Why is the US military making fake social media accounts?

Swaying public opinion 
 

 
More videos like this
 

An insidious practice

The US military has been given software which can create fake online social media personas.

These accounts are used to “create false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and other commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objective”.

They may not be controlling the internet directly, but such covert manipulation of online conversations is just as destructive, and worlds more deceitful.

 

Was Hillary Clinton, While Secretary of State, Running a Secret Spy Network?

 Monday, March 30, 2015

Sidney Blumenthal with Bill and Hillary
Clinton at the White House (photo:
courteesy of Maureen Dowd)

A trove of emails released two years ago show that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had access to intelligence from a private spy network run by an old confidant.

In 2012, the email account of Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time associate of Bill and Hillary Clinton, was accessed by Romanian hacker Marcel-Lehel Lazar, who went by the name Guccifer. 

Blumenthal’s emails, which were posted on the internet, showed he’d had correspondence with Hillary Clinton via her private email account. They revealed that Blumenthal was providing back-channel intelligence to Clinton about Libya’s civil war in the run-up to the Benghazi disaster, according to a report from ProPublica and Gawker.

One of the emails pointed out the deteriorating security situation right before the Benghazi consulate was stormed, citing “an extremely sensitive source” who pointed out the numerous bombings and kidnapping of aid workers and diplomats by those thought to be loyal to the late Libyan Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi, ProPublica reported. Despite the information gathered by Clinton’s network, she said after the Benghazi attacks of September 2012 that U.S. intelligence officials had had no advance warning of the threat.

The reports Blumenthal sent to Clinton appear to have been compiled by Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) clandestine service in Europe. Drumheller left the CIA in 2005 and started his own security business.

In addition to Libya, the memos deal with subjects ranging from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s discussions with her finance minister to the make-up of the South Korean cabinet.

But much of the attention was focused on Libya. There’s even one email exchange suggesting that four people be sent to neighboring Tunisia to aid the Libyan opposition. “Sid, you are doing great work on this,” Drumheller wrote to Blumenthal. “It is going to be around $60,000, coverting r/t business class airfare to Tunis, travel in country to the border and back, and other expenses for 7–10 days for 4 guys,” one email read.

A Clinton spokesman said all the Blumenthal emails in Clinton’s private email account have been turned over as part of the 30,000 pages of communications relayed to the State Department.

When Clinton was named secretary of state, she wanted Blumenthal to come work for her. But then White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is said to have vetoed that plan because of Blumenthal’s attacks on Obama during the 2008 presidential primary campaign.

-Steve Straehley

To Learn More:

Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aide’s Secret Spy Network (by Jeff Gerth, ProPublica, and Sam Biddle, Gawker)

Hacked Emails Show Hillary Clinton Was Receiving Advice at a Private Email Account From Banned, Obama-Hating Former Staffer (by John Cook, Gawker)

Blumenthal Emails (Cryptome) (pdf)

Hillary Clinton's ‘Hacked’ Benghazi Emails (RT)

Espionage, Treason, and the Congressional Fifth Column

Congress canoodles with Israeli spies to undermine Iran deal

by Justin Raimondo, March 25, 2015

The spectacle of virtually the entire Senate GOP caucus mobilizing in support of a foreign power in order to drag us into war with Iran has certainly been instructive. Not since the Federalist party plotted with the British during the War of 1812 has an American fifth column been so open about their treason.

But isn’t the "t"-word a bit hyperbolic? After all, don’t all Americans, even the worst warmongers among us, have the right to free speech? Those members of Congress were merely expressing their opinion – right?

Not so fast:
"Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks.

"The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said.

"The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said."

To be clear: the Israelis penetrated our communications, and used other means – including "informants" presumably inside the U.S. government – to uncover details about the emerging deal with Iran, and then passed this information on, perhaps indirectly, to their congressional fifth column, including presidential aspirants Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul, all of whom then signed on to Sen. Tom Cotton’s "open letter" to Tehran.

If this isn’t treason, then the word has no meaning.

Speaker of the House John Boehner, who plotted with Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer behind the President’s back to invite Netanyahu to address Congress, said he was "shocked" and "baffled" by the news. Not by the news they spied on us – it’s well known that the Jewish state is among the most aggressive foreign adversaries our counterintelligence agencies have to fend off – but "by the fact that there were reports in this press article that information was being passed on from the Israelis to members of Congress. I’m not aware of that at all." What’s baffling, however, is Boehner’s behavior during this Israeli incursion onto American territory: why did he suddenly decide to go full wingnut and canoodle with the Israelis to bring Bibi to American shores? And how is it the Speaker has so little knowledge of what’s going on right under his nose on Capitol Hill?

