Corruption – Page 558 – Public Intelligence Blog

Huh?

ORIGINAL NSA WHISTLEBLOWER: I Saw The Order To Wiretap Barack Obama In 2004

Michael Kelley

Business Insider, 22 June 2013

Russ Tice worked as an offensive National Security Agency (NSA) agent from 2002 to 2005, before becoming a source for this Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times article exposing NSA domestic spying.

This week he appeared on the Boiling Frogs Show and detailed how he had his hands “in the nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts” during his 20 years as a U.S. intelligence analyst.

Tice claimed that he held NSA wiretap orders targeting numerous members of the U.S. government, including one for a young senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.

“In the summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a forty-some-year-old senator from Illinois. You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives now would you? It's a big White House in Washington D.C. That's who the NSA went after. That's the President of the United States now.”

Tice added that he also saw orders to spy on Hillary Clinton, Senators John McCain and Diane Feinstein, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Gen. David Petraeus, and a current Supreme Court Justice.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: NSA Routinely Monitored Barack Obama, John McCain, and Other Members”

2013/06/242013/06/24

Mini-Me: Did This Letter to Israel from JFK Catalyze the Order from New York to Assassinate the President of the United States?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, Commerce, Corruption, Government

Huh?

July 5, 1963

Dear Mr. Prime Minister Eshkol:

It gives me great personal pleasure to extend congratulations as you assume your responsibilities as Prime Minister of Israel. You have our friendship and best wishes in your new tasks. It is on one of these that I am writing you at this time.

You are aware, I am sure, of the exchange which I had with Prime Minister Ben-Gurion concerning American visits to Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona. Most recently, the Prime Minister wrote to me on May 27. His words reflected a most intense personal consideration of a problem that I know is not easy for your Government, as it is not for mine. We welcomed the former Prime Minister’s strong reaffirmation that Dimona will be devoted exclusively to peaceful purposes and the reaffirmation also of Israel’s willingness to permit periodic visits to Dimona.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Did This Letter to Israel from JFK Catalyze the Order from New York to Assassinate the President of the United States?”

2013/06/242015/01/14

Berto Jongman: Why Is Barrett Brown in Jail? What Does It Tell Us About Corporate-Government Conspiracies to Repress Free Speech and the Media?

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement

The Strange Case of Barrett Brown

Amid the outrage over the NSA's spying program, the jailing of journalist Barrett Brown points to a deeper and very troubling problem.

Peter Ludlow

The Nation, 18 June 2013

In early 2010, journalist and satirist Barrett Brown was working on a book on political pundits, when the hacktivist collective Anonymous caught his attention. He soon began writing about its activities and potential. In a defense of the group’s anti-censorship operations in Australia published on February 10, Brown declared, “I am now certain that this phenomenon is among the most important and under-reported social developments to have occurred in decades, and that the development in question promises to threaten the institution of the nation-state and perhaps even someday replace it as the world’s most fundamental and relevant method of human organization.”

By then, Brown was already considered by his fans to be the Hunter S. Thompson of his generation. In point of fact he wasn’t like Hunter S. Thompson, but was more of a throwback—a sharp-witted, irreverent journalist and satirist in the mold of Ambrose Bierce or Dorothy Parker. His acid tongue was on display in his co-authored 2007 book, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny, in which he declared: “This will not be a polite book. Politeness is wasted on the dishonest, who will always take advantage of any well-intended concession.”

But it wasn’t Brown’s acid tongue so much as his love of minutiae (and ability to organize and explain minutiae) that would ultimately land him in trouble. Abandoning his book on pundits in favor of a book on Anonymous, he could not have known that delving into the territory of hackers and leaks would ultimately lead to his facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison. In light of the bombshell revelations published by Glenn Greenwald and Barton Gellman about government and corporate spying, Brown’s case is a good—and underreported—reminder of the considerable risk faced by reporters who report on leaks.

Full article below the line.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Why Is Barrett Brown in Jail? What Does It Tell Us About Corporate-Government Conspiracies to Repress Free Speech and the Media?”

