Dave Emory’s entire lifetime of work is available on a flash drive that can be obtained here. [1] (The flash drive includes the anti-fascist books available on this site.)
COMMENT: As information emerges concerning Edward J. Snowden, the apparent leaker in the NSA/PRISM story [2], a number of points of information stand out:
- This poster boy for civil liberties and openness [Snowden] has spent his entire [young] professional life steeped in “alphabet soup”–the intelligence agencies. He has worked for NSA, the CIA and Booz Allen Hamilton, a tech firm that is a virtual annex of the American intelligence apparat. (Booz Allen is owned by the Carlyle Group and has employed James Clapper [current director of national intelligence, Jonathan Bush, of THOSE Bushes, and James Woolsey [former director of the CIA]). Snowden’s is a curious professional resume for someone we are to believe is deeply concerned about privacy and personal liberty issues.
- He materializes in Hong Kong as President Obama is meeting with the Chinese leadership in an attempt to improve relations. This cannot help any attempts at improving U.S./Chinese relations with regard to cyberspying or much of anything else. He is apparently leaking documents to the Chinese [3]on U.S. hacking operations directed against the Chinese. (This incident strikes us in a similar manner to the downing of a U‑2 spy plane prior to the Eisenhower/Kruschev summit. In The Guns of November, Part I [4], 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.)
- Snowden does not have a high school degree [5]–mandatory for someone seeking employment as a national security contractor. One wonders if he was “fast-tracked” and just who may have done the work on his behalf.
- The disclosures concerning PRISM follow shortly on Obama’s taking control of the drone program away from the CIA. Might this be a response? Might Michael J. Morrell [6] be involved in this? Are we, in fact, looking at a destabilization gambit against Obama? Are we looking, perhaps, at a CIA-NSA tiff as well?
- It develops that Morrell decides to retire [7] right in the middle of this imbroglio.
- It turns out that Citizen Snowden is a supporter [8] of Nazi-linked Ron Paul [9], as well as a modest contributor to his campaign. We note in passing that, in addition to his long-standing Nazi/white supremacist connections, Ron Paul has successfully played Pied Piper to the young, stupid and stoned [10], who aren’t necessarily Nazis. Not everyone who backed Hitler was a Nazi either. Libertarianism is a far-right doctrine, however. As noted in our previous post, looming in the background is Peter Thiel, who’s Palantir firm appears to be the developer of PRISM, disclaimers to the contrary notwithstanding. Thiel also networks with the Cato Institute which has also networked with Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald was also deeply involved with the far-right Nazi-linked WikiLeaks operation. We note that Snowden isn’t some dumb-ass college kid, however. He’s a spook.
- The vast bulk of Paul’s Super PAC money came from ultra-right wing Peter Thiel [11].
- Despite denials from Palantir concerning inquiries about its PRISM software being the same “PRISM” featured in the NSA data-mining program, it turns out that Palantir does indeed [12] have a working relationship with the intelligence community [13]. The notion that “alphabet soup” would have two different software functions with identical names is not credible. Any attempt at utilizing the name “PRISM” by a different firm would certainly have triggered litigation by Palantir.
- Thiel is one of the associates [14] of the Koch Brothers-founded Cato Institute.
- The leaking journalist, Glenn Greenwald, is also professionally associated [15] with the Cato Institute.
- The possibility that the Cato/Thiel/Paul dynamic may have factored in the development of this story is one to be contemplated and researched.
- The Koch Brothers have also been deeply involved with financing the Tea Party [16] movement, focus of the IRS non-scandal.
- It now develops that a conservative Republican [17] initiated the scrutiny of the Tea Party documents. Coupled with the fact that a Bush appointee [18] was in charge of the IRS at the time, one must wonder if the non-scandal surrounding the IRS/Tea Party scrutiny was a deliberate gambit to ensnare the Obama administration in scandal.
