This was on a recent broad­cast of Democ­ra­cy Now. Jere­my Scahill (“Dirty Wars”) is work­ing with Green­wald “to build a news orga­ni­za­tion that would have an inher­ent­ly adver­sar­i­al pos­ture toward the state and those in pow­er.”

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20490-there-is-a-war-on-journalism-jeremy-scahill-on-nsa-leaks-and-new-investigative-reporting-venture

Excerpt:
AMY GOODMAN: And Lau­ra Poitras, of course, who was key, with Glenn, in releas­ing all the leaks from Edward Snow­den and filmed that first inter­view. You’re start­ing this new news orga­ni­za­tion. What are you doing? What’s it going to be called? And Alan Rus­bridger said they have per­haps released 1 per­cent of the infor­ma­tion that Snow­den got. Will you be releas­ing more of that?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah. I mean, well, first of all, just to answer your ini­tial ques­tion, Pierre, Lau­ra, Glenn and I start­ed hav­ing a series of con­ver­sa­tions, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, sev­er­al months ago. Glenn and Lau­ra and I were already talk­ing about cre­at­ing some kind of a news site that we were going to use, not nec­es­sar­i­ly to replace what we do in our nor­mal jour­nal­is­tic lives, but an addi­tion­al out­let. And we were going to do a Kick­starter cam­paign, basi­cal­ly beg for mon­ey, and maybe try to hire one or two young jour­nal­ists who would work with us on it. And at that sort of moment, I was in Rio dis­cussing this with Glenn, and then we get this email from a mutu­al friend of Glenn’s and Pierre’s basi­cal­ly say­ing that Pierre, you know, is work­ing on start­ing this new news orga­ni­za­tion and wants to talk to you about pos­si­bly con­tribut­ing.

And that sort of kicked off this process then where it was clear that Pierre’s goal with this, which was to build a news orga­ni­za­tion that would have an inher­ent­ly adver­sar­i­al pos­ture toward the state and those in pow­er, was in line with what we want­ed to do.

I’m sure “those in pow­er” does not include cor­po­ra­tions. From the Dai­ly Ban­ter: http://thedailybanter.com/2013/12/glenn-greenwald-vs-mark-ames-on-the-privatization-of-the-edward-snowden-leaks/
Also, at Pan­do: http://pando.com/2013/12/07/pierre-omidyar-in-2009-anybody-who-publishes-stolen-info-should-help-catch-the-thief/Pierre tweet­ed:

http://pandodaily.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/screen-shot-2013–12-07-at‑4–09-41-pm.png?w=503&h=339

A deves­tat­ing rant/takedown of Glen Green­wald by Sibel Edmonds; It reads like a run-on sen­tence, but Green­wald’s “left cov­er” is fad­ing away.

For sake of con­tent, here is the entire piece, but the key seems to be this:

“So, isn’t it amaz­ing that an Amer­i­can mega pub­lish­er, a main­stream Amer­i­can pub­lish­er, is giv­ing mil­lions to pub­lish a book that will reveal US gov­ern­ment clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al? I can tell you from expe­ri­ence and with one hun­dred per­cent cer­tain­ty: the pub­lish­er has the government’s con­sent. How does that bear with the claims that this check­book reporter is under arrest and even death threats by the U.S. gov­ern­ment? Let me tell you some­thing: it does not. What it tells you is this: A Dog & Pony Show put on by the U.S. gov­ern­ment and its agents.”
———————–

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/12/08/checkbook-journalism-leaking-to-the-highest-bidders/

Check­book Jour­nal­ism & Leak­ing to the High­est Bid­ders
Sibel Edmonds | Decem­ber 8, 2013 52 Com­ments

The NSA Whistle­blow­ing Case: Some­thing is Awful­ly Rot­ten in the State of …?

Imag­ine a major gov­ern­ment whistle­blow­er who leaks his evi­dence and obtained doc­u­ments to the high­est bid­ders in the main­stream media and mega cor­po­ra­tions. Does that sound awful, dis­grace­ful and despi­ca­ble? Okay. Now, imag­ine a pseu­do jour­nal­ist who obtains over 50,000 doc­u­ments from a gov­ern­ment whistle­blow­er, and then takes some of this infor­ma­tion and puts it out for bid, reserves a cer­tain por­tion for a lucra­tive book deal, and saves the rest for a mega cor­po­ra­tion that has a record of screw­ing whistle­blow­ers. How does that sound? This is what I mean by the title of this com­men­tary: Check­book Jour­nal­ism & Leak­ing to the High­est Bid­ders.

For the past twelve years I have been known as one of the most noto­ri­ous gov­ern­ment whistle­blow­ers, even giv­en the title of The Most Clas­si­fied Per­son in the His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States by a civ­il lib­er­ties orga­ni­za­tion. I am the founder and direc­tor of a whistle­blow­er orga­ni­za­tion that includes over 150 nation­al secu­ri­ty whistle­blow­ers. I have known and rep­re­sent­ed over 150 nation­al secu­ri­ty whistle­blow­ing cas­es in Con­gress and the media. And let me tell you this, I have nev­er seen a case that even comes close to this bizarrely uneth­i­cal and despi­ca­ble case.

