2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumWas Hillary Clinton, while Secretary of State, Running a Secret Spy Network?
AllGov.com is among those wondering. Here is one of the documents that seems to support that contention:
I wonder to what, exactly, the parts about a "Trifecta" and an "October Surprise" refer?
Was Hillary Clinton, While Secretary of State, Running a Secret Spy Network?
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. Blumenthals emails, which were posted on the internet, showed hed had correspondence with Hillary Clinton via her private email account. They revealed that Blumenthal was providing back-channel intelligence to Clinton about Libyas 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 Clintons 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 Agencys (CIA) clandestine service in Europe. Drumheller left the CIA in 2005 and started his own security business.
CONTINUED...
http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/was-hillary-clinton-while-secretary-of-state-running-a-secret-spy-network-150330?news=856096
We talked a bit on it on DU last year:
Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aides Secret Spy Network
and here...
Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aides Secret Spy Network
This matters because people wonder why, in the wealthiest times in human history, the rich get richer and the middle class disappearing.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)"Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves 43.6 billion barrels outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects."
http://www.medialens.org/index.php/component/acymailing/archive/view/listid-3-alerts-precis/mailid-74-three-little-words-wikileaks-libya-oil.html
Betty Karlson
(7,231 posts)"Look voters, I can start wars too!"
Octafish
(55,745 posts)"We came. We saw. He died." -- Hillary Clinton
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2051826/We-came-saw-died-What-Hillary-Clinton-told-news-reporter-moments-hearing-Gaddafis-death.html
Hah. Hah. It is to laugh.
firebrand80
(2,760 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)The author was a Chicago Boy helping implement the scam for ATT, Dita Beard, Agusto Pinochet and the CIA:
President Clinton and the Chilean Model.
By José Piñera
Midnight at the House of Good and Evil
"It is 12:30 at night, and Bill Clinton asks me and Dottie: 'What do you know about the Chilean social-security system?' recounted Richard Lamm, the three-term former governor of Colorado. It was March 1995, and Lamm and his wife were staying that weekend in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House.
I read about this surprising midnight conversation in an article by Jonathan Alter (Newsweek, May 13, 1996), as I was waiting at Dulles International Airport for a flight to Europe. The article also said that early the next morning, before he left to go jogging, President Bill Clinton arranged for a special report about the Chilean reform produced by his staff to be slipped under Lamm's door.
That news piqued my interest, so as soon as I came back to the United States, I went to visit Richard Lamm. I wanted to know the exact circumstances in which the president of the worlds superpower engages a fellow former governor in a Saturday night exchange about the system I had implemented 15 years earlier.
Lamn and I shared a coffee on the terrace of his house in Denver. He not only was the most genial host to this curious Chilean, but he also proved to be deeply motivated by the issues surrounding aging and the future of America. So we had an engaging conversation. At the conclusion, I ventured to ask him for a copy of the report that Clinton had given him. He agreed to give it to me on the condition that I do not make it public while Clinton was president. He also gave me a copy of the handwritten note on White House stationery, dated 3-21-95, which accompanied the report slipped under his door. It read:
[font color="red"]Dick,
Sorry I missed you this morning.
It was great to have you and Dottie here.
Here's the stuff on Chile I mentioned.
Best,
Bill.[/font color]
Three months before that Clinton-Lamm conversation about the Chilean system, I had a long lunch in Santiago with journalist Joe Klein of Newsweek magazine. A few weeks afterwards, he wrote a compelling article entitled,[font color="green"] "If Chile can do it...couldn´t North America privatize its social-security system?" [/font color]He concluded by stating that "the Chilean system is perhaps the first significant social-policy idea to emanate from the Southern Hemisphere." (Newsweek, December 12, 1994).
I have reasons to think that probably this piece got Clintons attention and, given his passion for policy issues, he became a quasi expert on Chiles Social Security reform. Clinton was familiar with Klein, as the journalist covered the 1992 presidential race and went on anonymously to write the bestseller Primary Colors, a thinly-veiled account of Clintons campaign.
