Justice Integrity Project
Backgrounder on Obama's Big Data Domestic Spying System
Collected here is background information to resolve conflicting claims about recent revelations about the Obama-Bush domestic spying program.
The expansion began immediately after the Bush-Cheney administration took office in 2001, and was later expanded after 9/11 and the imposition of the Patriot Act.
Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio is the only major communications executive known to have fought the program on behalf of his customers. Later, he was imprisoned on a financial fraud charges that he and his attorneys argue were trumped up to teach other American CEOs a lesson about opposing the federal government's program.
My forthcoming book, Presidential Puppetry, describes Nacchio's prosecution in the context of the government's massive surveillance program, and its use by both government and private sector leaders to intimidate their critics in government, the private sector and the media. Author James Bamford reported in-depth on the Nacchio complaint, which occasionally resurfaces in part.
In mid-2008, Sen. Barack Obama helped keep surveillance details secret and the program strong. After securing the Democratic nomination for the presidency, he switched his campaign position opposing immunity for communications companies that illegally conspired with government officials to spy on their customers.
Obama joined a bipartisan Congressional majority granting the immunity in 2008, thereby preventing most court litigation by citizens to learn if there are being victimized.
The White House photo at left shows President Obama and Chief of Staff Denis McDonough talking confidentially this month on the South Lawn of the White House. McDonough said June 16 that, Obama Will Speak On NSA In The Coming Days.
In other major news, the UK newspapers Guardian reported that the UK government had been caught secretly spying on allies at a Group of 20 meeting in London and then sharing the information with the United States and certain allies. Separately, the UK's Independent reported that Iran has committed to sending 4,000 troops to support Syria's government. With the U.S. positioning approximately the same number of troops in Jordan (and by some reports inflitrating advisors across the border into Syria), the Independent warned that the United States appears to be repeating its disastrous involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Mideast religious wars dating back to the 7th Century.
After each scandal officials deny that any laws are broken or that the public need have any concerns even though the most relevant laws, courts, factual situations, and decisions are secret.
Furthermore, whistleblowers are being prosecuted as spies. Those like Army Private Bradley Manning and NSA leaker Edward Snowden face a lifetime in prison, or worse. Federal authorities kept Manning, now on trial for spy charges because of his massive disclosures, in pre-trial detention characterized as torture by experts.
Additionally, reporters are being investigated with the potential of spy charges and the certainty of enormous legal expenses for themselves and their organizations. Even more dangerous for the public, individual reporters and their media employers increasingly face loss of access to relevant government officials if their reports are regarded as too aggressive. That kind of reprisal can mean loss of sources and jobs for reporters, who see cooperative reporters move to the top of the field with continued scoops from anonymous officials who like to rewarding their media friends and shape public discourse with no accountability.
Worst of all, a clear pattern has emerged whereby news organizations are not simply victims of government reprisal, but willing participants in secret agendas.
The participation of the Washington Post Chairman Donald Graham in this month's annual Bilderberg conference, as usual, underscores the deep ties between the financial, government, media, and national security elite. Graham, shown at right in a file photo, has served on the American Friends of Bilderberg board with David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Ron Paul supporter and PayPal founder Peter Thiel, and Perseus Capital executive James Johnson, a major player among Democrats. With great secrecy, the Bilderberg Group first met in 1954 at the smallish Bilderberg Hotel in the Netherlands with a guest list created by two members of the Rockefeller and Rothschild families.
The invitation-only secret conference each year attracts approximately 130 participants, which this year included the British Prime Minister David Cameron, Her Royal Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and CEOs of major new and old media companies, including Facebook, Google and Amazon.com. Mainstays are the top American and European financial, mining, energy, and industrial companies and their regulators.
Among other notable participants this year was former CIA Director David Petraeus, now chairman of the new global subsidiary of KKR, the $60 billion buyout company led by longtime Bilderberger Henry Kravis. Attending also was Kravis, whose father helped devise the special preferences in tax laws for energy companies, and offered George H.W. Bush his first job after Yale graduation. National Security Agency (NSA) Director Keith Alexander has frequently attended, but was not reported this year. Sometimes attendees are not listed, such as U.S. presidential candidates hoping for approval from the group.
The excerpts below include official government sources, such as the NSA, independent experts, such as author James Bamford and former NSA executives William Binney and Thomas Drake; and from news commentaries, both from mainstream publications and independent experts. The material focuses primarily on NSA and other spying on Americans in the United States because the NSA's original mandate was international intelligence. Thus, spying on foreign leaders fall within its expected scope. The Guardian reported on June 16 that British and NSA surveillance experts targeted attendees at London G20 summit in 2009, a story that might prove embarrassing to Obama as the G8 summit began in Ireland. But the reports would hardly surprise anyone.
The news accounts below draw heavily from the Washington Post for several reasons. The paper devotes massive space to its coverage, and is highly influential in Washington. I am a longtime subscriber, and appreciate how editors will strive to avoid duplication in coverage (which could easily occur if our list below tried to excerpt from many sources regarding essentially the same news story).
Jesse Ventura: Fighting for Our Freedoms, Against Both Parties
Jesse Ventura, the best-selling author and former Independent Minnesota governor, joined my weekly radio show to discuss his fight against the ongoing assault on American freedoms. He described airport security as "gestapo" tactics designed to condition Americans to submit to searches, not measurably to increase security.
He said he would be willing to run for president in 2016, but only in what he called the "unlikely" event that a low-budget, grassroots campaign drafted him and could succeed in including him in the presidential debates, which the parties tightly control.
Washington Update co-host Scott Draughon and I hosted the one-hour weekly show broadcast live nationally via the My Technology Lawyer network. Tune in here to listen to an achive version of the show.
The former pro wrestler's latest book is DemoCrips and ReBloodLicans: No More Gangs in Government. He compares in it both major parties to the notorious Los Angeles criminal gangs.
Ventura is the nation's most outspoken highly credentialed opponent of two-party complicity in eroding traditional American liberties. The updated book, co-authored with Dick Russell, is available here following its release in paperback two weeks ago following best-seller status as a hardcover last year, when Russell appeared on our show.
The book is especially timely following continuing revelations of massive secret surveillance by federal agencies on the American public.
The latest was a Bloomberg news report June 13, U.S. Agencies Said to Swap Data With Thousands of Firms. The report, excerpted below, said, "Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said."
That report followed a week of denials by authorities in both parties that the surveillance exposed former National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden posed any danger to the public or traditional freedoms. Recent revelations and analysis excerpted below includes NSA's own account of its activities, and rebuttals by other experts. Two senators challenged the veracity of NSA Director Keith Alexander, who claimed that surveillance has thwarted many attacks: Udall and Wyden Question NSA Head’s Defense of Surveillance Programs.
Update: The Justice Integrity Project published on June 16: Backgrounder on Obama's Big Data Domestic Spying System. The purpose was to resolve conflicting claims about recent revelations about the Obama-Bush domestic spying program.
One of Ventura's ongoing protests has been against what he regards as excessive security at airports, which he describes as intended to condition Americans to give up their rights -- not to improve security. The Justice Integrity Project reported those 2010-era protests in TSA Boondoogle Defies Logic, Decency. A version was published also on the Huffington Post.
Ventura often clashes with mainstream media cable TV hosts who defend mainstream political leaders and question his judgment on security issues especially. He is a former member of the U.S. Navy Underwater Demolition Team 12, the precursor to SEALs. By comparison, he argues that the typical host knows little of security risks except what they are told.
Ventura was Minnesota's governor from 1999 to 2003 after election as an independent following careers as a famed pro wrestler and The former professional wrestler has also been an actor in such films as: The Running Man (1987) and Predator (1987). He is the author or co-author of such previous books as: I Ain't Got Time to Bleed: Reworking the Body Politic from the Bottom up (2000), Quotations of Chairman Jesse (2000), Do I Stand Alone?: Going to the Mat Against Political Pawns and Media Jackals (2001), Jesse Ventura Tells It Like It Is: America's Most Outspoken Governor Speaks Out About Government (2002), The New Prohibition: Voices of Dissent Challenge the Drug War (2004).
Daniel Ellsberg: Snowden's NSA Leak Was Heroic, Historic
Edward Snowden's release of secret NSA surveillance methods used against the America public makes him the most admirable and important whistleblower in national security history.
That's essence of comment by Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, left, the nation's most-honored whistleblower.
“There’s no American official or former official that I admire more at this point," Ellsberg said of Snowden to a reporter. "There’s never been a more important disclosure to the American people than the leak — and I include the Pentagon Papers in that."
Ellsberg also said of Snowden, 29, shown at right in a Guardian photo, "He’s clearly ready to give his life or his freedom for the interests of his country.” Meanwhile, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat married to a major federal contractor, adjudged Snowden guilty of "treason" and said he should be punished in keeping with that determination.
This column provides other expert assessment on Snowden's actions, and addresses questions about the surveillance. It concludes with an appendix of other commentary. As the dust settled, the major mysteries remained, as indicated by: 5 Basic Things We Still Do Not Know about NSA Snooping.
Update: The Justice Integrity Project published on June 16: Backgrounder on Obama's Big Data Domestic Spying System. The purpose was to resolve conflicting claims about recent revelations about the Obama-Bush domestic spying program.
The Guardian published a video of Snowden's eloquent description of his reasons for risking imprisonment. He said he wanted to alert the American public to the danger it faces from surveillance of potentially any electronic communications by phone and social media.
Snowden, the source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history, explained to the Guardian team of Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, and videographer Laura Poitras "his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows."
Snowden said of his freedom and the rest of his future, "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
Ellsberg's praise of Snowden was based partly on Snowden's rare choice to take responsibility for his actions before authorities outed him. Others prominent in national security whistleblowing and related civil rights advocacy also praised Snowden, a onetime Army recruit injured in training for Iraq service.
"He’s a whistleblower,” said Thomas Drake, whom the Obama administration tried to imprison spy charges for proesting a billion dollars in waste to a reporter. “I consider it a magnificent act of civil disobedience,” Drake said of Snowden, who documented for Guadian and Washington Post reporters massive surveillance of the American public in violation of the NSA's onetime requirement to focus on foreign threats.
Predictably, high federal officials called for Snowden's arrest. Also, supporters of the surveillance state warned that his actions threatened security. U.S. Rep. Peter King of New York went further by calling for prosecution of reporters who publish leaked information. The Associated Press, a victim of secret surveillance of 100 reporters and their sources, instructed its staff never to call "leakers" of national security information "whistle-blowers" because the latter term implies that the news sources may have identified wrongdoing.
National Intelligence Director James Clapper said the Justice Department should arrest Snowden, who travelled to Hong Kong to announce his role in the video, released June 9.
“The government is not going to hold back on this case,” commented Michael Vatis, a former Clinton Justice Department official. “This is a huge one.”
Greenwald is the Guardian columnist who broke the Snowden stories after working with Poitras on the probe since February. He pushed back against anti-Snowden arguments June 10 from MSNBC "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski. Greenwald, right, said the public should be made aware of massive government surveillance to decide if they approve it. The hostess asked him to put the programs into perspective this way:
"Isn't it the case that reviewing of emails or any wiretapping cannot take place without an additional warrant from a judge and a review?" she asked. "I mean it's not like there's haphazard probing into all of our personal emails. Can we put this into context so we understand exactly what is going on?"
"Yeah, I'll put this into context for you," Greenwald responded. "The White House talking points that you're using are completely misleading and false."
'American Conservative' Publisher Decries Major Media Conventional Wisdom, Cover-ups
A conservative magazine publisher has created a stir during recent weeks by his non-partisan attack on shoddy and otherwise incomplete reporting by the mainstream media on vital national issues.
American Conservative Publisher Ron Unz, below left, published on April 29 Our American Pravda. His subtitle was: The major media overlooked Communist spies and Madoff’s fraud. What are they missing today? The long article described missed or misplayed national stories over the past three decades. Among them, he wrote, was coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War, which he described as one of the nation's greatest disasters.
Unz is a former Republican gubernatorial candidate in California's 1994 elections, a theoretical physicist by original training, and a software developer by profession. A 1999 magazine cover at right described his career.
More currently, he argues that conventional wisdom and other complacency has been leading major news organizations into missing stories repeatedly in a manner so bad that it approaches the Soviet Union's press performance during at least part of the Stalin era.
The Atlantic Magazine addressed his thesis in a column this week in Why Does the American Media Get Big Stories Wrong? Unz describes the Atlantic article as part of a gratifying reaction.
Unz amplified his views as guest on the June 7 edition of Washington Update, which I co-hosted live with Scott Draughon, founder of the My Technology Lawyer radio network. Click here to listen via archive. Call in toll free (866-685-7469 ) or send an email to
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for questions or comments, including for our June 14 show hosting author and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura.
My interest in the Unz column was generated by his hard-hitting, non-partisan approach, as well as by his obvious civic passion focused on several topics I have also researched for the Justice Integrity Project, the radio show, and my forthcoming book, Presidential Puppetry.
California Senator Rejects Criticism of Privacy Violations, Husband's Deal
The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee promptly defended on June 6 the massive invasions of Americans' privacy increasingly apparent under her watch.
California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, right, justified government surveillance of citizen phone calls, emails, social media and other electronic communications as necessary for national security.
Her defense of Orwellian Big Brother techniques matched those of most other Capitol Hill and Obama administration leaders. One news report said, Administration, lawmakers defend NSA program to collect phone records.
Last summer, I wrote how even a three-term Democratic colleague, Ron Wyden of Oregon, said he had no power to call any witnesses on privacy issues. The column was Senator’s Lonely Battle For Public’s Privacy Rights.
Moreover, Feinstein's remarks paralleled her recent defense of her husband's controversial receipt of an exclusive federal contract to sell billions of dollars of post offices and surrounding land for a 6 percent commission.
Feinstein's staff says that the enrichement of her husband, Richard C. Blum, from decades of federal contracts does not represent a conflict because he makes decisions independent from her, and much of her own wealth is in a blind trust.
Obama Doubles Down on National Security Strategy
The Obama administration and its critics separately hardened their national security positions this week.
The White House named UN Ambassador Susan Rice and former White House analyst Samantha Power to cabinet-level posts. Meanwhile, the Obama White House suffered embarrassment from major revelations regarding its surveillance of the public, prosecutions of leakers, and its dubious regime-change strategies in the Mideast.
The most recent was the Thursday revelation by the Washington Post of Documents: U.S. intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program. The Post story illustrating how the federal government is secretly capturing consumer date from such sites as Google, Facebook, Apple, MSN, Skype, Yahoo! and YouTube followed a Guardian report that Verizon was secretly handing over the federal government data on tens of millions of international calls. 
Regarding the administration's team, the president is "ushering out a cautious Washington insider and elevating two long-time proponents of a larger American role in preventing humanitarian crises and protecting human rights," the Washington Post reported in National security team shuffle may signal more activist stance at White House. "The ideological shift signaled by the choices highlights a central dilemma for Obama as he seeks to make a mark on the world at a time of austerity — and war weariness — at home."
Additionally this week, a Defense Department Inspector General's report revealed that former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta disclosed classified information that helped boost Zero Dark 30, a Hollywood movie favorable to the administration's messaging. In contrast to Panetta's misstep, the government is seeking draconian punishment for Army Pfc. Bradley Manning for leaks
Also, new information surfaced about the government's ongoing crackdown on the media and its sources.
Update: The Justice Integrity Project published on June 16: Backgrounder on Obama's Big Data Domestic Spying System. The purpose was to resolve conflicting claims about recent revelations about the Obama-Bush domestic spying program.
In other news, Egypt convicted more than 40 defendants, including 16 Americans, of crimes for advocating Western-style democracy procedures. This follows an order by Russia last month expelling such groups. Another setback for the Obama foreign policy team this week was the Syrian government's defeat of rebel fighters backed by the United States in an important battle in a Qusayr, a small city near Lebanon's border. These events are inter-related, often in ways difficult for the public to discern, as indicated below.
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Doubting Obama’s Resolve To Do Right: Ray McGovern
WBAI Interview of former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern by Michael Smith and Michael Ratner, June 3, 2013.
We continue our discussion on killing people using drone warfare with returning guest Ray McGovern. When President Obama delivered a major speech on counter-terrorism, he announced a shift in his administration’s use of drones. The Obama Administration has conducted hundreds of drone strikes in several countries, killing civilians and so far reported, four US citizens. Critics point out that as the Obama Administration assassinates its’ suspects, it also avoids the legal complications of detention. London based bureau for investigative journalism estimates that about 830 civilians including women and children may have been killed by drone attacks in Pakistan. 138 in Yemen, and 57 in Somalia.
Guest Raymond L. McGovern, right, is a retired CIA officer turned political activist. McGovern was a Federal employee under seven U.S. presidents in the past 27 years. Ray’s opinion pieces have appeared in many leading newspapers here and abroad.
His website writings are posted first on consortiumnews.com, and are usually carried on other websites as well. He has debated at the Oxford Forum and appeared on Charlie Rose, The Newshour, CNN, and numerous other TV & radio programs and documentaries. Ray has lectured to a wide variety of audiences here and abroad. Ray studied theology and philosophy (as well as his major, Russian) at Fordham University, from which he holds two degrees. He also holds a Certificate in Theological Studies from Georgetown University.
Ray McGovern [Interview excerpts by WBAI]:
It [the recent Obama speech] was a masterpiece of oratory and rhetoric, but it was deceptive through and through. Those of us who had been watching this know he lied through his teeth on many occasions. He has the power as we all know to release 86 prisoners (Guantanamo) in the next hour.
