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  financial fraud charges that he and his highly prominent attorneys argue were trumped up. The motive? 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.

Revelations keep happening, as indicated by this June 29 column featuring former NSA staffers Wayne Madsen: Revealed: secret European deals to hand over private data to America, and Russell Tice, such as NSA Whistleblower: NSA Illegally Spied On Top Generals, All Supreme Court Justices, White House Spokesman.

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 infiltrating 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.

Update: Atlantic, The Surveillance Speech: A Low Point in Barack Obama's Presidency, Conor Friedersdorf, Aug. 12, 2013.

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, Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands (who abdicated this spring after a long rule as Queen), 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, like author James Bamford and former NSA executives William Binney and Thomas Drake; and news commentaries, both 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). 

Moreover, the Post and other mainstream organizations have many fine journalists seeking to do their best despite the inherent conflicts noted above. On June 15, for example, Post reporter Barton Gellman authored a major story, U.S. surveillance architecture includes collection of revealing Internet, phone metadata, describing the major secret programs the federal government uses for its surveillance operations.

In sum, mainstream publications have the personnel, access, and readership to provide unique perspective on this kind of story.

So does, of course, the federal government itself.

At left is 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 government also has provided the follow flow chart of its work:

Justice Integrity Project Coverage Summary

Hong Kong, Snowden Snub U.S. Demand for 'Rule of Law' As U.S. Ramps Up War In Syria, June 23, 2013. Hong Kong snubbed the United States June 23 by refusing to extradite former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to face spy charges.  Separately, Kerry committed the United States to join 10 other nations in a "Group of 11" to topple Syria's government by a major escalation into Syria's civil war by the West and the Gulf monarchies. This column summarizes the recent global difficulties for the United States on these issues. An appendix below includes commentaries on Snowden and Syria.

Jesse Ventura: Fighting for Our Freedoms Against Both Parties, June 14, 2013. Jesse Ventura, right, 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. Ventura is the nation's most outspoken highly credentialed opponent of two-party complicity in eroding traditional American liberties. His updated book, at right, 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 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."

Daniel Ellsberg: Snowden's NSA Leak Was Heroic, Historic, June 10, 2013. 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 the view of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, left, the nation's best-known and most-honored whistleblower after he risked imprisonment in 1971 to leak to the media the secret Defense Department history of the Vietnam War. “There’s no American official or former official that I admire more at this point," Ellsberg told a reporter. "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." Ellsberg continued by saying of Snowden, 29,  "He’s clearly ready to give his life or his freedom for the interests of his country.”

'American Conservative' Publisher Decries Major Media Conventional Wisdom, Cover-ups, June 7, 2013. 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 published on April 29 "Our American Pravda: 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, right, is a former Republican gubernatorial candidate in California's 1994 elections, a theoretical physicist by training, and a software developer by profession.

California Senator Rejects Criticism of Privacy Violations, Husband's Deal, June 7, 2013. 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, left, 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.

Obama Doubles Down on National Security Strategy, June 7, 2013. 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.

Obama's FBI Nominee Deserves Tough Scrutiny....That He Won't Get, Andrew Kreig, June 2, 2013. President Obama's prospective nominee to lead the FBI for a 10-year term, James Comey, deserves rigorous scrutiny for his civil rights record -- scrutiny he is unlikely to receive. The White House leaked to friendly reporters last week its plan to nominate Comey, right, a former deputy attorney general during the Bush administration. A Republican, Comey was a high-profile federal prosecutor in New York City and Virginia earlier in his career.

Free Press Expert Goodale Warns Against Obama DOJ's Abuses, May 24, 2013. One of the nation's most battle-tested First Amendment experts warned this week that President Obama "surely" will exceed the 1970s abuses of Richard Nixon "as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom." James C. Goodale was New York Times general counsel during its 1971 fight with the Nixon administration to publish the Pentagon Papers. Goodale, at left, published a Times op-ed May 21, that said, "Only Nixon Harmed a Free Press More,” cited recent revelations about the Obama Justice Department's extreme measures to plug national security leaks by secret surveillance of more than 100 Associated Press reporter phones, as well as intense surveillance of a Fox reporter suspected of speaking with a State Department contractor. "The search warrant filed to investigate the Fox News reporter James Rosen proved as many had suspected: President Obama wants to make it a crime for a reporter to talk to a leaker," Goodale wrote. "Until President Obama came into office, no one thought talking or e-mailing was not protected by the First Amendment." Goodale appeared as a guest May 24 on the MTL Washington Update weekly public affairs show I co-host with Scott Draughon.

