also—the folly of the human mind. by Subhankar Banerjee Edward Snowden Isn't on the Run... We Are The lessons of the
Edward Snowden Isn't on the Run... We Are
First
came the “shock and awe”: the revelations of massive spying by the
We must step
up and speak out to preserve the 4th amendment. Please keep your attention on
this--it affects us all.
A diverse
coalition of groups represented by the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) has
filed suit against the NSA on Tuesday for
its bulk, unconstitutional collection of Americans' phone records.
Please
join me in speaking out to protect our right to privacy. Are we going to
control our government or is our government going to control us? It is Time
to stop their smoke and mirror games. SEE BELOW:
From: Timothy Karr [mailto:tkarr@freepress.net]
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2013 11:03 AM To: Sue Skidmore Subject: NSA Status: Still Spying
|
|||||||||||||
Fictional letter from NSA regarding its illegal,
anti-democratic data mining and lying to Congress. “The Constitution safeguards Americans from
only ‘unreasonable’ searches.” --Dick
DAVE WEBB, “BIG BROTHER AND THE SECRET SECURITY
STATE
Don't Let NSA's 4th Amendment Violation
Center
RootsAction Team
[info@rootsaction.org]ActionsTo: James R. Bennett Tuesday, August 13, 2013
10:31 AM
|
Tue Aug 6, 2013 12:39 pm (PDT) . Posted by:
Mike Woloshin, AMH-2, USN
ATKRON 86, onbd USS Coral Sea (CVA-43)
Vietnam (Yankee Station) 1969-1970
Subject: He was being less than "open and honest" with his spinning of the official line on the NSA's illegal spying on American citizens
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 10:04:35 -0700
http://www.thenewamerican.com/
Monday, 05 August 2013 09:24
Feds Caught in
Lies; Say Will Come Clean. Don’t Bet on It.
Written by William F. Jasper
In a July 24 Defense Department public affairs
briefing, Pentagon spokesman George Little (shown) told DoD public affairs
officers that they must increase and intensify their efforts to deal with bad
news stories before the independent media and social media websites make them go
viral on the Internet. (The DoD press story is here; the actual video recording
of the press briefing is here.)
“When bad things happen, the American people should
hear it from us, not as a scoop on the Drudge Report,” said Little, who, as
assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, is the Pentagon’s
chief spokesman. “We cannot hide our bad news stories,” Little also said. “Bad
news gets out one way or the other and we must come to terms with telling bad
stories as well as the good.” He also stated that commanders must be open and
honest with the media, and should avoid “spin,” something he said he has no
taste for.
All of which sounds very positive; open and honest
is good, right? However, it was apparent from Little’s response to the first
question from the assembled public affairs officers that he was being less than
“open and honest” with his spinning of the official line on the NSA’s illegal
spying on American citizens. Public affairs officer Johnson asked (about 23:00
on the video timeline) for an official “from the horse's mouth” response as to
how public affairs officers are supposed to deal with media questions about the
spying/surveillance scandal.
In typical Beltway fashion, Little evaded the
question with a non-answer answer that praised the NSA’s General Alexander for
doing a good job (of lying to Congress and the American people). “General
Alexander, I think, has done a very effective job in recent media interviews,
and I think the more the NSA can talk about what it does that contributes to the
nation’s security, I think that will be helpful in informing the American
people…. But there’s going to be light at the end of the tunnel, but it won’t be
easy…. As long as we’re straightforward and accurate — I think that’s how we
have to deal with the situation.”
General Alexander, of course, and virtually all of
the Obama administration’s top intelligence officials (including Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI Director Robert Mueller) have been
repeatedly caught in lies, untruths, prevarications, and semantic dodges. (See
here, here, here, and here.)
In a March 12 Senate hearing, DNI Clapper engaged
in Clintonian semantic evasion and denial that most reasonable people would
consider lying. Here is the relevant exchange with Sen. Ron Wyden:
SEN. RON WYDEN (D-Ore.): “This is for you, Director
Clapper, again on the surveillance front. And I hope we can do this in just a
yes or no answer because I know Senator Feinstein wants to move on. Last summer,
the NSA director was at a conference, and he was asked a question about the NSA
surveillance of Americans. He replied, and I quote here, ‘The story that we have
millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is completely
false.’
