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US Secrets—And Lies—Unravel In NSA Leaks - MSNBC
US secrets—and lies—unravel in NSA leaksAdam Serwer - MSNBC
9:32 AM on 08/04/2013
<snip>
Eight weeks ago a series of explosive leaks blew the hinges off the closet containing the National Security Agency’s skeletons.
“This is more than we’ve learned in the last 35 years,” says Michelle Richardson of the ACLU.
The man behind the leaks, 30-year-old former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, said he couldn’t “in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy” after he exposed the scope of government surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post. Snowden’s leaks confirmed what civil liberties groups have feared for years: That beneath political rhetoric about the rule of law and respect for fundamental liberties, the U.S. government was indiscriminately gathering information on American citizens under authorities originally meant to protect the country from terrorism.
Snowden has been called a hero by some and a traitor by others, but one thing is clear: Because of evasions by government officials who tried to keep the nature of these surveillance programs secret, the public would never have known about the breadth of government spying had it not been for Snowden’s leaks, which have dramatically shifted the politics of surveillance in the U.S. Congress.
“<Snowden>‘s disclosures have changed the course of human history,” Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky told Democracy Now. “His initial disclosures were a service to our country because now we’re having this conversation—and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Before Snowden’s leaks, reauthorizations of laws like the Patriot Act or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act were mere occasions for Cassandras in Congress to espouse vague prophesies about the eroding of American freedoms. Legislation was crafted in such opaque terms that the government could collect information on Americans as long as it wasn’t “targeting them,” or when one end of the communication was presumed to be outside the country. Legislators used that linguistic distinction to publicly insist no information was being gathered on Americans at all.
Though President Obama had said the choice between security and liberty was a false one, once in office it was clear he had taken sides. Democrats went along with him, leaving Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, once the Patriot Act’s biggest critic in Congress, mocking the Senate Judiciary Committee as “the prosecutor’s committee.”
By 2011 however, Feingold was gone...
<snip>
More: http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/08/04/us-secrets-and-lies-unravel-in-nsa-leaks/
31 replies
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Where are the usual suspects telling us Snowden is a traitor, is a liar, doesn't really have anything, is a coward for running away. It has been hours now. Where are they? 
Some of them were around earlier. 
No snowden smears to go with a good article yet. Must be on a Seaworld office outing
WikiLeaks made that clear as day.
War is big business. It's an insider's game. It's why we have so much secret government.
The last remaining enormous wads of cash in the Treasury are to be had for purchasing today's modern military industrial intel complex.
There's more than a trillion to be grabbed -- just for the Lockheed-Martin F-35.
Now keeping tabs on us -- people interested in using some of the nation's treasure for more peaceful purposes -- are for-hire spies. How do I know this? Julian Assange and Anonymous:
WikiLeaks' Stratfor Dump Lifts Lid on Intelligence-Industrial Complex
WikiLeaks' latest release, of hacked emails from Stratfor, shines light on the murky world of private intelligence-gathering
by Pratap Chatterjee
Published on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 by The Guardian/UK
What price bad intelligence? Some 5m internal emails from Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based company that brands itself as a "global intelligence" provider, were recently obtained by Anonymous, the hacker collective, and are being released in batches by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website, starting Monday.
The most striking revelation from the latest disclosure is not simply the military-industrial complex that conspires to spy on citizens, activists and trouble-causers, but the extremely low quality of the information available to the highest bidder. Clients of the company include Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, as well as US government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Marines.
SNIP...
Assange notes that Stratfor is also seeking to profit directly from this information by partnering in an apparent hedge-fund venture with Shea Morenz, a former Goldman Sachs managing director. He points to an August 2011 document, marked "DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS", from Stratfor CEO George Friedman, which says:
"What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor's intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like."
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/28-10?print
If it weren't for Anonymous and WikiLeaks, we probably wouldn't know about any of that.
It's no joke. It's no unimportant story. It's no boring history. Run by insiders, the secret government is key to making the system run on behalf of the few -- the 1-percent of 1-percent. Central to that is intelligence -- economically, politically and military useful information.
Which brings up the nation's purported free press, the only business mentioned by name in the entire United States Constitution, and how the organizations therein have miserably failed to feature prominently the sundry and myriad ways the insiders on Wall Street and their toadies in Washington do the work for Them.
The problem is systemic. The corruption is systemic.
Because it involves oversight of secret organizations -- the Pentagon, Homeland Security, CIA, etc -- Congress and the Administration often have no clue, let alone oversight, to what is happening because the corruption is marked "Top Secret."