Why would he do all that? Why would he be afraid to take the drones away from the CIA?
Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s afraid. He’s afraid of what happened Martin Luther King Jr. 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.?
I’m convinced the President of the United States is afraid of the CIA. Does he have any reason to fear the CIA? Well he sure as heck does. For those of your listeners who have not read James Douglas’ JFK and the Unspeakable, you need to read that, because it’s coming up on 50 years. John Kennedy signed 2 executive orders just a month or so before he was killed. One of them said we’re pulling out a 1000 troops from South Vietnam. The other said we’re pulling out the bulk of the troops by 1965, we’re finished in Vietnam.
I think he’s just afraid and he shouldn’t have run for president if he was going to be this much of a wuss.
Editor's Choice: Click below to read the Justice Integrity Project's monthly archive of cutting-edge news excerpts for June 2013.
Other JIP Clips:
June 18
Veterans Today, Washington is Insane, Paul Craig Roberts, June 18, 2013. Polls demonstrate that 65% of the US population opposes US intervention in Syria. Despite this clear indication of the people’s will, the Obama regime is ramping up a propaganda case for more arming of Washington’s mercenaries sent to overthrow the secular Syrian government and for a “no-fly zone” over Syria, which, if Libya is the example, means US or NATO aircraft attacking the Syrian army on the ground, thus serving as the air force of Washington’s imported mercenaries, euphemistically called “the Syrian rebels.” Washington declared some time ago that the “red line” that would bring Syria under Washington’s military attack was the Assad government’s use of chemical weapons of mass destruction against Washington’s mercenaries. Once this announcement was made, everyone with a brain immediately knew that Washington would fabricate false intelligence that Assad had used chemical weapons, just as Washington presented to the United Nations the intentional lie via Secretary of State Colin Powell that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had dangerous weapons of mass destruction. Now Washington has fabricated the false intelligence, and President Obama has announced it with a straight face, that Syria’s Assad has used sarin gas on several occasions and that between 100 and 150 “of his own people,” a euphemism for the US supplied foreign mercenaries, have been killed by the weapon of mass destruction. Think about that for a minute.
June 17
AP via Huffington Post, Edward Snowden Guardian Chat: Leaker Defends Decision To Release Documents, Kimberly Dozier, June 17, 2013. NSA leaker Edward Snowden is defending his disclosure of top-secret U.S. spying programs in an online chat Monday with The Guardian and attacking U.S. officials for calling him a traitor. "The U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me," he said. He added the government "immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home," by labeling him a traitor, and indicated he would not return to the U.S. voluntarily.
Huffington Post, Obama Defends NSA Surveillance Program, Says It's 'Transparent,' Mollie Reilly, June 17, 2013. President Barack Obama further defended the National Security Agency's collection of phone and other electronic records to PBS' Charlie Rose, calling the program "transparent." n a pretaped interview set to air Monday evening, Obama gave a forceful defense of the program, saying that the NSA had not unlawfully targeted Americans. "What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails … and have not," Obama said, according to a transcript provided by PBS.Rose pressed Obama on the point, according to the transcript.
Huffington Post, Media's Edward Snowden Haters Club Keeps Growing, Jack Mirkinson, June 17, 2013. In trashing NSA leaker Edward Snowden on Sunday, CBS's Bob Schieffer joined a fast-growing club of establishment pundits who have derided his actions and questioned his character. It has seemed sometimes that commentators have been trying to compete for who can come up with the most sneering description of Snowden. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen seemed likely to win the contest when he confusingly dubbed Snowden a "cross-dressing Little Red Riding Hood." (Huh?) Schieffer might have managed to trump all of those rivals, though, when he lamented that Snowden did not live up to the likes of Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King. While it's definitely true that Snowden will probably not leave a legacy on the same scale as Rosa Parks, it's a bit of a strange test to match him against two of the greatest people in human history. Judged against them, most people would fail. For now, though, Schieffer is in first place in the anti-Snowden contest.
Fearless Media via Huffington Post, It's Time for the Press to Fight Back Against Secrecy, Dan Froomkin, June 17, 2013. Despite the recent blockbuster leaks about spying on the phone records of millions of Americans, and President Obama's stated willingness to discuss the issues they raise, a front-page New York Times article on June 10 asserted that "legal and political obstacles" make a vigorous public debate about surveillance and civil liberties highly unlikely. Scott Shane and Jonathan Weisman of the Times made a solid case that neither the executive nor legislative branches -- and neither Democratic nor Republican leaders -- show real interest in disclosing anything more about the programs. As for the president, they noted that his record on national security disclosures belies any commitment to transparency. But the Times story disregarded another possible influence: The media itself.
FireDoglake, Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Getting Involved in Syria, Jon Walker, June 17, 2013. President Obama’s decision to step up military aid to the rebels in Syria is in dramatic opposition to the will of the electorate. According to Pew Research poll, regular Americans overwhelmingly don’t want the United States to arm the rebels. Only 20 percent support this action, while 70 percent oppose it. Opposing to arming the rebel is strong across party lines.
Washington Post, Fine Print: In digital world, oversight of intelligence gathering is key, Walter Pincus, June 17, 2013. Americans are learning what electronics whizzes and hackers have known all along — that computers and smartphones, which make our lives more productive and entertaining, have at the same time ended privacy as most of us have understood it. Every e-mail, cellphone call, transferred photo, video and voice mail, online purchase and Internet game leaves a digital trail that identifies not just sender, receiver, length of message and location but also a variety of other data that perhaps we hoped to keep secret. In Microsoft’s Web-posted Law Enforcement Request Report for 2012, the company recorded 75,378 law enforcement requests that “potentially impacted 137,424 accounts.” Some 11,000 requests from the United States were listed; they involved about 25,000 accounts. Turkey made several hundred more requests, but they related to only 14,000 accounts. Roughly 80 percent of the requests were for what Microsoft characterized as “Subscriber/Transactional” data, meaning they did not involve actual content, just evidence that a to-and-from exchange took place. Of the 1,558 requests that Microsoft said involved subscriber content, all but 14 were from the United States. The 14 others were sought by entities from Brazil, Canada and New Zealand.
Reuters via Huffington Post, U.S. Surveillance: China Asks Washington To Explain Monitoring Programmes, Staff report, June 17, 2013. China made its first substantive comments on Monday to reports of U.S. surveillance of the Internet, demanding that Washington explain its monitoring programmes to the international community. Several nations, including U.S. allies, have reacted angrily to revelations by an ex-CIA employee over a week ago that U.S. authorities had tapped the servers of internet companies for personal data. "We believe the United States should pay attention to the international community's concerns and demands and give the international community the necessary explanation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily briefing.
New York Times, Syria and Russia Warn West Against Aiding Rebels, Stephen Castle, June 17, 2013. The Syrian and Russian governments warned the West on Monday not to arm Syria’s insurgency or attempt to provide a no-fly zone to protect rebel-held areas of the country, as leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized nations, including Russia, were convening a summit meeting in which the Syrian conflict was expected to dominate discussions.
Reuters, U.S. says it will buy Russian helicopters for Afghan military, Charles Abbott, June 17, 2013. The Pentagon said on Monday it will spend $572 million to buy 30 Russian-built military helicopters that will be used by Afghan security forces. The Mi-17 helicopters will be used by Afghanistan's National Security Forces Special Mission Wing, which supports counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and special operations missions. The contract with Rosoboronexport, the Russian arms company, covers spare parts, test equipment and engineering support. The Pentagon said the work would be performed in Russia. It is expected to be completed by the end of 2014. A year ago, the Defense Department purchased a dozen of the Mi-17 aircraft, right, from Rosoboronexport for $217.7 million, as part of a larger contract originating in 2011. Details: Reuters, Alabama firm may protest Russian helicopter deal, Andrea Shalal-Esa, Feb. 4, 2011. A small Alabama-based firm is gearing up to protest the Army's plan to hand an exclusive helicopter contract to a Russian government agency, saying it can do the job quicker and cheaper if it is allowed to compete. One of the Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters purchased by Alabama-based Defense Technology Inc (DTI) is seen at right in Ulan Ude, Russia.
Reuters, Angelina Jolie stunt double sues News Corp over hacking, Jennifer Saba, June 18, 2013. A stunt double for Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie has sued News Corp over allegations its British newspapers hacked her phone, the first lawsuit in the United States against the company since the scandal broke two years ago. The lawsuit, filed on June 13 by professional stunt double Eunice Huthart, said reporters from News Corp's tabloids The Sun and the defunct News of the World, hacked her mobile phone while she was working for Jolie on location in Los Angeles. The allegations include stories that ran in the tabloids about Jolie's budding relationship with actor Brad Pitt - when only a tight circle of people had knowledge of it - while they were filming the movie "Mr. & Mrs. Smith." A spokesman for News Corp declined to comment on the lawsuit.
June 16
Justice Integrity Project, Backgrounder on Obama's Big Data Domestic Spying System, Andrew Kreig, June 16, 2013. The Justice Integrity Project presents background information to resolve conflicting claims about recent revelations about the Obama-Bush domestic spying program. The expansion began immediately after the Bush-Cheney administration took office in 2001, and was later expanded after 9/11 and the imposition of the Patriot Act.
Independent, Iran to send 4,000 troops to aid President Assad forces in Syria, Robert Fisk, June 16, 2013. World Exclusive: US urges UK and France to join in supplying arms to Syrian rebels as MPs fear that UK will be drawn into growing conflict. Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region. For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement, the US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East. The Independent on Sunday has learned that a military decision has been taken in Iran – even before last week’s presidential election – to send a first contingent of 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against the largely Sunni rebellion that has cost almost 100,000 lives in just over two years. Iran is now fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime, according to pro-Iranian sources which have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel.
In years to come, historians will ask how America – after its defeat in Iraq and its humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan scheduled for 2014 – could have so blithely aligned itself with one side in a titanic Islamic struggle stretching back to the seventh century death of the Prophet Mohamed. The profound effects of this great schism continue across the region to this day.
Guardian, GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians' communications at G20 summits, Ewen MacAskill, Nick Davies, Nick Hopkins, Julian Borger and James Ball, June 16, 2013. Exclusive: phones were monitored and fake internet cafes set up to gather information from allies in London in 2009. Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic. The revelation comes as Britain prepares to host another summit on Monday – for the G8 nations, all of whom attended the 2009 meetings which were the object of the systematic spying. It is likely to lead to some tension among visiting delegates who will want the prime minister to explain whether they were targets in 2009 and whether the exercise is to be repeated this week.
Guardian, NSA targeted Dmitry Medvedev at London G20 summit, Ewen MacAskill, Nick Davies, Nick Hopkins, Julian Borger and James Ball, June 16, 2013. Leaked documents reveal Russian president was spied on during visit, as questions are raised over use of US base in Britain. American spies based in the UK intercepted the top-secret communications of the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during his visit to Britain for the G20 summit in London, leaked documents reveal. The details of the intercept were set out in a briefing prepared by the National Security Agency (NSA), America's biggest surveillance and eavesdropping organisation, and shared with high-ranking officials from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Reuters, Putin says West arming Syrian rebels who eat human flesh, Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Alexei Anishchuk, June 16, 2013. Russian President Vladimir Putin, arriving in Britain ahead of an international summit set to be dominated by disagreement over the U.S. decision to send weapons to Syria's rebels, said the West must not arm fighters who eat human flesh.
Mediaite, Greenwald Denounces Snowden ‘Smear Campaign’: ‘Tactic Of Establishment To Try To Demean People,' Evan McMurry, June 16, 2013. Appearing on Howard Kurtz’s Reliable Sources Sunday afternoon, Glenn Greenwald, left, responded to critics of Edward Snowden’s revelation of classified material, and of Greenwald’s own reporting, which has come under fire for inaccuracies since its publication two weeks ago. Greenwald said the personal nature of much of the media’s Snowden coverage was exactly what the 29-year-old defense contractor had feared. “One of his big concerns with coming out,” Greenwald said, “really his only one, was that he knows political media loves to dramatize and personalize things, and he was concerned that the focus would distract away from the revelations of about what our government was doing on to him personally.” “The other problem is that whenever there’s whistleblower, someone who dissents from our political institutions, the favorite tactic is to try to demonize him and highlight his alleged bad personality traits. That’s one of the reasons why we wanted to present him in his own words to the world, so that they could form their own impression before these smear campaigns began.”
Huffington Post, Obama Will Speak On NSA In The Coming Days, Says Denis McDonough, Jennifer Bendery, June 15, 2013.President Barack Obama doesn't think the National Security Agency's collection of phone records violates customer privacy and he will defend that view in the coming days, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said Sunday. During an interview on CBS's "Face the Nation," McDonough was asked if Obama had privacy concerns relating to the NSA's analysis of the phone metadata of millions of Americans. "He does not," said McDonough, emphasizing that all three branches of government play a role in overseeing the agency's surveillance programs. "The president is not saying, 'Trust me,'" he continued. "The president is saying, 'I want every member of Congress, on whose authority we are running this program, to be briefed on it, to come to the administration with questions and to also be accountable for it.'"
Mediaite, Palin Blasts NSA: Couldn’t Find ‘Two Pot-Smoking Bostonians With Hotline To Terrorist Central?’ Evan McMurry, June 15, 2013. Sarah Palin addressed Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference Saturday morning, skewering Obama voters, the NSA, and Washington culture in general, and throwing a good-natured elbow to her “friends” at Saturday Night Live while she was at it. “It seems so Orwellian around here,” Palin said. “Before 1984, terms like ‘leading from behind’ meant following. The other day the White House testified before Congress, bragging that they used the ‘least untruthful statement.’ Where I come from that’s called a lie.”
June 15
New York Times, For Snowden, a Life of Ambition, Despite the Drifting, John M. Broder and Scott Shane, June 15, 2013. In 2006, when Edward J. Snowden joined the thousands of computer virtuosos going to work for America’s spy agencies, there were no recent examples of insiders going public as dissidents. But as his doubts about his work for the Central Intelligence Agency and then for the National Security Agency grew, the Obama administration’s campaign against leaks served up one case after another of disillusioned employees refashioning themselves as heroic whistle-blowers.
New York Times, After Profits, Defense Contractor Faces the Pitfalls of Cybersecurity, David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, June 15, 2013. Why did Booz Allen assign a 29-year-old with scant experience to a sensitive N.S.A. site in Hawaii, where he was left loosely supervised as he downloaded highly classified documents about the government’s monitoring of Internet and telephone communications, apparently loading them onto a portable memory stick barred by the agency? The results could be disastrous for a company that until a week ago had one of the best business plans in Washington, with more than half its $5.8 billion in annual revenue coming from the military and the intelligence agencies. Last week, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, whom Mr. McConnell regularly briefed when he was in government, suggested for the first time that companies like Booz Allen should lose their broad access to the most sensitive intelligence secrets.
Washington Post, U.S. surveillance architecture includes collection of revealing Internet, phone metadata, Barton Gellman, June 15, 2013. On March 12, 2004, acting attorney general James B. Comey and the Justice Department’s top leadership reached the brink of resignation over electronic surveillance orders that they believed to be illegal. President George W. Bush backed down, halting secret foreign-intelligence-gathering operations that had crossed into domestic terrain. That morning marked the beginning of the end of STELLARWIND, the cover name for a set of four surveillance programs that brought Americans and American territory within the domain of the National Security Agency for the first time in decades. It was also a prelude to new legal structures that allowed Bush and then President Obama to reproduce each of those programs and expand their reach.
Washington Post, Metadata proves to be a powerful tool for U.S. intelligence agencies, Ellen Nakashima, June 15, 2013. Electronic surveillance of information about calls and e-mails can reveal hidden patterns behind terror attacks. Metadata reveals the secrets of social position, company hierarchy, terrorist cells. Officials say the NSA analyzed records of only a few hundred people in data for tens of millions. The government last year searched for the phone records of fewer than 300 people in a database containing tens of millions of Americans’ phone records, intelligence officials said Saturday in a statement to Congress. The figure’s release is part of a push by officials to allay privacy concerns following recent disclosures of National Security Agency surveillance programs that collect massive amounts of data in an effort to thwart terrorist attacks.
Washington Post, Only a few hundred people’s call records searched, U.S. says, Ellen Nakashima, June 15, 2013. Officials say the NSA analyzed records of only a few hundred people in data for tens of millions.
Washington Post, Private money pours into Syrian conflict as rich donors pick sides, Joby Warrick, June 15, 2013. U.S. and Middle Eastern officials describe a vast pool of private wealth being funneled to Syria’s warring factions, mostly without strings or oversight and outside the control of governments.
Washington Post, Edward Snowden’s life of hiding in plain sight, Carol D. Leonnig, Jenna Johnson and Marc Fisher, June 15, 2013. “I wouldn’t want God himself to know where I’ve been,” the former NSA contractor wrote online in 2003. Edward Snowden, the skinny kid from suburban Maryland who took it upon himself to expose — and, officials say, severely compromise — classified U.S. government surveillance programs, loved role-playing games, leaned libertarian, worked out hard and dabbled in modeling. Snowden, 29, has repeatedly insisted that the documents he revealed are the story and that his life is of no interest. [But] questions about his motives and rationale inevitably colored the debate over his decision to violate his oath.
Huffington Post, Dick Cheney: Edward Snowden Is A 'Traitor' And Possibly A Chinese Spy, Jennifer Bendery, June 15, 2013. Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that Edward Snowden betrayed his country by leaking classified documents about the U.S. government's surveillance programs and warned that the former National Security Agency contractor may be spying for the Chinese government. "I think he's a traitor,” Cheney, right, said of Snowden in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.” "I think he has committed crimes in effect by violating agreements given the position he had," he continued. "I think it's one of the worst occasions in my memory f somebody with access to classified information doing enormous damage to the national security interests of the United States."