“The reason I’m asking the question is, having
served on the committee now for a dozen years, I don’t really know what a
dossier is in this context. So what I wanted to see is if you could give me a
yes or no answer to the question, does the NSA collect any type of data at all
on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”
Director of National Intelligence JAMES CLAPPER:
“No, sir.”
SEN. WYDEN: “It does not?”
DIR. CLAPPER: “Not wittingly. There are cases where
they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly.”
SEN. WYDEN: “Thank you. I’ll have additional
questions to give you in writing on that point, but I thank you for the
answer."
Subsequently, of course, it has been revealed that
NSA has indeed been collecting data on millions of Americans. In a June 9
interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Clapper stated that his false response to
Sen. Wyden was “the most truthful, or least untruthful” response he could give.
He admitted he had engaged in deceptive semantics that some would describe as
“too cute by half.” But there is really nothing cute at all about heads of very
powerful spy agencies engaged in widespread violation of the rights of American
citizens, while also violating the oaths they’ve sworn to defend the
Constitution — and lying about it to congressional oversight committees with
clever semantics.
"Putting Out Mindless Propaganda"
During the DoD’s July 24 public affairs briefing,
George Little also took a question from Staff Sgt. Hostutler, who asked him for
help in changing the culture of the DoD’s public affairs leadership because she
feels she is being tasked with “putting out mindless propaganda” that the
American people no longer trust.
“It seems like we have this culture in our career
to kinda glaze over these issues,” said Hostutler, “and put out this positive
press — ‘No, our jets are fine’ — and so with the good and the bad, I don’t
think the American people actually trust us to deliver accurate
information.”
“Is there a plan to kinda change the way that we
think?” Hostutler asked. “Because as it is, a lot of people, from what I can
see, are going through — We’re putting out mindless propaganda — is what some of
us feel that we’re putting out and what the American people feel that we’re
putting out, so how do we change this?”
Little replayed the slick
transparency/honesty/openness gambit:
This is a point of tension …"What is spin versus
what is legitimate defense of your equities?" My perspective on this is that we
should not think in terms of spin. I’m not a big fan of that word and it’s
something I try to avoid…. But the way to get through such problems as the one
you’ve just noted, I think, is to acknowledge when we’ve got a problem. It’s
gonna get out, so let’s be straightforward about it. So, let’s be accurate, and
let’s show a plan for how we’re going to get through the problem…. We have to
tell it to the American people as straight as we can. If we try to avoid the
problem, delay it, if we’re not up front, then that’s going to have a corrosive
effect…. I don’t think in terms of spin, I certainly don’t think in terms of
propaganda…. I think about our obligation, morally and legally to be accurate
and to tell the truth.
Truth? Skeptics have good reason to doubt that
Little is a reliable source of truth. Prior to taking his position as top "truth
teller" for DoD, he held a similar position at the Central Intelligence Agency,
as the agency’s director of public affairs. (Little makes reference to his CIA
stint at the beginning of his July 24 briefing Q&A.) That was under CIA
chief Michael Hayden, who had previously (1999-2005) served as director of NSA.
While running NSA, Hayden had launched that agency’s massive illegal domestic
surveillance program for President Bush. One of the first exposés in the major
media of that unconstitutional Bush-Hayden-NSA program came in May 2006 with a
detailed article by Leslie Cauley in USA Today.
Little was certainly aware of this high-profile
media exposé of NSA’s abuse and false denials to Congress and the press. Prior
to his CIA service, George Little was (according to his official DoD bio) “an
intelligence community and business consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton,” the
mammoth hi-tech consultancy with large contracts with the DoD and intelligence
agencies. (Among other claims to infamy, Booz Allen Hamilton, reportedly, had a
major role in developing NSA’s invasive PRISM surveillance program. Most
recently, BAH has been noted as the former employer of NSA
whistleblower/defector Edward Snowden.) It is altogether likely that the
intelligence chiefs recently exposed lying to Congress and the press (Alexander,
Clapper, Mueller, et al.) were coached by Little and/or some of his Booz Allen
confreres.