Editor's Note: Appendices for the columns above replicate some of the excerpts below, which are organized more for research purposes than to illustrate the themes of columns.

Related News Coverage

Latest Updates

Atlantic, The Surveillance Speech: A Low Point in Barack Obama's Presidency, Conor Friedersdorf, Aug. 12, 2013. His tone on Friday was inappropriately dismissive, while the substance was misleading at best and mendacious at worst. On Friday, President Obama spoke to us about surveillance as though we were precocious children. He proceeded as if widespread objections to his policies can be dispatched like a parent answers an eight-year-old who has formally protested her bedtime. He is so proud that we've matured enough to take an interest in our civil liberties! Why, he used to think just like us when he was younger, and promises to consider our arguments. But some decisions just have to be made by the grownups. Do we know how much he loves us? Can we even imagine how awful he would feel if anything bad ever happened while it was still his job to ensure our safety? By observing Obama's condescension, I don't mean to suggest tone was the most objectionable part of the speech. The disinformation should bother the American people most. The weasel words. The impossible-to-believe protestations. The factually inaccurate assertions.

AP via Huffington Post, Vehicle Records Taken By Law Enforcement Agencies Across America: ACLU, Anne Flaherty and Calvin Woodward, July 17, 2013. You can drive, but you can't hide. A rapidly growing network of police cameras is capturing, storing and sharing data on license plates, making it possible to stitch together people's movements whether they are stuck in a commute, making tracks to the beach or up to no good. For the first time, the number of license tag captures has reached the millions, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union based on information from hundreds of law enforcement agencies. Departments keep the records for weeks or years, sometimes indefinitely, saying they can be crucial in tracking suspicious cars, aiding drug busts, finding abducted children and more. Attached to police cars, bridges or buildings – and sometimes merely as an app on a police officer's smartphone – scanners capture images of passing or parked vehicles and pinpoint their locations, uploading that information into police databases. Over time, it's unlikely many vehicles in a covered area escape notice. And with some of the information going into regional databases encompassing multiple jurisdictions, it's becoming easier to build a record of where someone has been and when, over a large area.

Washington Post, Kerry, in Brunei, faces European anger over Snowden’s NSA disclosures, Karen DeYoung, July 1, 2013. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said he was taken by surprise Monday when European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton questioned him here about reports that the United States conducted electronic monitoring of E.U. offices and computer networks. “I honestly hadn’t heard about it. I hadn’t seen any of those reports,” said Kerry, who has spent the last several days immersed in shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East. He arrived here Monday morning, after an all-night flight from Israel, on the last stop of an eight-nation tour.

Reuters via Huffington Post, EU Confronts Washington Reports Of Spying On Allies, Ben Deighton and Annika Breidthardt, June 30, 2013. The European Union has demanded that the United States explain a report in a German magazine that Washington is spying on the group, using unusually strong language to confront its closest trading partner over its alleged surveillance activities. A spokeswoman for the European Commission said on Sunday the EU contacted U.S. authorities in Washington and Brussels about a report in Der Spiegel magazine that the U.S. secret service had tapped EU offices in Washington and Brussels and at the United Nations. Der Spiegel reported on its website on Saturday that the National Security Agency had bugged EU offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks in the latest revelation of alleged U.S. spying that has prompted outrage from EU politicians. The magazine followed up on Sunday with a report that the U.S. secret service taps half a billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany in a typical month and has classed its biggest European ally as a target similar to China. Revelations about the alleged U.S. spying program, which became public through documents taken by fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, have raised a furore in the United States and abroad over the balance between privacy rights and national security. The extent to which Washington's EU allies are being monitored has emerged as an issue of particular concern.

