Real Purpose of NSA Programs: Targeting Dissent

These programs were never about terrorism: they’re about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They’re about power.

 -Edward Snowden

When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia briefly let the mask slip during recent comments to University of Hawaii law students it was a rare moment of openness as to reveal the pathology of the leadership class here in The Homeland.  During an exchange over a World War II era case involving Japanese Americans who were rounded up and placed in internment camps such as the infamous Manzanar Scalia stated that  “…you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again” and "In times of war, the laws fall silent." Times of war such as the permanent war on terror that is now in its thirteenth year running and still picking up steam as the oppressive apparatus of the state power of Leviathan has been exposed thanks to the sacrifices of former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The ongoing flow of revelations provided by the documents that Snowden appropriated as a public service to an America that has ever since the 'day when everything changed' on September 11, 2001 has been bludgeoned by fear into a state of meek acceptance and submission to their own enslavement continue to emerge. What is starting to come out now is even worse than just the massive unconstitutional warrantless surveillance, data-mining and mass storage of all of the communications and financial information of millions of law-abiding citizens that has been a constant nuisance to the Obama administration. Now we get the real stuff, first there was the trolling of porn sites for incriminating data, the obvious involvement in economic trickery and industrial espionage, blackmail of political officials and now thanks to Polk Award winner Glenn Greenwald - targeting political dissent.

In a story that broke yesterday by Greenwald and Ryan Gallagheron First Look Media's new online magazine The Intercept entitled “Snowden Documents Reveal Covert Surveillance and Pressure Tactics Aimed at WikiLeaks and Its Supporters” it was revealed that the NSA and its foreign partners went after supporters of Wikileaks as well as other activist groups. The greatest enemy of the secret state is transparency and the relentless manner in which the U.S. government and its lackeys have gone after first Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald is an indication of just how much it fears the truth about the real intent of the surveillance programs ever getting out. The list of those who have run afoul of the secret state is long and the vengeance has been severe.

Some targets of note with the exception of the aforementioned three are the free lance journalist Danny Casolaro who was investigating high crimes involving government officials when his body was found in a West Virginia hotel room in 1991 in a blood filled bathtub. It could be speculated that he was on to something big involving the surveillance state, particularly the CIA and NSA as well as foreign intelligence services as his research included matters associated with the now forgotten PROMIS software, a powerful and advanced precursor to today's NSA surveillance and data-mining programs. He could have been the first casualty in the war on journalism and it was the era before the internet so it was much easier to simply 'shut down' a dangerous line of inquiry by eliminating a 'nuisance' than it is in 2014. Then there was Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings whose reporting brought down General Stanley McChrystal formerly of JSOC and had amassed a large list of enemies. His mysterious and fiery death in an automobile 'accident' has been relegated to the memory hole just months afterwards, it is of note that according to some reports that he was also onto something big and was allegedly in contact with Wikileaks lawyers shortly before his new Mercedes was engulfed in a ball of fire.

But l digress...

Greenwald's expose is a damning indictment of just how out of control that the rogue elements of the deep state have become in their relentless drive to forever lock down their power and the targeting of dissenters is the most critical component of their long term strategy. I excerpt from the piece:

The efforts – detailed in documents provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – included a broad campaign of international pressure aimed not only at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but at what the U.S. government calls “the human network that supports WikiLeaks.” The documents also contain internal discussions about targeting the file-sharing site Pirate Bay and hacktivist collectives such as Anonymous.

 One classified document from Government Communications Headquarters, Britain’s top spy agency, shows that GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly monitor visitors to a WikiLeaks site. By exploiting its ability to tap into the fiber-optic cables that make up the backbone of the Internet, the agency confided to allies in 2012, it was able to collect the IP addresses of visitors in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines like Google.

Another classified document from the U.S. intelligence community, dated August 2010, recounts how the Obama administration urged foreign allies to file criminal charges against Assange over the group’s publication of the Afghanistan war logs.

 A third document, from July 2011, contains a summary of an internal discussion in which officials from two NSA offices – including the agency’s general counsel and an arm of its Threat Operations Center – considered designating WikiLeaks as “a ‘malicious foreign actor’ for the purpose of targeting.” Such a designation would have allowed the group to be targeted with extensive electronic surveillance – without the need to exclude U.S. persons from the surveillance searches.

 In 2008, not long after WikiLeaks was formed, the U.S. Army prepared a report that identified the organization as an enemy, and plotted how it could be destroyed. The new documents provide a window into how the U.S. and British governments appear to have shared the view that WikiLeaks represented a serious threat, and reveal the controversial measures they were willing to take to combat it.

