INTELLIGENCE? Is That What's
Running the CIA/NSA "Total Surveillance" Show?
Compendium of Revelations on the
CIA, NSA and Total Surveillance
World Affairs Brief May 12, 2006 Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial
quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen's World
Affairs Brief (
http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com)
- "The real problem the
public is unaware of is that the CIA, like virtually all other federal
enforcement agencies, has a white side and a black side. The white side does
the legal stuff, and the black side does the secret illegal acts like
funding itself by collecting drug trade profits, printing its own currency,
and receiving off-the-books black budget money from the Treasury."
- "The black, or 'dark' side, not only does illegal
acts but acts under orders that further
a very anti-American globalist agenda."
- "It is worse than the
mafia; it is worse than terror because it's systematized and shielded by the
aura of legitimate government that has the naive support of citizens whose
patriotism is played upon."
- "The real control issue here is over who will preside
over the unknown budget and acts of black operations of the illegal sort?"
PARTIAL EXCERPT:
CIA SHAKEUP: THE FALL OF PORTER GOSS
CIA Director Porter Goss was fired - but not for incompetence. For the last
18 months the former CIA operative turned Congressman turned CIA boss has
presided over a massive purge at the highest levels of the agency. While
the media would have you believe Goss was purging those responsible for the
security and intel lapses that brought us 9/11, Goss was actually cleaning
house of the growing ranks of complainers on the agency's "white side" who were
tired of taking the blame for the administration's falsification of terror and
manipulation of the justification for the Iraq War. The backlash among
normally compliant "company men" was unprecedented and had to be pacified and
capped - without any real change in control.
The real problem the public is unaware of is
that the CIA, like virtually all other federal enforcement agencies, has a
white side and a black side. The white side does the legal stuff, and the
black side does the secret illegal acts like funding itself by collecting drug
trade profits, printing its own currency, and receiving off-the-books black
budget money from the Treasury. The public thinks these two categories
correspond to public and secret missions respectively. Not so. Both sides
operate with much secrecy; the White side for legitimate and legal reasons, and
the Black side, illegally, to cover for
government evil - and not simply "targeted
assassinations" of drug lords or evil tyrants as the movies would have us
believe.
The black, or "dark" side, not only does illegal
acts but acts under orders that further a very anti-American globalist agenda.
The dark side enforcers (the public got a brief glimpse of them during the "Good
'Ol Boys Roundup" in 1990 where racist conduct by multi-jurisdiction federal
agents was video taped and leaked to the press) work for the Powers That Be (PTB)
- persons like VP Dick Cheney and other former National Security Advisors that
control puppet presidents like George W. Bush. The dark side agents that work
for the CIA and FBI (many times off the formal payroll using front companies)
are the enforcers that eliminate threats to dark side powers or whistleblowers
that might expose government cover-ups of evil acts. That's the kind of illegal
acts we are talking about.
It is worse than the mafia; it is worse than terror
because it's systematized and shielded
by the aura of legitimate government that has the naive support of citizens
whose patriotism is played upon.
Whoever runs the CIA has to be an inside man
who can operate on both sides of the spectrum without pangs of conscience or
principle. No matter how benign a CIA director may appear or however pleasant
his demeanor, we must keep in mind that he has knowledge of and approves of
the black side activities he overseas. That's why Gen. Hayden was brought
over from the NSA. He is capable of defusing the volatile situation over at
Langley -- but will simultaneously keep managing black ops to keep them secret
from the growing list of whistleblowers.
The media controversy about Gen Hayden being a front for Pentagon control of
a civilian agency is a red herring (In fox hunting days,
someone would drag a smelly red herring fish across the country side to divert
the chase dog's attention. Hence a "red herring" is a planned diversion).
There is no Pentagon-civilian controversy over Hayden's appointment. Goss,
Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Hayden are all on the same globalist/Neo-con team, whether
in military or civilian uniforms. In fact, there is competition between
military intelligence (each service arm has an intelligence group) for the $40
billion public portion of the budget - but that's only for White side
activities. The real
control issue here is over who will preside over the unknown budget and acts of
black operations of the illegal sort?