June 14
Atlantic, The Irrationality of Giving Up This Much Liberty to Fight Terror, Conor Friedersdorf, June 11, 2013. When confronted by far deadlier threats, Americans are much less willing to cede freedom and privacy. Of course we should dedicate significant resources and effort to stopping terrorism. But consider some hard facts. In 2001, the year when America suffered an unprecedented terrorist attack -- by far the biggest in its history -- roughly 3,000 people died from terrorism in the U.S. Let's put that in context. That same year in the United States: 71,372 died of diabetes. 29,573 were killed by guns. 13,290 were killed in drunk driving accidents. That's what things looked like at the all-time peak for deaths by terrorism.
Atlantic, How Obama Now 'Owns Syria'; The far-ranging implications of the president's decision to provide arms to anti-Assad rebels, Michael Hirsch, June 14, 2014. As he has done all along, Barack Obama is edging his way up to the precipice in Syria, and even now the president very much does not want to jump in--not into America's third major war in the past decade. Even while announcing what was billed as a major shift of policy Thursday, Obama signaled that he is unwilling to put American boots on the ground or even to be seen as taking the lead in the conflict in Syria. Judging from the latest signals from the White House, Obama wants the newly announced U.S. military aid to the Syrian rebels to be kept to a stringent minimum, and he wants it to be seen as part of a broader Western aid effort. The issue now is whether the president is deluding himself that he can limit involvement that way. "In a sense, Obama owns Syria now," says Joshua Landis, a highly regarded Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. "I presume he'll try to go in toe by toe.... But he has to decide what his objectives are, which he hasn't. Does he want to provide just enough arms to keep the status quo and divide Syria in two? Does he want to give them enough to take Damascus and drive the Alawites [President Bashar al-Assad's ruling sect] into the mountains? Does he want he want to see them take over the entire country?"
FireDogLake, Uncle Sam = Big Brother? U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, right, 
June 14, 2013. In George Orwell’s novel 1984, “Big Brother” is the dictator of Oceania. No one knows whether Big Brother is a real person, or simply the personification of the dictatorship. Big Brother spies on every citizen through “telescreens.” Everyone is reminded constantly, “Big Brother is Watching You.” Let’s compare that to the recent revelations about the Orwellian-named National Security Agency (NSA), an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense. The NSA has not denied that it is collecting call records on every America. On the contrary, the NSA sees nothing wrong with it. I see three fundamental problems with this:
1.This is worse than the proverbial “fishing expedition”; this is like putting the entire ocean through a sieve. It makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that government searches be “particular.”
2.This assumes not only that everyone is guilty until proven innocent, but that everyone is guilty. The Fourth Amendment limits searches to cases of “probable cause,” meaning that a prudent and cautious person would reasonably believe that the search will yield evidence of a crime. Obviously, most phone records have absolutely nothing to do with the commission of any crime.
3.Providing this information to the Department of Defense violates the fundamental principle that our military does not operate on American soil, against American citizens. That principle has been embodied in law since the 1870s. From this perspective, providing this personal call record information to DoD is no different from providing it to the CIA – another agency that is not allowed to operate on US soil.
See also, Sag Harbor Basement Films via YouTube, Orwell Rolls in his Grave, written and directed by Robert Kane Pappas, 2003. Three-hour documentary explaining a portion of the information about media censorship, consolidation and propaganda. Orwell Rolls in His Grave is a 2003 documentary film. Covered topics include the Telecommunications Act of 1996, concentration of media ownership, political corruption, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the controversy over the US presidential election of 2000 (particularly in Florida with Bush v. Gore), and the October surprise conspiracy theory.
Zero Hedge, Thousands Of Firms Trade Confidential Data With The US Government In Exchange For Classified Intelligence, Tyler Durden, June 14, 2013. The rabbit hole just got deeper. A whole lot deeper. On Sunday we predicated that "there's one reason why the administration, James Clapper and the NSA should just keep their mouths shut as the PRISM-gate fallout escalates: with every incremental attempt to refute some previously unknown facet of the US Big Brother state, a new piece of previously unleaked information from the same intelligence organization now scrambling for damage control, emerges and exposes the brand new narrative as yet another lie, forcing even more lies, more retribution against sources, more journalist persecution and so on." And like a hole that just gets deeper the more you dug and exposes ever more dirt, tonight's installment revealing one more facet of the conversion of a once great republic into a great fascist, "big brother" state, comes from Bloomberg which reports that "thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said."
FireDogLake, Udall and Wyden Question NSA Head’s Defense of Surveillance Programs, Jon Walker, June 14, 2013. It appears Director of National Intelligence General James Clapper may not be alone in misleading Congress during official testimony about NSA surveillance programs. Earlier this week the head of the NSA, Keith Alexander, testified that these programs help stop “dozens” of terrorist attack. Apparently, this might not be the most truthful answer. Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) have seen no evidence to justify this claim.
Washington Post, Facebook, Microsoft release number of data requests from government, Cecilia Kang, June 14, 2013. Facebook and Microsoft for the first time on Friday said they had gotten data requests from the government under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but they added that the U.S. government did not permit them to provide specific figures. Instead, the government allowed the companies to release only broad numbers with no breakdowns. Over the last six months of 2012, Facebook said, it had received as many as 10,000 requests from local, state and federal agencies, which impacted as many as 19,000 accounts. Facebook has 1.1 billion accounts worldwide. Microsoft said that it received between 6,000 and 7,000 similar requests, affecting as many as 32,000 accounts.
Washington Post, CBS confirms reporter’s computer was breached, Paul Farhi, June 14, 2013. The breaches, by an “unknown party,” appeared to be “sophisticated,” according to a statement Friday.
Washington Post, CIA preparing to deliver rebels arms through Turkey and Jordan, Greg Miller and Joby Warrick, June 14, 2013. The CIA is preparing to deliver arms to rebel groups in Syria through clandestine bases in Turkey and Jordan that were expanded over the past year in an effort to establish reliable supply routes into the country for nonlethal material, U.S. officials said. The bases are expected to begin conveying limited shipments of weapons and ammunition within weeks, officials said, serving as critical nodes for an escalation of U.S. involvement in a civil war that has lately seen a shift in momentum toward the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.
SANA (Syrian Arab News Agency), German Intelligence: 95 % of free army non-Syrian extremist groups, June 13, 2013. Germany's "Die Welt" daily said that only 5% of the armed terrorists in the so-called Free Army are Syrians, while 95% of them are extremist groups which came from several African countries to jihad in Syria baked by the Gulf and Arab countries. The daily quoted intelligence experts in Germany as saying: "The German intelligence has an official and detailed account of the nationalities of the rebels in Syria and their locations in the country."
Guardian, Al Gore: NSA's secret surveillance program 'not really the American way,' Suzanne Goldenberg, June 14, 2013. Former vice-president – not persuaded by argument that program was legal – urges Congress and Obama to amend the laws, The National Security Agency's blanket collection of US citizens' phone records was "not really the American way", Al Gore said on Friday, declaring that he believed the practice to be unlawful. In his most expansive comments to date on the NSA revelations, the former vice-president was unsparing in his criticism of the surveillance apparatus, telling the Guardian security considerations should never overwhelm the basic rights of American citizens. He also urged Barack Obama and Congress to review and amend the laws under which the NSA operated. "I quite understand the viewpoint that many have expressed that they are fine with it and they just want to be safe but that is not really the American way," Gore said in a telephone interview. "Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that those who would give up essential liberty to try to gain some temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
June 13
Bloomberg, U.S. Agencies Said to Swap Data With Thousands of Firms, Michael Riley, June 13, 2013. Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said. In addition to private communications, information about equipment specifications and data needed for the Internet to work -- much of which isn’t subject to oversight because it doesn’t involve private communications -- is valuable to intelligence, U.S. law-enforcement officials and the military. These programs, whose participants are known as trusted partners, extend far beyond what was revealed by Edward Snowden, a computer technician who did work for the National Security Agency. The role of private companies has come under intense scrutiny since his disclosure this month that the NSA is collecting millions of U.S. residents’ telephone records and the computer communications of foreigners from Google Inc (GOOG). and other Internet companies under court order. Many of these same Internet and telecommunications companies voluntarily provide U.S. intelligence organizations with additional data, such as equipment specifications, that don’t involve private communications of their customers, the four people said.
Editor's Note: James Bamford, former investigative editor for ABC-TV and author of the leading books about the NSA, described its new Bluffdale Data Center in a major article in 2012 for Wired Magazine. Bamford, at right, had disclosed the operations of the super-secret NSA in The Puzzle Palace in 1982. Later, however, NSA Director Michael Hayden cooperated with Bamford in the latter's 2001 book, Body of Secrets, chronicling NSA's vast spying operation. Bamford's The Shadow Factory in 2009 continued his book-length, cutting-edge reporting. His Wired cover-story below was the Inside the Matrix: The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say), published in the edition of March 15, 2012. This week, he published in Wired the authoritative article below.
Wired, Connecting the Dots on PRISM, Phone Surveillance, and the NSA’s Massive Spy Center, James Bamford, June 6, 2013. Physically, the NSA has always been well protected by miles of high fences and electrified wire, thousands of cameras, and gun-toting guards. But that was to protect the agency from those on the outside trying to get in to steal secrets. Now it is confronting a new challenge: those on the inside going out and giving the secrets away.
As someone who has written many books and articles about the agency, I have seldom seen the NSA in such a state. Like a night prowler with a bag of stolen goods suddenly caught in a powerful Klieg light, it now finds itself under the glare of nonstop press coverage, accused of robbing the public of its right to privacy. Despite the standard denials from the agency’s public relations office, the documents outline a massive operation to secretly keep track of everyone’s phone calls on a daily basis – billions upon billions of private records; and another to reroute the pipes going in and out of Google, Apple, Yahoo, and the other Internet giants through Fort Meade – figuratively if not literally.
But long before Edward Snowden walked out of the NSA with his trove of documents, whistleblowers there had been trying for years to bring attention to the massive turn toward domestic spying that the agency was making. Last year in my Wired cover story on the enormous new NSA data center in Utah, Bill Binney, the man who largely designed the agency’s worldwide eavesdropping system, warned of the secret, nationwide surveillance. He told how the NSA had gained access to billions of billing records not only from AT&T but also from Verizon. “That multiplies the call rate by at least a factor of five,” he said. “So you’re over a billion and a half calls a day.” Among the top-secret documents Snowden released was a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order proving the truth to Binney’s claim and indicating that the operation was still going on. Without documents to prove their claims, the agency simply dismissed them as falsehoods and much of the mainstream press simply accepted that.
“We don’t hold data on U.S. citizens,” NSA Director Keith Alexander said in a talk at the American Enterprise Institute last summer, by which time he had been serving as the head of the NSA for six years. The deception by General Alexander is especially troubling. n my new cover story for Wired’s July issue, which will be published online Thursday, I show how he has become the most powerful intelligence chief in the nation’s history. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. The article also sheds light on the enormous privatization not only of the intelligence agencies but now also of Cyber Command, with thousands of people working for little-known companies hired to develop the weapons of cyber war, cyber targeting, and cyber exploitation. The Snowden case demonstrates the potential risks involved when the nation turns its spying and eavesdropping over to companies with lax security and inadequate personnel policies. The risks increase exponentially when those same people must make critical decisions involving choices that may lead to war, cyber or otherwise.
Mediaite, Ralph Nader Slams Obama Again: ‘Has There Ever Been A Bigger Con Man In White House?’ Andrew Kirell, June 13, 2013 video. Appearing at a 92nd Street Y event with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman last week, famed activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader tore into President Obama for a variety of issues, namely the lack of progress in mandating an increase in the minimum wage. After explaining that he believes the Democratic Party has purposely stalled action on increasing the federally-mandated wage rate, Nader suggested the president has shrugged off the issue for the last five years. This thought led Nader to reiterate a harsh question he posed to Goodman several years ago: “Has there ever been a bigger con man in the White House?” The audience applauded. “The one ingredient you want when you vote for somebody… it’s their moral courage and the fire in the belly,” he added, suggesting that Obama has lacked it. “That’s what makes all the difference in the world.”
Wayne Madsen, CIA number two resigns hours before Obama announces decision to arm Syrian rebels, Wayne Madsen Report, June 14, 2013 (Subscription only). CIA deputy director Michael Morrell resigned from his post just hours before the Obama White House, through deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, announced that the Obama administration had decided to provide weapons to the Syrian Free Army and its allied groups. Obama's pretext for arming the Al Qaeda-linked guerrillas is that U.S. intelligence concluded, after months of saying there was insufficient proof, that Syria used chemical weapons to kill Syrian civilians.
AP via Washington Post, CIA deputy director retires; defended harsh interrogation techniques, CIA over Benghazi, Staff report, June 13, 2013. CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who defended harsh interrogation techniques and was involved with the fallout after the attack on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, announced his retirement Wednesday. When President Barack Obama named a successor to former CIA Director David Petraeus last January, Morell was passed over in favor of the White House counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan. Morell had been acting director since Petraeus’ resignation. He said he will leave his CIA post Aug. 9. Morell retired after 33 years at the CIA, including two stints as acting director and one as deputy director. Brennan said Morell, 54, will be replaced by Avril Haines, 43, the first woman to hold that position. Haines has been a White House deputy assistant and deputy counsel for national security affairs since 2010. Before that, she was assistant legal adviser for treaty affairs at the State Department, according to a White House statement.
President Obama meets with National Security staff in the Oval Office, March 8, 2012, at right. Clockwise from the President are: Jeff Eggers, Director for Afghanistan and Central Region; David Holmes, Director for Afghanistan; Avril Haines, Deputy Counsel to the President; Dennis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor; National Security Advisor Tom Donilon; and Lt. Gen. Doug Lute, Senior Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan. White House photo by Pete Souza.
Wires via New York Post, Obama's pick to be CIA #2 used to run 'Erotica Nights' readings after dropping out of grad school, Staff edits of wire services, June 13, 2013. President Obama's choice for the number two position at the CIA will be the highest ranking woman to ever serve in the CIA -- and she used to own a bookstore that featured regular erotica readings, White House lawyer Avril Haines is slated to take the reigns as the Deputy Director of the CIA the White House confirmed yesterday, but before she rose through the ranks to become one of America's top spies Haines opened and co-owned Adrian's Book Cafe in Baltimore that featured a regular "Erotica Nights." A then-24-year-old Haines opened the bookstore in 1994 when she dropped out of a graduate program in physics at Johns Hopkins University. With her 29-year-old pilot boyfriend, Haines renovated a boarded-up old strip club in Baltimore's waterfront neighborhood of Fells Point and turned it into the regular meeting place for a small community of erotica aficionados.
Washington Post, U.S. fears NSA leaker has more classified files, Greg Miller and Sari Horwitz, June 13, 2013. Investigators say findings appear to bolster Edward Snowden’s claim he made off with additional files. Lawmakers call for more disclosures A broad assessment of the damage caused by disclosure of documents on classified intelligence programs has concluded that the former National Security Agency contractor who claimed responsibility for the leaks probably obtained dozens of other sensitive files, U.S. officials said Thursday. The disclosure came as NSA and FBI officials came under new pressure from senior lawmakers to defend the agency’s interpretation of a law that it has used to sweep up the phone records of millions of U.S. citizens, and to declassify material to support NSA Director Keith B. Alexander’s assertion that the surveillance programs have helped to thwart “dozens” of terrorist attacks.
Washington Post, Syrian rebels: Help from U.S. could be too little, too late, Loveday Morris, June 13, 2013. Rebels call for shipments to include heavy weaponry, but the U.S. has not provided details on its assistance. Syrian rebels on Friday described the U.S. decision to provide them with arms as a “late step” and called for shipments to include heavy weaponry capable of tipping the balance of power on the battlefield. The United States has said it would be “responsive to the needs” of the increasingly desperate rebels, but has not given details of what assistance will include.
June 12
National Security Agency, Utah Data Center, Government website (accessed June 12, 2013.) The Utah Data Center, code-named Bumblehive, right, is the first Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative 
(IC CNCI) data center designed to support the Intelligence Community's efforts to monitor, strengthen and protect the nation. NSA is the executive agent for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and will be the lead agency at the center. The steady rise in available computer power and the development of novel computer platforms will enable us to easily turn the huge volume of incoming data into an asset to be exploited, for the good of the nation.
RT (Russia Today), ‘NSA ‘bamboozling’ lawmakers for access to Americans’ private data’ – agency, Staff report, June 12, 2013. American citizens hoping to change the way the NSA monitors their everyday activities have little hope of recourse, longtime agency veteran Bill Binney told RT. He said the way the Patriot Act is interpreted is the a big first step toward totalitarianism. American citizens hoping to change the way the NSA monitors their everyday activities have little hope of recourse, longtime agency veteran Bill Binney told RT. He said the way the Patriot Act is interpreted is the a big first step toward totalitarianism.
RT: I’m sitting here with Mr. William Binney -- he’s a thirty-two year veteran of the NSA who helped design a top-secret program that he says broadly changed Americans’ personal data. And he actually helped crack those codes, and enter into this. He’s now a whistleblower. Mr. Binney, thank you so much for joining me. So first of all, let’s talk about the latest information that has come out from this NSA spying on Americans.
