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U‑2 Pilot Fran­cis Gary Pow­ers’ Book

Lis­ten: MP3

Side 1  Side 2

Intro­duc­tion: This pro­gram begins analy­sis of the goals of the intel­li­gence oper­a­tion under­tak­en by Edward Snow­den. Among the evi­dent pri­ma­ry goals is the desta­bi­liza­tion of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. Inten­tion­al­ly dam­ag­ing Oba­ma’s attempts at improv­ing rela­tions with Rus­sia, Chi­na and Germany/EU, the “op” bears strong sim­i­lar­i­ty to the U‑2 inci­dent in May of 1960. That oper­a­tion appears to have been orches­trat­ed by domes­tic intel­li­gence ele­ments, where­as this appears to have been a for­eign “op,” prob­a­bly BND/Underground Reich.

Begin­ning with review of mate­r­i­al cov­ered years ago on For The Record, the pro­gram notes that the infor­ma­tion about NSA and GCHQ hoover­ing up elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions is not new. (Mr. Emory has been dis­cussing this for years, ref­er­enc­ing the analy­sis from open sources.) A New York Times arti­cle from 9/6/2001 high­lights a Euro­pean Par­lia­ment report that was com­piled over the course of a year. The report notes, among oth­er things, that sev­er­al Euro­pean coun­tries were doing sim­i­lar things.

In addi­tion to the fact that the aspects of Snow­den’s “dis­clo­sures” that have received most cov­er­age have been on the pub­lic record for years, we note a very impor­tant aspect of Snow­den’s “op”: he obtained and leaked scores of thou­sands of files, includ­ing infor­ma­tion about the GCHQ and mil­i­tary intel­li­gence con­cern­ing oth­er nations, includ­ing weapons sys­tems. This has noth­ing to do with pro­tect­ing civ­il lib­er­ties and every­thing in the world to do with hos­tile counter-intel­li­gence. It is, in essence, an act of war.

Next, the pro­gram com­pares Snow­den’s “op” to the U‑2 inci­dent. We review the descrip­tion for FTR #752. The U‑2 inci­dent entailed the delib­er­ate sab­o­tage of a U‑2 spy plane, suc­cess­ful­ly aimed at destroy­ing a sum­mit con­fer­ence between then Pres­i­dent Dwight D. Eisen­how­er and Sovi­et pre­mier Niki­ta Khr­uschev. Mr. Emory read the pro­gram descrip­tion for FTR #752 into the record. Where­as the U‑2 inci­dent appears to have been engi­neered by domes­tic intel­li­gence ele­ments, Snow­den’s actions appear to have been direct­ed by BND, the Ger­man for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice. (That hypoth­e­sis will be devel­oped in sub­se­quent pro­grams.)

Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the tim­ing of Snow­den’s odyssey: just before Oba­ma was to meet with Chi­nese pres­i­dent Xi, Snow­den heads for Hong Kong [Chi­na] dis­clos­ing infor­ma­tion about NSA hack­ing of Chi­nese com­put­ers. This action makes no sense in terms of safe­guard­ing civ­il lib­er­ties and a great deal of sense as a suc­cess­ful attempt at frus­trat­ing Oba­ma’s for­eign pol­i­cy. Chi­na is not a bas­tion of civ­il lib­er­ties and inter­net free­dom. (It should be not­ed that Chi­na is fac­ing a pro­gram of desta­bi­liza­tion by Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-con­nect­ed ele­ments, as well as Tibetan forces linked to the Dalai Lama and, through him, to the Under­ground Reich.)

After Snow­den pur­pose­ful­ly dam­aged U.S./Chinese rela­tions, Snow­den’s asso­ciate Glenn Green­wald pub­lished infor­ma­tion about NSA spy­ing on Ger­many, just before Oba­ma’s trip to Europe and the G20 con­fer­ence, there­by putting the wham­my on Oba­ma’s diplo­ma­cy vis a vis Ger­many and the EU. This, too, makes no sense in the con­text of pro­tect­ing civ­il lib­er­ties. It makes a great deal of sense in terms of sub­vert­ing Oba­ma and Amer­i­ca’s for­eign pol­i­cy.

“Hit­ting the tri­fec­ta,” Snow­den decamps from one bas­tion of inter­net freedom–China–to anoth­er: Rus­sia. This just after the G20 con­fer­ence and short­ly before a sched­uled sum­mit con­fer­ence with Russ­ian pres­i­dent Putin. The sum­mit con­fer­ence was can­celed.

In addi­tion to dam­ag­ing U.S. and Oba­ma diplo­ma­cy vis a vis Chi­na, Europe and Rus­sia, Snow­den’s “op” severe­ly strained rela­tions between Oba­ma and the NSA/intelligence com­mu­ni­ty itself.

Next, the pro­gram notes that “L’Af­faire Snow­den” has also dam­aged Oba­ma’s polit­i­cal pop­u­lar­i­ty, alien­at­ing some of his most loy­al sup­port­ers in Amer­i­ca’s largest state: Cal­i­for­nia.

Young peo­ple seem to have been par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed by Snow­den’s actions. Snow­den being regard­ed as a hero is tru­ly grotesque, though under­stand­able, giv­en the insuf­fi­cient nature of the media cov­er­age.

In that con­text, Cit­i­zen Green­wald has been advo­cat­ing the estab­lish­ment of a third par­ty can­di­date. If this hap­pens and the can­di­date devel­ops a sig­nif­i­cant fol­low­ing, it might well pro­pel the GOP back into pow­er, just as Ralph Nader’s can­di­da­cy did in 2000.