The mother of all reforms
While studying for a Masters and a Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University, I became enamored with Americas unique experiment in liberty and limited government. In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote the first volume of Democracy in America hoping that many of the salutary aspects of American society might be exported to his native France. I dreamed with exporting them to my native Chile.
So, upon finishing my Ph.D. in 1974 and while fully enjoying my position as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University and a professor at Boston University, I took on the most difficult decision in my life: to go back to help my country rebuild its destroyed economy and democracy along the lines of the principles and institutions created in America by the Founding Fathers. Soon after I became Secretary of Labor and Social Security, and in 1980 I was able to create a fully funded system of personal retirement accounts. Historian Niall Ferguson has stated that this reform was the most profound challenge to the welfare state in a generation. Thatcher and Reagan came later. The backlash against welfare started in Chile.
But while de Tocquevilles 1835 treatment contained largely effusive praise of American government, the second volume of Democracy in America, published five years later, strikes a more cautionary tone. He warned that the American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money. In fact at some point during the 20th century, the culture of self reliance and individual responsibility that had made America a great and free nation was diluted by the creation of [font color="green"] an Entitlement State,[/font color] reminiscent of the increasingly failed European welfare state. What America needed was a return to basics, to the founding tenets of limited government and personal responsibility.
[font color="green"]In a way, the principles America helped export so successfully to Chile through a group of free market economists needed to be reaffirmed through an emblematic reform. I felt that the Chilean solution to the impending Social Security crisis could be applied in the USA.[/font color]
CONTINUED...
http://www.josepinera.org/articles/articles_clinton_chilean_model.htm
Oh, well. As long as there's free football on Sundays, most men won't notice.
FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)and she wanted to be sure her faction was completely privatized.
GreenPartyVoter
(72,388 posts)truedelphi
(32,324 posts)I would be totally surprised. I mean, Obama just awarded honors to Kissinger,
Hillary's mentor.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)why kissinger right now?
jfern
(5,204 posts)So she simply found another way to have him involved, even though he no longer had classified security clearances for all the classified information he was dealing with.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)From his association with a former president, young Frank got a great deal in Kazakhstan:
By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
The New York Times, JAN. 31, 2008
EXCERPT...
Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstans president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent.
Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leaders bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Mr. Clintons public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstans poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clintons wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstans state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.
The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the worlds largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra, analysts said.
SNIP...
Mr. Giustra foresaw a bull market in gold and began investing in mines in Argentina, Australia and Mexico. He turned a $20 million shell company into a powerhouse that, after a $2.4 billion merger with Goldcorp Inc., became Canadas second-largest gold company.
CONTINUED...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31donor.html
From his association with a future president, young George got a great deal in Bahrain.
Harken Energy And Insider Trading
by Stephen Pizzo
Mother Jones, September / October 1992
EXCERPT...
Harken Energy was formed in l973 by two oilmen who would benefit from a successful covert effort to destabilize Australia's Labor Party government (which had attempted to shut out foreign oil exploration). A decade later, Harken was sold to a new investment group headed by New York attorney Alan G. Quasha, a partner in the firm of Quasha, Wessely & Schneider. Quasha's father, a powerful attorney in the Philippines, had been a staunch supporter of then-president Ferdinand Marcos. William Quasha had also given legal advice to two top officials of the notorious Nugan Hand Bank in Australia, a CIA operation.
After the sale of Harken Energy in 1983, Alan Quasha became a director and chairman of the board. Under Quasha, Harken suddenly absorbed Junior's struggling Spectrum 7 in 1986. The merger immediately opened a financial horn of plenty and reversed Junior's fortunes. But like his brother Jeb, Junior seemed unconcerned about the characters who were becoming his benefactors. Harken's $25 million stock offering in 1987, for example, was underwritten by a Little Rock, Arkansas, brokerage house, Stephens, Inc., which placed the Harken stock offering with the London subsidiary of Union Bank -- a bank that had surfaced in the scandal that resulted in the downfall of the Australian Labor government in 1976 and, later, in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal. (It was also Union Bank, according to congressional hearings on international money laundering, that helped the now-notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce International skirt Panamanian money-laundering laws by flying cash out of the country in private jets, and that was used by Ferdinand Marcos to stash 325 tons of Philippine gold around the world.)