GEN. HAYDEN AND NSA
CIVILIAN EAVESDROPPING: Also coming to the forefront in Hayden's
appointment as CIA Director is the volatile issue of the administration's
secret and warrantless eavesdropping program on American citizens. President
Bush not only weighed in vigorously in behalf of his appointment of 4-star
general Hayden, recently awarded a fourth star for his keeping the NSA
secrets secret, but the President also went to great lengths to mislead the
public about federal surveillance of US citizens:
As the AP reported, "President Bush addressed Thursday a newspaper report
that the National Security Agency was collecting records of tens of millions of
ordinary Americans' phone calls. Bush did not confirm the report that AT&T
Corp., Verizon Communications Inc., and BellSouth Corp. began turning over
[personal telephone] records to the NSA shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, as USA Today reported based on anonymous sources it said had
direct knowledge of the arrangement." [This, in itself, is a lie of a
different sort. What the public wasn't told is that all major telephone
companies have allowed warrantless telephone surveillance by the FBI for years.
Every major telephone exchange has been required since WWII to provide the FBI
unlimited access to place it's taps on any phone desire. The machinery is built
in. No warrants are ever requested or displayed by telephone companies - ed.]
Bush said, "Our intelligence activities strictly target al-Qaeda and their
known affiliates. We are not mining or trolling through the personal lives of
innocent Americans." Then why have a secret relationship with telephone
companies providing records of all telephone calls when the feds have open
access to tap any phone it wants to? The phone records provide data on calls the
NSA can't pick up via airwaves. It is obvious that we are dealing with a
total surveillance plan here - not just one that targets a few hundred
terrorists.
USA Today says that the NSA, via telephone companies has been collecting
information on every phone call made in this country. "Chances are that
your cell phone calls, as well as your home phone calls, have been tracked,"
according to Leslie Cauley, the lead journalist on the story.
Sen Arlen Specter (R-PA) responded to the revelations about telephone
company collusion with NSA that he would subpoena the phone companies to appear
before an investigative panel of the Senate Judiciary Committee which he heads.
Specter vowed to "find out exactly what is going on." I wouldn't be too sure
about that - this, coming from the man who served on one of the government's
biggest cover-ups, the notorious Warren Commission. Already, there exists a
ready excuse for failure: according to one AP report, "The government has
abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the
National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the
necessary security clearance to probe the matter." It will certainly do
the same to Congress.
Broad-based eavesdropping is being done by the NSA under the Echelon program,
which is world-wide including the entire USA. The real issue is not whether this
token little telephone eavesdropping project the president is defending should
be done by a warrant, but the fact that it is being used to divert attention
from the fact, attested to by many foreign and ex-intelligence agents, that the
NSA scans, records, and analyzes by computer virtually ALL electromagnetic
communications they can receive (nearly all).
All of this is done without a warrant and is
illegal.
Hayden's appointment is meant to have the
appearance of a peacemaker. He is mild and non-confrontational compared to
Porter Goss. He is an expert of telling Congress what it wants to hear.
In a prior hearing before Congress, Gen. Hayden was conciliatory about the
privacy rights of Americans and clearly stated that all surveillance of citizen
telephones ought to be by warrant. This was disingenuous, of course. As
he spoke, he knew that everything the NSA does violates that convention. Has
anyone thought, "Just how does the NSA know who's phone to selectively tap?"
The real answer is the they already surveil all telephone and radio signals -
both digital and analog. NSA computers spit out the identities of those speaking
about suspicious topics (picked up by key words and phrases the computer listens
for). That info provides the basis for either a warrant or warrantless
full-time tap on the telephone. Be assured, and be aware that the NSA computers
scan for much more than just words related to crime or terror.
Naturally, Hayden changed his tune recently and went on record supporting the
administration's view that the president has unlimited powers to surveil the
public under his broad mandate to "protect the nation from terror."
My, isn't the "war on terror" mantra useful for justifying increased
government power!
-----------------
World Affairs Brief May 19, 2006 Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations
with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com)
"The essential hardware elements of
a TIA-type spy program are being surreptitiously
slipped into real world telecommunications offices."
'We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what
web pages they clicked on,
we can reconstruct their (voice over Internet protocol) calls."
PARTIAL EXCERPT:
TOTAL SURVEILLANCE IS COMING
It's actually been here for a long time, but the public is just now becoming
aware of the scope. The whole purpose of leaking piecemeal pieces of minor
examples of warrantless telephone and internet eavesdropping is to accustom the
public to accepting the inevitable: Big Brother is watching you! - but it's for
your own good, to protect you from terrorists!