The pro­gram con­cludes with a pas­sage from The Art of War by the ancient Chi­nese mil­i­tary philoso­pher Sun Tzu. Delin­eat­ing a strate­gic pro­gram designed to frag­ment an ene­my, the pas­sage is strik­ing­ly rel­e­vant to Snow­den’s “op.” (It is not irrel­e­vant that this pas­sage was quot­ed in the auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Gen­er­al Rein­hard Gehlen, the Nazi spy chief who found­ed the BND. The book has an intro­duc­tion by David Irv­ing, the not­ed Holo­caust denier.)

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Details about the sab­o­tage of the U‑2 flight; evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries link­ing many of the major ter­ror­ist inci­dents  that have affect­ed the U.S. dur­ing the last quar­ter of a cen­tu­ry to Ger­many; review of the fas­cist and Nazi phi­los­o­phy and asso­ciates of Snow­den, Green­wald and the Wik­iLeaks milieu; details con­cern­ing the mas­sive cache of intel­li­gence that Snow­den had obtained; the fas­cist pol­i­tics of Wik­iLeaks’ oper­a­tive in Russia–Joran Jer­mas.

1. Begin­ning with review of mate­r­i­al cov­ered years ago on For The Record, the pro­gram notes that the infor­ma­tion about NSA and GCHQ hoover­ing up elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions is not new. (Mr. Emory has been dis­cussing this for years, ref­er­enc­ing the analy­sis from open sources.) A New York Times arti­cle from 9/6/2001 high­lights a Euro­pean Par­lia­ment report that was com­piled over the course of a year. The report notes, among oth­er things, that sev­er­al Euro­pean coun­tries were doing sim­i­lar things.

“World Brief­ing | Europe: Report On U.S. Spy Sys­tem” by Suzanne Daley; The New York Times; 9/6/2001.

[Notice when this was published–9/6/2001.–D.E.] . . . The Unit­ed States-led spy­ing sys­tem known as Ech­e­lon can mon­i­tor vir­tu­al­ly every com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the world — by e‑mail, phone or fax — that bounces off a satel­lite, the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment was told. But in report­ing on a year­long study of the sys­tem that was prompt­ed by con­cern that Amer­i­can com­pa­nies were using data from the sys­tem to gain a com­pet­i­tive edge, Ger­hard Schmid, a Ger­man mem­ber of the Par­lia­ment, said that many Euro­pean coun­tries had sim­i­lar abil­i­ties . . .

2. In addi­tion to the fact that the aspects of Snow­den’s “dis­clo­sures” that have received most cov­er­age have been on the pub­lic record for years, we note a very impor­tant aspect of Snow­den’s “op”: he obtained and leaked scores of thou­sands of files, includ­ing infor­ma­tion about the GCHQ and mil­i­tary intel­li­gence con­cern­ing oth­er nations, includ­ing weapons sys­tems. This has noth­ing to do with pro­tect­ing civ­il lib­er­ties and every­thing in the world to do with hos­tile counter-intel­li­gence. It is, in essence, an act of war.

“Ex-NSA Direc­tor Has A Rad­i­cal Idea for Han­dling the Snow­den Leaks” by Michael Kel­ley; Busi­ness Insid­er; 11/2/2013.

. . . . But the idea is a rad­i­cal one giv­en that Snow­den’s haul report­ed­ly includes the “blue­prints of the NSA,” 58,000 doc­u­ments from the UK’s sig­nals intel­li­gence agency (GCHQ), and 30,000 U.S. doc­u­ments that do “not deal with NSA sur­veil­lance but pri­mar­i­ly with stan­dard intel­li­gence about oth­er coun­tries’ mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties, includ­ing weapons sys­tems.”

Even The New York Times with­held details that offi­cials said could com­pro­mise intel­li­gence oper­a­tions . . . .

4a. Next, the pro­gram com­pares Snow­den’s “op” to the U‑2 inci­dent. We review the descrip­tion for FTR #752. The U‑2 inci­dent entailed the delib­er­ate sab­o­tage of a U‑2 spy plane, suc­cess­ful­ly aimed at destroy­ing a sum­mit con­fer­ence between then Pres­i­dent Dwight D. Eisen­how­er and Sovi­et pre­mier Niki­ta Khr­uschev. Mr. Emory read the pro­gram descrip­tion for FTR #752 into the record. The U‑2 inci­dent, how­ev­er, appears to have been engi­neered by domes­tic intel­li­gence ele­ments, where­as Snow­den’s actions appear to have been direct­ed by BND, the Ger­man for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice. (That hypoth­e­sis will be devel­oped in sub­se­quent pro­grams.)

Intro­duc­tion (for FTR #752): Excerpt­ed from The Guns of Novem­ber, Part I, this broad­cast reviews the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the U‑2 inci­dent in May of 1960. On the cusp of a sum­mit con­fer­ence between then Pres­i­dent Dwight D. Eisen­how­er and then Sovi­et Pre­mier Niki­ta Khr­uschev, a U‑2 spy plane pilot­ed by Fran­cis Gary Pow­ers came down in the heart of the for­mer Sovi­et Union. The inci­dent caused the can­cel­la­tion of the sum­mit con­fer­ence, which was to be a pre­lude to detente between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

This pro­gram is a pre­lude to a lengthy dis­cus­sion of “The Adven­tures of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook”–Edward Snow­den. Just before Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s meet­ing with Mr. Xi, pres­i­dent of Chi­na, Snow­den decamps to Hong Kong (in Chi­na) and leaks infor­ma­tion about the hack­ing of Chi­nese com­put­ers. This caused enor­mous embar­rass­ment to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, and neu­tral­ized any attempt he might have been able to make to reduce Chi­nese hack­ing of Amer­i­can com­put­ers, as well as oth­er points of dis­pute between the two nations.