Washington Post, Five myths about the National Security Agency, James Bamford, June 21, 2013. James Bamford, left, is the author of three books on the NSA, including “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.” When the National Security Agency was created through a top-secret memorandum signed by President Harry Truman in 1952, the agency was so secret that only a few members of Congress knew about it. While the NSA gradually became known over the decades, its inner workings remain extremely hidden, even with the recent leaks about its gathering of Americans’ phone records and tapping into data from the nine largest Internet companies. Let’s pull back the shroud a bit to demystify this agency. 1. The NSA is allowed to spy on everyone, everywhere. After his release of documents to the Guardian and The Washington Post, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden said, “I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal e-mail.” But Snowden probably couldn’t eavesdrop on just about anyone, including the president, without breaking the law.

OpEdNews, Greenwald: Every Phone Call is Recorded and Stored-- A Globalized System Designed to Destroy Privacy, includes video, Rob Kall, June 29, 2013. Glenn Greenwald, in a skyped in talk to the Socialism 2013 Conference, told the audience, for the first time, according to him, about his experience going through the process of encountering, interacting with Ed Snowden, at first anonymously, then seeing his first evidence that Snowden was the real deal. "It made me dizzy," he described. Greenwald, who has been a regular at the conference for several years, told the audience that a bombshell he would soon be releasing was that "NSA can redirect to its storage one billion cell phone calls every thing day. They are storing every call and have the capability to listen to them... It is a globalized system designed to destroy all privacy--- with no accountabliity and no safeguards." He described the debate about his journalism is " being led by TV actors who play the role of journalists on TV. " Glenn discussed how the US military's banning of access to the Guardian, the paper he publishes with, at all military bases, was better than receiving a Pulitzer or any other journalism award. He cited David Halberstam, saying, "David Halberstam viewed the measure of good journalism by how much you anger the people in power."   

Occidental Observer, Israel and the NSA Scandal, Kevin MacDonald, June 22, 2013. It’s always seemed very suspicious that Amdocs, an Israeli firm, was responsible for billing for US phone companies, and that two Israeli firms, Narus and Verint, are involved in wiretapping AT&T and Verizon for the NSA. It’s also not surprising that, as noted by James Bamford in his April 2012 article for Wired, someone with close connections to Israel secretly gave software designed by NSA to Israel. See also, Taki's Magazine, Does Israel Have a Backdoor to US Intelligence? Steve Sailer, June 12, 2013. Informed observers have assumed for most of this century that American telephone metadata may well already be available to a foreign military-intelligence complex via hypothesized “backdoors” coded into complex commercial software. In December 2001, Fox News’ chief political correspondent Carl Cameron delivered a four-part series on Israel’s surveillance of American targets. For unexplained reasons, Fox disappeared Cameron’s series down the memory hole later that month, although copies of the episodes survive on the Internet. “It apparently hasn’t hurt Israel that so many Washington and Wall Street insiders assume that Israel knows their secrets.” Cameron drew attention to Israel’s strategic initiative to dominate communications software.

National Press Club, AP CEO calls for new Justice Department guidelines to protect journalists, Robert Webb, June 19, 2013. The Department of Justice's seizure of Associated Press phone records has made it tougher for reporters to do their jobs, AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said Wednesday, June 19 at a National Press Club luncheon. Pruitt, shown in a photo courtesy of Noel St. John, called for new Justice Department guidelines that include protections for journalists' email and text messages, and a federal shield law "with teeth." The Justice Department's seizure unsettled sources and chilled reporting, he said. "Some longtime trusted sources have become nervous and anxious about talking with us -- even on stories unrelated to national security," Pruitt said. "Others are reluctant to meet in person. In one instance, our journalists could not get a law enforcement official to confirm a detail that had been reported elsewhere." AP is not the only media to suffer, he said. "Journalists from other news organizations have personally told me that has intimidated both official and non-official sources speaking to them as well," Pruitt said.

Guardian, Revealed: the top secret rules that allow NSA to use US data without a warrant, Glenn Greenwald and James Ball, June 20, 2013. FISA court submissions show broad scope of procedures governing NSA's surveillance of Americans' communication. Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information "inadvertently" collected from domestic US communications without a warrant. The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and stamped 29 July 2009. They detail the procedures the NSA is required to follow to target "non-US persons" under its foreign intelligence powers and what the agency does to minimize data collected on US citizens and residents in the course of that surveillance. The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used.

Washington Post, Firm allegedly misled U.S. on security checks, Tom Hamburger and Zachary A. Goldfarb, June 27, 2013. Federal investigators have told lawmakers they have evidence that USIS, the contractor that screened Edward Snowden for his top-secret clearance, repeatedly misled the government about the thoroughness of its background checks, according to people familiar with the matter. The alleged transgressions are so serious that a federal watchdog indicated he plans to recommend that the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees most background checks, end ties with USIS unless it can show it is performing responsibly, the people said.
 