Bill Binney: Well, first of all, the FISA warrant that was issued to the FBI to get the data from Verizon…that’s been going on, according to the paper anyway, since 2007. And this is like being renewed every three months. So if you look at the top-right corner of that order, it’s 13-80 -- that means it’s the 80thorder since this year of 2013. So when you start to say, so what are the other 79 orders? You can figure other companies. And this is like the second order of 2013, for each company. So that maximum -- you would divide 80 by two, and the maximum number of companies that could be involved in this order would be 40. But I’m sure that there are other things, that they have other orders they are issuing than just this kind, for the service providers, or the telecoms.
Huffington Post, Rep. Peter King: Reporters Should Be Prosecuted For Publishing Leaked Classified Information (VIDEO), Braden Goyette, June 12, 2013. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said on CNN's "AC 360" Tuesday night that reporters should be prosecuted for publishing stories with leaked classified information. After King explained why he believes the recent NSA leaks pose a grave threat to national security, host Anderson Cooper asked him if he thinks the reporters who break stories off of leaked information should be punished in some way. "If they willingly knew that this was classified information, I think action should be taken, especially on something of this magnitude," King said. "I think on something of this magnitude, there is an obligation both moral but also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something that would so severely compromise national security." Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story of the NSA's phone record collecting practices last week, expressed his disbelief at King's remarks on Twitter.
Reason, 3 Reasons the ‘Nothing to Hide’ Crowd Should Be Worried About Government Surveillance, Scott Shackford, June 12, 2013. Most people think the federal government would have no interest in them, but many discover to their horror how wrong they are. Responding to a popular reaction to news of the National Security Agency’s massive data collection program, blogger Daniel Sieradski started a Twitter feed called “Nothing to Hide.” He has retweeted hundreds of people who have declared in one form or another that they are not concerned that the federal government may spy on them. They say they have done nothing wrong, so they have nothing to hide. If it helps the government fight terrorists, go ahead, take their civil liberties away. In his blog, a frustrated Sieradski listed many of the abuses of power our federal government is known for; he is not happy with the "nothing to hide" crowd.
Reuters, Edward Snowden and the selective targeting of leaks, Jack Shafer, June 11, 2013. Edward Snowden’s expansive disclosures to the Guardian ] and the Washington Post about various National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs have only two corollaries in contemporary history—the classified cache Bradley Manning allegedly released to WikiLeaks a few years ago and Daniel Ellsberg’s dissemination of the voluminous Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and other newspapers in 1971. Leakers like Snowden, Manning and Ellsberg don’t merely risk being called narcissists, traitors or mental cases for having liberated state secrets for public scrutiny. They absolutely guarantee it. In the last two days, the New York Times’s David Brooks, Politico’s Roger Simon, the Washington Post‘s Richard Cohen and others have vilified Snowden for revealing the government’s aggressive spying on its own citizens, calling him self-indulgent, a loser and a narcissist. Yet even as the insults pile up and the amateur psychoanalysis intensifies, keep in mind that Snowden’s leak has more in common with the standard Washington leak than should make the likes of Brooks, Simon and Cohen comfortable. Without defending Snowden for breaking his vow to safeguard secrets, he’s only done in the macro what the national security establishment does in the micro every day of the week to manage, manipulate and influence ongoing policy debates. Keeping the policy leak separate from the heretic leak is crucial to understanding how these stories play out in the press.
Washington Post, NSA director says dozens of attacks were stopped by surveillance programs, Ellen Nakashima and Jerry Markon, June 12, 2013. The head of the National Security Agency defended his agency’s broad electronic surveillance programs Wednesday, saying that they have helped thwart dozens of terrorist attacks and that their recent public disclosure has done “great harm” to the nation’s security. Facing his first public grilling since it was revealed that the NSA has secretly collected millions of telephone records as well as e-mails and other Internet data, Gen. Keith Alexander sought to aggressively rebut congressional and other criticism of the Obama administration’s anti-terrorism tactics. The South China Morning Post, which said it interviewed Snowden at an undisclosed location in Hong Kong, said he presented “unverified documents” describing an extensive U.S. campaign to obtain information from computers in Hong Kong and mainland China. “We hack network backbones — like huge Internet routers, basically — that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” he told the newspaper. According to Snowden, the NSA has engaged in more than 61,000 hacking operations worldwide, including hundreds aimed at Chinese universities, businesses and public officials. Senior American officials have accused China of hacking into U.S. military and business computers. Snowden’s claims of extensive U.S. hacking of Chinese computers track assertions made repeatedly by senior Chinese government officials that they are victims of similar cyber-intrusions. Snowden’s assertions could not be verified, and U.S. officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Alex Jones' Infowars.com, Ron Paul and Wayne Madsen Interviews, Alex Jones, June 12, 2013. On today's show, we'll listen to former Congressman Ron Paul's defense of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is surprisingly being labeled a 'traitor' by members of the Republican party. We also welcome journalist and author Wayne Madsen to give his take on the giant whirlwind of scandals.
Guardian, A Guide to Your Metadata, Staff Report, June 12, 2013. Metadata is information generated as you use technology, and its use has been the subject of controversy since NSA's secret surveillance program was revealed. Examples include the date and time you called somebody or the location from which you last accessed your email. The data collected generally does not contain personal or content-specific details, but rather transactional information about the user, the device and activities taking place. In some cases you can limit the information that is collected – by turning off location services on your cell phone for instance – but many times you cannot. Below, explore some of the data collected through activities you do every day.
June 11
New York Times, Surveillance: A Threat to Democracy, Editorial Board, June 11, 2013. Perhaps the lack of a broader sense of alarm is not all that surprising when President Obama, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, and intelligence officials insist that such surveillance is crucial to the nation’s antiterrorism efforts. But Americans should not be fooled by political leaders putting forward a false choice. The issue is not whether the government should vigorously pursue terrorists. The question is whether the security goals can be achieved by less-intrusive or sweeping means, without trampling on democratic freedoms and basic rights. Far too little has been said on this question by the White House or Congress in their defense of the N.S.A.’s dragnet. The surreptitious collection of “metadata” — every bit of information about every phone call except the word-by-word content of conversations — fundamentally alters the relationship between individuals and their government.
FoxNews.com, Inside the Utah Data Center, John Brandon, June 11, 2013. As Americans demand answers about the government's wholesale electronic snooping on its citizens, the primary snooper -- the National Security Agency (NSA) -- is building a monstrous digital datacenter in a remote corner of Utah capable of sorting through and storing every e-mail, voicemail, and social media communication it can get its hands on. Former NSA employee William Binney told The Associated Press that he estimates the agency collects records on 3 billion phone calls each day. This top-secret data warehouse could hold as many as 1.25 million 4-terabyte hard drives, built into some 5,000 servers to store the trillions upon trillions of ones and zeroes that make up your digital fingerprint. But that's just one way to catalog people, said Charles King, principal analyst at data center consulting firm Pund-IT.
OpEdNews, The Mask of Liberalism Falls As Their Pundits Accuse Snowden of Being a Traitor and Narcissist, Rob Kall, June 11, 2013. The liberal pundits in America are coming out, revealing themselves to be duopolist sycophants, serving the corporate state, serving the worst abuser of executive privilege in US history. The Liberal mainstream media is so "out of the closet" they are disgustingly naked. They are calling Edward Snowden -- who is absolutely a courageous hero -- a traitor and narcissist. Jeffrey Toobin suggests that because he left his good job and girlfriend he is being narcissistic. Funny, if a guy leaves a job in pro-sports to enlist, leaving his family, he's considered a hero. What a pure crock from a collection of limp liberals who wouldn't know courage if it bit them. Watch the former Obama appointees on MSNBC perform oral service for Obama. They have sold out the values that the Democratic party is supposed to and used to have. They have become political operatives.
At left is another view of the National Security Agency's new Utah Data Center in Bluffdale, Utah. The government is collecting the records of virtually all U.S. customers, according to independent experts. The government defines its activities in a way that it says complies with relevant law, with all relevant proceedings secret. The data center had a VIP ribbon-cutting ceremony May 30, and moves into formal launch in October. Details below are quoted from an official NSA website:
The Utah Data Center, code-named Bumblehive, is the first Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative (IC CNCI) data center designed to support the Intelligence Community's efforts to monitor, strengthen and protect the nation. NSA is the executive agent for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and will be the lead agency at the center. The steady rise in available computer power and the development of novel computer platforms will enable us to easily turn the huge volume of incoming data into an asset to be exploited, for the good of the nation.
The Utah Data Center is currently under construction and is expected to open in October 2013. Our 1.5 billion-dollar one million square-foot Bluffdale / Camp Williams facility will house a 100,000 sq-ft mission critical data center. The remaining 900,000 SF will be used for technical support and administrative space. Other supporting facilities include water treatment facilities, chiller plant, power substations, vehicle inspection facility, visitor control center, and sixty diesel-fueled emergency standby generators and fuel facility for a 3-day 100% power backup capability. We're using a Critical Path Method (CPM) schedule to track the cost and resource data for over 26,000 activities. The project initially required over a million cubic yards of earthwork and nearly seven miles of new roadways. The massive twenty-building complex is being completed in three phases. The first phase was completed last Fall and includes the first of four data halls.
Guardian, Edward Snowden's girlfriend Lindsay Mills: At the moment I feel alone, Mills's blog – in which she described life with her boyfriend on Hawaii – taken down after Snowden identified as source of leaks, Paul Lewis, June 10, 2013. The girlfriend of Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who leaked classified documents about US surveillance operations, has apparently blogged about the couple's life in Hawaii and her uncertainty about the future without her "man of mystery." Just a day after Snowden identified himself as the source of the leaks, Lindsay Mills, a 28-year-old performance artist, wrote: "I don't know what will happen from here. I don't know how to feel normal." She added: "My world has opened and closed all at once. Leaving me lost at sea without a compass … at the moment all I can feel is alone." The authenticity of the blog, which was seen by the Guardian before it was taken down on Tuesday, could not be verified. Snowden had previously told the Guardian his girlfriend was called Lindsay.
Scientific American Magazine, Former NSA Whistleblower Sheds Light on the Science of Surveillance, Dina Fine Maron, June 11, 2013. Q&A, Thomas Drake talks about surveillance algorithms and the outlook for the latest alleged whistleblower Edward Snowden, drawing from his own NSA prosecution.
Question: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said it's not realistic nor would he want to listen to everyone's communications, so what can be done with all these phone records that the NSA is collecting?
Thomas Drake: The distinction here is metadata versus content. It’s like when you get physical snail mail, it has a certain shape, weight and type of envelope, and an address and a return address and a stamp and usually a date and routing numbers. And it’s going to a particular mailbox at a particular address—that’s all metadata. The content is what it’s inside the envelope. In a digital space the metadata is always associated with content. The content would be the actual phone call—the conversation. The fact is the metadata is far more valuable to them because it gives them an index of everything. If they want to, the data is available and the capability exists to store it, then later they can access the content as well with a warrant. You can learn a tremendous amount about people by looking at the metadata…phone records include location information. At that level you can track them as well and know who they speak with, the time of day and all of that. By definition a phone number is always associated with somebody or some business—believe me, subscribers all have names. Think of the White Pages; the White Pages equal metadata. If I store that, that gives the government a phenomenal power in secret to track all kinds of information about a person without going to content.
Lawfare, Today’s [Snowden] Headlines and Commentary, Ritika Singh, June 11, 2013. Keith Bradsher of the New York Times reports that Hong Kong is likely to extradite Edward Snowden if asked to by the U.S. government. From the Department of You Really Can’t Make This Up: Russia has called Snowden a “human rights activist” and has said it would consider an asylum request from him. Julian Assange, meanwhile, has invaluable advice for Snowden: “I would strongly advise him to go to Latin America.” CNN has more. The Post tells us that a full-scale investigation has begun into how Snowden was able to gain access to the information he leaked. The Times also reports on how and why Snowden gave his media contacts the information he did. And Kim Zetter of Wired magazine explains why what Snowden did was the “ultimate insider attack.” The Los Angeles Times, however, reports that Snowden’s claims that “at any time [he could] target anyone, any selector, anywhere” are a huge overstatement of what the NSA can legally do.
Washington Post, Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and the risk of the low-level, tech-savvy leaker, Greg Miller, June 11, 2013. In the span of three years, the United States has developed two gaping holes in its national security hull, punctures caused by leakers who worked at the lowest levels of the nation’s intelligence ranks but gained access to large caches of classified material. The parallels between Edward Snowden, who has declared himself the source of leaks on National Security Agency surveillance programs, and Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army private on trial for sending hundreds of thousands of secret files to the WikiLeaks Web site, go beyond generational ties. Who is Edward Snowden?: A 29-year-old government contractor who admitted that he was behind recent leaks of classified intelligence has vaulted from obscurity to international notoriety, joining the ranks of high-profile leakers such as Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame. Both enlisted in the Army during the war in Iraq only to later say they were disillusioned by that conflict. Neither has a college degree or extensive academic training in computer science. And yet both were technically savvy, able to navigate sensitive computer networks and smuggle classified files.
FireDogLake, Why Clapper’s Deception Destroys Obama’s Defense of Newly Revealed NSA Programs, Jon Walker, June 11, 2013. Not only are the prepared deceptive answers given by Director of National Intelligence General James Clapper in Congressional testimony potentially serious crimes, but the entire incident completely undermines President Obama defense of the newly revealed NSA domestic surveillance programs. When asked about revelations Obama defended both the legality and legitimacy of the programs by repeatedly claiming they were subject checks by the other branches of government. Obama’s entire case for why these programs are acceptable is based on the premise that Congress is fully briefed and has complete oversight. From Obama:
FireDogLake, Big Brother Is Watching — And So Are Lowly Bureaucrats and Contractors, Jon Walker, June 10, 2013.Many people are rightly focused on how the state as a whole could abuse the vast databases of information on regular Americans, but it should be noted that is not the only concern with such programs. Even if the “Government” acts in a mostly benign manner with this data, there is still the real danger of what rogue segments of a government agency or even individual contractors/bureaucrats could do. In his interview with Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden acknowledged that his position allowed him, and many others, the ability to access huge amounts of information about individuals. Snowden said he had “the authorities to wiretap anyone from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President.” This is a huge amount of power to put in the hands of individuals. On an individual level it could be abused to pursue personal vendettas, stalk old relationships, blackmail people in power, advance political goals, or illegally access information to be used for financial gain. The number of nefarious purposes this level of power could be used by a rogue individual or small group is almost beyond count. The same secrecy that hides the existence of these programs could make it easier for individuals to hide their abuses of it.
WhoWhatWhy, Why Obama Cannot Undo the Surveillance Society—But We Can, Russ Baker, June 11, 2013. Today, the New York Times, in a news/analysis article, essentially declared that there was no hope for any kind of restraint of growing government spying on the public. Not if it is up to the people’s representatives. The Times noted that secrecy rules will prevent robust and open discussion in Congress. It also pointed out that Republicans will mostly stay in line with their traditional allies in the intelligence services—and that Democrats will too, both because they will want to show they did the right thing in voting to authorize the Patriot Act and other relevant legislation, and because during this round, the leader is Obama, a Democrat. But that’s just the beginning of the difficulties in the way of achieving reform of our incipient surveillance state. What the Times and other media will not and perhaps cannot say, is this: not only is Congress impotent in these matters, but it wouldn’t even matter if the president himself chose to act. Here’s why. Presidents of both parties rarely deviate from a kind of “consensus” cobbled together by people in academia, media and government, a consensus that almost always serves the interests of a fairly small number of wealthy people and interests. (If you’ve never heard this notion, a visit to one of our remaining public libraries might be in order.) This is not a partisan issue. It doesn’t matter who is president. No “ordinary American who can dream of one day becoming president” is in a position to alter the basic equation, which would involve bucking the vast military-financial-industrial-academic complex that drives the American economy, funds our political elections and keeps people in line through any means necessary. That’s as true of Obama as it was of Kennedy or Nixon or…fill in the blank.
Guardian, A Guide to Your Metadata, Staff Report, June 12, 2013, Metadata is information generated as you use technology, and its use has been the subject of controversy since NSA's secret surveillance program was revealed. Examples include the date and time you called somebody or the location from which you last accessed your email. The data collected generally does not contain personal or content-specific details, but rather transactional information about the user, the device and activities taking place. In some cases you can limit the information that is collected – by turning off location services on your cell phone for instance – but many times you cannot. Below, explore some of the data collected through activities you do every day. On Thursday, June 13 The Guardian's data editor James Ball will answer your questions about the NSA data collection program in the US from 3pm-4pm EST | 8pm-9pm BST.
Washington Post, Tech companies urge U.S. to ease secrecy rules on national security probes, Craig Timberg and Cecilia Kang, June 11, 2013. Technology companies stung by the controversy over the National Security Agency’s sweeping Internet surveillance program are calling on U.S. officials to ease the secrecy surrounding national security investigations and lift long-standing gag orders covering the nature and extent of information collected about Internet users. The requests, made by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo and echoed by a top official from Twitter, came as debate intensified over whether oversight of government spying programs grew too lax in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when security concerns combined with soaring technological capabilities led to individuals being monitored on a vast new scale.
Washington Post, NSA revelations put Booz Allen Hamilton, Carlyle Group in uncomfortable limelight, Thomas Heath and Marjorie Censer, June 11, 2013. The Carlyle Group has spent years attempting to shed its image as a well-connected private equity firm leveraging Washington heavyweights in the defense sector. Instead, it nurtured a reputation as a financially sophisticated asset manager that buys and sells everything from railroads to oil refineries. The recent disclosures involving National Security Agency surveillance on U.S. citizens by an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, a Virginia consulting firm that is majority owned by Carlyle, has thrust two of Washington’s most prominent corporate entities uncomfortably into the limelight, bound by the thread of turning government secrets into profits.