During the course of his public affairs briefing,
George Little said new approaches should include engaging more with
nontraditional journalists such as bloggers and tweeters, who sometimes break
news but also may report gossip and rumor. It might not be too cynical to
translate this into: We need to do more to compromise and corrupt the
alternative media and turn them into lap dogs the way we’ve successfully done
with the MSM “journalists.”
Of course, DoD does not (as far as we know) have
the billions of dollars of “Black Ops” funds outside of congressional oversight
that CIA, NSA, and other intel agencies do. With its huge, unaudited slush
funds, the CIA has been buying American journalists for decades. According to
media insider Carl Bernstein (of Watergate, Pulitzer Prize, Washington Post, and
All the President’s Men fame) over 400 American journalists — many of them very
prominent — were working in various capacities for the CIA. That was back in
1977, when he penned his essay, “The CIA and the Media” for Rolling Stone
magazine. Bernstein wrote:
In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one ofAmerica ’s
leading syndicated columnists, went to thePhilippines
did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because
he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the
request of the CIA.
Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists
who in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the
Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA
headquarters.
Further investigation into the matter, CIA
officials say, would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in
the 1950s and 1960s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals
in American journalism.
Among the executives who lent their cooperation to
the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of
Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of
the Louisville Courier-Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service.
Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American
Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press,
United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek
magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday
Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune.
By far the most valuable of these associations,
according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.
What Bernstein doesn’t mention anywhere in his
stinging critique is another all-important three-letter acronym that has played
the key role in the subversive CIA-Big Media collusion: CFR, for Council on
Foreign Relations.
This is no minor oversight. Virtually all the major
names he mentions in his 25,000-word article — Joseph Alsop, William Paley,
Henry Luce, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, C.L. Sulzberger,
Barry Bingham Sr., Philip Graham, Katherine Graham, Norman E. Isaacs, Philip L.
Geyelin, Sam Jaffe, Cord Meyer — are CFR members. As are/were hundreds of other
corporate Big Media journos and execs, over the past few decades: Tom Brokaw,
Diane Sawyer, Tom Braden, Michael R. Bloomberg, Barbara Walters, Andrea
Mitchell, Brian Williams, Judith Miller, Rupert Murdoch, Thomas L. Friedman, and
William F. Buckley — to name a few.
The top drawer slots at CIA have also almost always
been reserved for CFR members, going back to its earliest days, when it was
known as theOSS
also CFR members include Walter Bedell Smith, Allen Dulles (a CFR founding
father), John McCone, Richard Helms, James R. Schlesinger, William E. Colby,
George H. W. Bush (the futureU.S.
Casey, William H. Webster, Robert M. Gates, James Woolsey, John Deutch, George
Tenet, and Michael Hayden.
Admiral Chester Ward, a former judge advocate
general of the U.S. Navy, was for many years a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations, but subsequently became one of its chief critics when it became clear
to him that the organization was fundamentally subversive. According to Admiral
Ward, the goal of the CFR is the "submergence ofU.S.
independence into an all-powerful one-world government." Ward charged that "this
lust to surrender the sovereignty and independence of theUnited States
pervasive throughout most of the membership."
This lust was especially clear in the case of
CIA/CFR/media doyen Cord Meyer, who was president of the United World
Federalists (which the CIA funded) and a lifelong avid advocate of world
government.
Another example was Tom Braden
(CIA/CFR/columnist/newspaper publisher), best known for his seven-year stint as
the liberal commentator opposite Pat Buchanan on CNN’s Crossfire. During a
September 15, 1983 episode of Crossfire, Braden was forced into making some
surprising admissions concerning his work in the CIA funding communist,
socialist, and subversive organizations. During debate with Scott Stanley,
editor of American Opinion magazine and The Review of the News magazine (both
forerunners of The New American), Braden admitted that the pro-communist
National Student Association was actually “a CIA front” and that the CIA
provided millions of dollars in funds to the Communist Party’s Daily Worker
newspaper.
The CIA/CFR/Big Media collusion continues, which is
why we are unlikely to see any serious pushback by the MSM journalists
concerning the accelerating drive toward the Big Brother total surveillance
state of the CIA/NSA/FBI/DOD/IRS/TSA/DHS. Any serious exposure and genuine
opposition must continue to be mounted by truly independent media and patriot
bloggers.
