Just a month ago we raised more than a proverbial eyebrow when we noted the creation of the NSA's Utah Data Center (codename Stellar Wind) and William Binney's formidable statement that “we are this far from a turnkey totalitarian state”. Democracy Now has the former National Security Agency technical director whistleblower's first TV interview in which he discusses the NSA's massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could “create an Orwellian state.” Today marks the first time Binney has spoken on national TV about NSA surveillance. Starting with his pre-9-11 identification of the world-wide-web as a voluminous problem since the NSA was ‘falling behind the rate-of-change', his success in creating a system (codenamed Thin-Thread) for ‘grabbing' all the data and the critical ‘lawful' anonymization of that data (according to mandate at the time) which as soon as 9-11 occurred went out of the window as all domestic and foreign communications was now stored (starting with AT&T's forking over their data). This direct violation of the constitutional rights of everybody in the country was why Binney decided he could not stay (leaving one month after 9-11) along with the violation of almost every privacy and intelligence act as near-bottomless databases store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.
There was a time when Americans still cared about matters such as personal privacy. Luckily, they now have iGadgets to keep them distracted as they hand over their last pieces of individuality to the Tzar of conformity.
Phi Beta Iota: Neither NSA nor DHS are inherently evil — they are merely expensive, inept, and out of control. They are staffed by good people who mean well, led by good people who mean well, but in the aggregate they are so unAmerican and unConstitutional as to deby belief that they could actually exist and thrive.
The U.S. military’s propaganda activities — known formally and euphemistically as “information operations” — has this week faced serious accusations of targeting Americans, a major infraction. According to USA Today, military personnel (or contractors) apparently took to the web to unleash a vitriolic, and embarrassingly transparent, smear campaign against two of the paper’s staff members. Why? Because they published a damning investigation of the military’s dubious propaganda campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
USA Today reported on Thursday evening that a reporter and an editor, Tom Vanden Brook and Ray Locker, respectively, had been victims of a web campaign intent on damaging their professional reputations. Though the paper couldn’t confirm who was behind the attack, they’ve got their suspicions: It started shortly after the two staffers kicked off an investigation of the Pentagon’s own propaganda contractors.
The campaign included phony websites, dubious Wikipedia entries, Twitter accounts and message forum posts. All of which, according to the paper, have now been taken offline.
US Defense Secretary: Pentagon Preparing to Aid in Syrian Conflict
NewsEmergency.com Critical News, Weather & Alerts
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told a congressional panel on Thursday that the Pentagon is providing “nonlethal aid” to the civilian-led opposition in Syria and that it is preparing additional measures if it becomes necessary to help protect the Syrian people.
Amid concern from some members of the U.S. Congress that the United States might be planning a military intervention similar to one in Libya last year, Panetta said there are similarities, but also important differences in the two situations.
He testified before the House of Representatives' Armed Services Committee, saying the United States stands with the Syrian people.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says he'd consider running as vice president with Mitt Romney, but doubts he'll ever be asked.
Bush tells the conservative website Newsmax that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is “probably the best” choice to share the ticket with Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee. Bush said he hopes the freshman senator is offered the No. 2 slot and accepts it.
Rubio has said repeatedly that he isn't interested in leaving the Senate.
Bush said he'd consider running if Romney were to ask him. But the former governor added that he's not sure running for vice president is the right thing for him and said he's doubtful he'd even receive the call.
Includes Video with Bush Family sealing the deal — Walker Bush (43) is being kind to Romney by being invisible.
One of the most disruptive men in the sprawling U.S. spy community, someone who turned the military’s elite killers into top spies, will likely soon be in charge of all military intelligence.
The Pentagon on Tuesday nominated Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to be the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the U.S.’ central military-intel hive. That might not go over so well with many responsible for battlefield intelligence. The first time most people outside of the shadows heard of Flynn, he was loudly complaining that military intelligence in Afghanistan sucked.
All this disruption ended up professionally beneficial — a likely consequence of how highly the Defense Department esteems JSOC’s intelligence prowess. McChrystal’s successor in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, now the CIA director, kept Flynn on his team even as the rest of the McChrystal staff flamed out after a Rolling Stone expose. Flynn’s next job, which he retains, was to be a top deputy to the Director of National Intelligence, nominally the head of the 16-agency spy community.
The Defense Intelligence Agency is a powerful if obscure organization responsible for providing intelligence to military commands, the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Its secret weapon: It’s chiefly responsible for all of the Defense Department’s human informants. Yet it can seem overly bureaucratic and in eclipse compared to the military tactical-intelligence shops it helps man.
“Flynn’s nomination is interesting because he does not seem like someone who would choose to be a placeholder at an agency in decline,” says spywatcher Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. “The appointment may signal a revival of DIA, or at least some upheaval.”
Flynn is the latest to ascend, pending Senate approval. And he’s probably not done breaking the spy community’s furniture.