The government's denials were blown wide open this week as wired.com
published a series of four articles detailing the revelations of a telephone
company whistleblower who discovered AT&T's secret room full of equipment
tapping into the latest fiber-optics communications links (both telephone and
internet services). Wired.com reporter Ryan Singel notes, "A federal judge
Wednesday shot down telecom giant AT&T's efforts to recover and suppress
internal documents that a former AT&T technician [Mark Klein] says demonstrate
the company's collusion in illegal government surveillance."
Here are excerpts from Klein's report (from clear back in 2004):
- "In 2003 AT&T built 'secret rooms' hidden deep in the
bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a
government spy operation which taps into the company's popular WorldNet
service and the entire Internet. These installations enable the government
to look at every individual message on the Internet and analyze exactly what
people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San
Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in
numerous other cities.
- .
- "The physical arrangement, the timing of its
construction, the government-imposed secrecy surrounding it, and other
factors all strongly suggest that its origins are rooted in the Defense
Department's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program which brought
forth vigorous protests from defenders of constitutionally protected civil
liberties last year: To mollify critics, the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) spokesmen have repeatedly asserted that they are
only conducting 'research' using 'artificial synthetic data' or information
from 'normal DOD intelligence channels' and hence there are 'no U.S. citizen
privacy implications" (Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector
General Report on TIA, December 12, 2003).
-
- "They also changed the name of the program to
'Terrorism Information Awareness' to make it more politically palatable.
But feeling the heat, Congress made a big show of allegedly cutting off
funding for TIA in late 2003, and the political fallout resulted in Adm.
Poindexter's abrupt resignation last August. However, the fine print reveals
that Congress eliminated funding only for 'the majority of the TIA
components,' allowing several components to continue (DOD, ibid).
The essential
hardware elements of a TIA-type spy program are being surreptitiously
slipped into real world telecommunications offices.
.
"In San Francisco the 'secret room' is Room 641A at
611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors
of which are occupied by AT&T. High-speed fiber-optic circuits come in
on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to
routers for AT&T's WorldNet service, part of the latter's vital
'Common Backbone.'
In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and
cabled to the secret room on the 6th floor to monitor the information going
through the circuits.
.
"The normal work force of unionized technicians in
the office are forbidden to enter the secret room, which has a special
combination lock on the main door. The telltale sign of an illicit
government spy operation is the fact that only people with security
clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room. In
practice this has meant that only one management-level technician works in
there. Ironically, the one who set up the room was laid off in late 2003 in
one of the company's endless downsizings,
but he was quickly replaced by another.
.
"A document addresses the special problem of trying
to spy on fiber-optic circuits. Unlike copper wire circuits which emit
electromagnetic fields that can be tapped into without disturbing the
circuits, fiber-optic circuits do not 'leak' their light signals. In order
to monitor such communications, one has to physically cut into the fiber
somehow and divert a portion of the light signal to see the information.
This problem is solved with 'splitters' which literally split off a
percentage of the light signal so it can be examined." [End of Klein
quote.]
The hardwire splitters AT&T installed for the NSA do more
than monitor AT&T/Worldcom's Internet clients.
They record all other Internet
messages routed through this main network.
.
To demonstrate the power of the new software associated with this fiber-optic
tap of the Internet, Robert Poe explains, "The equipment that technician
Mark Klein learned was installed in the AT&T's San Francisco switching office
... is a powerful commercial
network-analysis product with all sorts of valuable uses for network operators.
It just happens to be capable of doing things that make it one of the best
internet spy tools around. 'Anything that comes
through (an internet protocol network), we can record,' says Steve Bannerman,
marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company [that
develops secret tracking software for the NSA and others].
'We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with
attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice
over Internet protocol) calls.'"
That's the kind of total surveillance
the feds are working to achieve. It isn't complete yet, however. Qwest
Communications announced that it was approached by the NSA with a similar
request, with assurances that everything was legal. Herbert J. Stern, a lawyer
for Qwest, said that Qwest CEO, Joseph Nacchio, "made inquiry as to
whether a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that
request. When he learned that no such authority had been granted, and that there
was a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process ...
Mr. Nacchio concluded that the requests violated federal privacy requirements
and issued instructions to refuse to comply."
Bravo.
Now Nacchio himself is the target of a Martha
Stewart type indictment, which may be in retaliation for not cooperating.
The former CEO of Qwest (1997-2002) was indicted Tuesday on 42 counts of insider
trading. He is accused of using insider information to sell $100.8 million worth
of stock between January and May 2001 based upon publicly released financial
statements that promoted the company's growth in a manner the government thinks
was "extremely aggressive."