SNIP...
Suddenly, in January 1990, Harken Energy became the talk of the Texas oil industry. The company with no offshore-oil-drilling experience beat out a more-established international conglomerate, Amoco, in bagging the exclusive contract to drill in a promising new offshore oil field for the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain. The deal had been arranged for Harken by two former Stephens, Inc., brokers. A company insider claims the president's son did not initiate the deal -- but feels that his presence in the firm helped with the Bahrainis. "Hell, that's why he's on the damn board," the insider says. "...You say, 'By the way, the president's son sits on our board.' You use that. There's nothing wrong with that."
Junior has told acquaintances conflicting stories about his own involvement in the deal. He first claimed that he had "recused" himself from the deal; "George said he left the room when Bahrain was being discussed 'because we can't even have the appearance of having anything to do with the government.' He was into a big rant about how unfair it was to be the president's son. He said, 'I was so scrupulous I was never in the room when it was discussed.'"
Junior alternately claimed, to reporters for the Wall Street Journal and D Magazine, that he had opposed the arrangement. But the company insider says, to the contrary, that Junior was excited about the Bahrain deal. "Like any member of the board, he was thrilled," the associate says. "His attitude was, 'Holy shit, what a great deal!'"
CONTINUED...
http://www.georgewalkerbush.net/harkenenergyandinsidertrading.htm
I guess it reall is old fashioned to want to separate bank and state.
FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)that Bill Clinton's people wanted the private server. The motive sure is apparent.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)they just "enact" it ...
2cannan
(344 posts)HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)and he was encouraged by HRC to keep pumping his contacts for leaks of classified information from the CIA and to keep sending that information to her.
This wasn't 'back-channel' in the sense that it was workers in one branch of gov't sharing what they thought another branch should have.
On it's face it's political espionage. Information was leaked out of government from CIA to Drumheller (at the time a civilian) to Blumenthal (a civilian) and then it was sent to Clinton, who had a responsibility to report a known leak. But she didn't report it. She encouraged it. And frankly, we the public don't know where else Blumenthal trafficked what he collected. For all we know Clinton was just one address on his listserv.
Obama detests leaks, he can't say much about email because he emailed her at the private email address. But the leaks. I think he has some degree of freedom of movement on that. As we've seen Obama isn't friendly to leakers.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Last edited Mon May 9, 2016, 03:18 PM - Edit history (2)
2011 and 2012. Actual US covert activities, including support for opposition groups, in both countries goes back decades.
Reportedly, Obama was skeptical and cautious about more direct US involvement in these serial regime change operations, so the four corners of those findings were likely to be narrowly drawn. That reportedly chafed on the regime change sponsors within the Administration. My take is that Hillary, in coordination with Petraus, was operating a far more extensive US operation than has been publicly acknowledged, and the two agencies were involved up to their necks in some very nasty clandestine activities that extended far outside the four corners of Obama's authorization.
These covert operation authorizations are actually multi-stage and require additional White House authorizations as they proceed and escalate. Here's how Reuters described the Libya finding in March 2011: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-usa-order-idUSTRE72T6H220110330
In order for specific operations to be carried out under the provisions of such a broad authorization -- for example the delivery of cash or weapons to anti-Gaddafi forces -- the White House also would have to give additional "permission" allowing such activities to proceed.
Former officials say these follow-up authorizations are known in the intelligence world as "'Mother may I' findings."
In 2009 Obama gave a similar authorization for the expansion of covert U.S. counter-terrorism actions by the CIA in Yemen. The White House does not normally confirm such orders have been issued.
