do I really have to say it???
Posted on 06/22/2013 1:09:57 PM PDT by Renfield
NSA whistleblower Russel Tice – a key source in the 2005 New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping – told Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frogs Post (the website of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds):
Tice: Okay. They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U.S. international–U.S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that–like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups. So, you know, don’t tell me that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and looked at it. And in some cases, I literally was involved in the technology that was going after this stuff. And you know, when I said to [former MSNBC show host Keith] Olbermann, I said, my particular thing is high tech and you know, what’s going on is the other thing, which is the dragnet. The dragnet is what Mark Klein is talking about, the terrestrial dragnet. Well my specialty is outer space. I deal with satellites, and everything that goes in and out of space. I did my spying via space. So that’s how I found out about this.
Collins: Now Russ, the targeting of the people that you just mentioned, top military leaders, members of Congress, intelligence community leaders and the–oh, I’m sorry, it was intelligence committees, let me correct that–not intelligence community, and then executive branch appointees. This creates the basis, and the potential for massive blackmail.
Tice: Absolutely! And remember we talked about that before, that I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on. Now here’s the big one. I haven’t given you any names. This was is summer of 2004. One of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with, with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator from Illinois. You wouldn’t happen to know where that guy lives right now, would you? It’s a big white house in Washington, DC. That’s who they went after. And that’s the president of the United States now.
Other whistleblowers say the same thing. When the former head of the NSA’s digital spying program – William Binney – disclosed the fact that the U.S. was spying on everyone in the U.S. and storing the data forever, and that the U.S. was quickly becoming a totalitarian state, the Feds tried to scare him into shutting up:
[Numerous] FBI officers held a gun to Binney’s head as he stepped naked from the shower. He watched with his wife and youngest son as the FBI ransacked their home. Later Binney was separated from the rest of his family, and FBI officials pressured him to implicate one of the other complainants in criminal activity. During the raid, Binney attempted to report to FBI officials the crimes he had witnessed at NSA, in particular the NSA’s violation of the constitutional rights of all Americans. However, the FBI wasn’t interested in these disclosures. Instead, FBI officials seized Binney’s private computer, which to this day has not been returned despite the fact that he has not been charged with a crime.
Other NSA whistleblowers have also been subjected to armed raids and criminal prosecution.
After high-level CIA officer John Kiriakou blew the whistle on illegal CIA torture, the government prosecuted him for espionage.
Even the head of the CIA was targeted with extra-constitutional spying and driven out of office. Indeed, Binney makes it very clear that the government will use information gained from its all-pervasive spying program to frame anyone it doesn’t like.
(More examples here.)
Retired high-level CIA analyst Ray McGovern – the top CIA briefer to numerous presidents – said this a few weeks ago on a radio program:
Which leads to the question, why would [Obama] do all these things? Why would he be afraid for example, to take the drones away from the CIA? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s afraid. Number one, he’s afraid of what happened to Martin Luther King Jr. And I know from a good friend who was there when it happened, that at a small dinner with progressive supporters – after these progressive supporters were banging on Obama before the election, “Why don’t you do the things we thought you stood for?” Obama turned sharply and said, “Don’t you remember what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.?” That’s a quote, and that’s a very revealing quote.
McGovern also said:
In a speech on March 21, second-term Obama gave us a big clue regarding his concept of leadership – one that is marked primarily by political risk-avoidance and a penchant for “leading from behind”: “Speaking as a politician, I can promise you this: political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do. You must create the change that you want to see.”
John Kennedy was willing to take huge risks in reaching out to the USSR and ending the war in Vietnam. That willingness to take risks may have gotten him assassinated, as James Douglass argues in his masterful JFK and the Unspeakable.
Martin Luther King, Jr., also took great risks and met the same end. There is more than just surmise that this weighs heavily on Barack Obama’s mind. Last year, pressed by progressive donors at a dinner party to act more like the progressive they thought he was, Obama responded sharply, “Don’t you remember what happened to Dr. King?”
We’re agnostic about McGovern’s theory. We don’t know whether Obama is a total corrupt sell-out … or a chicken. We don’t think it matters … as the effect is the same.
(http://gizadeathstar.com/2013/06/another-perspective-on-the-snowden-affair/)
"...Consider the implications here: if it be possible to find “dirt” on someone via such data mining – and admit it, who doesn’t have dirt? – then one might run for office in either political party, with the best of intentions, but, having attained it, been confronted with the proverbial manilla envelope through the mail slot in the front door, full of pictures, transcripts, what have you, with a polite note informing you on how to vote on this or that piece of legislation, “or else.”