"The White House discovered the operation," reports Adam Entous of the Wall Street Journal, "when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter said." Those telling details then somehow found their way into conversations between the Israelis (and their American agents) and "U.S. lawmakers and others," accord to the Journal.

It’s one thing to spy, said a top U.S. official, but "it’s another thing to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy." Read More
 

Mossad Chief Secretly Met With Top U.S. Officials Including Sitting Senators

The Intel Hub
February 1, 2012

A clandestine Washington visit by Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo, in which he privately met with multiple Senators and other top officials, was revealed in testimony  during a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence attended by CIA director David Petraeus (CFR) and Intel Chief James Clapper.

U.S. Suspected Israeli Involvement in 1960s Missing Uranium from Pennsylvania Company NUMEC- WSJ

On September 10, 1968 NUMEC receives a key coordinator of Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program (Avraham Hermoni) and three undercover Israeli intelligence operatives. NUMEC tells the Atomic Energy Commission the Israeli visitors are "energy specialists."

U.S. Suspected Israeli Involvement in 1960s Missing Uranium Officials Believed Ally Used Materials Lifted From Pennsylvania Toward a Weapons Program

By John R. Emshwiller, WSJ, Updated Aug. 6, 2014 7:41 p.m. ET

Declassified documents from the 1970s provide new evidence that federal officials believed bomb-grade uranium that disappeared from a Pennsylvania nuclear facility in the 1960s was likely taken for use in a clandestine Israeli atomic-weapons program.

The documents, obtained earlier this year through public-records requests by a Washington-based nonprofit group, also indicate that senior officials wanted to keep the matter under wraps for fear it could undermine U.S. Middle East peace efforts.

Though the Central Intelligence Agency's case for the suspected theft wasn't conclusive, it was sufficiently persuasive that "I do not think that the President has plausible deniability" regarding the question, said a memo dated July 28, 1977, by a National Security Council staffer in President Jimmy Carter's administration.

A security council memo to Mr. Carter a few days later expressed more uncertainty about whether a theft had occurred, but noted that then-Secretary of State Cyrus Vance had a coming Middle East trip and discussed the need to keep attention "away from the CIA's information."

The question of whether one of America's closest allies was involved in the theft of some of its most valuable and dangerous material in pursuit of nuclear weapons has been one of the enduring mysteries of the atomic age. The suspected theft has drawn the attention of at least three presidents and other senior government officials.

The evidence suggested that "something did transpire," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, Mr. Carter's national-security adviser, in a recent interview. "But until you have conclusive evidence you don't want to make an international incident. This is a potentially very explosive, controversial issue." Besides, he added, even if a theft was proved, "What are we going to say to the Israelis, 'Give it back?' "

Israel hasn't ever said whether it has nuclear weapons. A spokeswoman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., declined to comment for this article.

So did a spokeswoman for the Obama administration, which like past U.S. administrations has declined to say whether it believes Israel has an atomic arsenal. A CIA spokesman also declined to comment.

Mr. Carter, who said at a 2008 gathering in Britain that he believes Israel has nuclear weapons, declined through a spokeswoman to be interviewed.

His diplomatic efforts as president, which helped produce a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, likely wouldn't have been possible "if there was some huge scandal at the time about this," said John Marcum, the staffer who wrote the July 28, 1977, memo, in a recent interview.

The theft suspicions surround events at a now-dismantled facility in Apollo, Pa., owned by a company called Nuclear Materials & Equipment Corp., or Numec. In the mid-1960s, some 200 pounds of bomb-grade uranium--enough possibly for several Hiroshima-sized bombs--couldn't be accounted for there.

An FBI investigation begun in the late 1960s, which drew interest from top Nixon administration officials, including the president, but couldn't determine what happened to the uranium, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agency documents. But FBI officials did raise questions about suspected dealings between Numec's founder and president, Zalman Shapiro, and Israeli intelligence officials, according to government documents. 

Babcock & Wilcox Co. BWC -0.35%  , a nuclear-technology and energy company that acquired Numec in 1971, declined to comment.

In an interview late last year, the 93-year-old Mr. Shapiro, who has long argued the material had been lost in the production process, said that no theft took place. He said his dealings with Israel, where Numec had commercial activities, were legitimate and to his knowledge never involved intelligence officials.