A gov­ern­ment whistle­blow­er obtains over 50,000 pages of doc­u­ments that impli­cate the gov­ern­ment in severe­ly ille­gal and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al prac­tices. This whistle­blow­er risks every­thing, includ­ing flee­ing the coun­try, in order to leak these doc­u­ments and let the pub­lic know how its gov­ern­ment has been break­ing the nation’s laws and vio­lat­ing their rights. So he goes to anoth­er coun­try and then entrusts all this evi­dence to a few reporters and wan­na-be jour­nal­ists. Why does he do that? He does it so that these reporters will present all this infor­ma­tion to the pub­lic: not only those in the Unit­ed States, but every­one all over the world. Think about it. Why else would some­one risk every­thing, includ­ing his own life, to obtain and leak such doc­u­ments? Are you think­ing? Because what would be the point to all this, to tak­ing all these risks, if 99% of these doc­u­ments remain secret and hid­den from the pub­lic? Ludi­crous, right?

Now, here is what hap­pens next: The whistle­blow­er hands over these doc­u­ments, and goes through a sur­re­al escape jour­ney. So sur­re­al that even Hol­ly­wood could not have matched it. Of the hand­ful of reporters who were entrust­ed with 50,000 doc­u­ments, a few do noth­ing. By that I mean absolute­ly noth­ing. A cou­ple from this entrust­ed group does a lit­tle bit more. They meet with a few main­stream media out­lets, they spend many hours around the table with their mega com­pa­nies’ mega attor­neys and U.S. gov­ern­ment mega rep­re­sen­ta­tives (the same gov­ern­ment that is impli­cat­ed in these doc­u­ments). Then what hap­pens? Here is what hap­pens:

Dur­ing the six-month peri­od since they received the doc­u­ments and the whistleblower’s sto­ry broke, the sup­posed-jour­nal­ists released 1% (One Per­cent) of these doc­u­ments:

Out of report­ed 50,000 pages (or files, not clear which), about 514 pages (>1%) have been released over 5 months begin­ning June 5, 2013. At this rate, 100 pages per month, it will take 42 years for full release. Snow­den will be 72 years old, his reporters hoard­ing secrets all dead.

That’s right. A whistle­blow­er breaks the law to obtain 50,000 doc­u­ments, he flees the coun­try to escape pros­e­cu­tion and jail time, he hands over these 50,000 pages to a hand­ful of indi­vid­u­als in return for their promise to present these doc­u­ments to the pub­lic, six months pass, and the pub­lic gets 1% of these doc­u­ments. But please, wait. This is not all. Far more inter­est­ing and trou­bling things hap­pen mean­while.

The main wan­na-be reporter begins his relent­less pur­suit of high dol­lars in return for … for what? In return for exclu­sive inter­views where he would dis­cuss some of this mate­r­i­al. In return for a very lucra­tive book deal where he would expose a few extra pages of these 50,000-page doc­u­ments. In return for a part­ner­ship with and extreme­ly high salary from a Mega Cor­po­ra­tion (think 1%) where he would … hmm­mm, well, it is not very clear: maybe in return for sit­ting on and nev­er releas­ing some of these doc­u­ments, or, releas­ing a few select pages?

That’s right. The cul­prit is able to use his role in the whistle­blow­er case, and his de fac­to own­er­ship of the whistleblower’s 50,000-page evi­dence, to gain huge sums of mon­ey, fame, a mega cor­po­rate posi­tion, book and movie deals … yet, mak­ing sure that the pub­lic would nev­er see more than a few per­cent of the incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence.

Of course, sec­ond­hand check­book prof­i­teers tend to be very savvy, able to blow smoke, mud­dy water, and obscure their real deeds and true per­son­hoods. This par­tic­u­lar one is famous for spend­ing years as an ambu­lance-chas­ing style attor­ney, where all he had to do was to write dozens of pages to make cas­es that were nev­er cas­es, or make real cas­es appear as if they nev­er were.

Sen­si­ble peo­ple always advise against using per­son­al back­ground infor­ma­tion to expose oth­er non-per­son­al cas­es of sub­jects. I agree with these sen­si­ble peo­ple. I think it is dis­grace­ful to bring in irrel­e­vant per­son­al infor­ma­tion to make a case on a non-per­son­al issue. How­ev­er, some­times per­son­al infor­ma­tion becomes part of the pic­ture and very rel­e­vant. Allow me to pro­vide you with an exam­ple in our case. What if the per­son­al facts paint a fig­ure that does any­thing and every­thing for mon­ey and fame? What if a check­book leak­er (or a check­book cen­sor­ship agent) is the type of per­son who has engaged in the fol­low­ing:

· Has rep­re­sent­ed cor­rupt mega banks and finan­cial insti­tu­tions as an attor­ney to make mega bucks, yet claims to be a Marx­ist Lenin­ist Social­ist who sup­ports the Occu­py move­ment.

· Has left short-lived civ­il lib­er­ties activ­i­ties to set up an exploitive pornog­ra­phy busi­ness with names such as Hairy Studs and Hairy Jock… All for mon­ey and prof­it.

· Has been known as an indi­vid­ual who has always used any­thing and every­thing to bring friv­o­lous law­suits (many of them) to get rich quick.

