When the National Security Agency was created through a top-secret memorandum signed by President Harry Truman in 1952, the agency was so secret that only a few members of Congress knew about it. While the NSA gradually became known over the decades, its inner workings remain extremely hidden, even with the recent leaks about its gathering of Americans' phone records and tapping into data from the nine largest Internet companies. Let's pull back the shroud a bit to demystify this agency.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden told Meet the Press’David Gregory on Sunday morning that security and transparency were a zero-sum game.
Mike Hayden
“For part of my life, when I was running the NSA program, I thought lawful, effective, and appropriate were enough,” Hayden said. “By the time I got to CIA I discovered I had a fourth requirement, and that’s politically sustainable. By the time I got to the CIA I was of the belief that I would probably have to shave points off of operational effectiveness to inform enough people that we had the political sustainability and the comfort of the American population concerning what it was we were doing. Living in this kind of democracy, we’re going to have to be a little less effective in order to be a little more transparent to get to do anything to defend the American people.”
Hayden’s comments came in response to journalist Jim Risen’s critiques of lack of transparency in the intelligence community, to the point that low-ranking intelligence officials had little recourse when they spotted something amiss.
Imagine a new “E Class” Mercedes exploding in flames, burning to a cinder. 220 km/hr crashes on the Autobahn are often survived, certainly without a fire.
There is a reason to own a Mercedes, in normal circumstances the chances of dying in one are quite remote unless you are Lady Di or heir to the presidency of Syria or, just perhaps, wrote a scathing expose that dismembered part of one of the greatest drug empires of all time.
“Yes, you got Michael Hastings. We are warned. Lots of journalists are killed each year. Veterans Today loses its share, perhaps a bit more. ”
For those who didn’t watch the entire video, go back. Catch the last few seconds. I was flabbergasted.
Those of us who have “been there and done that,” and come back with more than the T Shirt say goodbye to one of ours.
Afghanistan: President Karzai's spokesman said Wednesday that Afghanistan has suspended Bilateral Security Agreement talks with the US and that Afghanistan will not pursue peace talks with the Taliban unless the United States steps out of the negotiations.
The spokesman explained President Karzai took the action because of a contradiction between what the US says and does.
Comment: The Afghan government judges it has been betrayed by the US in agreeing to talks with the Islamic Emirate. Afghanistan said no such entity exists. It was told the Doha office was only for negotiations.
Qatar said the Taliban betrayed their promise to open only a political office of the Taliban. Qatari authorities were persuaded to force the Taliban to take down their flag and their Islamic Emirate plaque. The US said the Afghan government had been kept fully informed.
Russian Advanced Weapons for Syria: Unrevealed Secrets of Vladimir Putin’s Recent Visit to London
[Editors Note: We had reported earlier that when the Israelis used an American made mini-nuke bunker buster in the Damascus attack that they had crossed Russia ‘quiet red line' of using a tactical nuke against an non attacking opponent.
This not only forced them to move Syrian air space defenses to block additional Israeli attacks, but also get fully deployed when the calls from the Israeli Lobby shills like John ‘McQaeda' McCain and Lindsy Graham for a no fly zone which none of our military thinks is a smart idea, the wrong fight, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
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With the Russian navy back in the Mediterranean and the Israelis threatening to attack their air defense weapons in transit, this gave the Russians no choice but to deploy all of their top line weapons systems to protect their defensive deployment. Unsaid has been that any pre-emptive attack on the Russians would be dealt with in a full response so that the attacking party could then explain to it's citizen once again why Syria was worth the devastation.
NATO is a hollow shell that could not fight its way out of a paper bag. America is expected to do most everything and of course pay for it. And if someone on our side makes an aggressive move I expect to see a quick response. We would do the same. But no one is threatening us.
We and our proxies are the threatening parties here, taking us to war inch by inch thinking they will be able to pull some incident out of the hat to make it all look like we were attacked and then responded. No one will believe that…because it will not be true. And if the Saudis and Gulf States think they are going to move armor into Syria and not pay a price for it I suspect they will be getting an education the hard way…Jim W. Dean]
The following report comes to us from intelligence sources that have been able to confirm some of the “legend” behind the story. If this is true, and we have confirmed that the S 300 missile defense system has been, for some weeks now, in the hands of the Syrian military despite denials by the “pop culture press,” Putin has made an interesting and very necessary move.
Patrick Cockburn has written a very important essay on Syria in the London Review of Books (attached below). The essay is aptly titled but has only a few oblique, albeit important, references to Sykes – Picot Agreement, a document some readers may not familiar with. Let's begin with a little background.
The Sykes-Picot agreement (it was a secret agreement concocted by two bureaucrats) is one of the most cynical documents in the creation of the modern Middle East.
The Encylopaedia Britannica describes it accurately as follows:
It was a … “secret convention made during World War I (1916) between Great Britain and France, with the assent of imperial Russia, for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The agreement led to the division of Turkish-held Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine into various French- and British-administered areas. The agreement took its name from its negotiators, Sir Mark Sykes
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., June 3, 2013 – About 100 people are hard at work at the U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters here on a new plan that will operationalize the way the command provides manpower and capability in support of the new defense strategic guidance.
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The plan, due to the Joint Staff in late August, is part of the Special Operations Command 2020 vision Navy Adm. William H. McRaven introduced shortly after taking the helm as Socom commander in 2011.The building of a global network of special operations forces, as well as U.S. government partners and partner nations, is a major component of Socom 2020, McRaven explained during the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in Tampa, Fla., earlier this month.
McRaven’s Socom 2020 vision calls for a globally networked force of special operations forces, interagency representatives, allies and partners, with aligned structures processes and authorities to enable its operations. Globally networked forces, he said, will provide geographic combatant commanders and chiefs of mission with an unprecedented unity of effort and an enhance ability to respond to regional contingencies and threats to stability.
McRaven noted his own experience working with the Joint Special Operations Command in Afghanistan. “It has been interesting to work in a network like that, and we do that very, very well on the direct action side,” he said. “We need to figure out — and it is part of the Socom plan — how do we take that network, and be able to extend that out to the theater special operations commands,” down to special operations forward elements and forces assigned to them.