Potentially crucial sections of the recently released documents--obtained by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, an organization that has been critical of Israel--remain classified.

The latest document release underscores the need for the government to declassify the remaining information about the suspected theft, some former federal officials say.

"We know the CIA thought the material was stolen. We want to know why they thought that," said Victor Gilinsky, a former commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Government records show that a federal nuclear-enrichment facility in Ohio sent shipments to Numec containing the highest percentage of U235, the explosive form of uranium, ever known to have been produced, said Roger Mattson, another former NRC official.

Did the CIA later find that such uranium had turned up in Israel, as some documentary evidence suggests? "That's not something that's declassified," said Jessica Tuchman Mathews, a national-security official in the Carter administration who wrote or received some of the recently declassified documents.

Full Story: http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-suspected-israeli-involvement-in-1960s-uranium-theft-1407352852

Declassified Documents:  http://www.IsraelLobby.org/numec

Read also:
 A brief history of unprosecuted Israeli foreign agent, smuggling and espionage cases.

Here's How the Media/FBI/Police Apply the SPLC Training Doctrine to Provoke Homefront Terrorism *video*

BUT, says the FBI: "We have no specific threats nor are there any groups we are focusing on." Hellooooo?? Can you spell media Disinformation? It'll bring to mind: Rahm Emanuel: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste"

Here's video (2 mins.) proof of this police provocateur strategy applied in Canada!

Related to this CNN hype piece is Government Corruption: For Profit "non-profit" Hijacks Justice Department and Homeland Security *vid*
We suspect the disappointing grassroots turnout for Romney will be attributed to a "fear of terrorist" act.  First hype the unlikelihood, then correlate the 'non act' as Cause. How convenient.

The Hidden History of the Incredibly Evil Khazarian Mafia

Posted by Preston James, Ph.D on March 8, 2015 

The curtain is now being pulled back to fully expose the Khazarian Mafia and it's evil plan to infiltrate, tyrannize the whole World and eradicate all Abrahamic Religions and allow only their Babylonian Talmudism also known as Luciferianism, Satanism or ancient Baal worship.

by Preston James and Mike Harris

Note: The history of the Khazarians, specifically the Khazarian Mafia (KM), the World’s largest Organized Crime Syndicate that the Khazarian oligarchy morphed into by their deployment of Babylonian Money-Magick, has been nearly completely excised from the history books.

The present day KM knows that it cannot operate or exist without abject secrecy, and therefore has spent a lot of money having its history excised from the history books in order to prevent citizens of the World from learning about its “Evil beyond imagination”, that empowers this World’s largest Organized Crime Cabal. The authors of this article have done their best to resurrect this lost, secret history of the Khazarians and their large International Organized Crime Syndicate, best referred to as the Khazarian Mafia (KM) and make this history available to the World via the Internet, which is the new Gutenberg Press.

It has been exceedingly difficult to reconstruct this hidden secret history of the KM, so please excuse any minor inaccuracies or errors which are unintentional and are due to the difficulty in digging out the true history of Khazaria and its mafia. We have done the best we can to reconstruct it.

It was Mike Harris that connected the dots and made the actual discovery of the presence of the Khazarian Mafia’s secret history and blood oath to take revenge on Russia for helping Americans win the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, and their blood oath of revenge against America and Americans for winning these wars and sustaining the Union.

At the Syrian Conference on Combating Terrorism and Religious Extremism December 1, 2014 — in his Keynote address, Veterans Today Senior Editor and Director Gordon Duff disclosed publicly for the first time ever that World Terrorism is actually due to a large International Organized Crime Syndicate associated with Israel. This disclosure sent shock-waves at the Conference and almost instantly around the world, as almost every world leader received reports of Gordon Duff’s historical disclosure that same day, some within minutes. And the shockwaves from his historic speech in Damascus continue to reverberate around the world even to this very day.

We now know that the KM is waging a secret war against America and Americans by the use of false-flag Gladio-style terrorism, and via the illegal and Unconstitutional Federal Reserve System, the IRS, the FBI, FEMA, Homeland Security and the TSA. We know for certain that the KM was responsible for deploying an inside-job, Gladio-style false-flag attack on America on 9-11-01, as well as the Murrah Building Bombing on April 19, 1995.