It wasn't an intelligence gathering operation so much as an arms to Sunni Jihadi groups paramilitary operation run in conjunction with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Turkey, and Jordan. Both Petraeus and Hillary were also known to be strong advocates for overthrow and paramilitary operations against Iran, including assassinations, which were being run by the Israelis.
We know that after Panetta was replaced at CIA on June 30, 2011, the regime change policy was was most forcefully advocated and prosecuted by Petraeus at CIA and Clinton at State. We know that on September 11, 2012 that the arms to rebels program blew up in their faces when the CIA/State Dept arms storage compound in eastern Libya was overrun by militias, resulting in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens who had taken in-country command of the operation since the previous March. We know that both Petraeus and Clinton's communications were both being monitored by various parties in the US and abroad. Guccifer's hack of Blumenthal's AOL account was not the original source of information about his communications with Hillary. According to his indictment, his hack of that account occurred on March 12, 2013: http://thesmokinggun.com/file/guccifer-indictment?page=5
It was reported that on November 9, 2012, Petraeus was discovered to to have been involved in the extramarital affair with Petraeus. The circumstances of how the FBI discovered this affair are implausible, and appear to have been reverse engineered to cover ongoing surveillance.
It seems likely that the White House, the NSA, and the FBI have known about Petraeus and Hillary's semi-privatized covert operations in real time. They played out the rope. The only question is whether they will now actually hang HRC.
FlatBaroque
(3,160 posts)"It seems likely that the White House, the NSA, and the FBI have known about Petraeus and Hillary's semi-privatized covert operations in real time. They played out the rope. The only question is whether they will now actually hang HRC."
Spot on, I think. I wish we knew even 20% of what goes on in OUR government. It seems to have become a tool for the elites to pursue their own agendas of self-enrichment.
By the way, Octafish and leveymg on the same thread >>
leveymg
(36,418 posts)I don't believe that the NSA and other federal agencies first learned about Blumenthal and Hillary's emails from Guccifer's hack. According to the Indictment, Guccifer hacked Blumenthal ("Victim 5" on March 12, 2013" http://thesmokinggun.com/file/guccifer-indictment?page=5
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Though sad that the thread is about the total corruption of about every elected official that we Progressive Dems once believed in.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Last edited Tue May 10, 2016, 11:16 AM - Edit history (1)
You, leveymg and the other DUers who stand up to secret power are what Democracy is about.
ETA: What a true wise man said:
If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person. Fred Rogers
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The Libya-Syria secret findings show a lot of arms running to a lot of groups, some of whom are our sworn enemies. And thus, Seymour Hersh was tossed under the bus.
The Red Line and the Rat Line
Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels
EXCERPT...
In January, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the assault by a local militia in September 2012 on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others. The reports criticism of the State Department for not providing adequate security at the consulate, and of the intelligence community for not alerting the US military to the presence of a CIA outpost in the area, received front-page coverage and revived animosities in Washington, with Republicans accusing Obama and Hillary Clinton of a cover-up. A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafis arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didnt always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. (A spokesperson for Petraeus denied the operation ever took place.)
The operation had not been disclosed at the time it was set up to the congressional intelligence committees and the congressional leadership, as required by law since the 1970s. The involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation. The former intelligence official explained that for years there has been a recognised exception in the law that permits the CIA not to report liaison activity to Congress, which would otherwise be owed a finding. (All proposed CIA covert operations must be described in a written document, known as a finding, submitted to the senior leadership of Congress for approval.) Distribution of the annex was limited to the staff aides who wrote the report and to the eight ranking members of Congress the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and the Democratic and Republicans leaders on the House and Senate intelligence committees. This hardly constituted a genuine attempt at oversight: the eight leaders are not known to gather together to raise questions or discuss the secret information they receive.
The annex didnt tell the whole story of what happened in Benghazi before the attack, nor did it explain why the American consulate was attacked. The consulates only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms, the former intelligence official, who has read the annex, said. It had no real political role.