Phi Beta Iota: From the US IC point of view, nothing changes as long as the money is constant. The point of the US IC is to waste $80 billion a year on corporate vaporware, not to actually provide intelligence. Jim Clapper, the single best qualified DNI in history, failed to change the IC because he did not focus on outputs–he let inputs and collection continue to drive the train, did nothing about processing, nothing significant about HUMINT, nothing at all about analysis which is worse off than it ever was, and he failed to actually create intelligence for Whole of Government or to implement initiatives in the open source intelligence and the multinational, multiagency, multidimentional, multidomain information-sharing and sense-making arena. He has been–like Gates was at DoD–a place holder, a token leader of one of the US budget's sucking chest wounds. Flynn does not know what he does not know — he is simply not armed with what he needs to know to make the big changes that need to be made if intelligence with integrity is to be restored not just within DoD, but across Whole of Government. With his present knowledge base, surrounded by the ever-present sychophants, he will make changes on the margin. He will NOT change the craft of intelligence, especially if he continues to let contractors drive the train and rob the government of its key personnel. He is inheriting a corrupt, pathologically-fragmented mess completely lacking in integrity.
Complete integrity lost. If the soldier committed these acts, trying to cover them up and using the excuse, “the photographs could incite violence” is only self serving. Until the brass admits that they operate under two or more standards…those of the troops and then of the officer, the brass, the government, they will continue to hide from the American public the truth…and they will be aided and abetted by the dysfunctional two party system that has taken over this country to the detriment of the people….
The grisly photographs of American soldiers posing with the body parts of Afghan insurgents during a 2010 deployment in Afghanistan were the source of a dispute between The Los Angeles Times and the Pentagon lasting weeks.
Two of the 18 photographs given to the paper were published Wednesday by The Times over fierce objections by military officials who said that the photographs could incite violence. The officials had asked The Times not to publish any of the photographs, a fact that the defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, reiterated on Wednesday as the images spread across the Internet.
Read full article. Use first link above to see the two photos.
Phi Beta Iota: Citing earlier LA Times report: “An American soldier says he released the photos to the Los Angeles Times to draw attention to the safety risk of a breakdown in leadership and discipline. The Army has started a criminal investigation.” This is exactly right. We are glad someone in the US military still has intelligence and integrity. A force is the embodiment of its commander. The US military is “out of control” and has morally disengaged. They have lost their soul. If we had the power, not only would Panetta be gone and Gates' ridiculous Presidential Medal of Freedom rescinded (as ridiculous as the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama for his first ten days in office), but the flag officers would be retired en masse, all one grade lower than their present rank. They are a uniform disgrace to the nation for their lack of integrity in matters large and small.
AFGHANISTAN COMMENT: The photos published by the Los Angeles Times have been covered extensively by the US press, except for a few minor issues not mentioned by any news services.
First of all, an Islamic suicide bomber is not someone who has abused his body, as some pundits opined today. On the contrary, he is a martyr, in fundamentalist theology. The American soldiers were not just defacing a dead human being; they were insulting an Islamic warrior.
But that is not a big deal for Muslims. They do the same and understand fighting and death. Fighters die. Winners gloat.
Even suicide bombers ought to be respected as warriors, but that means little, even to Afghans. Above all, they understand that death is an occupational hazard for a warrior. Plus they believe he gets his reward in heaven.
No American leader should apologize. An apology betrays a complete ignorance of the culture because the Afghans understand war: national and regional; tribal and clan; and village and family. Afghans consider an apology by a stronger power to be a sign of weakness.
For example, the bombers were most likely kids taken from a madrasah in Pakistan, given rudimentary training, doped up and sent to die by their religious teachers and elders. In which case, no Afghans will lament the deaths. The US does not even know the nationality of the bombers. To whom should the US apologize?
The cultural and religious differences are valid. Fundamentalist Islamic values that encourage children to sacrifice themselves as suicide bombers do not represent the mainstream of Muslim theology. Suicide bombings are denounced regularly in every meeting of Pakistani and Afghan Islamic scholars. However, they have never denounced the killing of Americans, Jews and Christians. A US apologiy to people whom even Muslims consider extremists serves no point.
It might be some kind of epiphany for some news reporters that American soldiers are soldiers, who are not so different from Roman legionnaires. But in most of the world, including in the US outside of San Francisco or Los Angeles, everybody in every culture understands that gloating is part of winning after a battle, along with mourning the dead. So in a war, a US apology for the death of an enemy fighter by his own hand also serves no point.
The Taliban have shown no special reverence for their suicide bombers in the past 11 years, unless they kill lots of Americans or unless an incident could be turned to some propaganda advantage.
US soldiers in Afghanistan are not placed in increased risk because of this incident. Most Afghans most likely will consider taking pictures of the lower half of a dissected body bewildering, if not sick. Any protests will be perfunctory. Protests over the dead never last more than a day or two, if they occur at all.
Defacing the Koran is a vastly more incendiary offense. These protests last for weeks.
After 11 years of US troops in a country and culture, Readers and citizens have a right to expect a deeper official understanding and better handling of these incidents. It did not happen in Vietnam and it is no better in Afghanistan.
Thanks to Brilliant and extremely well-informed Readers for Feedback about Afghan attitudes towards death and towards defacing the Koran.