Related articles:
Who Lied? Mike Rogers, the NSA, and XKeyscore
DOJ Reports:FISA Court
Surveillance Request
New DHS Domestic Terrorism Report Targets Millions
of Americans
Profiling and Criminalizing Political
Dissent
Do You Fit the Terrorist Profile?
Watching Your Every Move
Trading Freedom for
Security
ATKRON 86, onbd USS Coral Sea (CVA-43)
Vietnam (Yankee Station) 1969-1970
Subject: He was being less than "open and honest" with his spinning of the official line on the NSA's illegal spying on American citizens
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 10:04:35 -0700
http://www.thenewamerican.com/
Monday, 05 August 2013 09:24
Feds Caught in
Lies; Say Will Come Clean. Don’t Bet on It.
Written by William F. Jasper
In a July 24 Defense Department public affairs
briefing, Pentagon spokesman George Little (shown) told DoD public affairs
officers that they must increase and intensify their efforts to deal with bad
news stories before the independent media and social media websites make them go
viral on the Internet. (The DoD press story is here; the actual video recording
of the press briefing is here.)
“When bad things happen, the American people should
hear it from us, not as a scoop on the Drudge Report,” said Little, who, as
assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, is the Pentagon’s
chief spokesman. “We cannot hide our bad news stories,” Little also said. “Bad
news gets out one way or the other and we must come to terms with telling bad
stories as well as the good.” He also stated that commanders must be open and
honest with the media, and should avoid “spin,” something he said he has no
taste for.
All of which sounds very positive; open and honest
is good, right? However, it was apparent from Little’s response to the first
question from the assembled public affairs officers that he was being less than
“open and honest” with his spinning of the official line on the NSA’s illegal
spying on American citizens. Public affairs officer Johnson asked (about 23:00
on the video timeline) for an official “from the horse's mouth” response as to
how public affairs officers are supposed to deal with media questions about the
spying/surveillance scandal.
In typical Beltway fashion, Little evaded the
question with a non-answer answer that praised the NSA’s General Alexander for
doing a good job (of lying to Congress and the American people). “General
Alexander, I think, has done a very effective job in recent media interviews,
and I think the more the NSA can talk about what it does that contributes to the
nation’s security, I think that will be helpful in informing the American
people…. But there’s going to be light at the end of the tunnel, but it won’t be
easy…. As long as we’re straightforward and accurate — I think that’s how we
have to deal with the situation.”
General Alexander, of course, and virtually all of
the Obama administration’s top intelligence officials (including Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI Director Robert Mueller) have been
repeatedly caught in lies, untruths, prevarications, and semantic dodges. (See
here, here, here, and here.)
In a March 12 Senate hearing, DNI Clapper engaged
in Clintonian semantic evasion and denial that most reasonable people would
consider lying. Here is the relevant exchange with Sen. Ron Wyden:
SEN. RON WYDEN (D-Ore.): “This is for you, Director
Clapper, again on the surveillance front. And I hope we can do this in just a
yes or no answer because I know Senator Feinstein wants to move on. Last summer,
the NSA director was at a conference, and he was asked a question about the NSA
surveillance of Americans. He replied, and I quote here, ‘The story that we have
millions or hundreds of millions of dossiers on people is completely
false.’
“The reason I’m asking the question is, having
served on the committee now for a dozen years, I don’t really know what a
dossier is in this context. So what I wanted to see is if you could give me a
yes or no answer to the question, does the NSA collect any type of data at all
on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”
Director of National Intelligence JAMES CLAPPER:
“No, sir.”
SEN. WYDEN: “It does not?”
DIR. CLAPPER: “Not wittingly. There are cases where
they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly.”
SEN. WYDEN: “Thank you. I’ll have additional
questions to give you in writing on that point, but I thank you for the
answer."
Subsequently, of course, it has been revealed that
NSA has indeed been collecting data on millions of Americans. In a June 9
interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Clapper stated that his false response to
Sen. Wyden was “the most truthful, or least untruthful” response he could give.
He admitted he had engaged in deceptive semantics that some would describe as
“too cute by half.” But there is really nothing cute at all about heads of very
powerful spy agencies engaged in widespread violation of the rights of American
citizens, while also violating the oaths they’ve sworn to defend the
Constitution — and lying about it to congressional oversight committees with
clever semantics.