Washington abruptly ended the CIAs role in the transfer of arms from Libya after the attack on the consulate, but the rat line kept going. The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists, the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of Syrian rebels. On 28 November 2012, Joby Warrick of the Washington Post reported that the previous day rebels near Aleppo had used what was almost certainly a manpad to shoot down a Syrian transport helicopter. The Obama administration, Warrick wrote, has steadfastly opposed arming Syrian opposition forces with such missiles, warning that the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists and be used to shoot down commercial aircraft. Two Middle Eastern intelligence officials fingered Qatar as the source, and a former US intelligence analyst speculated that the manpads could have been obtained from Syrian military outposts overrun by the rebels. There was no indication that the rebels possession of manpads was likely the unintended consequence of a covert US programme that was no longer under US control.
CONTINUED...
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." -- Henry Kissinger, after USN slogan.
The National Security secrecy card often is cover for grifters. I remember one veep who got ahead via NSDD.
Somewhere in Detroit, 1980 GOP Convention:
After the election, the relationship really, ah, evolved:
George Bush Takes Charge
The Uses of "Counter-Terrorism"
By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58
A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.
During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.
Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.
The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.
SNIP...
Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.
CONTINUED...
More details from the good professor:
EXCERPT...
NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985
The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.
The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.
[font color="green"]The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.
Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified.[/font color] The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.
CONTINUED...
CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.
This all matters because there's a steady bloody red line from 1981 to the present day few write about. More would, were the nation's news media honest and lived up to their constitutional mandate.
Thank you, leveymg! I very much appreciate that you are doing the job the corporate owned news media refuse to do: tell the truth.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Rat bastards do has been made legal in terms of operational protocols, prior to the rat
bastards going for their 'gold?" Whether it is the bombing of Laos and Cambodia, or these covert activities in the Middle East, none of it ever is deemed wrong, because they get to
define right and wrong.
I remember how that one aide to Kissinger went in and announced, "Sir, the bombing raid we conducted today was wrong,as it was totally over a civilian population. So we can't proceede with tomorrow's raid, because it too is in a civilian area."
Kissinger just smiled that little knowing smirk of his, and made arrangements for that area to be re-classified as "industrial for military purposes."
Since Bill Clinton understood that Americans wanted to be able to see him as moral, he never claimed Kissinger as his mentor. (Although his wife, who doesn't particularly care what other humans think of her has.)
But you do have to wonder where he learned that little trick of "It all depends on what the definition of the word "is" is."
Octafish
(55,745 posts)No-one noticed, no-one cares.
By Mark Ames
Pando, written on February 4, 2014
EXCERPT...
It was Pikes committee that got the first ever admissionfrom CIA director William Colbythat the NSA was routinely tapping Americans' phone calls. Days after that stunning confession, Pike succeeded in getting the head of the NSA, Lew Allen Jr., to testify in public before his committeethe first time in history that an NSA chief publicly testified. It was the first time that the NSA publicly maintained that it was legally entitled to wiretap Americans communications overseas, in spite of the 1934 Communications Act and other legal restrictions placed on other intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
It was also the first time an NSA chief publicly lied to Congress, claiming it was not eavesdropping on domestic or overseas phone calls involving American citizens. (Technically, legalistically, the NSA argued that it hadn't liedthe reason being that since Americans werent specifically targeted in the NSA's vast data-vacuuming programs in the 1970s, recording and storing every phone call and telex cable in computers which were then data-mined for keywords, that therefore they werent technically eavesdropping on Americans who just happened to be swept up into the wiretapping vacuum.)
Pike quickly discovered the fundamental problem with the NSA: It was by far the largest intelligence agency, and yet it was birthed unlike any other, as a series of murky executive orders under Truman at the peak of Cold War hysteria. Digging into the NSAs murky beginnings, it quickly became clear that the agency was explicitly chartered in such a way that placed it beyond legal accountability, out of reach of the other branches of government. Unlike the CIA, which came into being under an act of Congress, the NSAs founding charter was a national secret.