ABC News, Robert Redford Worried About President Obama’s ‘Courage of Conviction,’ Alisa Wiersema, June 10, 2013. Robert Redford had weather on his mind and urged President Obama to follow suit. In a collaborative campaign with the Natural Resources Defense Council, Redford challenged the president to strike at pollution and singled out coal-fired power plants as the root cause of the problem. “Four months ago, President Obama spoke of our obligation to combat climate change, saying failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” Redford was quoted as saying in a news release. “I just hope he has the courage of his convictions.”
Washington Post, Snowden’s girlfriend — dancer, nature lover — said to be shocked by his actions, Carol D. Leonnig and Julie Tate, June 11, 2013. Edward Snowden, the government contractor who leaked documents revealing a top-secret government surveillance program, was so cautious and distant that even his girlfriend of eight years referred to him as “my man of mystery.” For a 29-year-old who made his living in the digital world, Snowden has left remarkably few online traces. But as reclusive and private as he was, his longtime girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, 28, who moved with him to Hawaii last year, was outgoing and expressive. Writing in a blog that has vanished from public view, Mills, a native of Laurel, told of having to “kidnap” Snowden and “force a little adventure” on him to get him to join friends on a hike to a waterfall.
June 10
The NSA boasts legal compliance, as in its motto at left.
Huffington Post, Edward Snowden: Hero or Traitor?, Geoffrey R. Stone, June 10, 2013. Based on what I know from the media thus far, Snowden is neither a hero nor a traitor, but he is most certainly a criminal who deserves serious punishment. Snowden knowingly accepted a position of trust in his relation to the government. He did not have to accept his job, but he did. A clear condition of that job was his voluntary agreement not to disclose any classified information - that is, information the disclosure of which could reasonably endanger the security of the nation.
Pro Publica via Washington Spectator, 5 Basic Things We Still Do Not Know about NSA Snooping, Justin Elliott and Theodoric Meyer, June 10, 2013. Last week saw revelations that the FBI and the National Security Agency have been collecting Americans' phone records en masse and that the agencies have access to data from nine tech companies. But secrecy around the programs has meant even basic questions are still unanswered. Here's what we still don't know:
- Has the NSA been collecting all Americans' phone records, and for how long?
- What surveillance powers does the government believe it has under the Patriot Act?
- Has the NSA's massive collection of metadata thwarted any terrorist attacks?
- How much information, and from whom, is the government sweeping up through Prism?
- So, how does Prism work?
MSNBC via Huffington Post, Glenn Greenwald Clashes With Mika Brzezinski, Accuses MSNBC Host Of Using 'White House Talking Points' (VIDEO), June 10, 2013. Glenn Greenwald, left, clashed with Mika Brzezinski on air Monday when he accused her of using "White House talking points." The Guardian columnist broke a bombshell story revealing the NSA's secret surveillance of the phone records of Verizon customers on Wednesday night. The next day, he raced the Washington Post to report on the NSA's PRISM program. The revelations have roiled the Obama administration. On Monday, Greenwald appeared on "Morning Joe" to discuss the programs. He reiterated his point that the public should be made aware of government surveillance, and be able to decide if they want it. Brzezinski then asked him to put the programs into "perspective."
"Isn't it the case that reviewing of emails or any wiretapping cannot take place without an additional warrant from a judge and a review?" she asked. "I mean it's not like there's haphazard probing into all of our personal emails. Can we put this into context so we understand exactly what is going on?"
"Yeah, I'll put this into context for you," Greenwald responded. "The White House talking points that you're using are completely misleading and false." He said the law required individual warrants under when two people are in the United States and are both American citizens, but that the government could still probe the phone calls and emails of "all kinds of American citizens." "So those talking points that you're reading from are completely false as anybody whose paid even remote attention to the surveillance debate knows over the past 10 years," Greenwald continued.
Mika interrupted, "Uh no. Hey, Glenn, I'm not reading talking points. Glenn, I'd like to ask a question. Is this legal or illegal?
Slate, Edward Snowden, the Man Behind the NSA Leaks, Farhad Manjoo, June 10, 2013. If the NSA Trusted Edward Snowden With Our Data, Why Should We Trust the NSA? Edward Snowden sounds like a thoughtful, patriotic young man, and I’m sure glad he blew the whistle on the NSA’s surveillance programs. But the more I learned about him this afternoon, the angrier I became. The NSA trusted its most sensitive documents to this guy? According to the Guardian, Snowden, shown at right in a Guardian photo,is a 29-year-old high-school dropout who trained for the Army Special Forces before an injury forced him to leave the military. His IT credentials are apparently limited to a few “computer” classes he took at a community college in order to get his high-school equivalency degree—courses that he did not complete. His first job at the NSA was as a security guard. Then, amazingly, he moved up the ranks of the United States’ national security infrastructure: The CIA gave him a job in IT security. He was given diplomatic cover in Geneva. He was hired by Booz Allen Hamilton, the government contractor, which paid him $200,000 a year to work on the NSA’s computer systems. The worst part about the NSA’s surveillance is not its massive reach. It’s that it operates entirely in secret, so that we have no way of assessing the sophistication of its operation. All we have is the word of our politicians, who tell us that they’ve vetted these systems and that we should blindly trust that the data are being competently safeguarded and aren’t vulnerable to abuse. Snowden’s leak is thus doubly damaging. The scandal isn’t just that the government is spying on us. It’s also that it’s giving guys like Snowden keys to the spying program. It suggests the worst combination of overreach and amateurishness, of power leveraged by incompetence.
Hill, Sen. Feinstein calls Snowden's NSA leaks an 'act of treason,' Jeremy Herb and Justin Sink, June 10, 2013. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Monday said the 29-year-old man who leaked information about two national security programs is guilty of treason. Feinstein said that she doesn’t see National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden as a hero or a whistle blower.
Washington Post, Five ways to stop the NSA from spying on you, Timothy B. Lee, June 10, 2013. If recent reports are to be believed, the National Security Agency has broad powers to capture private information about Americans. They know who we’re calling, they have access to our Gmail messages and AOL Instant Messenger chats, and it’s a safe bet that they have other interception capabilities that haven’t been publicly disclosed. Indeed, most mainstream communications technologies are vulnerable to government eavesdropping. But all is not lost! The NSA’s spying powers are vast, but there are still ways to thwart the agency’s snooping. Here are five of them.
Washington Post, A timeline of surveillance in the United States from 2001 to 2013: from the Patriot Act to the PRISM program, Masuma Ahuja, June 7, 2013.
Huffington Post, PRISM Program: Obama Administration Held 22 Briefings For Congress On Key FISA Law, Sam Stein June 10, 2013. The Obama administration officials held 22 separate briefings or meetings for members of Congress on the law that has been used to justify the National Security Agency's controversial email monitoring program, according to data provided by a senior administration official. According to the official, the sessions that took place over the course of 14 months starting in October 2011 touched on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act, which gives the attorney general and director of national intelligence the authority to gather intelligence on non-U.S. citizens for up to one year. Section 702 has been cited by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper as the legal basis for the NSA's PRISM program, which has allowed the government to track email communication data.
Washington Post, Investigators looking into how Snowden gained access at NSA, Peter Finn, Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima, June 10, 2013. Counterintelligence investigators are scrutinizing how a 29-year-old contractor who said he leaked top-secret National Security Agency documents was able to gain access to what should be highly compartmentalized information, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials. Edward J. Snowden worked as a systems administrator at an NSA Threat Operations Center in Hawaii, one of several such facilities that are tasked with detecting threats to government computer systems. He has previously worked for the CIA, U.S. officials said. Snowden leaked documents to The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper on distinctly different operations: the NSA’s collection of data from U.S. phone call records and its surveillance of online communications to and from foreign targets.
Washington Post, Surveillance controversy illuminated by history, Walter Pincus, June 10, 2013. The NSA was founded in 1952 but only publicly acknowledged years later, which explains its nickname “No Such Agency.”
A little history and a little law are needed in the wake of the current uproar over the re-discovery that the National Security Agency has been vacuuming up telephone records of Americans and e-mails, phone messages and other Web data related to suspected overseas terrorists. Let’s start with a bit of history. Forty-three years ago, the staff director and counsel of a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee, set up by then-Chairman J.W. Fulbright (D-Ark.), traveled the world gathering facts as part of an investigation of military involvement in U.S. foreign policy. They visited NSA listening posts in Europe and Asia and interviewed those who ran the facilities. They were surprised at the data being collected, not just overheard communications but also cables and intercepts from satellites. I know about these events firsthand because I was that staff director. In a classified annex of the subcommittee’s report, there were recommendations relating to the NSA.
Washington Post, Hong Kong hotel says Edward Snowden was there, but checked out Monday, Jia Lynn Yang, June 10, 2013. “Hong Kong is definitely not a safe harbor for him,” said Regina Ip, a current legislator and chair of the New People’s Party. Snowden’s fate lies in a 16-year-old treaty between the United States and Hong Kong that guarantees extraditions except under rare circumstances. The treaty says that Hong Kong can refuse to transfer a suspected criminal to the United States if giving up the person “implicates” the “defense, foreign affairs or essential public interest or policy” of the People’s Republic of China. The treaty with Hong Kong says that any request to extradite must originate from the U.S. Department of Justice, and would be channeled through the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong.
Daily Caller, What Do They know about you? An interview with Former NSA analyst William Binney, Tim Cavanaugh, June 10, 2013.
Daily Caller: Can they retroactively put together the conversation we’re having right now? Suppose nobody from the government is taping this conversation right now. Is there any way they can go back and reconstruct it?
Binney: Well I think I’m on a target list, so anybody that my phone calls, they will be recorded. So yeah.
Daily Caller: Does this mean that my phone number is now going to be on a list?
Binney: You are now part of my community, so you can assume you are now going to be targeted, too.
Daily Caller: What did you make of the news over the last couple of days with Mr. Snowden coming forward?
Binney: Well obviously, I would have started out by trying to go different routes, like going to the intelligence committee, or the IG. I mean that didn’t do any good but that’s the route I took; I at least tried to do the right thing. So I’m not going to try to understand his motivation. I guess he was properly disturbed by the surveillance state we have, or the police state if you want to call it that. I wouldn’t have done it that way, but that’s the way he did it.
Daily Caller: But you said going through the proper channels didn’t do any good.
Binney: Yes, it didn’t do any good. I would still have done that to say I tried. And then, when it completely failed, then I might consider something radical.
Global News
CBS News, State Department memo reveals possible cover-ups, halted investigations, John Miller, June 10, 2013. CBS News has uncovered documents that show the State Department may have covered up allegations of illegal and inappropriate behavior within their ranks. The Diplomatic Security Service, or the DSS, is the State Department's security force, charged with protecting the secretary of state and U.S. ambassadors overseas and with investigating any cases of misconduct on the part of the 70,000 State Department employees worldwide. CBS News' John Miller reports that according to an internal State Department Inspector General's memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples. Among them: allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut "engaged in sexual assaults" on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's security detail "engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries" -- a problem the report says was "endemic." The memo also reveals details about an "underground drug ring" was operating near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and supplied State Department security contractors with drugs.
Infowars.com, Bilderberg Secrecy Exposed During Parliamentary Debate, Paul Joseph Watson, June 10, 2013. The secrecy of the Bilderberg Group was blown wide open during a Parliamentary debate in the House of Commons today when MP Ken Clarke was forced to defend himself against potentially damaging evidence of a conflict of interest surrounding his role as a steering committee member of the clandestine organization. MP Michael Meacher asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, an attendee to the confab, to make a statement regarding Bilderberg. However, the question was answered by Bilderberg steering committee member Ken Clarke, who was forced to embarrassingly claim he had “forgotten” that the organization’s meetings were paid for by funds raised by the Bilderberg Association. Despite acknowledging he had been on the steering committee for 10 years at the start of his response, Clarke later claimed he had “forgotten” that he was trustee of the British steering group and was now, “checking with the aid of my constituency secretary, whether I put that in.” Clarke’s failure to declare his his trusteeship of the body that funds the organization is a clear conflict of interest and is set to cause even more spotlight to be thrown on Bilderberg following an explosive live appearance by Alex Jones on the BBC. The majority of the House of Commons debate was a juvenile affair that gave Clarke and fellow Bilderberg member Ed Balls the opportunity to whitewash the organization as a mere talking shop, despite innumerable examples of Bilderberg setting the consensus for policy years in advance. See video MP's Discuss Bilderberg in the House of Commons (20 minutes).
Telegraph (United Kingdom), Bilderberg: Ken Clarke 'forgot' he was a trustee of funding group, Tim Ross, June 10, 2013. Kenneth Clarke has admitted that he may have failed fully to declare his role organising the secretive meetings of the Bilderberg Group of world leaders. The senior minister without portfolio is one of three trustees of the Bilderberg Association, the organisation that funded the conference last week. Mr Clarke told the Commons that he had “forgotten” that the controversial gatherings were paid for from funds raised by the group. He said he was checking his records to see whether he had informed civil servants of his role, as would be expected to avoid potential suggestions of a conflict of interest. Mr Clarke made the disclosure while answering questions over the “private” meeting of 140 of the world’s most powerful executives, politicians, ministers and advisers, which took place at a hotel near Watford last week. The minister, who has been a member of the Bilderberg Group steering committee for 10 years, attended the annual event, along with David Cameron, George Osborne, Ed Balls and Lord Mandelson.
Agonist, Aleppo, Istanbul, and London, Michael Collins, June 11, 2013. The war in Syria went from a seeming quagmire to a conflict that may reach a dramatic climax with the coming battle for Aleppo, a city of nearly three million people that was once the commercial center of the nation. Political leaders and events in two other cities, Istanbul and London, will play a central role in the outcome of the battle. The Syrian Army finished off final rebel resistance in the city of Qusayr last week fighting alongside the Lebanese group Hezbollah. As a result, the rebel supply line from Lebanon is shut down and the major road from Damascus to Aleppo via Qusayr is open. A victory by the Syrian military in Operation Northern Storm, its name for the Aleppo effort, will leave the rebels with very little in the way of major influence or meaningful territory.
June 9
Washington Post, From obscurity to notoriety, Snowden took an unusual path, Ellen Nakashima, June 9, 2013. Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old National Security Agency contractor who admitted that he was behind recent leaks of classified intelligence, has vaulted from obscurity to international notoriety, joining the ranks of high-profile leakers such as Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, shown at left. The fact that Snowden stepped forward to acknowledge his leaks to The Washington Post and the Guardian newspapers rather than wait for the FBI to find him impressed others who have disclosed government secrets. “I consider it a magnificent act of civil disobedience,” said Thomas Drake, a former NSA official who was prosecuted for leaking classified information to a journalist but wound up serving no prison time after the government’s case fell apart. “He’s a whistleblower.” Ellsberg was similarly impressed. He said in an interview: “There’s no American official or former official that I admire more at this point. There’s never been a more important disclosure to the American people than the leak [by Snowden] — and I include the Pentagon Papers in that. . . . He’s clearly ready to give his life or his freedom for the interests of his country.”
Washington Post, Timeline of surveillance. Staff report, June 9, 2013. A timeline of surveillance in the United States from 2001 to 2013: from the Patriot Act to the PRISM program,
Guardian, Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance, Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras. The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows. The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said. Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations – the NSA. In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant." Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight. "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing."
Regarding his future, he said, "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
Washington Post, Source of NSA leak reveals himself, Barton Gellman, Aaron Blake and Greg Miller, June 9, 2013. Edward Snowden, 29, says disclosing the top-secret information was right to do and is seeking asylum abroad.
Washington Post, The risk of outsourcing intelligence, Robert O’Harrow Jr., June 9, 2013. The unprecedented leak of National Security Agency secrets by an intelligence contractor, including bombshells about top-secret programs to collect telephone records, e-mail and other personal data, was probably an inevitable consequence of the massive growth of the U.S. security-industrial complex.
Washington Post, Edward Snowden says motive behind leaks was to expose ‘surveillance state,’ Barton Gellman and Jerry Markon, June 9, 2013. Before the world knew his name, 29-year-old Edward Snowden drafted a note of explanation. He had worked for the CIA and as a contractor for the NSA, he wrote, and had lived a “comfortable and privileged life.” But he was also deeply uncomfortable with the knowledge that had already been afforded to him in his brief career — knowledge about the U.S. surveillance that officials said they were carrying out to keep America safe.