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The Hidden History of the Incredibly Evil Khazarian Mafia

 100-800 AD – an incredibly Evil Society Emerges in Khazaria:

Khazarians develop into a nation ruled by an evil king, who had ancient Babylonian black arts, occult oligarchs serving as his court. During this time, Khazarians become known to surrounding countries as thieves, murderers, road bandits, and for assuming the identities of those travelers they murdered as a normal occupational practice and way of life.

800 AD – The Ultimatum is delivered by Russia and other surrounding nations:

The leaders of the surrounding nations, especially Russia, have had so many years of complaints by their citizens that, as a group, they deliver an ultimatum to the Khazarian king. They send a communique to the Khazarian king that he must choose one of the three Abrahamic religions for his people, and make it his official state religion and require all Khazarian citizens to practice it, and socialize all Khazarian children to practice that faith.

The Khazarian king was given a choice between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The Khazarian king chose Judaism, and promised to stay within the requirements laid out by the surrounding confederacy of nations led by the Russian czar. Despite his agreement and promise, the Khazarian king and his inner circle of oligarchs kept practicing ancient Babylonian black-magic, also known as Secret Satanism. This Secret Satanism involved occult ceremonies featuring child sacrifice, after “bleeding them out”, drinking their blood and eating their hearts.

The deep dark secret of the occult ceremonies was that they were all based on ancient Baal Worship, also known as worship of the Owl. In order to fool the confederacy of nations led by Russia that were watching Khazaria, the Khazarian king melded these Luciferian black-magick practices with Judaism and created a secret Satanic-hybrid religion, known as Babylonian Talmudism. 

This was made the national religion of Khazaria, and nurtured the same evil that Khazaria was known for before.

Sadly, the Khazarians continued their evil ways, robbing and murdering those from surrounding countries who traveled through Khazaria. Khazarian robbers often attempted to assume their identities after they murdered these visitors, and became masters of disguises and false identities — a practice they have continued even to this very day, along with their child-sacrifice occult ceremonies, which are actually ancient Baal Worship.

1,200 AD – Russia and the surrounding nations have had enough and take action:

About 1,200 AD, the Russians led a group of nations surrounding Khazaria and invaded it, in order to stop the Khazarian crimes against their people, which included kidnapping of their young children and infants for their blood sacrifice ceremonies to Baal. The Khazarian king and his inner court of criminals and murderers came to be known as the Khazarian Mafia (KM) by neighboring countries.

The Khazarian leaders had a well-developed spy network through which they obtained prior warning and escaped from Khazaria to European nations to the west, taking their vast fortune with them in gold and silver. They laid low and regrouped, while assuming new identities. In secret, they continued their Satanic child blood and sacrifice rituals, and trusted Baal to give them the whole world and all its riches, as they claimed he had promised them, as long as they kept bleeding out and sacrificing children and infants for him.

The Khazarian king and his court Mafia plotted eternal revenge against the Russians and the surrounding nations that invaded Khazaria and drove them from power.

The Khazarian Mafia invades England after being expelled for hundreds of years:

To accomplish their invasion, they hired Oliver Cromwell to murder King Charles 1, and make England safe for banking again. This began the English Civil Wars which raged for nearly a decade, resulting in regicide of the royal family and hundreds of the genuine English nobility. This is how the City of London was set up as the banking capital of Europe and launched the beginning of the British Empire.

From David Icke’s website www.davidicke.com. David Icke was the first ever to courageously expose the Rothschilds publicly in front of hundreds. This of course makes him an international hero and we need more with his kind of courage to break open the coverup hiding the Khazarian Mafia and bring an end to their worldwide illegitimate power.

The Khazarian Mafia (KM) decides to infiltrate and hijack all World Banking using Babylonian Black-Magick, also known as Babylonian Money-Magick or the secret art of making money from nothing also using the power of pernicious usury to accumulate interest:

Continue reading here

General Petraeus Accused of Founding ISIS/ISIL

1st posted by CV 11.16.14

Could Petraeus be carrying out orders from above? We think so. 

Is your "support" for our troops with the belief they're acting in America's national defense? Really? Or, are they and former foreign friends being sent to die for an enemy embedded within our gates. Something you may want to ponder. While doing so, your thrust for their safety - and our own -  demand they return home.

 

Thursday, November 6th, 2014 | Posted by Veterans Today

Western special services might be behind ISIS terrorists – Intel veteran

From Russia Today

The leaders of Islamic terrorists could be under the direct influence of NATO and Western powers using their movements to threaten Russia’s territorial integrity, says a former general of Russian military intelligence service.