2013/06/242013/06/24

SchwartzReport: Doom, Gloom, and Monsanto Poison in European Pee

Corruption

I think any small investor in the market has taken their life in their hands. In an age of algorithm computer trading, rampant dishonesty and corruption, small investors strike me as being as vulnerable as baby bunnies. Because of that view I don't spend a lot of time following markets in detail. But I do maintain a general overview, and the number of articles in the financial press sounding a klaxon, as this one d! oes, are growing in frequency. I have chosen this one because it is a compendium of the others. I think we need to take this seriously.

Doomsday Poll: 87% Risk of Stock Crash by Year-end
PAUL B. FARRELL – MarketWatch

We are never going to reverse the country's decline until we are willing to tell ourselves the truth about ourselves. Here's what I mean. Click through the to see the charts that accompany this report.

Big Lie: America Doesn't Have #1 Richest Middle-Class in the World… We're Ranked 27th
LES LEOPOLD – AlterNet (U.S.)

The evidence against glyphosates — a poison found in Roundup and other weed killers is insinuating itself literally into our tissues. The implications of this are only now beginning to be considered, and none of the news is good. Note that this is a European study where glyphosates are far less prevalent than they are in the U.S. No one has done the American study. Why is that do you think? And, of course, Monsanto says there's no problem.

Weed Killer Glyphosate Found in Human Urine Across Europe
ANNE SEWELL – Digital Journal

2013/06/232013/06/23

Carl Bernstein: The CIA and the Media (1977)

Corruption, Government, Media

After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years. His 25,000-word cover story, published in Rolling Stone on October 20, 1977, is reprinted below.

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

BY CARL BERNSTEIN

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He 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. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

Continue reading “Carl Bernstein: The CIA and the Media (1977)”

2013/06/232013/06/23

Marcus Aurelius: The Future of Joint Operations

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

Everybody play nice together while the bulk of already inadequate and dwindling resources are weighted to Navy and Air Force in the Pacific. [Oh, BTW, in separate Armed Forces Journal reporting, twp Army officers, a major general and a colonel, assert that former Chief of Naval Operations ADM (Ret) Gary Roughead and Hoover Institution analyst Kori Schake have recommended in a recent presentation at the Brookings Institution, that, “The active duty Army would be reduced by 200,000 soldiers from the 490,000 planned for the FY 2013 budget” to pay for it.

The Future Of Joint Operations

Real Cooperation for Real Threats

By Martin E. Dempsey

ForeignAffairs.com, June 20, 2013

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: The Future of Joint Operations”

2013/06/222013/06/22

Michael Hastings: In Memory — His Last Article — Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans While Betraying the Public Trust in Every Possible Sense of the Term

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government

Why Democrats Love To Spy On Americans

Besides Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, most Democrats abandoned their civil liberty positions during the age of Obama. With a new leak investigation looming, the Democrat leadership are now being forced to confront all the secrets they’ve tried to hide.For most bigwig Democrats in Washington, D.C., the last 48 hours has delivered news of the worst kind — a flood of new information that has washed away any lingering doubts about where President Obama and his party stand on civil liberties, full stop.

Glenn Greenwald’s exposure of the NSA’s massive domestic spy program has revealed the entire caste of current Democratic leaders as a gang of civil liberty opportunists, whose true passion, it seems, was in trolling George W. Bush for eight years on matters of national security.

“Everyone should just calm down,” Senator Harry Reid said yesterday, inhaling slowly.

That’s right: don’t panic.

The very topic of Democratic two-facedness on civil liberties is one of the most important issues that Greenwald has covered. Many of those Dems — including the sitting President Barack Obama, Senator Carl Levin, and Sec. State John Kerry — have now become the stewards and enhancers of programs that appear to dwarf any of the spying scandals that broke during the Bush years, the very same scandals they used as wedge issues to win elections in the Congressional elections 2006 and the presidential primary of 2007-2008.

Continue reading “Michael Hastings: In Memory — His Last Article — Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans While Betraying the Public Trust in Every Possible Sense of the Term”