Next, Snow­den’s leak­er of choice–“Cit­i­zen Green­wald”–pub­lished arti­cles in The Guardian dis­clos­ing exten­sive NSA spy­ing on Ger­many, which the NSA views as “a third class part­ner.” These arti­cles were pub­lished just before Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was to meet with Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel of Ger­many. Again, it caused enor­mous dam­age to Oba­ma and harmed U.S. rela­tion­ships with Ger­many and oth­er Euro­pean nations. (Note that Green­wald, as an attor­ney, was a fel­low trav­el­er of some of the most heinous and mur­der­ous neo-Nazi and white suprema­cist groups).

Hit­ting the tri­fec­ta, Eddie the Friend­ly Spook [Snow­den] then decamps to Moscow in Rus­sia (like Chi­na, Rus­sia is not renowned as a bas­tion of free speech or inter­net free­dom.) This occurred just before Oba­ma’s meet­ing of the G20 in Moscow and in the run-up to a sched­uled sum­mit con­fer­ence with Putin. That sum­mit con­fer­ence was can­celed.

Snow­den’s trip to Moscow, like his jour­ney to Hong Kong/China could only have been intend­ed to harm Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s admin­is­tra­tion and the Unit­ed States.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er’s order to sus­pend all U‑2 over­flights of the Sovi­et Union (Pow­ers’ flight was dis­patched against Pres­i­den­tial orders); the fact that Fran­cis Gary Pow­ers had poi­son and a nee­dle with which to take his own life, in order to pre­vent cap­ture (which he did not do); the fact that Pow­ers had exten­sive per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion pin­point­ing him as a U.S. intel­li­gence agent, oper­at­ing under civil­ian cov­er (in direct con­tra­ven­tion of stan­dard “san­i­ti­za­tion” pro­ce­dures); the fact that the U‑2 flew at an alti­tude which no Sovi­et or Amer­i­can inter­cep­tor air­craft or sur­face-to-air mis­sile could reach; the U‑2’s use of a spe­cial hydro­gen tech­nol­o­gy to per­mit its engine to oper­ate at that alti­tude; the prob­a­bil­i­ty that hydro­gen star­va­tion forced down Pow­ers’ plane; the rel­a­tive­ly undam­aged state of the U‑2 air­craft, call­ing into ques­tion the asser­tion that a sur­face-to-air mis­sile could have been respon­si­ble for the down­ing of Pow­ers’ plane; Pow­ers’ asser­tion that Lee Har­vey Oswald was respon­si­ble for the down­ing of his U‑2 plane (this pre­sum­ably cen­tered on Oswald’s access to radar fre­quen­cies, which had noth­ing to do with the down­ing of the plane!)

4b. Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the tim­ing of Snow­den’s odyssey: just before Oba­ma was to meet with Chi­nese pres­i­dent Xi, Snow­den heads for Hong Kong [Chi­na] dis­clos­ing infor­ma­tion about NSA hack­ing of Chi­nese com­put­ers. This action makes no sense in terms of safe­guard­ing civ­il lib­er­ties and a great deal of sense as a suc­cess­ful attempt at frus­trat­ing Oba­ma’s for­eign pol­i­cy. Chi­na is not a bas­tion of civ­il lib­er­ties and inter­net free­dom. (It should be not­ed that Chi­na is fac­ing a pro­gram of desta­bi­liza­tion by Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-con­nect­ed ele­ments, as well as Tibetan forces linked to the Dalai Lama and, through him, to the Under­ground Reich.)

“Snow­den Is Using ‘Spe­cif­ic’ Evi­dence of U.S. Hack­ing Chi­na to Stay out of Jail” by Alexan­der Abad-San­tos; The Atlantic Wire; 6/14/2013.

Edward Snow­den, the NSA leak­er who has turned the Unit­ed States intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus upside-down, said that he won’t be extra­dit­ed back home with­out a fight. That fight won’t take him to Britain in the mean­time, but it does appar­ent­ly involve let­ting the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment know that he has infor­ma­tion on the Unit­ed States “using tech­ni­cal exploits to gain unau­tho­rised access to civil­ian machines” in Chi­na. We knew from Snow­den’s inter­view this week with The South Chi­na Morn­ing Post that he had new infor­ma­tion about the U.S. hack­ing Chi­na, but Hong Kong’s Eng­lish-lan­guage news­pa­per reports today that he’s got tar­gets, too: . . .

. . . Beyond Chi­na’s hack­ing cul­ture, the U.S. and Chi­nese gov­ern­ments have accused each oth­er of back-and-forth cyberes­pi­onage on gov­ern­ment sites, infra­struc­ture, and beyond — and Pres­i­dents Oba­ma and Xi made lit­tle progress on dig­i­tal war when they met a week ago. This could be a seri­ous­ly provoca­tive esca­la­tion if Snow­den has a back­up plan of more leaks as he nego­ti­ates his next move, which The Guardian’s Glenn Green­wald told The Atlantic Wire he “might” indeed have. . . .

5. After Snow­den pur­pose­ful­ly dam­aged U.S./Chinese rela­tions, Snow­den’s asso­ciate Glenn Green­wald pub­lished infor­ma­tion about NSA spy­ing on Ger­many, just before Oba­ma’s trip to Europe and the G20 con­fer­ence, there­by putting the wham­my on Oba­ma’s diplo­ma­cy vis a vis Ger­many and the EU. Mr. Emory read one of his posts on this sub­ject into the record:

In the 1930’s, there was a famous Amer­i­can crim­i­nal named Baby Face Nel­son. In the sec­ond decade of this cen­tury, we are wit­ness­ing the activ­i­ties of anoth­er Amer­i­can crim­i­nal of youth­ful visage–Edward J. Snow­den. A career spook, Snow­den has, of course, been the source for dis­clo­sures about NSA spy­ing on indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions.