· Has been rep­re­sent­ing him­self as a Marx­ist-Social­ist, Lib­er­al and Lib­er­tar­i­an, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, and based on cir­cum­stances, nev­er hav­ing to rec­on­cile the dis­crep­an­cies between those posi­tions and his part­ner­ship with cor­po­rate bil­lion­aires, his lux­u­ri­ous lifestyle, putting on a Marx­ist front, rep­re­sent­ing him­self as a Lib­er­tar­i­an … and the list goes on. Which one is he? Real­ly?

You see, when you add these qual­i­ties and per­son­al his­to­ry to the fact that a whistle­blow­er and 50,000-pages of doc­u­ments are being used to make mega mon­ey and mega fame, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly the pub­lic at large is being kept in the dark and 99% of these doc­u­ments are cen­sored, what do you get?

A few days ago the check­book wan­na-be jour­nal­ist released a very long argu­ment in defense of his inde­fen­si­ble actions and prac­tices. I am going to address a cou­ple of those, but I want you to keep in mind that the argu­ment is com­ing from a per­son known as an ambu­lance-chas­er attor­ney and liti­gious mon­ey grab­ber, thus is bril­liant at obscur­ing facts and real­i­ties with mud and dis­tor­tions.

Con­sid­er how a part­ner­ship with a mega bil­lion­aire cor­po­rate man is being char­ac­ter­ized and fudged here:

It has the back­ing and is being built by some­one whom I am absolute­ly con­vinced is ded­i­cat­ed to this mod­el of inde­pen­dent, adver­sar­i­al jour­nal­ism.

This is not the first time this sup­posed pro-whistle­blow­ers and civ­il lib­er­ties ori­ent­ed wan­na-be jour­nal­ist has described his new Bil­lion­aire own­er. The new own­er has been char­ac­ter­ized by him sev­er­al times as a sol­id own­er with a sol­id track record on whistle­blow­ers issues, First Amend­ment, Free­dom of the Press, etc.

We have been search­ing and research­ing the new owner’s record. There is not much to be found to qual­i­fy this man as some­one with a good record on the sig­nif­i­cant areas men­tioned above. None … except:

Pay­pal sus­pend­ed online pay­ments to Wik­iLeaks in Decem­ber of 2010 after, its man­agers said, they read a let­ter by the State Depart­ment indi­cat­ing Wik­iLeaks was break­ing Amer­i­can laws. In retal­i­a­tion, a group of Anony­mous hack­tivists brought down the pay­ment site with DDoS attacks two days lat­er. The hack­tivists who were appre­hend­ed, known as the Pay­Pal 14, were in court today and accept­ed plea bar­gains in order to avoid felony charges.

Omid­yar has been ‘the direc­tor and Chair­man of the Board since eBay’s incor­po­ra­tion in May 1996,’ and not­ed that “eBay owns Pay­Pal.”

…

In our next BFP Round­table video ses­sion I will talk more about this, and oth­er eye-brow rais­ing items in Omidyar’s record, includ­ing his con­nec­tions and asso­ci­a­tions with Iran­ian lob­by groups for “Regime Change” in Iran. But for now, let’s shoot down this mud­dy­ing counter-argu­ment pre­sent­ed by some­one with true exper­tise in mud­dy­ing and fudg­ing facts as an ambu­lance-chas­er liti­gious attor­ney who has got­ten away in life by threat­en­ing every­one he could with a law­suit and libel suits.

Now back to lies, con­tra­dic­tions and then mud­dy­ing it all a la the liti­gious attor­ney. For the last few months, when­ev­er pres­sured about the 99% unre­leased doc­u­ments, the answers have been swing­ing between two or three more years to we are done with releas­ing. You see, this was not the case ini­tial­ly, not dur­ing the first cou­ple of months pri­or to sign­ing deals with mega cor­po­rate new sug­ar dad­dies and mega pub­lish­ers for the book deals. Here is the triple-talk­ing, mud-mak­ing and fudge-cre­at­ing wan­na-be jour­nal­ist on June 26, 2013, the month the pub­lic saga began:

When they met, Snow­den sup­plied Green­wald with a “vol­ume of doc­u­ments so great that I haven’t actu­al­ly gone through them all.” Snow­den was metic­u­lous — Green­wald described the files as beau­ti­ful­ly orga­nized, “almost to a scary degree.” Sto­ries based on the leaked doc­u­ments will con­tin­ue for anoth­er few months, Green­wald said, but not, he hopes, beyond that. “I get bored with myself,” he said. “If I’m still work­ing on these sto­ries a year from now, I’ll prob­a­bly be in an asy­lum some­where.”

…

So what hap­pened since the greasy check­book reporter made those state­ments? Please don’t tell me that at that point he was not aware how deep things went or how thick those doc­u­ments were. Because he knew exact­ly how deep and how thick, and that they were all metic­u­lous­ly and beau­ti­ful­ly orga­nized: Mean­ing the whistle­blow­er had done all the work for the reporters in advance. This was not a thick pile of hodge­podge doc­u­ments – they were already ana­lyzed, orga­nized, cat­e­go­rized, sub-cat­e­go­rized, and sub-sub-cat­e­go­rized. As for what hap­pened since June 26, 2013? A lot.