Chris Strohm of the Congress Daily reports on another NSA whistleblower who has
insider knowledge of NSA spying on civilians: "A former intelligence
officer for the National Security Agency said he plans to tell Senate staffers
next week that unlawful activity occurred at the agency under the supervision of
Gen. Michael Hayden beyond what has been publicly reported, while hinting that
it might have involved the illegal
use of space-based satellites and systems to spy on U.S. citizens.
Russell Tice, who worked on what are known as
'special access programs,'
has wanted to meet in a closed session with members of Congress and their staff
since President Bush announced in December that he had secretly authorized the
NSA to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without a court order."
And, Tice doesn't have access to
everything. It is much broader than what he knows.
According to Democracy Now, "Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner of
Wisconsin is preparing legislation that rewrites Internet privacy rules.
Under the proposed legislation, Internet service providers would be required to
keep logs tracking what users did online in order to help police to be able to
'conduct criminal investigations.'" The PTB try to legislate these kinds of
things only after the fact. This makes sure the little ISPs are drawn into
the surveillance noose.
NOW JOURNALISTS UNDER SURVEILLANCE
An entry posted Monday evening on The Blotter, an ABC News blog, by
investigative reporters Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, reported: "The
FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly seeking reporters' phone
records in leak investigations. 'It
used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush
administration,' said a senior federal official."
Naturally, mainstream journalists are
crying foul - though they shouldn't. What did they expect was the price for
having secret access to government leakers? Although all leaking of
classified information is illegal, the government allows hundreds of authorized
leaks to "approved media" sources so as to be able to determine public
perceptions. The critical truths about government wrongdoing are omitted
unless a purposeful effort is made by the PTB to set up a president for a fall -
as they did for Richard Nixon.
Bush is being set up for a different fall: to take the blame for eventual
worldwide retaliation when WWIII comes. But of course, he'll be out of office by
then. [In classic "good cop/bad cop" style,
they'll blame it on the Democrats who blame it on Republicans - same old game
while they advance the same totalitarian "total surveillance" agenda. -CR]
In fact, the government only eavesdrops on
journalists to discover unauthorized leakers-whistleblowers who want the public
to know about government illegal acts. To do
so, they eavesdrop on all government phones, including Congress, the White
House, all bureaucracies, and even the Supreme Court.
Leftist Journalists are fearful that the "right wing" Bush administration (right
wing in the same erroneous sense that the socialist Nazis were labeled right
wing) will put them on some McCarthy-like black list of enemies. William
Arkin of the Washington Post, while playing up to the Left is turning out to
be a shill for the Bush administration, steps up to assure his fellow Lefties
that this is not so - there is NO LIST! How could anyone possibly know such a
negative proposition, especially when government computers keep thousands of
special lists?
.
Secrecy is so compartmentalized that even people
in the NSA or CIA don't know but a fraction of what goes on there.
But, Arkin contacted his buddies within the controlled
intelligence community (more official leakers) and they dutifully assured him
"no enemies list exists."
.
OK, if you say so ... I guess we can all rest easy.
-------------------
World Affairs Brief May 26, 2006 Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial
quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen's World
Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com)
"This witch hunt is all about
going after whistleblowers leaking info damaging
to the government illegal activities or its secret globalist agenda."
"The establishment media consistently back both parties when in power.
Criticism is only for a show of duty, yet token and muted,
with the worst sins suppressed."
"Anyone who believes this government is
allied with the Constitution
and 'conservativism' is fooling themselves."
PARTIAL EXCERPT:
DE FACTO OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT IN USA
Britain is notorious for its selective denial of free speech and a free
press using its "Official Secrets Act." Americans used to be proud we
were free from such sleight-of-hand maneuvers to restrict liberty. No more. It
appears we have, compliments of our erstwhile "conservative" government, using
dubious legal interpretations, a de facto "state
secrets act."
Thinkprogress.org
warned this week, "Be careful what you read." Not only is it
viewed as unlawful to distribute classified material, you can be prosecuted for
possessing it, even if you buy and keep a book or newspaper with illegal
material inside.
- "Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, asked this
weekend whether he believes he can prosecute journalists for publishing
classified information, made
a statement that should chill the bones of every
American who values a vigorous press: 'It
depends on the circumstances.' Speaking on ABC's This Week,
Mr. Gonzales explained, 'There are some statutes on the book which, if
you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a
possibility ... We have an obligation to enforce those laws.' But
presenting the administration's radical new strategy as mere deference to
Congress is profoundly dishonest.