Two quick things to take away from the excerpt is that the rogue agency as well as the U.S. military is not only speaking of designating WikiLeaks as a "malicious foreign actor" which would make it subject to the anti-terror (anti-dissent) secret system of laws jammed down Americans' throats after 9/11 but that it is also going after those who are even supportive of the organization - including domestic targets. This is the key component of the entire piece in my personal opinion in that all of that data-mining that will take up residence at the massive NSA Utah facility and other locations for vague future purposes has now become a little clearer. The data will be perused for going after 'enemies of the state' and the oppression will not be limited to dissenters and sympathizers but also to all of their known acquaintances, family members, friends and other associates past and present so as to intimidate, bully, threaten and extort in order to build a case against the targets.

NSA whistleblower William Binney perfectly sums it up in a recent interview with Rob Kall of the progressive website OpEd News available here:

R.K.: Anything that we haven't covered yet?  We have got to wrap this up.  Anything that we haven't covered that's really important that you would like the listeners to know about?

W.B.: Just that my major concern isn't with NSA having access to this data or having this data, it's the use of it and once they get it and store it, being used by law enforcement and our law enforcement is spreading that around the world to other law enforcement and so it's corrupting not just our democracy, we're becoming a police state because of this but it's also corrupting the countries around the world so it's really endangering the democratic process and the court systems that we have established.  That is really destroying our society.  We may not know it yet but eventually it'll get to all of us.

R.K.: Bad news.  So you told me that you're going to spend the rest of your life on this. 

W.B.: Yes.  Until my government basically starts to do the right thing, and that means become a constitutionally based operating government.

R.K.: Do you see any ideological or party differences in the way this is being handled?

W.B.: Actually no.  I think they're all basically the same.  They've been, I mean for example you know Bush would refer to have acquired the terrorists, captured them, put them in to torture them to get information; whereas Obama would kill them with a drone.  So it's the same principle, I mean they're just doing whatever they want, there are no limits to what they want to do.  Especially the latest NDAA that talks about giving the president the power to declare anybody, any US Citizen even in this country a terrorist and have the military pick them up, take them off the street, incarcerate them indefinitely, and give them no due process. 

That to me is executing something very similar to what the Nazis did in 1933, Special Order 48, that did exactly the same thing.  And that's how they got rid of all of their opposition.  All the communists and anybody else that opposed them.  But I mean they sent them to the concentration camps.  So far we have not been sending them to the concentration camps but they'll do things like send the FBI after you or maybe attempt to put you in jail like they tried to do with a number of us. 

So they're not as radical yet but the problem is that when you give people that kind of power or they hold that kind of power, sooner or later, they're going to use it. One way or another. 

R.K.: You know it seems to me that the same applies to technology.  If the technology is available or if it can be developed they're going to develop it and they're going to use it.  

The elimination of political opponents and crushing of dissent is essential for authoritarian regimes, it is notable that it was Justice Scalia, a Ronald Reagan appointee who brought up the internment camps in American's future for it was another former Reagan official, Lt. Colonel Oliver North whose REX 84 program was similarly targeting political dissidents and using the aforementioned PROMIS software to do so. I excerpt from a 1990s WIRED magazine piece "The Inslaw Octopus" by Richard Fricker:

 Lt. Col. Oliver North also may have been using the program. According to several intelligence community sources, PROMIS was in use at a 6,100-square-foot command center built on the sixth floor of the Justice Department. According to both a contractor who helped design the center and information disclosed during the Iran-Contra hearings, Oliver North had a similar, but smaller, White House operations room that was connected by computer link to the DOJ's command center.

 Using the computers in his command center, North tracked dissidents and potential troublemakers within the United States as part of a domestic emergency preparedness program, commissioned under Reagan's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), according to sources and published reports. Using PROMIS, sources point out, North could have drawn up lists of anyone ever arrested for a political protest, for example, or anyone who had ever refused to pay their taxes. Compared to PROMIS, Richard Nixon's enemies list or Sen. Joe McCarthy's blacklist look downright crude. This operation was so sensitive that when Rep. Jack Brooks asked North about it during the Iran-Contra hearings, the hearing was immediately suspended pending an executive (secret) conference. When the hearings were reconvened, the issue of North's FEMA dealings was dropped.

The greatest yet to be asked question about the ongoing surveillance programs, given the comments by Scalia is not how much has yet to be revealed but when did it all begin in the first place? 

FBI Goons Spied on Libertarian Website for Years

Today’s example of the fascist powers of a rogue government harassing American citizens, particularly journalists is that story that broke in The Guardian about the bureau’s years of monitoring libertarian website Antiwar.com. As a regular reader of the site over the years I have found it to be a consistent and principled critic of the decidedly anti-American domestic and foreign policy strain that has contaminated this once great country over the past twelve years. It is no wonder that Antiwar.com is on the enemies list of the warfare/security industrial complex, the site has never sold out in the manner that so many of the other early blogs did to curry favor with the establishment. The Guardian piece which is entitled “FBI monitored anti-war website in error for six years, documents show” goes on to provide the official cover story that it was all a big mistake – bullshit! The government hates the site as it does any that offer up an uncompromising critique of the evils of Empire.