- Note that, again, the so-called scandals ensnaring Obama stem from programs begun by George W. Bush’s regime and leaked from the intelligence community. We are almost certainly looking at a de-stabilization program undertaken by the GOP/Underground Reich faction of the intelligence community.
- With regard to NSA/GCHQ spying–this has been known for years. There are For The Record programs dealing with this subject material [19]. So there is nothing really new here. We also reiterate that the initial assault on Echelon/NSA/GCHQ came from the far right and Underground Reich, in the form of the Free Congress Foundation and the European Parliament (read “Germany,” which does the same thing [20]). Be sure to read our first post on this subject.
The New York Times; 6/11/2013; p. A13. [21]
EXCERPT: . . . . It is not clear how Mr. Snowden managed to extract the secret documents, and the portrait of his transformation from a trusted National Security Agency contractor to a leaker is still impressionistic.
Last year, he donated money to the campaign of Ron Paul the libertarian ‑leaning Republican presidential candidate who was long critical of government’s growing reach. . . .
EXCERPT: When American analysts hunting terrorists sought new ways to comb through the troves of phone records, e‑mails and other data piling up as digital communications exploded over the past decade, they turned to Silicon Valley computer experts who had developed complex equations to thwart Russian mobsters intent on credit card fraud.
The partnership between the intelligence community and Palantir Technologies, a Palo Alto, Calif., company founded by a group of inventors from PayPal, is just one of many that the National Security Agency and other agencies have forged as they have rushed to unlock the secrets of “Big Data.” . . . .
“C.I.A. to Get First Woman in No. 2 Job” by Scott Shane; The New York Times; 6/12/2013. [7]
EXCERPT: The C.I.A.’s deputy director, Michael J. Morell, is retiring after 33 years at the agency and will be replaced by Avril D. Haines, the top lawyer at the National Security Council, the C.I.A.’s director, John O. Brennan, announced Wednesday.
The switch will put a woman in one of the agency’s top two jobs for the first time. Ms. Haines is an unusual choice because she is not an intelligence professional, though in her two years at the White House she has been deeply involved in intelligence programs and got to know Mr. Brennan when he was President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser.
In April, the president had nominated Ms. Haines to become the legal adviser at the State Department, a job in which she would also have been the first woman. But with Mr. Morell’s departure, he evidently decided to shift her to the C.I.A. post.
The agency’s deputy director is not subject to Senate confirmation.
Mr. Morell, 54, is leaving voluntarily, officials said, after a full career that has included two recent stints as acting director of the spy agency, first after the departure of Leon E. Panetta in 2011 and then after the resignation of David H. Petraeus last year over a sex scandal. . . .
. . . . Mr. Morell, a career intelligence analyst and former presidential briefer, previously oversaw the agency’s analytic efforts, which are separate from the clandestine service that sends spies overseas. He is viewed as a competent and well-liked manager who has rarely made waves with the public, though in recent months he drew attention for his role in helping to draft the administration’s disputed “talking points” on the lethal attack in September on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
In a statement, Mr. Morell recalled that he was at President George W. Bush’s side as his intelligence briefer when Al Qaeda struck on Sept. 11, 2001, and with Mr. Obama during the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. . . .
EXCERPT: A U.S. Internal Revenue Service manager, who described himself as a conservative Republican, told congressional investigators that he and a local colleague decided to give conservative groups the extra scrutiny that has prompted weeks of political controversy.
In an official interview transcript released on Sunday by Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings, the manager said he and an underling set aside “Tea Party” and “patriot” groups that had applied for tax-exempt status because the organizations appeared to pose a new precedent that could affect future IRS filings.
Cummings, top Democrat on the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee conducting the probe, told CNN’s “State of the Union” program that the manager’s comments provided evidence that politics was not behind IRS actions that have fueled a month-long furor in Washington.
“He is a conservative Republican working for the IRS. I think this interview and these statements go a long way toward showing that the White House was not involved in this,” Cummings told CNN’s “State of the Union” program. . . .