Washington Post, Wonkblog: Is he crazy to seek asylum? Has the US become the type of nation from which you have to seek asylum? Timothy B. Lee, June 9, 2013. The whistleblower who disclosed classified documents regarding NSA surveillance to The Washington Post and the Guardian has gone public. He is Edward Snowden, 29, an employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Rather than face charges in the United States, Snowden has fled to Hong Kong. He plans to seek asylum in a nation with a strong civil liberties record, such as Iceland. Americans are familiar with stories of dissidents fleeing repressive regimes such as those in China or Iran and seeking asylum in the United States. Snowden is in the opposite position. He’s an American leaving the land of his birth because he fears persecution. Four decades ago, Daniel Ellsberg surrendered to federal authorities to face charges of violating the Espionage Act. During his trial, he was allowed to go free on bail, giving him a chance to explain his actions to the media. His case was eventually thrown out after it was revealed that the government had wiretapped him illegally. Bradley Manning, a soldier who released classified documents to WikiLeaks in 2010, has had a very different experience. Manning was held for three years without trial, including 11 months when he was held in de facto solitary confinement. During some of this period, he was forced to sleep naked at night, allegedly as a way to prevent him from committing suicide. The United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture has condemned this as “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of Article 16 of the convention against torture.” Ellsberg has argued that this degrading treatment alone should be grounds for dismissing the charges against Manning. Instead, the government has sought the harshest possible sentence. Even after Manning pleaded guilty to charges that could put him in prison for 20 years, the government has still pushed forward with additional charges, including “aiding the enemy” and violating the Espionage Act, that were intended to be used against
Politico, NSA leaker reveals self, has no apologies, Reid J. Epstein, June 9, 2013. The leaker is taking credit for exposing the NSA’s PRISM program. Snowden told the Guardian that he has gone to great lengths to maintain his digital privacy, going so far as to keep pillows under his door frame to interfere with listening devices and maintain a hood over his computer when entering passwords to block any hidden cameras. “I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions,” he told the paper. “I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.” Snowden, according to the Guardian, copied a series of NSA documents from a Hawaii office where he worked until late May, when he requested According to the Guardian, Snowden was raised in North Carolina and suburban Maryland. The paper reported that he never completed high school, yet was able to enter a U.S. Army Special Forces training program in order to fight in the Iraq war. The paper said he later received a GED. The Guardian reported that Snowden was discharged from the Army after breaking his legs in a training accident. Then, the paper said, he joined the NSA where it reported his “understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma.
Time, Four Things to Know About Surveillance Leaker Edward Snowden, Zeke J Miller, June 9, 2013.Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old defense contractor who leaked classified documents on U.S. government surveillance programs, revealed himself Sunday afternoon in interviews with the Guardian and the Washington Post. Snowden, an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton for the past three months, moved to a Hong Kong hotel on May 20, after accessing a trove of classified information from a government office in Hawaii with the intent to reveal information on the controversial classified programs, the Guardian reported. Last week the British paper revealed details on two classified programs — one pertaining to the seizure of all telephone metadata in the U.S. and another dealing with an effort to monitor Internet activities overseas using the resources of American technology firms. The Post revealed information about the second program, called PRISM. Both papers confirmed that Snowden passed them the information.
Huffington Post, Glenn Greenwald On 'This Week': 'You Should' Expect More Revelations From Me, Rebecca Shapiro, June 9, 2013. The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald appeared on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday and told host George Stephanopoulos that the public should expect more revelations from him. Last week, Greenwald broke the bombshell story about the NSA collecting phone data from millions of Verizon customers. Additional stories on major government surveillance programs followed, including news about the NSA program called Prism that allows officials to collect material from some of the country's largest Internet companies (including AOL, HuffPost's parent company). On Sunday, Greenwald published another story about an NSA datamining tool used for global surveillance called Boundless Informant. "Should we be expecting more revelations from you?" Stephanopoulos asked Greenwald. "You should," he said.
Huffington Post, Rand Paul: NSA Surveillance Programs Warrant Supreme Court Challenge, Mollie Reilly June 9, 2013. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), left, said Sunday that he is weighing a Supreme Court challenge to the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance programs, calling the organization's collection of records an "extraordinary invasion of privacy." "I'm going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level," Paul said on Fox News Sunday. "I’m going to be asking all the internet providers and all of the phone companies: Ask your customers to join me in a class action lawsuit. If we get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at, then maybe someone will wake up and something will change in Washington."
Lawfare, The Washington Post on Prism, Paul Rosenzweig, June 9, 2013. I had some hesitancy writing this blog since so many of the writers at the Post are acquaintances. But it really must be said. By now, readers are familiar with the Post’s story on the NSA Prism program from last week. It turns out that the story is wrong — wrong on the facts and wrong on the technology. That’s not my conclusion — that’s the conclusion of the inestimable Declan McCullagh of CNET. His conclusion is notable precisely because McCullagh is never thought of as a government apologist. Quite to the contrary he is a frequent, but fair, critic.
LDS Freedom Forum, Alex Jones Storms BBC, Confronts Bilderberg Member, Radio host takes over live broadcast, Paul Joseph Watson, June 9, 2013. Alex Jones confronted Bilderberg member and UK Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls shortly before a live BBC broadcast on which Jones was a guest, before Balls was ambushed again in the corridor about breaking the ministerial code by taking part in a secret lobbying meeting. Bilderberg steering committee member and MP Ken Clarke was forced to address the issue during the BBC Sunday Politics show. Treasury official Balls sidestepped the question about breaking the ministerial code, which states that MP’s cannot attend private meetings without disclosing details to the public, by claiming that he was not a minister – an overt lie because Balls swore an oath to uphold that very code when he became a Member of Parliament in 2005. Balls attended Bilderberg meetings before he became Shadow Chancellor. Officials are also supposed to have a secretary on hand making minutes, which is not the case at Bilderberg. Just like the NSA wiretapping issue and innumerable other scandals, illegal activity is being conducted in plain sight at Bilderberg when British officials like Balls and Prime Minister David Cameron attend Bilderberg with no public disclosure.
June 8
Reuters via Huffington Post, NSA Leaks Investigation Report Filed, Timothy Gardner and Mark Hosenball, June 8, 2013. A U.S. intelligence agency requested a criminal probe on Saturday into the leak of highly classified information about secret surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper launched an aggressive defense of a secret government data collection program. Clapper, right, blasted what he called "reckless disclosures" of a highly classified spy agency project code-named PRISM. It was not known how broad a leaks investigation was requested by the super-secret NSA. The report goes to the Justice Department. Prosecutors have brought a series of high-profile leak investigations under President Barack Obama. U.S. officials said the NSA leaks were so astonishing they expected the Justice Department to take the case. In a statement earlier on Saturday, Clapper acknowledged PRISM's existence by name for the first time and said it had been mischaracterized by the media. The project was legal, not aimed at U.S. citizens and had thwarted threats against the country, he said. "Over the last week we have seen reckless disclosures of intelligence community measures used to keep Americans safe," Clapper said in a statement. He said the surveillance activities reported in the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper were lawful and conducted under authorities approved by Congress. "Significant misimpressions" have resulted from recent articles, he said.
Director of National Intelligence, Facts on the Collection of Intelligence Pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, James Clapper, June 8, 2013. PRISM is not an undisclosed collection or data mining program. It is an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government’s statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision, as authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (50 U.S.C. § 1881a). This authority was created by the Congress and has been widely known and publicly discussed since its inception in 2008. Under Section 702 of FISA, the United States Government does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers. All such information is obtained with FISA Court approval and with the knowledge of the provider based upon a written directive from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. In short, Section 702 facilitates the targeted acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning foreign targets located outside the United States under court oversight. Service providers supply information to the Government when they are lawfully required to do so. The Government cannot target anyone under the court-approved procedures for Section 702 collection unless there is an appropriate, and documented, foreign intelligence purpose for the acquisition (such as for the prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities, or nuclear proliferation) and the foreign target is reasonably believed to be outside the United States. We cannot target even foreign persons overseas without a valid foreign intelligence purpose.
Ed Bott Report via ZD Net, The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism, Ed Bott, June 8, 2013. Summary: A bombshell story published in the Washington Post this week alleged that the NSA had enlisted nine tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple, in a massive program of online spying. Now the story is unraveling, and the Post has quietly changed key details. What went wrong? One day later, with no acknowledgment except for a change in the timestamp, the Post revised the story, backing down from sensational claims it made originally. But the damage was already done.
Washington Post, U.S., company officials: Internet surveillance does not indiscriminately mine data, Robert O’Harrow Jr., Ellen Nakashima and Barton Gellman, June 8, 2013. The director of national intelligence on Saturday stepped up his public defense of a top-secret government data surveillance program as technology companies began privately explaining the mechanics of its use. The program, code-named PRISM, has enabled national security officials to collect e-mail, videos, documents and other material from at least nine U.S. companies over six years, including Google, Microsoft and Apple, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post. The disclosures about PRISM have renewed a national debate about the surveillance systems that sprang up after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, how broad those systems might be and the extent of their reach into American lives.
CNET, No evidence of NSA's 'direct access' to tech companies, Sources challenge reports alleging National Security Agency is "tapping directly into the central servers." Instead, they say, the spy agency is obtaining orders under process created by Congress, Declan McCullagh, Updated June 8, 2013. In response to outcry over PRISM, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence has released some details. Among other things, he says the government "does not unilaterally obtain information from the servers of U.S. electronic communication service providers" and that PRISM-related activities are conducted "under court supervision." The National Security Agency has not obtained direct access to the systems of Apple, Google, Facebook, and other major Internet companies, CNET has learned. Recent reports in The Washington Post and The Guardian claimed a classified program called PRISM grants "intelligence services direct access to the companies' servers" and that "from inside a company's data stream the NSA is capable of pulling out anything it likes." Those reports are incorrect and appear to be based on a misreading of a leaked Powerpoint document, according to a former government official who is intimately familiar with this process of data acquisition and spoke today on condition of anonymity.
Washington Post, Vast surveillance programs renew debate about oversight, Robert Barnes, Timothy B. Lee and Ellen Nakashima, June 8, 2013. The disclosure of vast government surveillance programs has renewed the debate about whether the kind of transparent oversight that Americans expect from their government can work if it might compromise efforts to keep them safe from terrorism. President Obama and his national security leaders have asserted that vigorous oversight of government surveillance of phone calls and Internet data exists and denounced media reports that brought the programs to public attention. Can the kind of transparent oversight Americans expect from their government work if it might compromise efforts to keep them safe from terrorism?
Fox News via YouTube, June 8, 2013. Fox News host Neil Cavuto and Democratic strategist Julian Epstein erupted at each other on Saturday morning, when Cavuto demanded Epstein see the NSA subpoena as part of a larger pattern of oppressive behavior on the part of the Obama administration. "You see one incident after another that comes up," Cavuto said. "It all comes back to the same basic issue: privacy invaded or potentially invaded. Institutions of all sorts doing the same thing. There is a pattern." "If you want to conflate and combine the issues and make the general statements you can do that," Epstein said. "I don't think it's a thoughtful way to approach it." Cavuto, who had been winding up the whole hour, lost it. "Think about what I said!" Cavuto screamed. "Julian! Don't play the politics thing. I'm telling you, drop the liberal thing and focus on the reality thing. You have one entity after another going after American people. You have one system of government, one agency, one department after another essentially doing the same thing. You can call that conflating. I am telling you there is a pattern." "You can't conflate all these issues," Epstein said, causing Cavuto to wag his head in disbelief. "You have to speak about them differently. In the case of the IRS, I agree the targeting is wrong, but there was never any connection to the White House. Nobody has proven that."
Consortium News, Second Thoughts on October Surprise, Robert Parry, June 8, 2013. Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who oversaw two congressional investigations into Ronald Reagan's secret dealings with Iran, says a key piece of evidence was withheld that could have altered his conclusion clearing Reagan's 1980 campaign of allegations that it sabotaged President Jimmy Carter's hostage negotiations with Iran. In a phone interview on Thursday, the Indiana Democrat responded to a document that I had e-mailed him revealing that in 1991 a deputy White House counsel working for then-President George H.W. Bush was notified by the State Department that Reagan's campaign director William Casey had taken a trip to Madrid in relation to the so-called October Surprise issue.
Fox News / Lawfare, The NSA’s phone collection order -- it may be legal, but is it wise? Paul Rosenzweig, June 6, 2013. The revelation that the National Security Agency (NSA) has secured a court order directing Verizon to provide it with call data has sparked controversy. And, rightly so. If the order is genuine (and nobody has denied that it is), it reflects a significant expansion of America’s surveillance apparatus – one that should at a minimum be closely examined. First, some details. The order applies only to “meta-data” of calls: the phone numbers called, the location of the cell phone when the call was made, and the time and duration of the call. So the order does not require Verizon to let the NSA monitor the conversations or other content of the calls. Also, the order applies both to international calls and to calls occurring wholly within the United States. Verizon is required to update its compliance “on a daily basis.” Finally, though the order disclosed Wednesday applies only to Verizon, the logic of the request supports an inference that similar orders have been issued to other major telecommunications carriers like ATT & Sprint. Whatever its legality, the entire NSA order is remarkably overbroad and quite likely unwise. n short, the order appears to give NSA blanket access to the records of Verizon customers' phone calls –foreign and domestic—made between April 25, when the order was signed, and July 19, when it expires. Of course, if the order is only the latest in a series of orders (as also seems likely), then the access may go back for quite some time. Meta-data are not currently protected under the Fourth Amendment, and the large-scale collection of that meta-data remains lawful. On the other hand, it is uncertain how the NSA was allowed to collect information on U.S. citizens within the United States. Historically, both law and policy have limited the NSA to collecting signals intelligence only when it involves foreigners. Presumably there is some underlying procedural or legal limitation that insures that the NSA’s actions conform to law – but to date we don’t know what that is. Finally, whatever its legality, the entire order is remarkably overbroad and quite likely unwise.
Boston Globe, Police response training planned, but bombs hit first, Maria Cramer, June 8, 2013. The scenario had been carefully planned: A terrorist group prepared to hurt vast numbers of people around Boston would leave backpacks filled with explosives at Faneuil Hall, the Seaport District, and in other towns, spreading waves of panic and fear. Detectives would have to catch the culprits. Months of painstaking planning had gone into the exercise, dubbed “Operation Urban Shield,” meant to train dozens of detectives in the Greater Boston area to work together to thwart a terrorist threat. The hypothetical terrorist group was even given a name: Free America Citizens, a home-grown cadre of militiamen whose logo would be a metal skull wearing an Uncle Sam hat and a furious expression, according to a copy of the plans obtained by the Boston Globe. But two months before the training exercise was to take place, the city was hit with a real terrorist attack executed in a frighteningly similar fashion. The chaos of the Boston Marathon bombings disrupted plans for the exercise, initially scheduled for this weekend, forcing police to postpone. Now officials must retool aspects of the training.
June 7
An NSA chart shows its official procedures.
New York Times, Congress Can Stop Privacy Abuse, Editorial Board, June 7, 2013. Most members of Congress, it turns out, had received the usual bland assurances from counterterrorism officials that the authority granted to the government under the Patriot Act and related laws were absolutely necessary to prevent an attack on the United States, and that domestic spying activities must remain top secret. Proposals to bring greater transparency to these activities, or to limit their scope, were vigorously opposed by the Obama administration. (The Justice Department argued in a court filing in April that there must be no public disclosure of the extent of domestic data collection.) Except for a few leaders and members of the intelligence committees, most lawmakers did not know the government was collecting records on almost every phone call made in the United States or was able to collect anyone’s e-mail messages and Internet chats. And most important, since the public did not know about the extent of the surveillance, it was in no position to bring popular pressure against elected representatives.
National Security Agency (NSA) Director Keith Alexander is shown below left. Alexander also holds the titles of Chief of the U.S. Central Security Service and Commander of the Cyber Command. He previously served as Deputy Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army from 2003 to 2005. He was born in Syracuse, New York in 1951, and entered active duty at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Washington Post, Obama defends sweeping surveillance efforts, Philip Rucker, Sean Sullivan and and Aaron Blake, June 7, 2013. President Obama strongly defended the government’s secret surveillance of people’s phone records and Internet activities Friday, saying there are “a whole bunch of safeguards involved” and that Congress has repeatedly authorized the programs. Commenting on the surveillance for the first time since news organizations revealed the sweeping National Security Agency programs this week, Obama highlighted limits to the programs to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens and said the surveillance has helped the government thwart terrorist attacks. “They make a difference in our capacity to anticipate and prevent possible terrorist activity,” Obama said. He added that the programs are “under very strict supervision by all three branches of government and they do not involve listening to people’s phone calls, do not involve reading the e-mails of U.S. citizens and U.S. residents.”
Tech Dirt, President Obama 'Welcomes' The Debate On Surveillance That He's Avoided For Years Until It Was Forced Upon Him, Mike Masick, June 7, 2013. President Obama's incredibly weak response to the revelations this week of widespread data collection of pretty much everything by the NSA is to say that he "welcomes" the debate. But, of course, he hasn't actually welcomed the debate at all, because people have tried to bring that debate to him for years, and he's brushed them off.
New York Times, Tech Companies Concede to Surveillance Program, Claire Cain Miller, June 7, 2013. When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world’s largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled. In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit. While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is not, which is why Twitter could decline to do so. Details on the discussions help explain the disparity between initial descriptions of the government program and the companies’ responses. Instead of adding a back door to their servers, the companies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said. Facebook, for instance, built such a system for requesting and sharing the information, they said. The data shared in these ways, the people said, is shared after company lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data. Tech companies might have also denied knowledge of the full scope of cooperation with national security officials because employees whose job it is to comply with FISA requests are not allowed to discuss the details even with others at the company, and in some cases have national security clearance, according to both a former senior government official and a lawyer representing a technology company.
Center for Public Integrity, Secret court judge attended expenses-paid terrorism seminar; Lecturers included advocate for strong executive powers, Chris Youngemail, June 7, 2013. U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, who signed an order requiring Verizon to give the National Security Agency telephone records for tens of millions of American customers, attended an expense-paid judicial seminar sponsored by a libertarian think tank that featured lectures from a vocal proponent of executive branch powers. Vinson, whose term on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court began in 2006 and expired last month, was the only member of the special court to attend the August 2008 conference sponsored by the Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment, according to disclosure records filed by the federal judge. The Center for Public Integrity collected the disclosure records as part of an investigative report that revealed how large corporations and conservative foundations routinely sponsor ideologically driven educational conferences for state and federal judges. Eric Posner, a University of Chicago law professor who delivered two lectures, argued in a 2007 book he co-wrote — Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts — that “the executive branch, not Congress or the judicial branch, should make the tradeoff between security and liberty.”