Washington Post, Justice Dept. targets retired general in leak investigation, Greg Miller and Sari Horwitz, June 27, 2013. A retired four-star Marine Corps general who served as the nation’s second-ranking military officer is a target of a Justice Department investigation into a leak of information about a covert U.S.-Israeli cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear program, a senior Obama administration official said. Retired Gen. James E. “Hoss” Cartwright served as deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and was part of President Obama’s inner circle on a range of critical national security issues before he retired in 2011. The administration official said that Cartwright is suspected of revealing information about a highly classified effort to use a computer virus later dubbed Stuxnet to sabotage equipment in Iranian nuclear enrichment plants.

Zero Hedge, NSA Whistleblower: NSA Illegally Spied On Top Generals, All Supreme Court Justices, White House Spokesman, George Washington (pen name), June 21, 2013. As we reported yesterday, NSA whistleblower Russel Tice – a key source in the 2005 New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping – told Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frogs Post (the website of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds) that the NSA spied on and targeted for blackmail:

•    "Members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial" 
•     "One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court"
•     "Two ... former FISA court judges"
•     "State Department officials"
•     "People in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people"
•     "Antiwar groups"
•     "U.S. companies that that do international business"
•     "U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business"
•     "NGOs that–like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work"
•     "The president of the United States now [i.e. Barack Obama, when he was running for Senate]"

MediaIte, ‘Out Of Control’: Fox Hosts Take On Whistleblower Claim That NSA Wiretapped Obama In 2004, Meenal Vamburkar, June 21, 2013. Video. On Friday, Fox & Friends tackled the recent report about Bush-era whistleblower Russell Tice — who came forward with information about warrantless wiretapping — and his claim that the NSA wiretapped President Obama back in 2004. The report demonstrates why all Americans should care about this issue, they asserted, criticizing an intelligence community that appears to be “out of control.” Tice apparently said the surveillance looked into many including high-ranking military members, judges, diplomats, and lawmakers. “Here’s the big one,” Tice said. “This was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois. You wouldn’t happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It’s a big white house in Washington, D.C. That’s who they went after, and that’s the president of the United States now.”

FireDogLake, 100 Groups Seek investigation into NSA Spying, Brian Sonenstein, June 19, 2013. A bipartisan coalition of over 100 civil liberties organizations and internet companies is calling for  a full-scale, Church Committee-style congressional investigation into NSA spying abuses.

Lawfare, Today’s Headlines and Commentary, Raffaela Wakeman, June 19, 2013. Yesterday’s House intelligence committee hearing with top intelligence agency and DOJ officials drew a big crowd and much news. The New York Times editorial today focuses on President Obama’s interview with Charlie Rose and yesterday’s House intelligence hearing.

FireDogLake, Rereading Michael Hastings’ Interview with Julian Assange, Kevin Gosztola, June 19, 2013. Someone who had a great passion for what he did and embodied the adversarial spirit that muckraking reporters should have in journalism died in a car accident at a young age. Rolling Stone contributor Michael Hastings, shown at right in a screen shot from a Democracy Now! interview, died in a car crash in Los Angeles at the age of 33. His death also happens to come almost exactly one year after WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange sought asylum from Ecuador and entered the country’s embassy in the United Kingdom. Hastings is one of the few reporters in the world to have conducted and published a major interview with Assange. He interviewed him back in December 2011 when Pfc. Bradley Manning first appeared in a military court at Fort Meade. As someone who has aggressively covered the Manning court martial, along with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, I found myself going back over the interview that Hastings did. I read it when it was released , but, a year and a half later, there are bits and pieces I am noticing that make it an enduring piece of work. Hastings, unlike many other journalists, took seriously the fact that the United States government had decided to target Assange. He listened to what Assange had to say about how the Justice Department was likely pursuing him in a widespread investigation. Assange answered, “The U.S. government is trying to redefine what have been long-accepted journalistic methods. If the Pentagon is to have its way, it will be the end of national-security journalism in the United States.”

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.

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.