"Putting Out Mindless Propaganda"
During the DoD’s July 24 public affairs briefing,
George Little also took a question from Staff Sgt. Hostutler, who asked him for
help in changing the culture of the DoD’s public affairs leadership because she
feels she is being tasked with “putting out mindless propaganda” that the
American people no longer trust.
“It seems like we have this culture in our career
to kinda glaze over these issues,” said Hostutler, “and put out this positive
press — ‘No, our jets are fine’ — and so with the good and the bad, I don’t
think the American people actually trust us to deliver accurate
information.”
“Is there a plan to kinda change the way that we
think?” Hostutler asked. “Because as it is, a lot of people, from what I can
see, are going through — We’re putting out mindless propaganda — is what some of
us feel that we’re putting out and what the American people feel that we’re
putting out, so how do we change this?”
Little replayed the slick
transparency/honesty/openness gambit:
This is a point of tension …"What is spin versus
what is legitimate defense of your equities?" My perspective on this is that we
should not think in terms of spin. I’m not a big fan of that word and it’s
something I try to avoid…. But the way to get through such problems as the one
you’ve just noted, I think, is to acknowledge when we’ve got a problem. It’s
gonna get out, so let’s be straightforward about it. So, let’s be accurate, and
let’s show a plan for how we’re going to get through the problem…. We have to
tell it to the American people as straight as we can. If we try to avoid the
problem, delay it, if we’re not up front, then that’s going to have a corrosive
effect…. I don’t think in terms of spin, I certainly don’t think in terms of
propaganda…. I think about our obligation, morally and legally to be accurate
and to tell the truth.
Truth? Skeptics have good reason to doubt that
Little is a reliable source of truth. Prior to taking his position as top "truth
teller" for DoD, he held a similar position at the Central Intelligence Agency,
as the agency’s director of public affairs. (Little makes reference to his CIA
stint at the beginning of his July 24 briefing Q&A.) That was under CIA
chief Michael Hayden, who had previously (1999-2005) served as director of NSA.
While running NSA, Hayden had launched that agency’s massive illegal domestic
surveillance program for President Bush. One of the first exposés in the major
media of that unconstitutional Bush-Hayden-NSA program came in May 2006 with a
detailed article by Leslie Cauley in USA Today.
Little was certainly aware of this high-profile
media exposé of NSA’s abuse and false denials to Congress and the press. Prior
to his CIA service, George Little was (according to his official DoD bio) “an
intelligence community and business consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton,” the
mammoth hi-tech consultancy with large contracts with the DoD and intelligence
agencies. (Among other claims to infamy, Booz Allen Hamilton, reportedly, had a
major role in developing NSA’s invasive PRISM surveillance program. Most
recently, BAH has been noted as the former employer of NSA
whistleblower/defector Edward Snowden.) It is altogether likely that the
intelligence chiefs recently exposed lying to Congress and the press (Alexander,
Clapper, Mueller, et al.) were coached by Little and/or some of his Booz Allen
confreres.
During the course of his public affairs briefing,
George Little said new approaches should include engaging more with
nontraditional journalists such as bloggers and tweeters, who sometimes break
news but also may report gossip and rumor. It might not be too cynical to
translate this into: We need to do more to compromise and corrupt the
alternative media and turn them into lap dogs the way we’ve successfully done
with the MSM “journalists.”
Of course, DoD does not (as far as we know) have
the billions of dollars of “Black Ops” funds outside of congressional oversight
that CIA, NSA, and other intel agencies do. With its huge, unaudited slush
funds, the CIA has been buying American journalists for decades. According to
media insider Carl Bernstein (of Watergate, Pulitzer Prize, Washington Post, and
All the President’s Men fame) over 400 American journalists — many of them very
prominent — were working in various capacities for the CIA. That was back in
1977, when he penned his essay, “The CIA and the Media” for Rolling Stone
magazine. Bernstein wrote:
In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of
leading syndicated columnists, went to the
did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because
he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the
request of the CIA.
Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists
who in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the
Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA
headquarters.
Further investigation into the matter, CIA
officials say, would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in
the 1950s and 1960s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals
in American journalism.