A new very lucra­tive book deal was struck. He is being very secre­tive and tight-lipped on how many mil­lions of dol­lars he received from this US mega pub­lish­er, how­ev­er, he had to deal a whistleblower’s doc­u­ment to secure this deal:

Accord­ing to the pub­lish­er, it will “con­tain new rev­e­la­tions expos­ing the extra­or­di­nary coop­er­a­tion of pri­vate indus­try and the far-reach­ing con­se­quences of the government’s pro­gram, both domes­ti­cal­ly and abroad.”

…

So there – one rea­son why a check­book wan­na-be jour­nal­ist is not pro­vid­ing the pub­lic with the infor­ma­tion they have the right to know. How is that for integri­ty?

Fur­ther, no one is ask­ing the cru­cial ques­tion: With the mega pub­lish­ing cor­po­ra­tions’ record, how is it that they are will­ing to pub­lish clas­si­fied gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments? Do you know what these same pub­lish­ers said about my own book? Here is what they said:

“with­out the approval by the FBI-DOJ pre­pub­li­ca­tion review board we will not pub­lish your book. The gov­ern­ment will come after us.”

So, isn’t it amaz­ing that an Amer­i­can mega pub­lish­er, a main­stream Amer­i­can pub­lish­er, is giv­ing mil­lions to pub­lish a book that will reveal US gov­ern­ment clas­si­fied mate­r­i­al? I can tell you from expe­ri­ence and with one hun­dred per­cent cer­tain­ty: the pub­lish­er has the government’s con­sent. How does that bear with the claims that this check­book reporter is under arrest and even death threats by the U.S. gov­ern­ment? Let me tell you some­thing: it does not. What it tells you is this: A Dog & Pony Show put on by the U.S. gov­ern­ment and its agents.

The check­book wan­na-be reporter is also secur­ing a mil­lion dol­lar movie deal with Hol­ly­wood.

You had to know this was com­ing. There’s a bid­ding war heat­ing up between Hol­ly­wood stu­dios over the rights to bring Glenn Greenwald’s forth­com­ing tell-all book about the Edward Snow­den affair to the big screen.

Well, as we all know, the CIA bless­es these movie deals with main­stream Hol­ly­wood. Don’t we? With­out the han­dlers’ bless­ing no such deal could have been made. When the pre­tender shows up at the Oscar Gala, ask your­self this: Weren’t they sup­posed to arrest and maybe even drone the hell out of this guy? So what hap­pened, dude?

The exact same ques­tions should be posed for a new mega cor­po­rate sug­ar dad­dy tuck­ing check­book jour­nal­ists under his wing in return for…? Your guess is def­i­nite­ly as good as mine. The bil­lion­aire who stomped upon a whistleblower’s account with his Pay­Pal Cor­po­ra­tion has sud­den­ly found a heart? I didn’t think so either

In her first inter­view since leav­ing Moscow for Berlin last month, Har­ri­son told Ger­man news week­ly Stern: “How can you take some­thing seri­ous­ly when the per­son behind this plat­form went along with the finan­cial boy­cott against Wik­iLeaks?” Har­ri­son was refer­ring to the deci­sion in Decem­ber 2010 by Pay­Pal, which is owned by eBay, to sus­pend Wik­iLeaks’ dona­tion account and freeze its assets after pres­sure from the US gov­ern­ment. The company’s boy­cott, com­bined with sim­i­lar action tak­en by Visa and Mas­ter­card, left Wik­iLeaks fac­ing a fund­ing cri­sis.

“His excuse is prob­a­bly that there is noth­ing he could have done at the time,” Har­ri­son con­tin­ued. “Well, he is on the board of direc­tors. He can’t shake off respon­si­bil­i­ty that eas­i­ly. He didn’t even com­ment on it. He could have said some­thing like: ‘we were forced to do this, but I am against it’.”

…

In our com­ing BFP Round­table we will have first-hand accounts from reporters who have wit­nessed how our check­book jour­nal­ist has been ask­ing for mon­ey in return for inter­views and doc­u­ments.

I start­ed this com­men­tary by intro­duc­ing my cre­den­tials as a whistle­blow­er and some­one who has known and rep­re­sent­ed many gov­ern­ment whistle­blow­ers from the intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment agen­cies- hun­dreds of whistle­blow­ers, hon­or­able peo­ple such as NSA’s Russ Tice, DEA’s San­dalio Gon­za­lez and FBI’s John Cole. In this case of a check­book wan­na-be jour­nal­ist and a whistle­blow­er, I have noth­ing but many ques­tions when it comes to the whistle­blow­er in ques­tion. I do con­sid­er the self­less act of releas­ing this incrim­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion on our government’s ille­gal­i­ty hero­ic; how­ev­er, I have numer­ous unan­swered ques­tions for the whistle­blow­er in ques­tion:

Did he give his full con­sent to the main­stream and check­book reporters so that they could sit on 99% of these doc­u­ments if they chose to?

Is he per­fect­ly okay with this dis­grace­ful and oppor­tunist per­son using these doc­u­ments to secure mil­lions of dol­lars in book and movie deals?