Washington Post, NSA chief: 50 terror plots foiled by surveillance, Ellen Nakashima, June 18, 2013. Gen. Keith Alexander says one of the “potential terrorist events” was directed at the New York Stock Exchange.  
 
Washington Post, How an e-mail address disrupted plots in Britain and U.S., Peter Finn and Greg Miller,  June 18, 2013. The NSA was monitoring the Yahoo user in Pakistan when a peculiar message arrived from a man named Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan American living in Aurora, Colo. But some critics of NSA surveillance suggested that the collection of data under a program called PRISM was not essential to Zazi’s capture because the British first obtained the critical e-mail address. Still, the case study provides a rare glimpse of how the broad surveillance practices of the United States, often in concert with allies, are deployed.

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.

Government Overview

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.

Central Intelligence Agency, Editor's Note: The CIA maintains a library of recent publications available to the public online via the link: Studies in Intelligence.

An example is the following report: An Insider’s Perspective on Innovation During Fiscal Austerity: The Early Evolution of the Predator Drone, Frank Strickland, March 2013. Editor’s note: The author, as a senior officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, was Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey’s staff officer for the Predator project. Among his duties was the conduct of a detailed operational evaluation of the Predator’s initial deployment. Woolsey served as the DCI from 5 February 1993 to 10 January 1995. Summary of article: The history of one government project, the GNAT 750, and its rapid evolution into today’s Predator UAV demonstrates that fiscal austerity can be an ”innovator’s opportunity. "Innovations in national security capabilities need not decrease during times when security needs collide with austere budgets, and government and industry leaders must continue promoting innovation even as budget cuts drive reductions in some capabilities. The history of one government project, the GNAT 750 and its rapid evolution into today’s Predator UAV — America’s first operational long endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or “drone”—demonstrates that fiscal austerity can be an innovator’s opportunity. The opportunity, however, is only recognized and realized by teams of people with extraordinary combinations of leadership, commitments to missions, technical know-how, and bureau expertise."

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.”

National Security Agency (NSA) Director Keith Alexander is shown at 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.

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.

Washington Post, For NSA chief, passion to prevent attacks drives ‘collect it all’ approach, Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick, July 14, 2013.    Gen. Keith Alexander’s aggressive methods fuel debate over the divide between privacy and security.

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.

Expert Critics

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 left, 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, Bamford 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. In 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.

Observer, Revealed: secret European deals to hand over private data to America, Jamie Dowden, June 30, 2013. Germany 'among countries offering intelligence' according to new claims by former US defense analyst. At least six European Union countries in addition to Britain have been colluding with the US over the mass harvesting of personal communications data, according to a former contractor to America's National Security Agency, who said the public should not be "kept in the dark." Wayne Madsen, a former US navy lieutenant who first worked for the NSA in 1985, names Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy as having secret deals with the US. Madsen, shown at right in a file photo, said the countries had "formal second and third party status" under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested. Under international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US is first party while the UK, Canada, Australia and  New Zealand enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third party relationships. In an interview published last night on the PrivacySurgeon.org blog, Madsen, who has been attacked for holding controversial views on espionage issues, said he had decided to speak out after becoming concerned about the "half story" told by EU politicians regarding the extent of the NSA's activities in Europe. He said that under the agreements, which were drawn up after the second world war, the "NSA gets the lion's share" of the sigint "take." In return, the third parties to the NSA agreements received "highly sanitised intelligence."

Strategic Culture Foundation, NSA is All about Preserving the Power of the Aristocracy in a Dystopian World, Wayne Madsen, June 28, 2013. The National Security Agency (NSA) has launched yet another high-powered charm offensive. The world’s largest communications and cyber-warfare intelligence agency insists that it unprecedented surveillance infrastructure exists merely to protect U.S. national security from terrorists and foreign intelligence agents. In fact, the NSA conducts massive political and economic intelligence gathering in order to preserve the vested interests of America’s aristocracy.

Atlantic, 2 Senators Say the NSA Is Still Feeding Us False Information, Conor Friedersdorf, June 25, 2013. How can a democratic republic function when the bureaucrats are constantly misleading the people? Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall say that at least one of the NSA's statements is inaccurate, and another one is misleading. "We were disappointed to see that this fact sheet contains an inaccurate statement about how the section 702 authority has been interpreted by the US government," they write. "In our judgment this inaccuracy is significant, as it portrays protections for Americans' privacy as being significantly stronger than they actually are." Notice that these two senators feel unable to tell us what the false information is or to correct the record -- just further evidence that classified programs subvert not only public debate, but also the ability of Congress to openly discuss policy and communicate with constituents. Wyden and Udall go on to address the NSA talking point that they characterize as "merely" misleading.