What the Snowden affair, the IRS affair, and similar scandals seem to be indicating is that there may very well be hidden reasons, deep within rogue groups that have seized control of the intelligence agencies that compose the national security apparatus, that are responsible for the growing non-responsiveness of government at the national level. And what is true here is most likely true in other western countries. How can elected officials do their job, and remain responsible to their public constituencies, if in fact they are beholden to hidden and occulted constituencies of an entirely different nature?
The terrible prospect raised by such questions are that the national security establishment could, under such circumstances, be capable of working against the national security."
FYI, Washington’s Blog is a ‘truther’ site.
Looks like Snowden isn’t exposing anything that’s not already being told!
Concerning Obama's relationship with the CIA, it is in no way adversarial. Wayne Madsen's informative (and self-published) book, The Manufacturing of a President, tells a very plausible story about a family's membership in the Agency. His mother, Anne Dunham, was CIA via USAID, doing anthropological fieldwork in Indonesia that was an important part of the CIA's coup against the not-sufficiently-capitalist Sukarno in the war against Communism. Obama is the Company's president. He has consistently protected the CIA from day one. Obama is CIA. His legend was created by CIA. Documents concerning his past and his family's past have been systematically destroyed here and abroad. Ray McGovern is disingenuous. Why should anyone believe a CIA agent? One can check out of the Agency, but like the Hotel California, one can't ever leave. Obama would never consider taking drones away from the CIA. Truth is, what's good for the CIA is good the the USA, in Obama's mind. If your own blessed mother were involved in the CIA, you're likely to have very warm and fuzzy feelings for this monstrous cult. Let's also not forget that Bill Clinton was recruited by the CIA in Prague in 1968, and George H. W. Bush was former CIA director. The CIA has been choosing our presidents for us since at least 1988.
That’s silly. If the NSA was really spying on senior officials, you would expect to see crazy, illogical decisions. We’d see a conservative Supreme Court justice voting that ObamaCare is a tax and thus constitutional, we’d see the Republican leadership pushing for amnesty for criminal illegals, and we’d see the entire federal government pretending that the eligibility requirements for the office of the President of the United States are just suggestions that can be ignored.
The desire of some to pretend this is not Obama doing this and using the information is astounding. Have they even heard of a town called Chicago?
You’d also expect to see the DEA, the ATF, and the Justice Department coercing gun dealers to sell firearms to known gun-runners with Mexican connections, and to keep quiet about it. Yeah, completely crazy.
I’m becoming a truther. Not there yet, but....
By the way, folks, pathologically narcissistic people are easy to identify, and easy to manipulate. The CIA probably had Obama pegged by the time he was 12.
do I really have to say it???
That’s how they got to Gen. Paetraus so quickly, after Benghazi. He probably got the stand-down order.
None of this seems so crazy, does it. I wonder:
- who killed JFK, MLK, etc?
- why mccain stopped running right after he admitted the North Viet Namese “broke” him?
- why Bush #1 didn’t seem interested in getting re-elected?
- was Perot a plant to make us think it got Clinton elected?
- was the Florida recount just an act to make us think our votes count?
- was Roberts blackmailed?
so many questions. But only one possible answer.
Well, then you are just going to have to come to terms with the fact that the Truthers might be right. Look the US government is openly arming and training Al Qaeda terrorists that slaughter Christians, blow up churches, and post videos on Youtube of themselves eating the hearts of prisoners. The US/NATO has been using Al Qaeda for years and then says Grandma has to be groped at the airport and we have to lose all our privacy because Al Qaeda will get us.
You say the Truthers have no credibility. I say it's this government that has zero credibility on any subject.
Have you seen this video yet?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrTUv4M6E3A
You can skip through the first 10 minutes or so if you want....but this video strongly links the CIA to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. David Morales and Gordon Campbell of CIA were photographed numerous times in the hotel where RFK was assassinated, both immediately before and immediately after the assassination.
And by the way it was Bill Harvey and Cord Meyer at CIA who coordinated the assassination of JFK.
Oh, and the “security guard” who was standing behind, and a little to the right, of RFK when he was shot, was Thane Eugene Cesar, a CIA operative who had gotten a job as a security guard just 2 weeks before RFK’s appearance in L.A. He was carrying a .22 revolver (what kind of security guard carries a .22 revolver?) just like the one found on Sirhan Sirhan at the time of the shooting. One of the bullet holes in RFK (one that was covered up by the official inquiry) was just behind RFK’s right ear.
Boehner didn’t get really awful until he played golf with Obama. Wonder what Obama ‘splained to him?
> One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand.
Hmm I bet I know who that judge is...
This fellow Tice has come back to get another 15 minutes. He may be factual about some things but he was pretty thorougly discredited at the time.
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