The Guardian story references an ACLU lawsuit and documents related to the government attack on a legitimate forum for news and opinion that have been obtained through the Freedom of Information Act - heavily redacted of course. The COINTELPRO style operation has been tabbed as "sloppy" rather than sinister which is what it truly is. The background is that in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks that the site received a threat “Be warned assholes, ill be posting your site address to all the hack boards tonight, telling them about the little article at the moscowtimes and all. YOUR SITE IS HISTORY”.  Eric Garris, the site's managing editor passed the threat along to the local FBI office which then used the opportunity to make "a mistake" that could be played off that Antiwar.com and Garris had been the ones making the threat against the FBI. Subsequently the site, Garris, top writer Justin Raimondo have been on the proverbial double secret probation and if you have been paying any attention at all to the NSA spying, data-mining and storage of information for future investigations I would imagine any and all visitors to the site are also on a watchlist. Per the story "FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the bureau could not comment, as the ACLU’s litigation of the antiwar.com case is ongoing." More bullshit.

I excerpt the following from the Guardian piece, written by Spencer Ackerman:

According to unredacted portions of the documents, that apparent mix-up was the first time antiwar.com came onto the FBI’s radar – a purview that would last at least six years.

Garris said he never heard back from the FBI, and had no reason to believe that the incident had any broader impact, until he saw what was in his FBI file. “It was pretty scary to think that in my FBI file, and perhaps other government agency files, there was a report that I was considered a threat based on that,” Garris said.

“That may follow me for the rest of my life. Any time I interact with any law enforcement or government agencies, they’re going to be able to see that, and make evaluations of me based on it. It’s very scary.”

The mix-up did not stay limited to the San Francisco field office. In 2004, FBI officials in Newark, New Jersey, compiled a “threat assessment” of Garris and his colleague Justin Raimondo.

The 2004 “threat assessment” took note of Raimondo and Garris’ anti-war views, listed articles and media appearances in which they made their arguments, and reported that “peaceful” anti-war protesters in the UK passed out literature referencing antiwar.com that suggested the US government was holding Israeli spies in connection to the September 11 attacks.

Contained within the file are copies of articles penned by Raimondo advancing the conspiracy theory that Israel had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks.

The FBI created profiles of both Raimondo and Garris using public records, such as those held by the Department of Motor Vehicles, to include their physical descriptions. “The rights of individuals to post information and to express personal views on the Internet should be honored and protected; however, some material that is circulated on the internet can compromise current active FBI investigations,” reads an unsigned “analyst comment” on the 2004 threat assessment.

The unnamed analyst said there were “several unanswered questions regarding www.antiwar.com,” such as the source of its funding, the presence of material on the site that is “not suitable for public release” and whether Raimondo was using “a pseudonym.”

Note that the piece does state that  "Contained within the file are copies of articles penned by Raimondo advancing the conspiracy theory that Israel had advance knowledge of the September 11 attacks. " This is textbook establishment character assassination to slyly insinuate that Raimondo is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist or in the favorite pejorative term "a truther". Antiwar.com has been a vocal critic of both the influence of right-wing Israeli backed lobbies in America on politicians and policy as well as the current right-wing government's warmongering fanaticism. I would strongly recommend reading Haaretz on a regular basis which is often as critical of Israeli militarism and increasing internal intolerance as anything seen on Antiwar.com. But it sells well to the schmucks who don't bother to do their homework or otherwise accept anything that government agencies proven to be historically contemptuous of the law happens to spew out as justification for their fascist "mistakes".

Don’t expect to see this covered in the state-corporate media, they also hate sites such as Antiwar.com because it exposes the corruption of the journalistic profession in America. There are very few writers who wouldn’t risk their careers to take principled stands against the heinous acts of this torture state and its allies. Chris Hedges, formerly of the New York Times comes to mind as one and after his now infamous commencement speech at Rockford College back in 2003 when the Bushreich was arming for wars and idiotic yellow ribbon magnets adorned fleets of SUV’s. Hedges immediately fell into disfavor with the establishment NYT and has since spent his career outside of the corrupt propaganda apparatus writing several books on the deterioration of The Homeland, both moral and economically. While Hedges is not for everyone, his views are probably a bit leftist for a good many libertarians and paleo conservatives he is consistent in his denouncement of the corporate fascist warfare state. Hedges notably was a party of a lawsuit against the Obama administration over the National Defense Authorization Act. Justin Raimondo is another relentless critic and truth teller and one hell of a patriotic American. We need far more like him and hopefully the exposure of the FBI harassment of Antiwar.com will attract much more traffic to the site as well as some embarrassment to yet another government Gestapo operation.

As the great crusading journalist I.F. Stone once famously wrote - "All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed". Antiwar.com does a damned good job in following the tradition of the men who used to be real journalists who in their constitutional duties held the liars in high places accountable for their crimes.  In the age of the parasites and presstitutes who routinely carry water for the corrupt state and pimp for its wars and policies of domestic repression it should surprise nobody when they are harassed by rogue agencies such as the FBI.