“There are some grounds to suspect that American and British special services could support the Islamic extremists in order to target the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation,” Lieutenant-General Nikolai Pushkaryov, formerly of the Central Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff said in an interview with the RIA-Novosti news agency. “The top of these movements can be under the influence of NATO agents,” he added.

The general also commented on the statement by the head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, who promised to destroy any Islamic terrorist who voiced threats against Russia.

Kadyrov also told reporters that Chechen special services intended to hunt down and kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – the head of the Islamic State group (also known as ISIL and ISIS), adding that this man had been recruited to work for the US by General David Petraeus, the former director of the CIA, and former commander of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Back then, Kadyrov claimed the Islamic State “was acting on orders from the West and Europe.”

Pushkaryov said in his interview that he took Kadyrov’s words very seriously and believed that the head of the Chechen Republic could bring his plans to fruition. “I have a great respect towards Ramzan Kadyrov. If he and his men want to find this man, they would be capable of doing it,” he stated.

The head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, Aleksandr Bortnikov named the Islamic State as a primary threat at the meeting of the heads of special services of the CIS states on Wednesday.

Bortnikov said that IS terrorists receive combat training and experience in Iraq and Syria and then return to their home countries, including the CIS nations, as instructors, recruiters and experts in the terrorist underground. 

He added that the Taliban and other radical groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan were ready to adopt these methods and this carried additional threats to the CIS countries.

Russia has acknowledged the threat that comes from the Islamic State and promised to support countries and groups fighting against the organization. In September US Secretary of State John Kerry said that in his view Russia must join the international fight against the IS terrorists.

 The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for New Challenges and Threats, Ilya Rogachev, said that the country “did not expect any invitations and was not going to buy entry tickets,” into the US-led anti-IS coalition.

See our General Petraeus files:

Charleston Voice: Petraeus Affair: Shirtless FBI Pic Appears to Be ...

Nov 21, 2012 ... Petraeus Affair: Shirtless FBI Pic Appears to Be Playful - ABC News.

Charleston Voice: General Petraeus may have been officially ...

Sep 9, 2013 ... Another special forces veteran, retired Colonel James Coffman, worked with Steele and reported directly to General David Petraeus, who had ...

Charleston Voice: Cover-up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Nov 11, 2012 ... “What I do know is that an integral part of that firewall involved having information on Petraeus that would potentially damage his career, legacy ...

Charleston Voice: CIA-Sponsored Trolls Monitor Internet & Interact ...

Nov 29, 2012 ... Petraeus is seeking to better the CIA's ability to create online identities for undercover spies. Currently, each internet user has a digital footprint ...

Traitors Within the Gates: CFR's Military Membership Roster

Oct 6, 2014 ... GEN David Petraeus - Director CIA (Aug. 2011) Resigned 11/9/12 Admitted Adulterer present Commander of U.S. and Coalition forces in ...

Charleston Voice: Could Theft of $500M Fuel in Afghanistan be ...

Sep 11, 2012 ... Could Theft of $500M Fuel in Afghanistan be another Thread to be Unraveled on Petraeus' Watch? Posted by Charleston Voice ...

Charleston Voice: Mossad Chief Secretly Met With Top U.S. Officials ...

Feb 1, 2012 ... Feinstein then indicated that she had met Mossad chief Pardo earlier in the week in Washington, with Petraeus adding that he too met Pardo ...

Charleston Voice: U.S. Escalates Drone War in Yemen

Mar 31, 2012 ... About two weeks after the strike, U.S. General David Petraeus, now the director of the CIA, met with Yemen's then-dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Charleston Voice: Enemies Within Our Gates: Jane Harman and ...

Aug 1, 2013 ... It is astounding to find that one of the handful of prospects being floated to become CIA director following the fall of General David Petraeus is a ...

The Feds Are Terrified

Napolitano: The NSA vs. the Fourth Amendment

What if the Government Fears Freedom?

By Andrew P. Napolitano

What if the current massive spying on Americans began with an innocent secret executive order signed by President Reagan in 1986? What if Reagan contemplated that he was only authorizing American spies to spy on foreign spies unlawfully present in the U.S.?

What if Reagan knew and respected the history of the Fourth Amendment? What if the essence of that history is the colonial revulsion at the British use of general warrants? What if general warrants were issued by a secret court in London and authorized British agents in America to search wherever they wished and to seize whatever they found? What if the revulsion at this British government practice was so overwhelming that it led to the Revolutionary War against the king?