Does he con­sid­er the cen­sor­ship of 99% of his doc­u­ments jus­ti­fied and okay? If so, what kind of image does he hope to main­tain when the leak­ing is selec­tive and based on bid­ding in dol­lars?

Does he have an arrange­ment where he gets a cut from the opportunist’s mega mil­lions obtained via doc­u­ments he entrust­ed him with? If so, wouldn’t that make him taint­ed and a cul­prit in this?

Why is he in Rus­sia (in exile), when the check­book oppor­tunist is in the bel­ly of the beast mak­ing deals in mil­lions of dol­lars, and is about to head a $250 Mil­lion news cor­po­ra­tion set up by his bil­lion­aire sug­ar dad­dy?

And final­ly, a bit crude­ly,

What the fu.. is wrong with this pic­ture?! Because as a whistle­blow­er and an expert on whistle­blow­ers I see thou­sands of wrong things with this pic­ture!

Please do not get me wrong here. I have no ques­tions but answers when it comes to the check­book oppor­tunist in ques­tion. I have known about him for years, long before this NSA episode. What I don’t have is an answer when it comes to the NSA whistle­blow­er in ques­tion. I have been sit­ting on the fence on this one. Unlike my own whistle­blow­er mem­bers, I do not know this guy. I don’t. I have nev­er cor­re­spond­ed with him, and he has nev­er reached out to me or my orga­ni­za­tion. I keep going from silent­ly cheer­ing and sup­port­ing him, to doubt­ing what he is all about. I have nev­er seen a case like this. I don’t think any­one has. How­ev­er, in light of the case of our check­book jour­nal­ist, Main­stream Pub­lish­ers’ mega mil­lion book deals, Main­stream Hollywood’s mega stu­dio deals, Main­stream Media back­ing and show­cas­ing, and Mega Corporation’s mega mil­lions get­ting involved … and in all this, zero retal­i­a­tion or inter­fer­ence from our mega gov­ern­ment known for being ruth­less on whistle­blow­ers, I just don’t get this case.

My expe­ri­enced gut says some­thing is awful­ly rot­ten in the state of … this NSA whistle­blow­er-Check­book Oppor­tunist Dra­ma Set. I get half of the rot­ten state, but am still won­der­ing about the oth­er half.

@SWAMP–

Ms. Edmonds has done some good work but has always been a ques­tion mark to me, much as L’Af­faire Snow­den and Cit­i­zen Green­wald appear to be to her.

Edmonds has done some excel­lent work, and yet she–like so many others–won’t touch Oper­a­tion Green Quest, al-Taqwa or any of its prin­ci­pal mem­bers or ele­ments (SAAR net­work, Safa Trust, Achmed [Albert] Huber, Fran­cois Genoud, Youssef Nada) or any of the dev­as­tat­ing infor­ma­tion link­ing Grover Norquist/Karl Rove/Talat Oth­man et al to the milieu of the 9/11 attacks.

There is an awful lot of oth­er infor­ma­tion that escapes her gaze–just exam­ine the info on this web­site and see how lit­tle makes it into her purview.

Why not? I would­n’t con­clude that SHE is part of a dog and pony show, but it is sig­nif­i­cant and puz­zling.

She does­n’t appear to be aware of Green­wald’s exten­sive pro-Nazi activ­i­ties.

She also appears to be pro-Wik­iLeaks, fail­ing to note that the same fas­cist ele­ments under­lie Assange and com­pa­ny as under­lie Snow­den and Green­wald.

WHY that is the case is a top­ic for inquiry.

I don’t think L’Af­faire is a dog-and-pony show, although it is def­i­nite­ly an oper­a­tion. The desta­bi­liza­tion of Oba­ma, assault on U.S. inter­net busi­ness, inclu­sion of BND in the “Five Eyes” pro­gram are all goals of the “op.”

I also won­der whether the U.S./EU Free Trade Agree­ment will be a bar­gain­ing chip in this. Cer­tain­ly, L’Af­faire Snow­den takes atten­tion off of the things Ger­many has been doing in Europe and por­trays the U.S. as the “inter­na­tion­al vil­lain de jour.”

As you know, I feel the exec­u­tive ele­ment is BND/Underground Reich, though there may be a UR-asso­cait­ed ele­ment of CIA involved. I’m very inter­est­ed in Michael Morell in this regard.

Most the prin­ci­pals are in Ger­many and this tar­gets the U.K. in addi­tion to the U.S.

Note that the bit­coin phe­nom­e­non and the “Shutdown”/Tea Par­ty ele­ments are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Snow­den milieu–they are a deep fifth col­umn that is pro­found­ly anti‑U.S. “Von Mis­es Uber Alles”!

Some­thing to con­sid­er: when I dis­cuss “The Under­ground Reich,” I’m talk­ing about a vir­tu­al state–a state that does not have for­mal geo­graph­i­cal bor­ders.

The Under­ground Reich embraces VERY pow­er­ful ele­ments in the U.S., includ­ing most of the GOP and a nice chunk of the U.S. CIA and State Depart­ment.

Whether there is an Under­ground Reich ele­ment with­in NSA is some­thing to pon­der. Cer­tain­ly, NSA is infil­trat­ed and com­pro­mised.