Pre­vi­ously, we not­ed that Ron Paul backer Snow­den decamped to Hong Kong and leaked infor­ma­tion about U.S. hack­ing of Chi­nese com­put­ers just as Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was meet­ing with the Chi­nese prime min­is­ter Xi, embar­rass­ing the Pres­i­dent at a sen­si­tive time.

(Users of this web­site are emphat­i­cally encour­aged to exam­ine in detail the pre­vi­ous, above-linked posts on this sub­ject.)

Now, Snow­den has fol­lowed up his Chi­nese “op” by leak­ing infor­ma­tion about NSA spy­ing on EU mem­bers. The most “spied-upon” EU mem­ber state is–unsurprisingly–Germany. The lat­est dis­clo­sure comes as Oba­ma was prepar­ing to meet with Angela Merkel of Ger­many.

The tim­ing of this, on top of the “remark­able coin­ci­dence” of Snow­den show­ing up in Hong Kong and leak­ing embar­rass­ing infor­ma­tion as Oba­ma is meet­ing with Xi, is more than even the most cred­u­lous should believe.

As not­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, this inci­dent strikes us as being remark­ably sim­i­lar to the down­ing of a U‑2 spy plane pri­or to the Eisenhower/Kruschev sum­mit. In The Guns of Novem­ber, Part I  and FTR #752, we exam­ined infor­ma­tion from Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty indi­cat­ing that the U‑2 had been delib­er­ately sab­o­taged by CIA hard­lin­ers to frus­trate attempts at improv­ing U.S./Soviet rela­tions. The leak­ing of the infor­ma­tion to down the U‑2 was blamed on none oth­er than Lee Har­vey Oswald!

“Snowden’s Ride”, to coin a term, has all the ear­marks of an intel­li­gence oper­a­tion, like the U‑2 gam­bit. Cen­tral to this is Thiel’s Palan­tir firm, almost cer­tainly the devel­oper of the PRISM func­tion. As dis­cussed in our last post, the notion that there would be two Sil­i­con Val­ley soft­ware func­tions with iden­ti­cal names used by NSA/intelligence com­mu­nity is not cred­i­ble. There would have been lit­i­ga­tion.

Also as not­ed in our last post, we won­der what role may have been played in this by Michael J. Mor­rell, who brief Dubya on intel­li­gence mat­ters and who was at his side on 9/11. Note that Snow­den also worked for CIA, as well as NSA. That “the Com­pany” may be scor­ing points against a rival agency is also to be con­sid­ered.

It should come as no sur­prise that the NSA would tar­get Ger­many as a “hot spot” for elec­tronic sur­veil­lance. An overview of the most impor­tant ter­ror­ist inci­dents affect­ing the Unit­ed States over the last quar­ter of a cen­tury reveals impor­tant evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries lead­ing to Ger­many:

• The bomb­ing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Locker­bie, Scot­land, in 1988 was exe­cuted in Ger­many. The bomb was placed aboard the plane in Ger­many and the bombers were heav­ily infil­trated by Ger­man intel­li­gence. One or more of the cell of bombers was a Ger­man intel­li­gence oper­a­tive.
• The financ­ing for the first World Trade Cen­ter bomb­ing in 1993 came from oper­a­tives in Ger­many.
• The actu­al mas­ter­mind of the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, accord­ing to ATF infor­mant Car­ol Howe, was Andreas Strass­meir. Strass­meir was a “for­mer” Bun­deswehr offi­cer and the son of Chan­cel­lor Hel­mut Kohl’s chief of staff. Andreas’ grand­fa­ther was one of the char­ter mem­bers of the NSDAP under Hitler. The resem­blance between Strass­meir and “John Doe #2″ is strik­ing.
• Not only did the 9/11 hijack con­spir­a­tors coa­lesce in Ham­burg, but there is strong evi­dence that Ger­man intel­li­gencewas involved with the attack. Many of hijack­er Mohamed Atta’s asso­ciates in South Flori­da were Ger­mans. Atta was moved around under the cov­er of the Carl Duis­berg Soci­ety (Gesellschaft). (See text excerpts below.) In Flori­da, he was asso­ci­at­ing with the sons and daugh­ters of promi­nent Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists. (See text excerpts below.) Of inter­est, also, is the fact that CIA pilots appar­ently made a “run” to the Bor­mann ranch. (See text excerpts below.) This sounds like a reg­u­lar route. In our con­ver­sa­tions with Daniel Hop­sicker, we have not­ed that the South Flori­da avi­a­tion milieu had been a focal point of covert oper­a­tions for decades, dat­ing back to the Sec­ond World War. The Bor­mann ranch was in the three-bor­ders area high­lighted in FTR #457. Did the Ger­man asso­ciates of Mohamed Atta come up the oth­er end of that pipeline?
• The “vac­uum clean­er” activ­i­ties of NSA/GCHQ have been known for a long time–we have done pro­grams about it dat­ing back many years. The for­mal, pub­lic attack on the ECHELON net­work began in 1998. That attack came from Ger­many and Under­ground Reich-asso­ci­at­ed ele­ments such as the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion.
• In August of 1998, sev­eral things hap­pened almost simultaneously–as the German/EU/Free Con­gress Foundation/Underground Reich attack on ECHELON/Menwith Hill was gain­ing momen­tum, Osama bin Laden stopped using his cell phone and began using couri­ers for impor­tant com­mu­ni­ca­tion. At this time, Ger­man intel­li­gence had the Ham­burg cell (of 9/11 hijack­ers) under elec­tronic sur­veil­lance. Ger­man intel­li­gence did NOT alert the Unit­ed States.

“NSA Map Shows Ger­many Most Spied-on of EU Mem­bers”; UPI.com; 6/10/2013.