SNIP...
In early August, 1975, Pike ordered the NSA to produce its charter document, National Security Council Intelligence Directive No. 6. The Pentagons intelligence czar, Albert Hall, appeared before the Pike Committee that daybut without the classified NSA charter. Hall reminded Pike that the Ford White House had offered to show the NSA charter document to Pikes committee just as it had done with Churchs Senate Committee members, who had agreed to merely view the charter at a government location outside of Congress, without entering the secret document into the Senate record. Officially, publicly, it still didnt exist. Pike refused to accept that:
Youre talking about the document that set up the entire N.S.A., its one which all members [of Congress] are entitled to see without shuttling back and forth downtown to look at.
Assistant Defense Secretary Hall told an incredulous Pike that he hadnt brought the NSA charter with him as hed been told to, and that he couldnt because I need clearance and the charter has secret material in it.
Pike exploded:
It seems incredible to me, very frankly, that we are asked to appropriate large amounts of money for that agency which employs large numbers of people without being provided a copy of the piece of paper by which the agency is authorized.
CONTINUED...
https://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-the-nsa-is-dead-no-one-noticed-no-one-cares/
Is is this: This history from way back when is why the in-crowd occupying Wall Street-on-the-Potomac are doing swell, while most of the rest of the country can get tossed out of their homes without anyone really doing anything about it. Law schools must really be something.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)the season, 1000% more aircraft were in the sky than in the days leading up to Christmas or Thanksgiving.
Although the humidity on my barometer registered at 72%, my clothes put on the clothesline Thursday AM were dry in three hours!
I guess me and Pike can be referred to as "conspiracy theorists."
seafan
(9,387 posts)...to your question, Octafish.
From this 2010 thread:
Classified "human intelligence directives" issued in the name of Hillary Clinton or her predecessor, Condoleeza Rice, instruct officials to gather information on military installations, weapons markings, vehicle details of political leaders as well as iris scans, fingerprints and DNA.
The most controversial target was the leadership of the United Nations. That directive requested the specification of telecoms and IT systems used by top UN officials and their staff and details of "private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys".
The reputations of the FBI and DOJ hang in the balance in 2016.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)...following the Journalist's Code: "To Comfort the Afflicted and to Afflict the Comfortable." Those at the top of the food pyramid, don't need defending so much as they have Wall Street's credit line plus the Secret Team on their side.
Thus giving a break to those who are "friends" and beating the crap out of those who like to share with others isn't just hypocritical, it's good business. For example, contrast the treatment afforded Larry Franklin and Marc Grossman with that given to Kendall and Gwen Myers. Based on the little reported, Marc G was spying on behalf of AIPAC and Israel. The Myers were convicted of spying for Cuba. Larry and Marc got to retire and enjoy their Golden Years. The Myers got to rot in prison -- Kendall for the rest of his life.
So this is old news to you, yet a shocker to Mr. and Ms. Average Dem who may not read stories missed by The Nation:
Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aides Secret Spy Network
Emails disclosed by a hacker show a close family friend was funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of States private account starting before the Benghazi attack.
by Jeff Gerth, ProPublica, and Sam Biddle, Gawker, March 27, 2015
EXCERPT...
Indeed, though they were sent under Blumenthals name, the reports appear to have been gathered and prepared by Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of the CIAs clandestine service in Europe who left the agency in 2005. Since then, he has established a consulting firm called Tyler Drumheller, LLC. He has also been affiliated with a firm called DMC Worldwide, which he co-founded with Washington, D.C., attorney Danny Murray and former general counsel to the U.S. Capitol Police John Caulfield. DMC Worldwides now-defunct website describes it at as offering innovative security and intelligence solutions to global risks in a changing world.