Secret government also means We the People can't do our job as citizens, which is to hold them accountable and find the ones responsible in order to vote the crooks out and, it is hoped, the honest ones in.
With no citizen oversight, anything goes. And it doesn't stop.
Remember this fine fellow, US Navy fighter ace Randy "Duke" Cunningham?
Later a member of the United States Congress, he used his position to feather his nest, Big Time.
In his political career, Cunningham was a member of the Appropriations and Intelligence committees, and chaired the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Human Intelligence Analysis and Counterintelligence during the 109th Congress. He was considered a leading Republican expert on national security issues.
Currently, he's in USP Tuscon or another fine facility where he gets three squares, medical and dental.
He's due for release in a year or so. He'll be able to pick up his pension.
"The Duke Cunningham Act, also known as the Federal Pension Forfeiture Act, was introduced by U.S. Senator John F. Kerry in 2006. The bill would have denied pension benefits to any members of Congress convicted of bribery, conspiracy or perjury. The bill died in committee. (Source: The Press Enterprise)
Duke wasn't alone. He really was just one snake in a long line of snakes. Remember Dusty Foggo, Number 3 at CIA and close associate of CIA Director and former Congressman Porter Goss? Swells sitting atop the peak of political and military secrecy and power.
Unfortunately, when it comes to modern governance, no oversight means means the insiders are getting away with murder, and warmongering and treason and all the power that they bring. Appointed pretzeldent George W Bush on Valentine's Day 2007 put it in words: "Money trumps peace."
Secret government warmongering and war profiteering are systemic. Secret government is rotten to the core. What's more, in a democracy that once really was land of the free and home of the brave, secret government poses the greatest threat to true national security.
*Paul Wellstone... KIA
*Howard Dean.... discredited, marginalized, banished for cheering too enthusiastically!
*Cynthia McKinney..... attacked, isolated, marginalized, cut off from Party support, expelled
*Eliot Spitzer...... Honey Trapped, discredited, isolated, expelled
*Russ Feingold.... attacked from The Center, marginalized, isolated from party support, exiled
*Alan Grayson .... "They" tried, but Alan bounced BACK!!!
*Dennis Kucinich ... attacked from The Center, discredited, marginalized, isolated, redistricted, exiled
*Shirley Sherrod... Blackballed by the Party Leadership over an exaggerated allegation (BY BRIETBART!), expelled
*Van JonesBlackballed by Party Leadership and expelled over a contrived and over-hyped Republican allegation
*John Edwards.... expelled and demonized for weakness in his personal life that regularly goes unpunished for others
*Maxine Waters... currently under attack
*ACORN.... quickly thrown under the bus by Party Leadership over a hyped and contrived allegation.
The Party leadership literally could not run away fast enough!
The downfall of some of the above can be partially attributed to their own personal foibles,
but in every case, the party leadership was quick to condemn and abandon, and made no effort to embrace or assist any of these Liberals in their time of need. There ARE politicians in BOTH parties guilty of far more serious transgressions who managed to survive their troubles because of Party support.
*The Congressional Black Caucus..... admonished by the President to quit whining, "Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes" and get behind the President's agenda.
(When has he EVER spoken to the "Blue Dogs" like that?)
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-tells-blacks-stop-complainin-fight-015928905.html
*The Progressive Caucus.... no seats in the cabinet, almost none appointed to positions of any power in the Executive Branch, the White House doesn't take their calls.
*Organized LABOR... while holding up a facade of supporting Unions, the Party leadership continues to advance Anti-UNION policy (unregulated International Trade with Slave Labor countries), and attack UNIONS as a major problem in Education, Government Employment, and the Work Place.
SEE: Arkansas Democratic Primary, 2010
http://www.salon.com/2010/06/10/lincoln_6/
*Liberal Advocacy Groups like MoveOn... marginalized and compromised by the White House Message Control Team.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-scahill/rahm-emanuels-think-tanke_b_185203.html
*Democratic Primaries 2010.... Strong pattern of endorsing and supporting Blue Dogs and Big Business Conservatives,
even including one "former" Republican running against more Liberal, Pro-Working Class challengers.
(See: Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Colorado and others)
The message is crystal clear, and written on the walls with the blood of America's Working Class, as the fat, RICH, New Aristocrats lean back, light their cigars, and laugh while saying,
[font size=3]"Gee. I didn't think it would be this easy!"[/font]
Those Who Speak Truth To Power are getting more and more rare.