While the Unit­ed States spies on all Euro­pean Union nations, it spies on Ger­many the most, say papers sup­plied by a for­mer employ­ee of the top U.S. spy agency.

The rank­ings of what EU nations are snooped on, and how much, can be seen in a col­or-cod­ed map of covert Nation­al Secu­rity Agency sur­veil­lance activ­i­ties, EUObserver.com report­ed Mon­day.

Nations sub­ject to the least spy­ing activ­i­ties are shad­ed green; those with the most red.

All EU mem­bers are var­i­ous shades of green on the map. Ger­many is orange.

The map, called Bound­less Infor­mant, is among doc­u­ments released by Edward Snow­den, a for­mer CIA employ­ee and NSA con­trac­tor who says he is the per­son who this month leaked infor­ma­tion about the U.S. meta­data col­lec­tion pro­gram known as PRISM. . . .

6a. “Hit­ting the tri­fec­ta,” Snow­den decamps from one bas­tion of inter­net freedom–China–to anoth­er: Rus­sia. This just after the G20 con­fer­ence and short­ly before a sched­uled sum­mit con­fer­ence with Russ­ian pres­i­dent Putin. The sum­mit con­fer­ence was can­celed. Mr. Emory again read into the record one of his pre­vi­ous posts on L’Af­faire Snow­den:

In the third of our posts on “L’Af­faire Snow­den,” we reit­er­at­ed and fur­ther devel­oped the com­par­i­son between Snow­den’s activ­i­ties and the down­ing of Fran­cis Gary Pow­ers’ U‑2 spy plane on the eve of an impor­tant sum­mit con­fer­ence between then Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er and Sovi­et Pre­mier Niki­ta Khr­uschev.

In the Guns of Novem­ber, Part I (record­ed on 11/1/1983), we ana­lyzed evi­dence that the spy plane was delib­er­ate­ly sab­o­taged in order to frus­trate the Eisenhower/Khruschev efforts at detente. (Irate over the inci­dent, Khr­uschev can­celled the sum­mit con­fer­ence. The down­ing of the U‑2 inci­dent was blamed on infor­ma­tion sup­pos­ed­ly leaked to the U.S.S.R. by Lee Har­vey Oswald.)

As the actions of Baby Face Snow­den take shape, our analy­sis of this as “U‑2, II” becomes more cred­i­ble.

After decamp­ing to Hong Kong and leak­ing infor­ma­tion about anti-Chi­nese U.S. hack­ing pro­grams on the eve of Oba­ma’s sum­mit with Chi­nese pre­mier Xi, Snow­den leaks infor­ma­tion on NSA spy­ing on Ger­many on the eve of Oba­ma’s trip to Ger­many to meet with Merkel.

Imme­di­ate­ly AFTER Oba­ma’s meet­ing with Vladimir Putin, Snow­den decamps to Moscow, there­by plac­ing fur­ther strain on Oba­ma’s diplo­mat­ic efforts and for­eign pol­i­cy. Oba­ma’s goal of “reboot­ing” rela­tions with Moscow will suf­fer as a result.

Even­tu­al­ly, Snow­den’s efforts led to the can­cel­ing of Oba­ma’s planned sum­mit con­fer­ence with Vladimir Putin (update). (See text excerpts below.)

As Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry not­ed, we can safe­ly con­clude that Snow­den’s trips to Chi­na and Rus­sia were not under­tak­en because either coun­try is a citadel of polit­i­cal free­dom and expres­sion, but rather to dam­age Oba­ma’s pres­i­den­cy. (See text excerpts below.)

The Snow­den op also appears to be aimed at alien­at­ing ide­al­is­tic and less sophis­ti­cat­ed vot­ers from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

We note, in this con­text, who has han­dled much of Wik­iLeaks’ Russ­ian oper­a­tions–Joran Jer­mas (“Israel Shamir”)–Assange’s Holo­caust-deny­ing pal and the per­son who con­nect­ed Wik­iLeaks with Nazi finan­cial angel Lund­strom’s milieu. (See text excerpt below.)

In pass­ing, we also note that Ecuador and the Cor­rea gov­ern­ment, which has shel­tered Assange and is appar­ent­ly mov­ing to shel­ter Snow­den as well, have strong links to Ger­many and the EU. In a recent vis­it, Merkel was nego­ti­at­ing with Cor­rea for clos­er ties between Ger­many, Ecuador and the EU. (See text excerpt below. In this regard, we must remem­ber that the Ger­man econ­o­my is gov­erned by the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.)

He has hit the Tri­fec­ta and that is almost cer­tain­ly by design. This is a spook oper­a­tion, clear­ly. This should come as no sur­prise giv­en Snow­den’s background–Alphabet Soup from day one.

We still have ques­tions about this imbroglio, includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty Eddie the Friend­ly Spook may be doing some CIA sab­o­tag­ing of NSA, as well as the only-too-obvi­ous evi­dence that he is doing his utmost to under­mine Oba­ma’s pres­i­den­cy.

In this con­text, we won­der about Michael J. Mor­rel­l’s res­ig­na­tion right in the mid­dle of this affair.

Please exam­ine at length and detail our pre­vi­ous posts on this “op.”

As with the far-right, Nazi-linked Wik­iLeaks oper­a­tion, fol­low the mon­ey. Snow­den con­tributed mon­ey to Nazi/White Suprema­cist Ron Paul’s cam­paign, which was financed by Peter Thiel, the uber-reac­tionary whose Palan­tir firm can be safe­ly deduced as hav­ing devel­oped the PRISM soft­ware at the cen­ter of this con­tro­ver­sy. A good treat­ment of Thiel’s back­ground is to be found in FTR #718. Thiel is so far to the right that he has stat­ed that he no longer believes in democ­ra­cy, in part because we should not have allowed women to vote.