Huffington Post, What Is PalTalk? Video Chat Service Among Facebook, Google And Other Big Names Being Spied On, Alexis Kleinman, June 7, 2013. Late Thursday, major reports from The Washington Post and The Guardian revealed that the U.S. government is collecting data from nine of the biggest Internet companies in the country. The list of firms is composed of nearly all household names -- Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple -- in addition to one lesser-known company: PalTalk. The Jericho, N.Y.-based company calls itself the "largest online video chat room community." Of the other firms associated with the National Security Agency's so-called PRISM program, PalTalk sound most similar to Microsoft-owned Skype. Started in 1998, the site's features include video chat rooms and free group video calling for up to 10 users at a time on both desktop and mobile. Users can also pay for more features. The company was founded by Jason Katz. But with 4 million members, according to its website, Paltalk has a significantly smaller userbase than the other companies on the NSA's list. So what makes this small video chat service interesting to the U.S. government? PalTalk was allegedly used a good deal during the "Arab Spring," the series of protests across the Middle East and North Africa that began at the beginning of 2011.
Business Insider, PRISM Is Also The Name Of A Product From Palantir, A $5 Billion Tech Startup Funded By The CIA, Nicholas Carlson, June 7, 2013. Update: Palantir says there is no connection between its product, Prism, and the NSA's top secret program, PRISM. According to documents obtained by the Post, PRISM allows the NSA to tap directly into the central servers of 9 big Internet companies: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple. A source told the Post that with PRISM, the NSA can "quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type." To be able to do that, the NSA would need some seriously impressive "big data" tools to analyze the terabytes of messages, videos, images, and metadata streaming through. One company that would be able to provide such tools is Silicon Valley tech firm called Palantir. Not a lot is known about Palantir, a private company that does not say much about who it works with. On its company website, Palantir says it offers "a suite of software applications for integrating, visualizing and analyzing the world's information."
Wayne Madsen Report, Update 1x. A wilderness of PRISMs, Wayne Madsen, June 8, 2013 (Subscription required). Palantir Technologies, Inc. received start-up finds from the CIA's IN-Q-TEL venture capital firm that expects to see a return on its investments in companies coming up with ways to better spy on Americans. Palantir now denies that its PRISM system, a powerful Internet scanning tool, is related to the National Security Agency's PRISM data mining tool that collects meta-data from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.
Tech Crunch, Despite Naming Coincidence, Palantir Says It’s Not Part Of PRISM Program, Alexia Tsotsis, June 7, 2013. It’s dumb to postulate that, because big data and security startup Palantir has a similarly named product to PRISM, that it’s somehow culpable. And, in an emailed statement to the Financial Times’ Tim Bradshaw, Palantir has now refuted that exact claim. “Palantir’s Prism platform is completely unrelated to any US government program of the same name. Prism is Palantir’s name for a data integration technology used in the Palantir Metropolis platform (formerly branded as Palantir Finance). This software has been licensed to banks and hedge funds for quantitative analysis and research.” The startup explains that the Prism software in question is for banks, not for government — though it does count the NSA as a client for other products. YCombinator partnet Garry Tan has backed up this statement, revealing that he helped build the team and code Palantir Prism née Palantir Finance in 2006.
Huffington Post, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page Slam 'Outrageous' PRISM Reports, Dino Grandoni, June 7, 2013. The leaders of the country's largest technology companies are apparently taking personally allegations that they are cooperating in a covert program that funnels users' information to the government. Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page, the chief executive officiers of Facebook and Google, respectively, each issued strongly worded statements late Friday, denying any involvement in the so-called PRISM program. "I want to respond personally to the outrageous press reports about PRISM," Zuckerberg wrote in a public Facebook message that was liked 69,000 times in the 21 minutes after it was posted. "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers." Page similarly pushed back in a blog post cosigned by Google's chief lawyer, David Drummond, titled "What the...?" The original version of the Post's story suggested the firms were voluntarily giving the government direct access to their servers -- a claim the paper later seemed to hedge. Zuckerberg and Page said they hand over information to authorities only when legally compelled to do so. Page cited Google's frequently issued transparency reports, which detail the volume of data requests from governments around the world, as evidence of Google's commitment to user privacy. Such unambiguous denials are rare for corporations. Compare the tech companies' response to that of Verizon, which refused to acknowledge its cooperation with the NSA even to its own employees in a leaked internal memo.
Institute for Political Economy, Another Phony Jobs Report From A Government That Lies About Everything, Paul Craig Roberts, June 7, 2013. The payroll jobs report for May released today continues the fantasy. Goods producing jobs declined, with manufacturing losing another 4,000 jobs, but the New Economy produced 179,000 service jobs.
AP via Huffington Post, Bilderberg 2013: Secretive Meeting Of Western Power Brokers Begins Near London, Jill Lawless, June 7, 2013. It's a busy weekend at the luxury Grove Hotel, favored haunt of British soccer players and their glitz-loving spouses. More than 100 of the world's most powerful people are at the former manor house near London for a secretive annual gathering that has attained legendary status in the eyes of anti-capitalist protesters and conspiracy theorists. The guest list for the Bilderberg meeting includes Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. British Prime Minister David Cameron is due to drop by Friday. The Bilderberg Group was set up in 1954 to support military and economic co-operation between Europe and North America during the Cold War. Named for the site of its first meeting – the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland – the forum for prominent politicians, thinkers and business leaders has been held annually at a series of secluded venues in Europe and North America.
June 6
Washington Post, Documents: U.S. intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program, Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras, June 6, 2013. The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track one target or trace a whole network of associates, according to a top-secret document obtained by the Washington Post. The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley. Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”
Huffington Post, Dianne Feinstein Says NSA Phone Records Surveillance Has Thwarted Terrorism, 'But That's Classified,' Matt Sledge, June 6, 2013. Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Thursday the National Security Agency program collecting domestic phone records has prevented terrorism. But she and other senators briefed on the program refused to delve into details about how it is used. Feinstein, right, spoke to reporters after the Intelligence Committee held a "highly classified" briefing on the vast NSA program, which Feinstein said had been put together "quickly" after The Guardian's report on its existence.
Washington Post, Administration, lawmakers defend NSA program to collect phone records, Ellen Nakashima and Ed O’Keefe, June 6, 2013. The Obama administration and key U.S. lawmakers on Thursday defended a secret National Security Agency telephone surveillance program that one congressman said had helped avert a terrorist attack in recent years. The program apparently has collected the telephone records of tens of millions of American customers of Verizon, one of the nation’s largest phone companies, under a top-secret court order. The government has built a national security and intelligence system so big, so complex and so hard to manage, no one really knows if it's fulfilling its most important purpose: keeping its citizens safe. The National Security Agency secretly collected phone records of millions of Verizon customers. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the court order, issued in April, appears to be “the exact three-month renewal” of the program that has been underway for the past seven years. She said the program is “lawful.”
Fox, IG report says Panetta disclosed sensitive info on bin Laden raid, rep decries 'hypocrisy' June 6, 2013. A top House Republican is accusing the Obama administration of “hypocrisy” after a draft watchdog report claimed former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta disclosed sensitive information on the Usama bin Laden raid to a Hollywood filmmaker -- even as the Justice Department aggressively pursued other security leaks. Rep. Peter King, R-NY, sharply criticized the White House for letting the Panetta disclosure slide. "There is definitely a hypocrisy here," King fumed. "The administration is cracking down on every leak. But here, they themselves are orchestrating leaks. But here you have the White House cooperating with Hollywood. And as a result of that, we have security breaches."
AP via Huffington Post, NSA PRISM Program: Is Big Data Turning Government Into 'Big Brother?' Michael Liedtke, June 7, 2013. With every phone call they make and every Web excursion they take, people are leaving a digital trail of revealing data that can be tracked by profit-seeking companies and terrorist-hunting government officials. The revelations that the National Security Agency is perusing millions of U.S. customer phone records at Verizon Communications and snooping on the digital communications stored by nine major Internet services illustrate how aggressively personal data is being collected and analyzed. Verizon is handing over so-called metadata, excerpts from millions of U.S. customer records, to the NSA under an order issued by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, according to a report in the British newspaper The Guardian. The report was confirmed Thursday by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Washington Post, Romney mixes business and politics at exclusive Utah conference, Jason Horowitz, June 7, 2013. John Schoenfeld came to an exclusive resort here to do business with Mitt Romney. The concentration of wealthy Romney backers in one place is a natural draw for politicians with national ambitions. The retreat highlights the enduring flaws that helped sink Romney’s candidacy. His ideas conference, much like his campaign, had no specific agenda and would define itself over time, aides said. The off-the-record sessions, the cigar rooms and the vanilla homogeneity of the exclusive event evoked the elitism of his disastrous speech to donors about the “47 percent.” And Romney hasn’t exactly loosened up. When the former GOP nominee suddenly appeared in the lounge on the way to the kick-off festivities, he responded to a question about his ambitions for the conference by grabbing his wife’s hand and scampering out the door.
Washington Post, Does Verizon records case mean an end to privacy? Eugene Robinson, June 6, 2013. Someday, a young girl will look up into her father’s eyes and ask, “Daddy, what was privacy?” The father probably won’t recall. I fear we’ve already forgotten that there was a time when a U.S. citizen’s telephone calls were nobody else’s business. A time when people would have been shocked and angered to learn that the government was compiling a detailed log of ostensibly private calls made and received by millions of Americans. The Guardian got its scoop by obtaining a secret order signed by U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Since we know so little about this shadowy court’s proceedings and rulings, it’s hard to put the Verizon order in context. The instructions to Verizon about what information it must provide take up just one paragraph, with almost no detail or elaboration. The tone suggests a communication between parties who both know the drill. Indeed, Senate intelligence committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said the order obtained by the Guardian was nothing more than a “three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past seven years.”
Washington Post, The FCC should repeal its newspaper-broadcast ownership rule, Reed Hundt, June 6, 2013. Reed Hundt was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997. A widespread though unverified rumor had it that President Bill Clinton did not want the newspaper-broadcast ownership rule repealed as part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act because he did not want the owner of the Little Rock newspaper to be the same person who owned the dominant Little Rock television station. Fritz Hollings, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, did not want the Federal Communications Commission to repeal the rule for the same reason, transposed to the media of South Carolina. But if I lacked the gumption and votes at the FCC to get rid of the rule then, the proliferation of Internet access and content over the past 17 years should give today’s commissioners the conviction to do the right thing. In celebration of our commitment to freedom, the FCC should eliminate the rule that constrains the owner of a broadcast TV station from also owning a newspaper in the same city, and vice versa — forthwith.
Washington Post, NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program, Staff report, June 6, 2013. Through a top-secret program authorized by federal judges working under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. intelligence community can gain access to the servers of nine Internet companies for a wide range of digital data. Documents describing the previously undisclosed program, obtained by The Washington Post, show the breadth of U.S. electronic surveillance capabilities in the wake of a widely publicized controversy over warrantless wiretapping of U.S. domestic telephone communications in 2005. These slides, annotated by The Washington Post, represent a selection from the overall document, and certain portions are redacted. Read related article.
Washington Post, Message from the ruins of Qusair, Charles Krauthammer, June 6, 2013. On Wednesday, Qusair fell to the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. Qusair is a strategic town that connects Damascus with Assad’s Alawite heartland on the Mediterranean, with its ports and Russian naval base. It’s a major strategic shift. Assad’s forces can now advance on rebel-dominated areas in central and northern Syria, including Aleppo. For the rebels, it’s a devastating loss of territory, morale and their supply corridor to Lebanon. No one knows if this reversal of fortune will be the last, but everyone knows that Assad now has the upper hand.
June 5
At left, President Barack Obama talks with, from left, Samantha Power, former Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and Ambassador Susan Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, in the Oval Office, June 5, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Washington Post, National security team shuffle may signal more activist stance at White House, Scott Wilson, June 5, 2013. President Obama announced a major shuffle of his national security team on Wednesday, ushering out a cautious Washington insider and elevating two long-time proponents of a larger American role in preventing humanitarian crises and protecting human rights. The ideological shift signaled by the choices highlights a central dilemma for Obama as he seeks to make a mark on the world at a time of austerity — and war weariness — at home. How ambitious Obama intends to be abroad at a time of stiff challenges on the domestic front has remained an open question well into his second term. Samatha Power, Obama’s pick for U.N. ambassador, is a longtime foreign and national security adviser to Obama. She has been called a Harvard brainiac with both a Pulitzer Prize and a mean jump shot. Here are a few facts about her. Susan E. Rice, named by Obama Wednesday to succeed Thomas E. Donilon as national security adviser, and Samantha Power, nominated to follow Rice as U.N. ambassador, will have the opportunity to provide an answer as the administration reviews its policy in Syria, winds down the war in Afghanistan and seeks to stop Iran’s nuclear-enrichment program. In a Rose Garden announcement, Obama called Rice, who does not need Senate confirmation, a “a fierce champion for justice and human dignity.” Video: President Obama named Susan Rice to replace Tom Donilon as his national security adviser and Samantha Power to replace Rice at the United Nations in the Rose Garden Wednesday.
Washington Post, What you need to know about Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who will be the next national security adviser, Staff report, June 5, 2013.
AP via Huffington Post, Tom Donilon Resigning: Obama National Security Adviser To Be Replaced by Susan Rice, Julie Pace, June 5, 2013. President Barack Obama's top national security adviser Tom Donilon is resigning and will be replaced by Susan Rice, right, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. who has been a lightning rod for Republican criticism over faulty explanations for the attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Donilon has been a key foreign policy adviser to President Barack Obama. But the 58-year-old had been expected to depart sometime this year, with Rice seen as the likely candidate to replace him. Her selection is sure to anger congressional Republicans, who have accused the administration of inconsistency and a cover-up in the Benghazi attacks.
Guardian, NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily, Glenn Greenwald, June 5, 2013. Exclusive: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama. Under the terms of the order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data and the time and duration of all calls. The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing. The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19. Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.
Huffington Post, Hey America -- 'Can You Hear Me Now?!' Obama, Verizon, and Executive Power Run Amok, Kristen Breitweiser, June 6, 2013. hToday's news relating to the Verizon data and records siege speaks volumes about this president and his absolute abuse of power. And when coupled with Eric Holder's abuses regarding the targeting of journalists and whistleblowers, Obama's positioning of John Brennan at CIA and James Comey at FBI, along with Obama's shift of drone warfare from CIA to DOD, which will now conveniently enable drones to operate within our borders, we all should be very, very scared. Because dissent, discussion, debate can no longer exist with this sort of omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent government. In short, the deck is stacked against us. Years ago, while in the midst of fighting the Bush administration for access to 9/11 documents that the 9/11 Commission needed to conduct its investigation, I met some old law school buddies for drinks. During our conversations, I railed against the Patriot Act and its inherent triggers against "our" privacy rights.
American Conservative, American Pravda: “Liberal Bias,” Ron Unz, June 5, 2013. When a small publication such as the American Conservative publishes a sharp attack against the mainstream media as I recently did in American Pravda, the ultimate result largely depends upon whether that self-same media will take any notice. Many tens or even low hundreds of thousands may read a highly popular article online, but such totals are negligible in a nation of over three hundred million, and those readers might anyway question the credibility of the charges. After all, one of my central arguments had been that our media decides what is real and what is nonsense. With the media serving as gatekeeper to its own criticism, the impact of my efforts remained in substantial doubt over the last month, but early Monday morning the ground shifted as the venerable Atlantic—one of America’s oldest publications and still among the most influential—published a very thoughtful 2,000 word discussion of my piece, under the noteworthy heading “Why Does the American Media Get Big Stories Wrong?” Agreeing with me on some particulars and disagreeing on others, author Conor Friedersdorf helpfully summarized my critique while also providing several suggested answers to his own title-question, something that I had not treated in detail.
At right, President Obama and Chief of Staff Denis McDonough walk June 3 on the South Lawn of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.)
FireDogLake, Surveillance State Secrecy & the Top Secret Court Order to Hand Over Verizon Call Data to NSA, Kevin Gosztola, June 6, 2013. A court order that was classified as top secret indicates Verizon was ordered by a US secret surveillance court to provide call data of millions of communications of Americans on an “ongoing, daily basis” to the National Security Agency (NSA) from April 25 to July 19. The order authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was published by The Guardian and columnist, Glenn Greenwald, wrote about the order for the media organization, concluding that it showed for “the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.”
Washington Post, Verizon ordered to provide NSA with all call data, Ellen Nakashima June 5, 2013. Administration official says purported court order “does not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s telephone calls” and only relates to data, including phone number and call length.
WMR, FBI issued subpoenas on leak of DEA's Israeli spying memo, Wayne Madsen, June 5, 2013 (Subscription required). WMR has learned from a primary source that the U.S. Justice Department sought and received subpoenas to force testimony from and monitor the phone conversations and emails of journalists who received parts of or the entirety of a Drug Enforcement Administration report in December 2002 documenting Israeli "art student" espionage directed at U.S. government facilities and homes of U.S. government employees in the years and months leading up to the 9/11 attack.