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, Russ Tice, Bush-Era Whistleblower, Claims NSA Ordered Wiretap Of Barack Obama In 2004, Nick Wing, June 20, 2013. Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst who in 2005 blew the whistle on what he alleged was massive unconstitutional domestic spying across multiple agencies, claimed Wednesday that the NSA had ordered wiretaps on phones connected to then-Senate candidate Barack Obama in 2004. Speaking on "The Boiling Frogs Show," Tice claimed the intelligence community had ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats. "Here's the big one ... this was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois," he said. "You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It's a big white house in Washington, D.C. That's who they went after, and that's the president of the United States now." Host Sibel Edmonds and Tice both raised concerns that such alleged monitoring of subjects, unbeknownst to them, could provide the intelligence agencies with huge power to blackmail their targets. "I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on," Tice said. After going public with his allegations in 2005, Tice later admitted that he had been a key source in a bombshell New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush administration's use of warrantless wiretapping of international communications in the U.S. The article forced Bush to admit that the practice was indeed used on a small number of Americans, but Tice maintained that the NSA practice was likely being used the gather records for millions of Americans. The NSA denied Tice's allegations.

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.

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 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.

New York Review of Books, Who’s in Big Brother’s Database? James Bamford, Nov. 5, 2009. Review of The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency. Based on the NSA’s history of often being on the wrong end of a surprise and a tendency to mistakenly get the country into, rather than out of, wars, it seems to have a rather disastrous cost-benefit ratio. Were it a corporation, it would likely have gone belly-up years ago. The September 11 attacks are a case in point. For more than a year and a half the NSA was eavesdropping on two of the lead hijackers, knowing they had been sent by bin Laden, while they were in the US preparing for the attacks. The terrorists even chose as their command center a motel in Laurel, Maryland, almost within eyesight of the director’s office. Yet the agency never once sought an easy-to-obtain FISA warrant to pinpoint their locations, or even informed the CIA or FBI of their presence. But pulling the plug, or even allowing the lights to dim, seems unlikely given President Obama’s hawkish policies in Afghanistan. However, if the war there turns out to be the train wreck many predict, then Obama may decide to take a much closer look at the spy world’s most lavish spender.

Right and Left Political Commentaries

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." Paul said, "I'm going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level." He continued 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."

Nation, How the Powerful Derail Accountability: The Case of Intelligence Reform (Part I), Rick Perlstein, July 1, 2013. Two weeks ago I reflected on how power uses distraction campaigns to do its dirtiest work—for instance, discrediting whistleblowers, and dissolving investigations that threaten to upend the cozy arrangements of the powerful. I cited the way the (authentic) story of George W. Bush going absent without leave from the Texas Air National Guard was derailed by raising questions about one (inauthentic) document; and how, in 1975, the killing of a CIA station chief in Greece was deployed to dampen momentum for a thorough reform of America's intelligence agencies. Today and tomorrow, we'll learn more about the latter example. I fear it will become more and more relevant as the weeks to on.  Some background. Christmastime, 1974, in a massive front page New York Times article, Seymour Hersh revealed that the CIA had collected intelligence files on at least 10,000 American citizens in direct violation of its 1947 charter stipulating that it was only allowed to work overseas. It also documented "dozens of other illegal activities by members of the C.I.A in the United States, beginning in the nineteen-fifties, including break-ins, wiretapping, and the surreptitious inspection of mail." Emerging but eighteen weeks after Richard Nixon's resignation, when the momentum for deep reckoning with America's sins had never been stronger, President Ford was forced to react. He impaneled a blue-ribbon commission to investigate the allegations—a paper-tiger panel made up of the very establishmentarians whose complicity in CIA sins should have been a subject of investigation itself. "Having the CIA investigated by such a group," the New York Times editorialized "is like having the Mafia audited by its own accountants." Not having any of it, both chambers of Congress impaneled their own select committees to investigate the CIA, FBI, and—later—the NSA.

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.”

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,