NOTE: Palan­tir offi­cial­ly claims that “their PRISM” is NOT the same PRISM in the focal point of the Snowden/NSA imbroglio. We feel this claim is laugh­able, frankly. The notion that the intel­li­gence ser­vices are using TWO counter-ter­ror soft­ware pro­grams with iden­ti­cal names is not cred­i­ble. Had a com­pa­ny devel­oped a counter-ter­ror soft­ware pro­gram for use by the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and called it “PRISM,” there would have been lit­i­ga­tion. The major tech com­pa­nies are NOTHING if not liti­gious, and Thiel and com­pa­ny have PLENTY of mon­ey!

(Although many of the naifs seduced by the Paul cam­paign aren’t fas­cists, we are oblig­ed to hold Eddie the Friend­ly Spook to a high­er crit­i­cal stan­dard. If Baby Face Snow­den is so omni­scient, how come he can’t fig­ure out his pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice is a Nazi. THAT is hard­ly a state secret.)

We’ve also not­ed that Glenn Green­wald, Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s leak­er of choice, also net­worked with the Koch Broth­ers’ Cato Insti­tute, with which Thiel also works. Saint Green­wald, by the way, has a back­ground work­ing as a lawyer work­ing for high-priced cor­po­rate clients.

When one exam­ines the Wik­iLeaks net­work, one finds the same forces at work. The Cyber-Wan­der­vo­gel, as we have termed Wik­iLeaks’ foot sol­diers are, for the most part, “anarcho/Utopian” in their polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion.

They are absolute­ly clue­less, how­ev­er, when it comes to dis­cernible polit­i­cal real­i­ty. The “Pirate Bay/Pirate Par­ty” crowd has­n’t even fig­ured out their “own thing,” so to speak. The Pirate Bay oper­a­tion, on whose servers Wik­iLeaks’ activ­i­ties were based, is financed by Nazi mon­ey man Carl Lund­strom.  Wik­iLeaks’ con­nec­tion with Lund­strom’s cadre is no acci­dent either.

Assange’s con­nec­tion to Lund­strom was effect­ed by Joran Jer­mas (“Israel Shamir”), the Wik­iLeaks’ founder’s long-stand­ing Holo­caust-deny­ing ally. Both Pirate Bay/WikiLeaks Nazi finan­cial angel Lund­strom and Ron Paul have net­worked with David Duke in the past.

As some­thing of an amus­ing aside, we find it more than a lit­tle enter­tain­ing that the “Free­tards” are alarmed that NSA/GCHQ is vac­u­um clean­ing communications–something that has been on the pub­lic record for many years and an activ­i­ty that is con­duct­ed by oth­er coun­tries, includ­ing Ger­many.

NSA, et al, is indeed mon­i­tor­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions on a mas­sive scale. They are not like­ly to take action against the aver­age cit­i­zen, how­ev­er.

Wik­iLeaks, on the oth­er hand, part­nered with the Russ­ian “phish­ing mafia”! They are the folks who will use the Inter­net to hack your e‑mails, steal your iden­ti­ty, emp­ty your bank account and max-out all your cred­it cards. I guess the sup­port­ers of Wik­iLeaks and Eddie the Friend­ly Spook are OK with that!

“Oba­ma Can­cels Putin Sum­mit amid Snow­den Ten­sions” by Matthew Lee and Deb Riech­mann [AP]; Yahoo News; 8/7/2013.

Already fal­ter­ing, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s five-year effort to reboot U.S.-Russian rela­tions final­ly crashed Wednes­day, as the White House abrupt­ly can­celed his planned face-to-face sum­mit with Rus­si­a’s Vladimir Putin.

The effort to upgrade the rela­tion­ship has fall­en vic­tim to the rapid­ly shrink­ing com­mon ground between the for­mer Cold War rivals, includ­ing extreme dif­fer­ences over the Syr­i­an civ­il war, Rus­si­a’s domes­tic crack­down on civ­il rights and — the final straw — the asy­lum grant­ed to Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency leak­er Edward Snow­den. . . .

7.  “Assange’s Extrem­ist Employ­ees: Why is Wik­iLeaks employ­ing a Holo­caust Denier and his dis­graced son?” by Michael C. Moyni­han; Rea­son Mag­a­zine; 12/14/2010.

. . . Accord­ing to reports in the Swedish and Russ­ian media, the broad strokes of which have been con­firmed by a Wik­iLeaks spokesman, Shamir serves as the group’s con­tent aggre­ga­tor in Rus­sia, the man who “selects and dis­trib­utes” the cables to Russ­ian news orga­ni­za­tions, accord­ing to an inves­ti­ga­tion by Swedish pub­lic radio. In the news­pa­per Expressen, Mag­nus Ljung­gren, an emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture at Gothen­burg Uni­ver­si­ty, out­lined Shamir’s close ties to Wik­iLeaks and his posi­tion “spread­ing the doc­u­ments in Rus­sia.” (The arti­cle is illus­trat­ed with a pic­ture of Assange and Shamir in an uniden­ti­fied office.)

. . . . The Swedish media has iden­ti­fied Shamir’s son, a dis­graced jour­nal­ist named Johannes Wahlström, him­self accused of anti-Semi­tism and fal­si­fy­ing quotes, as a Wik­iLeaks spokesman in Swe­den. Indeed, Wahlström has authored sto­ries based on the Wik­iLeaks mate­r­ial for the news­pa­per Afton­bladet and is cred­ited as a pro­ducer on a recent Swedish pub­lic tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary about the group.