Politico, Report: Leon Panetta revealed classified SEAL unit info, Josh Gerstein, June 5, 2013. Former CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed the name of the Navy SEAL unit that carried out the Osama bin Laden raid and named the unit’s ground commander at a 2011 ceremony attended by Zero Dark Thirty filmmaker Mark Boal. Panetta also discussed classified information designated as “top secret” and “secret” during his presentation at the awards ceremony, according to a draft Pentagon inspector general’s report published Wednesday by the Project on Government Oversight. A source close to Panetta said Wednesday evening that he was unaware anyone without the proper security clearances was present at the event, which included both CIA and military personnel. “He has no idea who all is in the audience. He was told everyone got the requisite clearances,” said the source, who asked not to be named. Panetta’s prepared speech was classified “secret,” according to the source. That may have led the CIA director to believe he could speak freely about the operation. The leaked version of the report does not address whether Panetta knew Boal was present at the ceremony, held under a tent at the CIA complex on June 24, 2011. “Approximately 1,300” people from the military and the intelligence community were on hand for the event, according to a CIA press release issued the following week. The disclosure of the IG report could undermine the Obama administration’s claims that senior officials have not leaked classified information. Last spring, Republicans publicly attacked President Barack Obama and his top aides, alleging that the administration leaked national security secrets to burnish Obama’s standing for his reelection bid.
Peter H. Stone, Huffington Post, Sheldon Adelson's Woes Mount With Grand Jury In Las Vegas Sands Money-Laundering Probe, June 5, 2013. The legal headaches besetting billionaire Sheldon 
Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. now include a grand jury in Los Angeles, part of a federal money-laundering probe of his Nevada-based casinos, the Huffington Post has learned. The involvement of a federal grand jury, not previously reported, suggests an escalation of the money-laundering investigation into Sands and one of its executives, being led by the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles, according to a person with direct knowledge of the inquiry. Investigators are probing whether Sands broke money-laundering laws by failing to report millions in potentially questionable transfers of money several years ago by two-high rollers at its casinos. Both men have separately been charged with other crimes and one has since been sentenced to jail for accepting illegal kickbacks. Adelson, CEO of the Sands, is shown at left in a photo via Wikipedia. The Wall Street Journal, in a lengthy story last summer, first disclosed that Sands was a subject of a federal money-laundering inquiry and that some of its executives were also under scrutiny. The Journal reported in October that possible settlement discussions with government officials were underway. Those talks were focused on a possible deal, which, to avoid charges, may have included a fine of $100 million or more and would've required Sands to institute new internal controls for customer deposits.
Guardian, Bradley Manning Trial Focuses on His Database Access, Ed Pilkington, June 5, 2013. Bradley Manning, the source of the largest intelligence leak in US history, was allowed by his superiors to surf massive closed databases of secret information without any official restrictions, as well as download classified files to CDs and play music, movies and video games on his secure computer, his court martial has heard.
Day three of the trial, the highest-profile prosecution of an official leaker in at least a generation, focused on a tussle between the US government and Manning's defence lawyers over the environment in which the soldier worked as an intelligence analyst. The prosecution attempted to depict his unit within the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division as meticulously trained in the handling and safeguarding of classified information.
By contrast, the defence team led by civilian lawyer David Coombs extracted answers from prosecution witnesses under cross-examination that presented the unit as an ill-disciplined group that operated under lapse security guidelines, even though they were stationed on active duty at a US military base outside Baghdad. Two of Manning's supervisors at Forward Operating Base Hammer were called to the stand, Jihrleah Showman and chief warrant officer Kyle Balonek, and grilled in similar fashion.
Foreign Policy, After weeks of fighting, Syrian forces overtake the strategic town of Qusayr, Mary Casey and Jennifer Parker, June 5, 2013. The Syrian army, along with pro-government Hezbollah forces, overtook the strategic town of Qusayr on Wednesday after over two weeks of fighting. Syrian state news agency SANA reported the "heroic armed forces have returned security and stability to all of the town." The regime and allied forces reportedly overtook the town after an overnight offensive. According to one Hezbollah fighter, "We did a sudden surprise attack in the early hours and entered the town. They escaped." Opposition forces said they had pulled out of Qusayr. The loss of the town, which is located about six miles from the border with Lebanon, will be a significant blow to the opposition as it lies on an important supply route.
June 4
AP via Huffington Post, Egypt Sentences NGO Workers To Prison, Including 16 Americans, Hamza Hendawi, June 4, 2013. An Egyptian court on Tuesday sentenced 43 non-profit workers, including the son of the U.S. secretary of transportation and 15 other Americans, to prison in a case against foreign-funded pro-democracy groups. The ruling and heavy jail time of up to five years deepen worries over the operations of non-governmental organizations in Egypt as parliament considers a bill proposed by Islamist President Mohammed Morsi that critics warn will profoundly restrict their activities.
June 3
Mediaite, Jesse Ventura Rants On Bradley Manning, IRS, And Suing Navy SEAL’s Widow With A Skeptical Piers Morgan, Josh Feldman, June 3, 2013 (Video). Former Minnesota governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura joined Piers Morgan tonight for a lively discussion ranging from the big scandals in Washington to the trial of Bradley Manning to whether Ventura would finally dip his toes in the presidential water after sitting out for the last two cycles. Ventura bashed the Obama administration for overreach in the IRS and AP scandals, while declaring that public trust in parties is so low, a third party candidate like himself could easily win in 2016.
Atlantic, Why Does the American Media Get Big Stories Wrong? Conor Friedersdorf, June 3, 2013. A magazine publisher has written a provocative article raising that question. I try to offer some answers.
Politico, Opening Statements Paint Two Pictures Of Manning, Stephanie Gaskell, June 3, 2013. Prosecutors opened the Army’s court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning on Monday by charging that the former intelligence analyst knew full well the 700,000 classified documents he has admitted giving to WikiLeaks could fall into the hands of America’s enemies. During opening statements in the biggest leak case in U.S. military history, prosecutors said they have evidence that Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden asked for the WikiLeaks files after they were released and the information was found on computers inside his Pakistan compound when it was raided by Navy Seals two years ago.
Truthdig via OpEdNews, 'We Steal Secrets': State Agitprop, Chris Hedges, June 3, 2013. Alex Gibney's new film, We Steal Secrets, is about WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. It dutifully peddles the state's contention that WikiLeaks is not a legitimate publisher and that Bradley Manning, who allegedly passed half a million classified Pentagon and State Department documents to WikiLeaks, is not a legitimate whistle-blower. It interprets acts of conscience and heroism by Assange and Manning as misguided or criminal. It holds up the powerful -- who are responsible for the plethora of war crimes Manning and Assange exposed -- as, by comparison, trustworthy and reasonable. Manning is portrayed as a pitiful, naive and sexually confused young man. Assange, who created the WikiLeaks site so whistle-blowers could post information without fear of being traced, is presented as a paranoid, vindictive megalomaniac and a sexual deviant. "We Steal Secrets" is agitprop for the security and surveillance state.
Legal Schnauzer, A Wife's Investigative Skills Turn Up Information About CEO Ted Rollins' Extramarital Activities, Roger Shuler, June 3, 2013. Birmingham resident Sherry Carroll Rollins decided that a visit to her husband's office while he was away on business might yield some interesting information. She was right about that -- on multiple fronts.
Zero Hedge, The Full List Of 2013's Bilderberg Attendees, Tyler Durden, June 3, 2013. Selected attendees from the 2013 annual Bilderberg conference in the United Kingdom, chaired this year by Henri de Castries, Chairman and CEO of the AXA Group. Other attendees of special stature include Her Royal Highnesss Princess Beatrix of The Netherlands and J. Michael Evans, Vice Chairman, Goldman Sachs & Co., which reportedly helps funds the annual conference along with the BP [according to cables released by the hacker group Anonymous]. Among others convening for the secret policy discussions, listed here in alphabetical order, were: Washington Post Chairman and CEO Donald E. Graham; Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Managing Director, Lazard Freres & Co.; Henry A. Kissinger, Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.; Henry R. Kravis, Co-Chairman and Co-CEO Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, Harvard Law School Lawrence Lessig, a prominent advocate of congressional reform; Richard N. Perle, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Global Institute Chairman David H. Petraeus, General, U.S. Army (Retired); Robert E. Rubin, Co-Chairman, Council on Foreign Relations and former Secretary of the Treasury; and Peter A. Thiel, President, Thiel Capital and a leading funder of social media companies and political campaigns.
June 2
The Guardian, The week ahead: Bilderberg 2013 comes to … the Grove Hotel, Watford, Charlie Skelton, June 2, 2013. The Bilderberg group's meeting will receive greater scrutiny than usual as journalists and bloggers converge on Watford. When you're picking a spot to hold the world's most powerful policy summit, there's really only one place that will do: Watford. On Thursday afternoon, a heady mix of politicians, bank bosses, billionaires, chief executives and European royalty will swoop up the elegant drive of the Grove hotel, north of Watford, to begin the annual Bilderberg conference It's a remarkable spectacle – one of nature's wonders – and the most exciting thing to happen to Watford since that roundabout on the A412 got traffic lights. The area round the hotel is in lockdown: locals are having to show their passports to get to their homes. It's exciting too for the delegates. The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell will hop from his limo, delighted to be spending three solid days in policy talks with the head of HSBC, the president of Dow Chemical, his favourite European finance ministers and US intelligence chiefs. The conference is the highlight of every plutocrat's year and has been since 1954. The only time Bilderberg skipped a year was 1976, after the group's founding chairman, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, was caught taking bribes from Lockheed Martin.
Wall Street Journal, For JFK Authors, the Truth Is, Conspiracy Theories Sell Lots of Books; 50th Anniversary of Assassination Prompts Torrent of Words, Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, June 2, 2013. When it comes to President John F. Kennedy's assassination, no word has been left unturned. As the 50th anniversary draws near, some might think there is little left to say. That turns out not to be the case. Skyhorse Publishing is issuing eight new titles, flanked by 17 reprints. The publisher started the year with 12 JFK-related titles, which means it will have 37 by year's end. Bowker's Books In Print says nearly 1,400 titles related to President Kennedy, including his assassination, conspiracy works, biographies and speeches, have been published in the U.S. over the past five decades. By comparison, the company says there were more than 3,300 titles related to Abraham Lincoln published during the same period, and nearly 800 about the Titanic. Many of the Skyhorse works have vivid titles, among them Mark North's "Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy" and Patrick Nolan's "CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys."
Time, Mitt Romney Inc.: The White House That Never Was, June 2, 2013. In the months before the 2012 election, a group of high-powered consultants and political operatives prepared a secret report for candidate Mitt Romney, explaining how he should take over and restructure the federal government should he win the presidency. “The White House staff is similar to a holding company” read one PowerPoint slide, which would have been presented to President-elect Romney as part of an expansive briefing on the morning after Election Day. It went on to list three main divisions of the metaphorical firm: “Care & Feeding Offices,” like speechwriting, “Policy Offices,” like the National Security Council, and “Packaging & Selling Offices,” like the office of the press secretary. This was the view of the Presidency Romney would have brought with him to Washington, a glimpse of the White House that never was — and plan that never saw the light of day.
Huffington Post, Eric Holder Perjury Charge Weighed By Republicans, Arthur Delaney, June 2, 2013. Republicans in Congress are investigating whether U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder committed perjury when he said he had nothing to do with the "potential prosecution" of a journalist even though Holder himself reportedly approved of a search warrant in the case. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said on "Fox News Sunday" that Republicans are waiting for Holder's response to a letter about the apparent discrepancy between his sworn testimony and reports about his involvement in the near prosecution of Fox News reporter James Rosen. "It is fair to say we're investigating the conflict in his remarks, those remarks were made under oath, but we also think it’s very important that the attorney general be afforded the opportunity to respond, so we will wait to pass judgment on that until we receive his response," Goodlatte said.
Jonathan Turley.com, It’s All About the Judges, Lawrence E. Rafferty, June 2, 2013. What would you say if corporations and partisan foundations or think tanks and oil companies were deeply involved in making sure the judges know who their real “friends” are? “According to a recent investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, “conservative foundations, multinational oil companies and a prescription drug maker were the most frequent sponsors of more than 100 expense-paid educational seminars attended by federal judges over a 4 1/2-year period.” About 185 federal judges participated in these “educational” events which were sponsored by multinational corporations such as ExxonMobil, Pfizer and BP. These seminars are clearly designed to encourage judicial principles that would benefit the sponsors. According to the investigators, Justice Carl A. Barbier happens to have attended at least one of these conferences in 2009, which was sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, Shell Oil Company, and Exxon Mobil Corporation. Barbier has since dismissed a wrongful death case against Exxon and now finds himself presiding over the BP Deepwater Horizon cases. In an ongoing trial, it is up to him to determine whether or not BP is grossly negligent and liable for tens of billions of dollars in Clean Water Act damages.”
CNN via Huffington Post, Paul Krugman: Debunked Reinhart-Rogoff Paper 'Did A Lot Of Damage' (VIDEO), June 2, 2013. Having a public spat with your colleagues and former classmates over the best way to fix the global economy can be “very unpleasant,” according to Paul Krugman. The Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist told Fareed Zakaria that “the stakes are high” in his public debate with Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, over their research which found a close correlation between high levels of public debt and slow economic growth. Researchers recently debunked the two economists’ findings, which were widely cited by pro-austerity politicians to justify cutting governments spending. In the aftermath, Krugman has been critical both of the politicians who used Reinhart and Rogoff’s research to push for austerity and of the economists themselves for not doing more to admit that their ultimate conclusion was wrong. The two posted a letter last month accusing Krugman of engaging in “uncivil behavior” in his criticisms. “This one claimed result -- which is that growth falls off a cliff when debt is at 90 percent of GDP -- that’s what the world picked up on and that result is false,” Krugman told Zakaria on an episode of his show “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” which aired on CNN Sunday. “That paper of theirs did a lot of damage by giving people who didn’t want stimulus, who didn’t want any kind of expansionary policy a way to scare their opponents.”
June 1
OpEdNews, Time For Holder to Resign/Be Fired, Rob Kall, June 1, 2013. Eric Holder should resign. I say he should resign rather than be fired because it is totally obvious that Holder has been doing the work Obama has told him to do. Holder should resign to save his reputation. He should resign AND make it clear that he is resigning because he can no longer be Obama's "sin eater" as Jonathan Turley calls him in his USA Today article: "Fire Eric Holder." I don't expect Holder to resign, because he has already demonstrated that he is totally willing to prostitute his integrity in obedience to Obama-- as he's violated our rights. Turley says it well in the article, "His value to President Obama has been his absolute loyalty." For Obama, there has been no better sin eater than Holder. When the president promised CIA employees early in his first term that they would not be investigated for torture, it was the attorney general who shielded officials from prosecution. When the Obama administration decided it would expand secret and warrantless surveillance, it was Holder who justified it. When the president wanted the authority to kill any American he deemed a threat without charge or trial, it was Holder who went public to announce the "kill list" policy. Last week, the Justice Department confirmed that it was Holder who personally approved the equally abusive search of Fox News correspondent James Rosen's e-mail and phone records in another story involving leaked classified information. In the 2010 application for a secret warrant, the Obama administration named Rosen as "an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator" to the leaking of classified materials. The Justice Department even investigated Rosen's parents' telephone number, and Holder was there to justify every attack on the news media."
FireDogLake, Post Gives Us the Bad News on Medicare, Good News May Reduce Pressure for Change, Dean Baker, June 2, 2013. The Washington Post long ago eliminated any distinction between news and opinion in its reporting on Social Security and Medicare. Keeping with this pattern, it ran a front page editorial that gave us the bad news from the Medicare and Social Security trustees reports released Friday. If Congress were to implement changes to the programs comparable to the ones that were actually put in place in the decade of the 1980s, it would be more than sufficient to keep them fully funded for the rest of the century according to the most recent trustees reports.
New York Times, Seeking a Fresh Start, Holder Finds a Fresh Set of Troubles, Peter Baker, Charlie Savage, Jonathan Weisman, June 2, 2013. At the end of last year, with the election decided and the Obama administration in office for four more years, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. considered stepping down. He decided against it. While the White House publicly backed Mr. Holder as he tried to smooth over the latest uproar amid new speculation about his future, some in the West Wing privately tell associates they wish he would step down, viewing him as politically maladroit. But the latest attacks may stiffen the administration’s resistance in the near term to a change for fear of emboldening critics. But that does not mitigate the frustration of some presidential aides. “The White House is apoplectic about him, and has been for a long time,” said a Democratic former government official who did not want to be identified while talking about friends. Some advisers to Mr. Obama believe that Mr. Holder does not manage or foresee problems, the former official said. “How hard would it be to anticipate that The A.P. would be unhappy?” the former official said. “And then they haven’t defended their position.”
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JIP
Mission Statement
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Andrew Kreig JIP Director |
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The Justice Integrity Project is a research and education initiative established in 2010 by concerned citizens to improve oversight of prosecution and judicial decisions suspected as abusive. Its primary focus is political and other arbitrary prosecutions, and official corruption cases. The Project promotes effective oversight, educates the public and its opinion-leaders and works with legal officials, organizations, and voters to increase awareness of how injustice harms the country.
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Call to Action
The Justice Integrity Project urges readers to sign the petition to President Obama for clemency for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (1999-2003), whom our research indicates was unjustly convicted in 2006 on politically motivated corruption charges. The petition is here. The goal is 100,000 signatures, with more than 50,000 already. Siegelman is shown above with his wife (at center), son and daughter. He was reimprisoned at age 67 in September 2012 for nearly six more years in Louisiana.
The Project has extensively documented injustice in the case. An unprecedented coalition of former law enforcers, scholars, and others has denounced the prosecution as selective punishment for a non-crime: As governor in 1999, Siegelman reappointed to an unpaid state board a donor to a non-profit foundation, with Siegelman receiving no money. For this, authorities destroyed his life with more than a dozen years of investigations costing taxpayers vast amounts. For background, see a site by his supporters and our recent column.
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