What if the whole purpose of the Fourth Amendment was to outlaw general warrants? What if the Fourth Amendment specifically guarantees the right to privacy to all in America in their persons, houses, papers and effects?

What if, in order to emphasize its condemnation of general warrants, the Fourth Amendment requires the government to obtain a warrant from a judge before invading the persons, houses, papers or effects of anyone and lays down the preconditions for the issuance of such warrants? What if those preconditions are individualized suspicion and articulated evidence of crime — called probable cause — about the specific person whose privacy the government seeks to invade?

What if these principles of constitutional fidelity, privacy and probable cause and the unlawfulness of general warrants have been regarded universally and publicly as quintessentially American values, values that set this nation apart from all others?

What if the administration of President George W. Bush was so embarrassed that 9/11 happened on its watch that it fought a useless public war in Iraq — which had nothing to do with 9/11 — and a pernicious private war against American values by unleashing American spies on innocent Americans as to whom there was no individualized probable cause so that it could create the impression it was doing something to keep America safe from another 9/11-like attack?

What if the Bush folks took Reagan’s idea of spying on foreign spies and twisted it so that they could spy on not just foreign spies, but also on foreign persons? What if they took that and leapt to spying on Americans who communicated with foreign persons?

What if they then concluded that it was easier to spy on all Americans rather than just those who communicated with foreign persons? What if they claimed in secret that all this was authorized by Reagan’s executive order and two federal statutes, their unique interpretations of which they refused to discuss in public? What if the Reagan order and the statutes authorized no such thing?

What if The New York Times caught the Bush administration in its massive violation of the Fourth Amendment, whereby it was spying on all Americans all the time without any warrants? What if the Times sat on that knowledge during, throughout and beyond the presidential election campaign of 2004? What if, when the Times revealed all this, the Bush administration agreed to stop spying? What if it didn’t stop?

What if President Obama came up with a scheme to make the spying appear legal? What if that scheme involved using secret judges in secret courts to issue general warrants? What if the Obama administration swore those judges to secrecy? What if it swore to secrecy all in the government who are involved in undermining basic American values? What if it forgot that everyone in government also swears an oath to uphold the Constitution? What if Edward Snowden violated his oath to secrecy in order to uphold his oath to the Constitution, which includes the Fourth Amendment, and spilled the beans on the government?

What if all this spying by the feds has spawned spying by the locals? What if more than 50 local police departments now have received false cell towers from the FBI, but have sworn not to tell anyone about them? What if these towers trick cellphone signals into exposing the content of cellphone conversations to the police? What if the police have done this without the knowledge of the elected representatives who are their bosses? What if they do this without any warrants? What if the Supreme Court last year outlawed police invading cellphones without warrants?

What if both Bush and Obama have argued that their first job is to keep America safe, and they will twist, torture the plain meaning of and even break laws in order to accomplish that job? What if the presidential oath is to enforce all laws faithfully, including ones the president may hate?

What if Bush and Obama have been wrong about the priority of their constitutional duties as president? What if the president’s first job is to preserve the Constitution? What if that includes the Fourth Amendment? What if the president keeps us safe but unfree?

What if invading our freedoms keeps us less safe? What if the president has failed to keep our freedoms safe? What if the government doesn’t like freedoms? What if the government is afraid we will exercise them?

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The Best of Andrew P. Napolitano

Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written nine books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit creators.com.

source lewrockwell

Morton Halperin (CFR) and his ultra-radical Center for National Security Studies

1st. pub. by CV 08.12.2012

Morton Halperin and his ultra-radical Center for National Security Studies

The Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.  Bottom Row: Ellen Williams, John Glenn, James Schlesinger, William Perry, Lee Hamilton, John Foster.  Top Row: Frederick Ikle, James Woolsey, Keith Payne, Harry Cartland, Morton Halperin, Bruce Tarter.  (Credit: USIP Photo/Steven E. Purcell)

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Morton H. Halperin was born on June 13, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, son of Lillian Neubart and Harry Halperin. He married Ina Weinstein. He is an alumnus of Columbia University(B.A., 1958) and Yale University(M.A., 1959; Ph.D., 1961). He is the author of Limited War in the Nuclear Age(1963) and China and the Bomb(1965). He is co-author of Strategy and Arms Control(1961). Morton's son, Mark, also to the far left has been Political Director of ABC News since 1997.