But while being the son of a famous Holo­caust denier is per­haps only suggestive—Wahlström is sure­ly not respon­si­ble for his father’s many sins—his cel­e­bra­tions of his father’s work in print and his con­tri­bu­tions to Shamir’s web­site sug­gest ide­o­log­i­cal affin­ity.* Indeed, in 2005 Wahlström wrote a sto­ry for the left­ist mag­a­zine Ord­front argu­ing that Swedish media, not known for being friend­ly to the Jew­ish state, was in fact being manip­u­lated by Jew­ish inter­ests on behalf of the Israeli gov­ern­ment.

Three of the jour­nal­ists inter­viewed for the story—Cecilia Uddén, Lot­ta Schüllerqvist, and Peter Löfgren—claimed that Wahlström fal­si­fied quotes, lead­ing the mag­a­zine to with­draw the sto­ry and issue an apol­ogy. Heléne Lööw, a his­to­rian of fas­cism and Euro­pean neo-Nazism, com­mented that the Wahlström sto­ry con­tained all the “ele­ments that one would find in a clas­sic anti-Semit­ic con­spir­acy the­o­ry.”

A mem­ber of Ordfront’s edi­to­r­ial board, writ­ing in the news­pa­per Dagens Nyheter, lament­ed that the piece was ever pub­lished, cit­ing Wahlström’s “close work­ing rela­tion­ship with Israel Shamir,” with­out point­ing out just how close the two were.

Wahlström and Shamir, father and son, are the Wik­iLeaks rep­re­sen­ta­tives for two rather large geo­graphic areas. Accord­ing to Swedish Radio’s inves­ti­ga­tion, Wahlström is the gate­keeper of the cables in Scan­di­navia, and “has the pow­er to decide” which news­pa­pers are pro­vided access and what leaks they are allowed to see. (At the time of fil­ing, Wahlström had yet to respond to an email request for com­ment.) . . .

8. “Leak­er’s Flight Rais­es Ten­sion For 3 Nations” by Peter Bak­er and Ellen Bar­ry; The New York Times; 6/25/2013.

Frus­trat­ed Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials pressed Rus­sia on Mon­day to turn over Edward J. Snow­den, the nation­al secu­ri­ty con­trac­tor who dis­closed sur­veil­lance pro­grams, while warn­ing Chi­na of “con­se­quences” for let­ting him flee to Moscow.

As Mr. Snow­den remained out of sight, appar­ent­ly holed up in Moscow await­ing word of his fate, what start­ed as a dra­mat­ic escape sto­ry involv­ing a self-described whis­tle-blow­er evolved into a diplo­mat­ic inci­dent in which the Unit­ed States faces an open rift with one major pow­er and a tense stand­off with anoth­er. Hopes for a quick res­o­lu­tion had fad­ed by night­fall.

Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry said China’s deci­sion to allow Mr. Snow­den to leave Hong Kong despite an arrest request from the Unit­ed States would have “with­out any ques­tion some effect, an impact on the rela­tion­ship, and con­se­quences.” He called on Rus­sia to expel Mr. Snow­den. “I would urge them to live by the stan­dards of the law, because that’s in the inter­est of every­body,” Mr. Ker­ry said.

He point­ed out that the Unit­ed States in the past two years had trans­ferred sev­en pris­on­ers Rus­sia had sought, though the par­al­lel is not exact, since Mr. Snow­den is not being held by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment.

At the White House, Pres­i­dent Obama’s press sec­re­tary, Jay Car­ney, rein­forced what he called “our frus­tra­tion and dis­ap­point­ment with Hong Kong and Chi­na,” call­ing their refusal to detain Mr. Snow­den a “seri­ous set­back” in rela­tions. He said the Hong Kong author­i­ties had been noti­fied that Mr. Snowden’s pass­port had been revoked, and he dis­missed their expla­na­tion that they had no legal basis to stop Mr. Snow­den. “We do not buy the sug­ges­tion that Chi­na could not have tak­en action,” Mr. Car­ney said.

Amer­i­can offi­cials also open­ly mocked Chi­na and Rus­sia as states that repress free speech and trans­paren­cy and there­fore are hard­ly apt refuges for some­one fight­ing gov­ern­ment secre­cy in the Unit­ed States.

“I won­der if Mr. Snow­den chose Chi­na and Rus­sia as assis­tants in his flight from jus­tice because they’re such pow­er­ful bas­tions of Inter­net free­dom,” Mr. Ker­ry said sar­cas­ti­cal­ly dur­ing a stop in New Del­hi. . . .

9. In addi­tion to dam­ag­ing U.S. and Oba­ma diplo­ma­cy vis a vis Chi­na, Europe and Rus­sia, Snow­den’s “op” severe­ly strained rela­tions between Oba­ma and the NSA/intelligence com­mu­ni­ty itself.

“Intel­li­gence Staffs Feel Like Scape­goats” by Ken Dilan­ian and Janet Sto­bart; The Los Ange­les Times; 10/29/2013.

The White House and State Depart­ment signed off on sur­veil­lance tar­get­ing phone con­ver­sa­tions of friend­ly for­eign lead­ers, cur­rent and for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials said Mon­day, push­ing back against asser­tions that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and his aides were unaware of the high-lev­el eaves­drop­ping.

Pro­fes­sion­al staff mem­bers at the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency and oth­er U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies are angry, these offi­cials say, believ­ing the pres­i­dent has cast them adrift as he tries to dis­tance him­self from the dis­clo­sures by for­mer NSA con­trac­tor Edward Snow­den that have strained ties with close allies. . . .

. . . . Oba­ma may not have been specif­i­cal­ly briefed on NSA oper­a­tions tar­get­ing a for­eign lead­er’s cell­phone or email com­mu­ni­ca­tions, one of the offi­cials said. “But cer­tain­ly the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil and senior peo­ple across the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty knew exact­ly what was going on, and to sug­gest oth­er­wise is ridicu­lous.”