I also strong­ly sus­pect that there is some seri­ous black­mail­ing and wheel­ing and deal­ing with­in the inter­na­tion­al intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty behind closed doors.

Anoth­er thing to pon­der: Much of this has already been pub­lished, so try­ing to slap a gov­ern­ment gag on some­thing that is already in the pub­lic domain might very well have prob­lems in the appel­late courts–gagging such infor­ma­tion would con­sti­tute a vio­la­tion of the First Amend­ment.

Cer­tain­ly, Snow­den, Green­wald, Assange and com­pa­ny have the sup­port of the Tea Party/Paulistinian Lib­er­tar­i­an Orga­ni­za­tion ele­ment of the gov­ern­ment, as well as the “left” CIA that con­trols the so-called pro­gres­sive sec­tor, Paci­fi­ca radio et al.

Exact­ly what is going on is “Food for Thought and Grounds for Fur­ther Research.”

Best,

Dave

Here’s a fol­lowup arti­cle on the NSA/Norway spy­ing con­fu­sion. It’s not espe­cial­ly sur­pris­ing: Nor­way, like Swe­den, real­ly likes to spy on Rus­sia:

Dag­bladet
Norway´s secret sur­veil­lance of Russ­ian pol­i­tics for the NSA
The Nor­we­gian Intel­li­gence Ser­vice con­ducts sur­veil­lance of politi­cians, ener­gy pol­i­cy and oth­er civil­ian «tar­gets» in Rus­sia — and pro­vides this infor­ma­tion for the USA.
Arne Halvors­en sondag@dagbladet.no
Anne Marte Blind­heim abl@dagbladet.no
Har­ald S. Klungtveit hkl@dagbladet.no
Kjetil Magne Sørenes kjs@dagbladet.no
Tore Bergsak­er tbe@dagbladet.no
Gun­nar Hult­green ghu@dagbladet.no

tirs­dag 17. desem­ber 2013, kl.06:47

A Top Secret doc­u­ment shows the exten­sive coop­er­a­tion between the Nor­we­gian Intel­li­gence Ser­vice (NIS) and the US Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency (NSA). It con­firms and spec­i­fies that Nor­way is con­duct­ing sur­veil­lance on Rus­sia and that the NIS is shar­ing intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion with the NSA.

The NIS pro­vides the NSA with infor­ma­tion on:
• Politi­cians
• Ener­gy
• Arma­ment

NSA is one of the largest intel­li­gence ser­vices in the USA, and has glob­al reach. Dag­bladet has gained access to the doc­u­ment, leaked by the whistle­blow­er Edward Snow­den, and is today pre­sent­ing parts of it´s con­tent. This arti­cle is writ­ten in coop­er­a­tion with jour­nal­ist Glenn Green­wald, who is known world­wide because of his access to the many doc­u­ments leaked by Snow­den.

The doc­u­ment has a «Top Secret» clas­si­fi­ca­tion and is dat­ed April 17th this year. It is signed by a lead­ing offi­cial at the NSA’s Nor­way Desk and is appar­ent­ly writ­ten short­ly after an annu­al plan­ning con­fer­ence between the two agen­cies, which was com­plet­ed on March 7th this year.

The doc­u­ment reveals the extent of the coop­er­a­tion between the Nor­we­gian intel­li­gence ser­vice and the NSA. Sur­veil­lance of Rus­sia is a major part of this.

The doc­u­ment presents lists of what intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion the NIS pro­vides to NSA and vice ver­sa, and also men­tions sev­er­al «suc­cess sto­ries» from the coop­er­a­tion.

The Nor­we­gian Intel­li­gence Ser­vice con­firms the authen­tic­i­ty of the doc­u­ment, but stress­es that it rep­re­sents the Amer­i­cans’ point of view:
— The doc­u­ment in Dag­bladets pos­ses­sion is an inter­nal NSA doc­u­ment that the NIS has not seen before. It is a descrip­tion of how the NSA views Nor­we­gian intel­li­gence capa­bil­i­ties, Nor­we­gian intel­li­gence tar­gets and the coop­er­a­tion between the NIS and NSA. The doc­u­ment is clear­ly writ­ten by an Amer­i­can offi­cial, and the NIS would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly endorse all of the descrip­tions, says the head of NIS, gen­er­al Kjell Grand­ha­gen, to Dag­bladet.

Mon­i­tor­ing politi­cians
One part of the memo is titled «What the part­ner pro­vides to NSA». Among the bul­let points, it men­tions:
• «Access to Russ­ian tar­gets in the Kola Penin­su­la»
• «Reports on Russ­ian civil­ian tar­gets of mutu­al tar­gets, par­tic­u­lar­ly Russ­ian ener­gy pol­i­cy»

Under the head­ing «suc­cess sto­ries», NSA states that the agency is work­ing togeth­er with the NIS to «expand and deep­en the intel­li­gence exchange, focus­ing on report shar­ing and tar­get devel­op­ment on Russ­ian polit­i­cal, nat­ur­al resources and ener­gy issues (...)».