In one exchange in March 2013, Blumenthal emailed Drumheller, Thanks. Can you send Libya report. Drumheller replied, Here it is, pls do not share it with Cody. I dont want moin speculating on sources. It is on the Maghreb and Libya. Cody is Cody Shearer, a longtime Clinton family operativehis brother was an ambassador under Bill Clinton and his now-deceased sister was married to Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbottwho was in close contact with Blumenthal. While its not entirely clear from the documents, Moin may refer to the nickname of Mohamed Mansour El Kikhia, a member of the Kikhia family, a prominent Libyan clan with ties to the Libyan National Transition Council. (An email address in Blumenthals address book, which was also leaked, was associated with his Facebook page.)
Theres no indication in Blumenthals emails whether Clinton read or replied to them before she left State on February 1, 2013, but he was clearly part of a select group with knowledge of the private clintonemail.com address, which was unknown to the public until
Gawker published it this year. They do suggest that she interacted with Blumenthal using the account after she stepped down. H: got your message a few days ago, reads the subject line of one email from Blumenthal to Clinton on February 8, 2013; H: fyi, will continue to send relevant intel, reads another.
CONTINUED...
https://www.propublica.org/article/private-emails-reveal-ex-clinton-aides-secret-spy-network
Doubt if many of those new to the Party ever even heard of Valerie Plame, let alone Sibel Edmonds. Few have considered, let alone addressed the role of the secret government in private gain. Thank you for standing up to them and telling the truth to their face, seafan.
amborin
(16,631 posts)GreenPartyVoter
(72,388 posts)senz
(11,945 posts)I saw signs of it all over the place. I don't have time right now to read the material in the OP in depth, but some of what I saw could fit in with my long held hunch.
Ferd Berfel
(3,687 posts)she will pass TPP, and we will have a New World Order.
Tarc
(10,478 posts)berni_mccoy
(23,018 posts)Tarc
(10,478 posts)Once Hill's well into her 2nd term and working on legacy-building, you and I will sit back, look back on these days and laugh. How mithfully we will laugh.
Ferd Berfel
(3,687 posts)ok.
But try to grasp that is is precisely the end game of TPP, WTO, GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA
Uncle Joe
(58,596 posts)Thanks for the thread, Octafish.
baldguy
(36,649 posts)Can we stop with the putrid RW CT bullshit, please?
Fawke Em
(11,366 posts)You do know that yelling "CONSPIRACY THEORIST!" at every story that doesn't kiss your status quo candidate's ass is a diversion cooked up by the CIA to keep Americans from asking questions, don't you?
amborin
(16,631 posts)emsimon33
(3,128 posts)Onlooker
(5,636 posts)silvershadow
(10,336 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)She was running a spy network.
H2O Man
(73,715 posts)As you know, when the USA decided that the executive branch needed an intelligence agency -- distinct from those of the military branches, which were selective in what they shared with the president -- they hired guys from other intelligence groups. These were groups created by the oil industry, and thus had access to other countries.
Not all of those they hired were openly associated with big oil. Some were employed at universities. Others worked in non-elective positions in government. Thus, there were those with out "official cover," and those with official cover.
On the surface, they appeared to be businessmen, educators, and public servants. But they were primarily involved in "intelligence gathering" for big oil. They coordinated with military intelligence, of course, but were distinct.
After WW2, some would initially return to big oil. And then Truman morphed that group into the CIA.
Most Americans were unaware of the overlap between energy corporations and the various US intelligence agencies until Bush-Cheney exposed it. Cheney, of course, sought to create a "new" intelligence outfit, which was largely neoconservative, but did not have the experience to handle analysis of gathered information. For example, Scooter Libby fancied himself capable of doing analysis and response. It became amateur hour in the office of the vice president.
Lesser known at that time was that a core of neoconservatives had been placed in various executive positions. Again, these are not elected positions; hence, they remain in their jobs no matter who would be elected in 2008 and beyond. This included at State.
felix_numinous
(5,198 posts)your research is vital.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)That I forgot to Rec this!