.
"The administration is seeking to convert a
moribund World War I-era espionage law into an American version of Britain's
Official Secrets Act. Mr. Gonzales is correct that the law, which bans
the transmission of national defense information to anyone not cleared to
receive it, would - if read literally - make criminals out of journalists
who publish such material. For that matter, it
would also permit the jailing of
whistle-blowers, academics who write about leaked information, members of
Congress who disclose secrets and, theoretically, even readers of newspapers
who discuss the stories.
Precisely because of the law's unthinkable scope, the First Amendment has
long been understood to limit its application. Government has gone after
officials who promise to protect the nation's secrets and then fail to do so
- but generally not against citizens who receive those secrets.
.
"The attorney general pretends that the
administration's current understanding of the law merely reflects Congress's
policy judgment, rather than its own. Yet only a few years ago, when
Congress passed (and President Bill Clinton vetoed) a bill to criminalize
leaks of classified material, people on both sides of the issue understood
that current law did not criminalize the vast majority of leaks - let alone
subsequent disclosures by people who never swore to protect classified
material in the first place. Criminalizing such disclosures would be
antithetical to the American tradition.
Yet the administration has set about
doing it without even asking Congress."
[End Thinkprogress quote].
There is a real double standard going on. The
government isn't going after journalists who regularly received insider leaks
(which are illegal, but secretly authorized).
This witch hunt is all about going after whistleblowers
leaking info damaging to the government illegal activities or its secret
globalist agenda.
While the government is threatening journalists
and citizens about leaks and stretching its interpretation of law to prosecute,
it is using the widest and loosest interpretation in justifying illegal domestic
spying here at home. [You can't make spying
"right" without making open government "wrong". -CR]
Thinkprogress takes
apart AG Gonzales' arguments piece by piece:
- "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales won't confirm that
the federal government collected the phone records of millions of Americans,
as reported on May 11 in USA Today. But yesterday, Gonzales claimed that
doing so was perfectly legal. From the Washington Post: 'Attorney
General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday that the government can obtain
domestic telephone records without court approval under a 1979 Supreme Court
ruling that authorized the collection of business records.'
"This is a classic case of misdirection. The issue isn't simply
whether or not collecting domestic phone records is constitutional. The
issue is whether it's legal. If the USA Today story is accurate, the NSA
program appears to be illegal, not because it violates the fourth amendment,
but because it violates two statutes: Significantly, Smith v. Maryland
considers activities that occurred in 1976. Both of the statutes that
prohibit the activity described by USA Today were enacted after that date:
"1. The Stored Communications Act of 1986 (SCA). The law
prohibits the telecommunications companies from handing over telephone
records to the government without a court order. (18 USC 2702-3.) There are
several exceptions, none of which apply in this circumstance. The SCA was
enacted in response to Smith v. Maryland.
- "2. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of
1978 (FISA). The law allows this kind of domestic surveillance in two
circumstances: 1) the government obtains a warrant from the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court, or 2) the government obtains a
certification from the Attorney General that the program is legal under FISA.
According to the
USA Today article, neither action was taken."
[End Thinkprogress quote].
The analysis goes on to fault the
Washington Post story for only presenting Gonzales' comments.
"[It] doesn't mention the Stored Communications Act
or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. For that matter, it doesn't
include any legal analysis from anyone other than Gonzales."
.
Anyone who thinks the press is Leftist and hostile to this administration isn't
looking closely. It may be liberal, but it is also
globalist in allegiance - just like the Bush and Clinton
teams. The establishment media consistently back
both parties when in power. Criticism is only for a show of duty, yet token and
muted, with the worst sins suppressed.
In other disturbing news, Dawn Kopecki of
Business Week shocked the business crowd by a little known fact tucked
away in a newly passed law: John Negroponte, the "Intelligence Czar"
can waive SEC rules for companies who have
"special national security" relations with government:
"Now, the White House's top spymaster can cite national security
to exempt businesses from reporting
requirements. President George W. Bush has bestowed
on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of
national security, to excuse publicly traded
companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations.
Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated
May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye."
Anyone who believes this government is
allied with the Constitution and "conservativism" is fooling themselves.
Meanwhile, the big insider telephone companies are
bracing for legal action based upon growing awareness that they have illegally
colluded with the NSA to compromise clients' phone records.