The NSA doc­u­ment do not reveal the exact infor­ma­tion that has been col­lect­ed or the details of what and who the exact tar­gets are, but Dag­blade­t’s sources con­firm that the NIS is con­duct­ing sur­veil­lance against politi­cians in Rus­sia.

Nor­way and Rus­sia both have great oil and gas inter­ests in the North, and each of the two coun­tries have large state-owned ener­gy com­pa­nies. How­ev­er, the NIS says to Dag­bladet that this the sur­veil­lance con­duct­ed on Rus­sia is not indus­tri­al espi­onage.

In Nor­way
The doc­u­ment shows that Nor­way has exten­sive access to infor­ma­tion on Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices from dif­fer­ent sources. The NIS is pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion on this to the NSA.

«What NSA pro­vides to the part­ner» is one of the sub­ti­tles in this doc­u­ment, head­ing a list of bul­let points. The list reveals that Nor­way gets infor­ma­tion on Russ­ian counter-intel­li­gence oper­a­tions in Nor­way from the NSA. The doc­u­ment does not pro­vide any details on what kind of oper­a­tions these are or how the infor­ma­tion is pro­vid­ed.

The US and Nor­we­gian intel­li­gence agen­cies also exchange reports, tech­ni­cal data and ana­lyt­i­cal exper­tise on Russ­ian mil­i­tary and civil­ian tar­gets.

Strate­gic impor­tance
Accord­ing to the NSA doc­u­ment, the coop­er­a­tion between the NIS and NSA start­ed in 1952 and has been expand­ing since.

The Nor­we­gian Intel­li­gence Ser­vice has sev­er­al times expressed their views on why sur­veil­lance in the High North is nec­es­sary, last in a recent, unclas­si­fied threat assess­ment from the NIS called «Fokus 2013», pub­lished in March this year. The areas are of great geopo­lit­i­cal, strate­gic and eco­nom­ic impor­tance for both Rus­sia and Nor­way, much because of the abun­dance of nat­ur­al resources. The Russ­ian econ­o­my is heav­i­ly depen­dent on oil.

Grow­ing mil­i­tary activ­i­ty
Despite the fact that The Cold War is over, the arma­ment of the Russ­ian mil­i­tary forces is increas­ing. The Rus­sians con­duct exten­sive weapons sys­tems train­ing, includ­ing fly­ing bombers along the Nor­we­gian coast. On the Kola Penin­su­la, only 200 miles (30 met­ric miles) from the Nor­we­gian city of Vardø, sev­er­al strate­gic sub­marines are sta­tioned at one of Russia´s most impor­tant mil­i­tary bases.

The Russ­ian mil­i­tary bud­get grows faster than oth­er sec­tors in the Gov­ern­ment bud­get. Because of this Nor­way’s intel­li­gence ser­vices keep a keen out­look on Russ­ian eco­nom­ic poli­cies and ener­gy pol­i­tics.

The head of the NIS has for­mer­ly stat­ed that they are using all avail­able assets in keep­ing an eye on the High North. The mis­sion of the intel­li­gence ser­vice is not restrict­ed to pure­ly mil­i­tary objects of inter­est, but is to work with­in all areas of inter­est to Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment.

There­fore, all branch­es of the gov­ern­ment, such as the Oil and Ener­gy Min­istry, may order infor­ma­tion from the NIS.

Oil and gas
Nor­way and Rus­sia both have large inter­ests in oil and gas in the High North, and the two coun­tries both export ener­gy to Europe on a large scale. What Russ­ian ener­gy politi­cians are doing, is there­fore of great inter­est to Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment.

In a meet­ing between Jonas Gahr Støre (Labour Par­ty) and the EU’s ener­gy sec­re­tary Gün­ter Oet­tinger in Brus­sels in March last year, the Nor­we­gian Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs at that time made clear that Nor­way is reach­ing for a «deep­er under­stand­ing of Russ­ian pol­i­tics» — accord­ing to a sum­ma­ry that Dag­bladet obtained.

...

Glenn Green­wald gave a video tes­ti­mo­ny to the EU par­lia­ment yes­ter­day. The first 15 min­utes were pre­pared remarks fol­lowed by 45 min­utes of ques­tions. It’s worth watch­ing to get a sense of how the glob­al response to the Snow­den affair is like­ly to con­tin­ue. Dur­ing his open­ing remarks Green­wald repeat­ed­ly made ref­er­ences to the US and UK want­i­ng to elim­i­nate indi­vid­ual pri­va­cy world­wide. And the par­tic­u­lar exam­ple he gives (at ~5:40 min­utes into the remarks) was Swe­den being a vic­tim of Five Eyes spy­ing. This is a week after Swe­den reporters, work­ing with Green­wald, revealed that Swe­den was like the Five Eye­s’s Sixth Eye:

Infos­e­cu­ri­ty Mag­a­zine
Swe­den’s Intel­li­gence Agency has Access to NSA’s XKeyscore sys­tem

12 Decem­ber 2013
Swe­den has some­times been called the ‘Sixth Eye’ – refer­ring to the Eng­lish-speak­ing Five Eyes SIGINT alliance – sug­gest­ing a close work­ing rela­tion­ship between Swe­den’s FRA and the NSA and GCHQ. New doc­u­ments sug­gest that it has access to the XKeyscore tool, and has helped in the Quan­tum hack­ing pro­gram.