Among the executives who lent their cooperation to
the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of
Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of
the Louisville Courier-Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service.
Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American
Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press,
United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek
magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday
Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune.
By far the most valuable of these associations,
according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.
What Bernstein doesn’t mention anywhere in his
stinging critique is another all-important three-letter acronym that has played
the key role in the subversive CIA-Big Media collusion: CFR, for Council on
Foreign Relations.
This is no minor oversight. Virtually all the major
names he mentions in his 25,000-word article — Joseph Alsop, William Paley,
Henry Luce, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, C.L. Sulzberger,
Barry Bingham Sr., Philip Graham, Katherine Graham, Norman E. Isaacs, Philip L.
Geyelin, Sam Jaffe, Cord Meyer — are CFR members. As are/were hundreds of other
corporate Big Media journos and execs, over the past few decades: Tom Brokaw,
Diane Sawyer, Tom Braden, Michael R. Bloomberg, Barbara Walters, Andrea
Mitchell, Brian Williams, Judith Miller, Rupert Murdoch, Thomas L. Friedman, and
William F. Buckley — to name a few.
The top drawer slots at CIA have also almost always
been reserved for CFR members, going back to its earliest days, when it was
known as the
also CFR members include Walter Bedell Smith, Allen Dulles (a CFR founding
father), John McCone, Richard Helms, James R. Schlesinger, William E. Colby,
George H. W. Bush (the future
Casey, William H. Webster, Robert M. Gates, James Woolsey, John Deutch, George
Tenet, and Michael Hayden.
Admiral Chester Ward, a former judge advocate
general of the U.S. Navy, was for many years a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations, but subsequently became one of its chief critics when it became clear
to him that the organization was fundamentally subversive. According to Admiral
Ward, the goal of the CFR is the "submergence of
independence into an all-powerful one-world government." Ward charged that "this
lust to surrender the sovereignty and independence of the
pervasive throughout most of the membership."
This lust was especially clear in the case of
CIA/CFR/media doyen Cord Meyer, who was president of the United World
Federalists (which the CIA funded) and a lifelong avid advocate of world
government.
Another example was Tom Braden
(CIA/CFR/columnist/newspaper publisher), best known for his seven-year stint as
the liberal commentator opposite Pat Buchanan on CNN’s Crossfire. During a
September 15, 1983 episode of Crossfire, Braden was forced into making some
surprising admissions concerning his work in the CIA funding communist,
socialist, and subversive organizations. During debate with Scott Stanley,
editor of American Opinion magazine and The Review of the News magazine (both
forerunners of The New American), Braden admitted that the pro-communist
National Student Association was actually “a CIA front” and that the CIA
provided millions of dollars in funds to the Communist Party’s Daily Worker
newspaper.
The CIA/CFR/Big Media collusion continues, which is
why we are unlikely to see any serious pushback by the MSM journalists
concerning the accelerating drive toward the Big Brother total surveillance
state of the CIA/NSA/FBI/DOD/IRS/TSA/DHS. Any serious exposure and genuine
opposition must continue to be mounted by truly independent media and patriot
bloggers.
Related articles:
Who Lied? Mike Rogers, the NSA, and XKeyscore
DOJ Reports:
Surveillance Request
New DHS Domestic Terrorism Report Targets Millions
of Americans
Profiling and Criminalizing Political
Dissent
Do You Fit the Terrorist Profile?
Watching Your Every Move
Trading Freedom for
Security
Tue Aug 6, 2013 12:44 pm (PDT) . Posted by:
Mike Woloshin, AMH-2, USN
ATKRON 86, onbd USS Coral Sea (CVA-43)
Subject: The federal government is remotely activating the microphones and cameras in Android smartphones and Windows laptops, according to a report published by the Wall Street Journal.
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 10:04:25 -0700
jwolverton@thenewamerican.com
Sunday, 04 August 2013 19:00
Federal Snoops
Activate Smartphone Microphones and Laptop Cameras
Written by Joe
Wolverton, II, J.D.
The federal government is remotely activating the
microphones and cameras in Android smartphones and Windows laptops, according to
a report published by the Wall Street Journal.