If U.S. spy­ing on key for­eign lead­ers was news to the White House, cur­rent and for­mer offi­cials said, then White House offi­cials have not been read­ing their brief­ing books.

Some U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials said they were being blamed by the White House for con­duct­ing sur­veil­lance that was autho­rized under the law and uti­lized at the White House.

“Peo­ple are furi­ous,” said a senior intel­li­gence offi­cial who would not be iden­ti­fied dis­cussing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion. “This is offi­cial­ly the White House cut­ting off the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.” . . .

10. Cal­i­for­ni­ans’ approval of Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s job per­for­mance has tak­en the sharpest dive of his pres­i­den­cy in recent months, accord­ing to a new Field Poll, with some of his most loy­al sup­port­ers los­ing faith after rev­e­la­tions that the gov­ern­ment is track­ing Amer­i­cans’ phone and Inter­net use. . .

“Pres­i­den­t’s Sup­port in State Slips” by Josh Rich­man; San Jose Mer­cury News; 7/23/2013; pp. B1-B4.

11. Young peo­ple seem to have been par­tic­u­lar­ly affect­ed by Snow­den’s actions. Snow­den being regard­ed as a hero is tru­ly grotesque, though under­stand­able, giv­en the insuf­fi­cient nature of the media cov­er­age.

“Snow­den among Nom­i­nees for a Euro­pean Human Rights Prize” by Dan Bilef­sky; The New York Times; 9/18/2013.

. . . . In an online New York Times opin­ion arti­cle on Sun­day, Peter Lud­low, a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, wrote that Mr. Snow­den had exposed a gap between mem­bers of the younger “Wik­iLeaks gen­er­a­tion,” who regard him as a role mod­el, and old­er com­men­ta­tors in the tra­di­tion­al news media, who believe he needs to be brought to jus­tice. Mr. Lud­low cit­ed a recent poll show­ing that 70 per­cent of Amer­i­cans ages 18 to 34 believed that Mr. Snow­den “did a good thing.” . . .

12. In that con­text, Cit­i­zen Green­wald has been advo­cat­ing the estab­lish­ment of a third par­ty can­di­date. If this hap­pens and the can­di­date devel­ops a sig­nif­i­cant fol­low­ing, it might well pro­pel the GOP back into pow­er, just as Ralph Nader’s can­di­da­cy did in 2000.

“Glenn Green­wald: Life Beyond Bor­ders” by Fred Bern­stein; out.com; 4/18/2011.

. . . .By the third year of law school, he was work­ing for a large law firm. But real­iz­ing that rep­re­sent­ing Gold­man Sachs would have destroyed him psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, he set up his own firm, which rep­re­sent­ed sev­er­al neo-Nazis and oth­er unpop­u­lar clients. . . .

. . . . One of his hopes for 2012 is that can­di­dates will emerge to take on the red and the blue teams — he is keep­ing an eye on Gary John­son, a two-term Repub­li­can gov­er­nor of New Mex­i­co, who is pro-gay and anti­war, and who could run with a Demo­c­rat like for­mer Wis­con­sin sen­a­tor Russ Fein­gold. He would also be hap­py to see a bil­lion­aire run with­out the help of either par­ty, to dis­rupt the two-par­ty stran­gle­hold. . 

13. The pro­gram con­cludes with a pas­sage from The Art of War by the ancient Chi­nese mil­i­tary philoso­pher Sun Tzu. Delin­eat­ing a strate­gic pro­gram designed to frag­ment an ene­my, the pas­sage is strik­ing­ly rel­e­vant to Snow­den’s “op.” (It is not irrel­e­vant that this pas­sage was quot­ed in the auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Gen­er­al Rein­hard Gehlen, the Nazi spy chief who found­ed the BND. The book has an intro­duc­tion by David Irv­ing, the not­ed Holo­caust denier.)

We might update the text to read: ” . . . . impli­cate the Pres­i­dent in crim­i­nal under­tak­ings; under­mine his posi­tion and destroy his rep­u­ta­tion. . . . Dis­rupt the work of their gov­ern­ment with every means you can. Spread dis­uni­ty and dis­pute among the cit­i­zens of the ene­my’s coun­try. Turn the young against the old. [Turn the NSA and the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty against the Pres­i­dent.] . . . . ”

The Ser­vice: The Mem­oirs of Gen­er­al Rein­hard Gehlen; World Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny; copy­right 1972 [HC];p.331.

. . . . ‘There is no art high­er than that of destroy­ing the ene­my’s resis­tance with­out a fight on the bat­tle­field. The direct tac­tic of war is nec­es­sary only on the bat­tle­field; but only the indi­rect tac­tic can lead to a real and last­ing vic­to­ry. Sub­vert any­thing of val­ue in the ene­my’s coun­try. Impli­cate the emis­saries of the major pow­ers in crim­i­nal under­tak­ings; under­mine their posi­tion and destroy their rep­u­ta­tion in oth­er ways as well, and expose them to the pub­lic ridicule of their fel­low cit­i­zens. Do not shun the aid of even the low­est and most despi­ca­ble peo­ple. Dis­rupt the work of their gov­ern­ment with every means you can. Spread dis­uni­ty and dis­pute among the cit­i­zens of the ene­my’s coun­try. Turn the young against the old. Use every means to destroy their arms, their sup­plies, and the dis­ci­pline of the ene­my’s forces. Debase old tra­di­tions and accept­ed gods. Be gen­er­ous with promis­es and rewards to pur­chase intel­li­gence and accom­plices. Send out your secret agents in all direc­tions. Do not skimp with mon­ey or with promis­es, for they yield a high return. . . .’