The infor­ma­tion is dis­closed in a new Swedish doc­u­men­tary pro­duced by Upp­drag granskn­ing of the Sveriges Tele­vi­sion AB (SVT, the Swedish nation­al broad­cast­er) after Fred­erik Lau­rin, Sven Bergman and Joachim Dyfver­mark gained access to the data­base of Snow­den-leaked doc­u­ments. They were look­ing for evi­dence of Swedish involve­ment in the NSA/GCHQ mass-sur­veil­lance oper­a­tion.

In Rio they met with Glen Green­wald and British jour­nal­ist Ryan Gal­lagher, and were able to search for Swedish (but only Swedish) doc­u­ments. And what they found would seem to con­firm the epi­thet ‘Sixth Eye’ for Swe­den.

First­ly, the NSA has grant­ed the Swedish intel­li­gence agency Försvarets Radioanstalt (the Nation­al Defense Radio Estab­lish­ment known as the FRA) access to its XKeyscore pro­gram. XKeyscore is the front end that gives NSA agents and con­trac­tors the abil­i­ty to search its huge data­bas­es. Using it, Edward Snow­den told the Guardian in June, “I, sit­ting at my desk,” he said, could “wire­tap any­one, from you or your accoun­tant, to a fed­er­al judge or even the pres­i­dent, if I had a per­son­al email.”

One par­tic­u­lar doc­u­ment found by SVT, head­ed, “Swe­dUSA 2013 Strate­gic Plan­ning Con­fer­ence” shows that the FRA is seek­ing an update on a Quan­tum project known as Win­ter Light, and that the FRA has access to XKeyscore.

“If the Swedish FRA now has access to the sys­tem, as the Snow­den doc­u­ments Indi­cate, this sug­gests that the FRA is all part of the unlim­it­ed mass sur­veil­lance of mil­lions of peo­ple world­wide — includ­ing Swedes,” reports SVT. Gal­lagher also sug­gests, “The Eng­lish pub­lic should be made aware that the FRA has access to the sys­tem,” allud­ing to the GCHQ Tem­po­ra pro­gram that taps the fiber cables between the UK and the US.

...

Inter­est­ing­ly, the last ques­tion dur­ing the hear­ing, at ~56 min­utes, is asked by a Swedish MEP and he specif­i­cal­ly brings up that Swedish report and asks about the involve­ment of oth­er EU mem­bers’ involve­ment in the Five Eye­s’s activies. Green­wald responsed that, yes, oth­er EU mem­bers had these intel­li­gence shar­ing arrange­ments and were also spy­ing them­selves, and yes, the NSA is shar­ing tools like XKeyscore and PRISM with more of its allies.

But, Green­wald argues, the NSA and GCHQ are just in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent league both in terms of the abil­i­ty to destroy pri­va­cy but also their desire to do so. Now, sure­ly the NSA and GCHQ have a much greater abil­i­ty to destroy pri­va­cy, but are we now sup­posed to assume that oth­er nations’ spy agen­cies don’t have the same desire to spy as much as pos­si­ble? Keep in mind that the Swedish report indi­cat­ed that Swe­den’s intel­li­gence agen­cies poten­tial­ly had access to that mas­sive trea­sure trove of data too via their use of pro­grams like XKeyscore. So why do the many non-Five Eyes coun­tries get a pass when it comes to their desire to “destroy pri­va­cy” if they’re con­tri­bu­tion to this giant spy­ing sys­tem and, in return, receiv­ing the abil­i­ty to search it? When Ger­many expressed a desire to join the Five Eyes club, was­n’t Merkel’s gov­ern­ment simul­ta­ne­ous­ly demon­strat­ing a strong desire to destroy indi­vid­ual pri­va­cy world­wide? If not, why not?

If this is part of an active strat­e­gy to build glob­al momen­tum for glob­al spy­ing reform by almost exclu­sive­ly assign­ing blame for past spy­ing abus­es on the US and UK there’s a cer­tain log­ic to that since it’ll be much eas­i­er to get oth­er coun­tries on board when they can all play blind, deaf, and dumb about their own his­to­ries. But it’s kind of a high-risk endeav­or for pri­va­cy advo­cates because fram­ing the NSA and GCHQ as glob­al spy­ing vil­lains lead­ing a small Five Eyes cabal plot­ting against all peo­ples and gov­ern­ments to destroy pri­va­cy glob­al­ly might just end up pro­vid­ing a huge excuse for oth­er coun­tries to ramp up their own spy­ing capa­bil­i­ties as a defen­sive coun­ter­mea­sure. The de-empha­sis of the extent that gov­ern­ments around the globe have been coop­er­at­ing with each oth­er in build­ing a glob­al spy­ing net­work might actu­al­ly be encour­ag­ing a future where the pub­lic demands that their gov­ern­ments devel­op robust spy­ing capa­bil­i­ties as a defen­sive mea­sure to fend off the plot to destroy pri­va­cy. Mak­ing the pub­lic almost exclu­sive­ly para­noid of the NSA and GCHQ seems like a big missed oppor­tu­ni­ty.