Morton's other son David is a gay activist and professor at the University of Michigan.  He has authored and edited a number of books about homosexuality, including: How to Do the History of Homosexuality; Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography; The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader; and One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love.

Snowden: Remove The Government's Ability To Interfere With Our Rights

By: Samuel Eaton Feb 24, 2015

In an ‘Ask Me Anything’ question and answer session on Reddit, Edward Snowden was asked: “What’s the best way to make NSA spying an issue in the 2016 Presidential Election? It seems like while it was a big deal in 2013, ISIS and other events have put it on the back burner for now in the media and general public. 

What are your ideas for how to bring it back to the forefront?”

Snowden replied:

This is a good question, and there are some good traditional answers here. Organizing is important. Activism is important.

At the same time, we should remember that governments don’t often reform themselves. One of the arguments in a book I read recently (Bruce Schneier, “Data and Goliath”), is that perfect enforcement of the law sounds like a good thing, but that may not always be the case. The end of crime sounds pretty compelling, right, so how can that be?

Well, when we look back on history, the progress of Western civilization and human rights is actually founded on the violation of law. America was of course born out of a violent revolution that was an outrageous treason against the crown and established order of the day. History shows that the righting of historical wrongs is often born from acts of unrepentant criminality. Slavery. The protection of persecuted Jews.

But even on less extremist topics, we can find similar examples. How about the prohibition of alcohol? Gay marriage? Marijuana?

Where would we be today if the government, enjoying powers of perfect surveillance and enforcement, had — entirely within the law — rounded up, imprisoned, and shamed all of these lawbreakers?

Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren’t just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determining our futures.

How does this relate to politics? Well, I suspect that governments today are more concerned with the loss of their ability to control and regulate the behavior of their citizens than they are with their citizens’ discontent.

How do we make that work for us? We can devise means, through the application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if they will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights.

You can see the beginnings of this dynamic today in the statements of government officials complaining about the adoption of encryption by major technology providers. The idea here isn’t to fling ourselves into anarchy and do away with government, but to remind the government that there must always be a balance of power between the governing and the governed, and that as the progress of science increasingly empowers communities and individuals, there will be more and more areas of our lives where — if government insists on behaving poorly and with a callous disregard for the citizen — we can find ways to reduce or remove their powers on a new — and permanent — basis.

 Our rights are not granted by governments.

They are inherent to our nature. But it’s entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.

We haven’t had to think about that much in the last few decades because quality of life has been increasing across almost all measures in a significant way, and that has led to a comfortable complacency. But here and there throughout history, we’ll occasionally come across these periods where governments think more about what they “can” do rather than what they “should” do, and what is lawful will become increasingly distinct from what is moral.

In such times, we’d do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn’t defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to re-balance it toward just ends.

Glenn Greenwald focused on how the issue did not break down along party lines:

The key tactic DC uses to make uncomfortable issues disappear is bipartisan consensus. When the leadership of both parties join together – as they so often do, despite the myths to the contrary – those issues disappear from mainstream public debate.

The most interesting political fact about the NSA controversy, to me, was how the divisions didn’t break down at all on partisan lines. Huge amount of the support for our reporting came from the left, but a huge amount came from the right. When the first bill to ban the NSA domestic metadata program was introduced, it was tellingly sponsored by one of the most conservative Tea Party members (Justin Amash) and one of the most liberal (John Conyers).

The problem is that the leadership of both parties, as usual, are in full agreement: they love NSA mass surveillance. So that has blocked it from receiving more debate. That NSA program was ultimately saved by the unholy trinity of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner, who worked together to defeat the Amash/Conyers bill.

The division over this issue (like so many other big ones, such as crony capitalism that owns the country) is much more “insider v. outsider” than “Dem v. GOP”. But until there are leaders of one of the two parties willing to dissent on this issue, it will be hard to make it a big political issue.

That’s why the Dem efforts to hand Hillary Clinton the nomination without contest are so depressing. She’s the ultimate guardian of bipartisan status quo corruption, and no debate will happen if she’s the nominee against some standard Romney/Bush-type GOP candidate. Some genuine dissenting force is crucial.

Both make great points. We must remember that it is our duty to restore our rights and take away the power of the government to destroy those rights. But to do so means full spectrum cooperation.

Read the whole Snowden, Greenwald, and Poitras Reddit AMA here.

via benswann