Citing a “former
court documents reveal that that the FBI is using a variety of “hacking” tools
to ramp up the scope of the surveillance of millions of Americans, keeping many
unwittingly under the watchful eye of
When contacted by The New American, a media
spokesperson for Google had no comment.
One of the Journal's anonymous sources described a
part of the FBI called the "Remote Operations Unit." Agents in this specialized
unit prefer, if possible, to install the remote control software by uploading to
the target’s computer using a USB flash drive. When the g-men-come-hackers can’t
get access to the target’s computer, they install the surveillance software over
the Internet “using a document or link that loads software when the person
clicks or views it."
Readers should understand that it is not only
possible for the federal government to listen to your conversations using the
microphone in your Android smartphone and watch you while you sit in your own
home on your own computer, but they do so regularly and can do so very
easily.
Purportedly, the FBI has been using these methods
of surveillance “for over a decade,” but their use has come to light only
recently by way of “court documents and interviews” with people familiar with
the programs.
The Journal relates one such document that shed
light on the computer and cellphone hacking methods used by the federal
government:
Earlier this year, a federal warrant application in
a
take photos using a computer's camera, according to court documents. The judge
denied the application, saying, among other things, that he wanted more
information on how data collected from the computer would be minimized to remove
information on innocent people.
This frightening remote control of computers and
cellphones by federal agents is nothing new, however.
Just over a year ago, the Ninth Circuit of Appeals
ruled federal snoops may use a cellphone as a microphone and record the
conversations overheard even when the phone itself is not being used
otherwise.
This baffling bit of judicial lawmaking came as
part of the decision in the case of the United States v. Oliva, 2012 WL 2948542
(9th Cir. July 20, 2012).
For a bit of background, Oliva was convicted by a
jury of drug-related crimes involving the distribution of methamphetamine,
cocaine, and marijuana. He appealed a decision by a district court denying his
motion to suppress evidence obtained from a series of electronic surveillance
orders authorizing interception of communications over cellular phones
associated with him and his alleged co-conspirators.
Oliva argued that the orders authorizing these
wiretaps were not standard intercept orders and did not meet the “specificity”
requirement of the applicable federal law.
In its decision, the Ninth Circuit has upheld the
lower court’s ruling, essentially allowing the federal government to convert
cellphones into “roving bugs” so long as the government makes it clear that it
will be using the target’s cellphone in that manner. Notice, the Ninth Circuit —
a court created under the authority granted to Congress in Article III of the
Constitution — did not throw out the matter as a violation of the defendant’s
Fourth Amendment right against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Instead, it
simply informed the government that it needs to get permission before doing
so.
There are, of course, far-reaching implications of
such a decision. As we reported last summer, a person will not know, and perhaps
will never know, if he has been the target of surveillance on the part of the
domestic spying apparatus. Assuming, as many a savvy American would, that the
federal government is liable to eventually want to monitor and record your
personal electronic communication, is there not an expectation that when the
cellphone is off the surveillance is suspended?
Not anymore. In the wake of the Ninth Circuit’s
ruling in Oliva and in light of the testimony of the insiders interviewed by the
Wall Street Journal, “roving bugs” have apparently become a potent weapon in the
already impressive arsenal of the branches of the surveillance
state.
Some of the dictum in the Oliva decision is almost
as disturbing as the ruling itself. For example, in one part of its discussion
of the various technological tools available to federal agents, the court
describes how one such advance allows the agents to remotely upload software
into a target’s cellphone that converts it into the “roving bug” mentioned
above. Again, this sort of power is undoubtedly only the tip of the surveillance
iceberg.
A person’s expectation of privacy when sitting at
home talking to a friend is ridiculous in the face of the judicially upheld fact
that government snoops may now use powerful surveillance technology to use your
idle mobile phone as a very active mobile microphone or to use a laptop’s
built-in camera to take pictures of any American at any time for any
reason.
Now that it is indisputable that the courts,
Congress, and the president have formed an unholy alliance bent on obliterating
the Constitution and establishing a country where every citizen is a suspect and
is perpetually under the never-blinking eye of the government, it would be well
to remember the words written by Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist, No. 33.
In that letter,
its constitutional powers and violating the inherent rights of the people are
not law, but are “merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as
such.”
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for
The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of
nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state.
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