As Peter Grier of the Christian Science Monitor writes, "The forecast for
major US phone companies this spring: continued heat, with a 100 percent chance
of gathering lawsuits. From New York to Kentucky to Texas, lawyers specializing
in class-action litigation are lining up to sue phone firms alleged to have
handed over customer records to the National Security Agency without a court
order. On Monday, for instance, the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois
filed suit against AT&T, charging that its actions in the NSA program violated
customer privacy."
AT&T has already petitioned the court to quash the evidence, and
government has come to the telecom's defense, but it's a pretty open and shut
case that the statutes have been violated. Even if convicted, the secret
phone tapping won't stop. Government will simply make up to the companies any
fines they might be assessed.
Hayden defends eavesdropping: Reuters reports that, as expected, "Gen.
Michael Hayden, President George W. Bush's nominee for CIA director, strongly
defended a domestic eavesdropping program on Thursday,
saying it protected the country
against terrorism and did not violate Americans' civil rights.
- "The toughest questions came
from Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and focused on Hayden's role as
architect of Bush's domestic spying program and his own credibility. Wyden
said Hayden had not kept Congress fully informed of the eavesdropping
program and had made misleading statements in previous appearances before
Congress: 'General, having evaluated your words, I now have a difficult time
with your credibility ... So with all due
respect, general, I can't tell now if you've simply said one thing and done
another, or whether you have just parsed your words like a lawyer to
intentionally mislead the public.'"
That's the way it always is in
Congressional hearings. Administration nominees or spokesmen are so predictable
in their responses that it is hardly worth holding a hearing. Wyden and other
Democrats were particularly incensed that Hayden had told them in prior secret
briefs that the eavesdropping did not
involve US citizens -- only foreign terrorists suspects.
[The Big Lie - CR]
When pressed more
specifically during his confirmation hearing, the Gen. kept evading by
refusing to answer in public. As the AP reported, "Hayden repeatedly
demurred, frustrating Democrats who had hoped to use the hearings for a public
airing on whether the government broke the law by eavesdropping without warrants
on thousands of phone conversations.
- "'Is the NSA program indeed limited to 'only
international calls' as Hayden stated earlier this year? Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.,
asked. 'I chose my words very carefully. What I was talking about in the
National Press Club was the program the president confirmed,' Hayden
replied. 'I'm delighted to go into great detail in closed session.'
[where the public is excluded and can't tell even if our Senators cross
examine with rigor].
"'Has the administration sought court
approval for collection of millions of phone records of ordinary Americans,
as news reports stated? Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked. 'Just a
slight discomfort. But I'll be happy to give it to you as soon as we get to
closed session,' Hayden said."
More of the same. There were half a dozen more
responses that demurred to closed session. Bush picked the right guy for
slickness.
Hayden even hedged on torture:
"Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked the nominee a simple question: Is 'waterboarding'
an acceptable interrogation technique? Gen. Hayden responded:
'Let me defer that to closed session, and I would be
happy to discuss it in some detail.' That
was the wrong answer. The right one would have been simple: No. Last year
Congress banned cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment of detainees; one of its
explicit aims was to stop the CIA's use of waterboarding, which induces an
excruciating sensation of drowning and is considered by most human rights
organizations to constitute torture.
So why couldn't Gen. Hayden say clearly that the technique is now
"off-limits?" Simple, because the US still
uses torture - just with evermore evasive descriptions.
###
"The world is a cosmic
struggle for the soul of mankind
and that struggle is reaching a climax."
"The only thing necessary
for the triumph of evil
is for good men to do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke
“If Tyranny and
Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
-- James Madison, Chief
Architect of the Constitution
“When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the
truth,
he will either cease being mistaken, or cease being honest.”
"Tyranny hates reason! Tyranny hates honor! This is
because
Tyranny is overcome by REASON and HONOR.
It is Folly and Fear that is the food of Tyrants.
Tyranny thrives in a climate of dishonor and
tolerance for dishonor.
Turn on the lamp of truth and justice and tyrants
flee to hide."
- Reinhold Sommerstedt
"Such is the irresistible nature of
truth that all it
asks,
and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing."
--Thomas Paine
The truth
will come out when powerful people
no longer wish to suppress it."
- Lord Acton
"The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience.
With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death."
-
Voltaire
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and
love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time
they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS."
-- Mahatma Gandhi