NSA Snoop Program: Greasing the Skids of the Police State

[Guest guest]

S

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:51:52 -0800 (PST)

NSA Snoop Program: Greasing the Skids of the Police State

 

 

 

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=187

 

NSA Snoop Program: Greasing the Skids of the Police State

Friday January 13th 2006, 10:23 am

 

 

In Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984, Big Brother only surveilled Inner

and Outer Party members. Since the proles were not considered a

threat, they did not have telescreens in their homes, although on

occasion the Thought Police would track down and eliminate a few

proles who demonstrated the capacity to think for themselves. In

Bushzarro world, the state snoop apparatus—monitoring all voice and

data communication with the connivance of the

telecoms—indiscriminately surveils everybody and then uses

sophisticated computer algorithms (called " artificial intelligence " )

to ferret thought crimes out of the massive amount of captured data.

 

" Since 9/11, the expansion of efforts to gather and analyze

information on U.S. citizens is nothing short of staggering, " writes

Laura K. Donohue for the Los Angeles Times. " The government collects

vast troves of data, including consumer credit histories and medical

and travel records. Databases track Americans' networks of friends,

family and associates, not just to identify who is a terrorist but to

try to predict who might become one. " Of course, since there is a very

small number of people in America who would entertain joining

" al-Qaeda " (only CIA vetted patsies and dim bulbs are allowed to

join), this massive snoop effort has nothing to do with terrorism,

unless of course you consider disagreement with the Straussian neocons

terrorism (and they do). It should be obvious the NSA has long poked

through personal communication in order to detect thought crime, not

stop " al-Qaeda. "

 

In addition to detecting inappropriate thoughts—for instance, that it

is morally repugnant and criminal to invade small defenseless

countries and kill more than a hundred thousand people—one idea behind

the NSA effort, at the behest of the Straussian neocons, is to spread

a pervasive sense of fear and paranoia. As Donohue admits, under the

neocon snoop program " privacy " (or more accurately our once

constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties) " certainly suffers, but

as individuals begin to feel inhibited in what they say and do, free

speech and freedom of assembly also erode. " In other words, the

neocons are sending a message to the proles of America—if you engage

in unorthodox thought (Orwell called this " crimethink " ) and transmit

this subversive thought by way of cell phone or email, the government

will know and you may suffer the consequences.

 

As Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue notes, the current

interpretation of Orwell's all-pervasive snoop and detention state had

its beginnings in the Reagan administration under the reign of the

Iran-Contra criminals, most notably the convicted felon Oliver North.

The Straussian neocons, kissing cousins of the Iran-Contra coterie,

have installed ready-made Reagan era " national security initiatives "

that were " hatched in 1982 by controversial Marine Colonel Oliver

North, later one of the key players in the Iran-Contra Scandal [and]

charged the Federal Emergency Management Agency with administering

executive orders that allowed suspension of the Constitution,

implementation of martial law, establishment of internment camps, and

the turning the government over to the President. "

 

Peter Dale Scott writes for AlterNet that " there are reasons to

suspect that the illegal eavesdropping, and the related program of

illegal detentions of U.S. citizens as well as foreign nationals,

began earlier. Both may be part of what Vice President Dick Cheney has

called the Bush administration's restoration of `the legitimate

authority of the presidency'—practices exercised by Nixon that were

outlawed after Watergate. " It is worth quoting Scott at length:

 

In the 1980s Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld discussed just

such emergency surveillance and detention powers in a super-secret

program that planned for what was euphemistically called " Continuity

of Government " (COG) in the event of a nuclear disaster.

 

At the time, Cheney was a Wyoming congressman, while Rumsfeld, who

had been defense secretary under President Ford, was a businessman and

CEO of the drug company G.D. Searle. Overall responsibility for the

program had been assigned to Vice President George H.W. Bush, " with

Lt. Col. Oliver North…as the National Security Council action

officer, " according to James Bamford in his book, " A Pretext for War. "

 

These men planned for suspension of the Constitution, not just

after nuclear attack, but for any " national security emergency, " which

they defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: " Any occurrence,

including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other

emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national

security of the United States. " Clearly 9/11 would meet this definition.

 

As developed in the mid-1980s by Oliver North in the White House,

the plans called for not just the surveillance but the potential

detention of large numbers of American citizens. During the

Iran-Contra hearings, North was asked about his work on " a contingency

plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American

constitution. " The chairman, Democratic Senator Inouye, ruled that

this was a " highly sensitive and classified " matter, not to be dealt

with in an open hearing.

 

Cheney would eventually get his way. In May of 2001, a few scant

months before nine eleven, " President George W. Bush appointed Cheney

to head a terrorism task force and created a new office within FEMA to

assist him. In effect, Bush was authorizing a resumption of the kind

of planning that Cheney and FEMA had conducted under the heading of

COG. " Moreover,

 

Many actions of the Bush presidency resemble not only what Nixon

did in the 1970s, but what Cheney and Rumsfeld had planned to restore

under COG in the 1980s in the case of an attack. Prominent among these

have been the detention of so-called `enemy combatants,' including

U.S. citizens, and placing them in special camps. Now as before, a

policy of detentions outside the Constitution has been accompanied by

a program of extra-constitutional surveillance to determine who will

be detained. "

 

None of this is new and in fact predates the Bush administration. " If

you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a

good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the

country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global

Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National

Security Agency and four English-speaking allies: Canada, Great

Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The mission is to eavesdrop on

enemies of the state: foreign countries, terrorist groups and drug

cartels. But in the process, Echelon's computers capture virtually

every electronic conversation around the world, " Steve Kroft of 60

Minutes reported in 2000, before the Straussian neocons captured the

White House and Pentagon. Of course, as the history of COINTELPRO and

Operation CHAOS (to name but two) reveals, the government is more

concerned with domestic political opposition to its policies than

preventing terrorism and putting drug cartels out of business (and it

can be persuasively argued that the U.S. government has more than a

little bit to do with drug cartels and terrorist groups; after all the

CIA is not called the " Cocaine Importing Agency " for nothing and there

is sufficient evidence the CIA and others created " al-Qaeda " for

various reasons).

 

" John Brinkerhoff, deputy director of FEMA, developed the martial law

implementation plan, following a template originally developed by

former FEMA director Louis Guiffrida to battle a `national uprising of

black militants.' Gifuffrida's implementation of martial law called

for jailing at least 21 million African Americans in `relocation

camps.' Brinkerhoff later admitted in an interview with the Miami

Herald that President Reagan signed off on the initiatives and they

remained in place, dormant, until George W. Bush took office, " writes

Doug Thompson.

 

Brinkerhoff moved on the Anser Institute for Homeland Security

and, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, provided the Bush White

House and the Pentagon with talking points supporting revised

" national security initiatives " that would could allow imposition of

martial law and suspension of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1978, the law

that is supposed to forbid use of troops for domestic law enforcement.

 

In addition to sending a message that Big Brother is watching, the NSA

is capturing massive amounts of data in order " to determine who will

be detained " by FEMA and its private sector contractors " in the case

of an attack " engineered by the Straussian neocons. " Bush used parts

of the plan to send troops into the streets of New Orleans following

Hurricane Katrina. In addition, FEMA hired former special forces

personnel from the mercenary firm Blackwater USA to `enforce

security,' " Thompson continues.

 

The Department of Homeland Security established the " Northern

Command for National Defense " [NORTHCOM], a wide-ranging program that

includes FEMA, the Pentagon, the FBI and the National Security Agency.

Executive orders already signed by Bush allow the Northern Command to

send troops into American streets, seize control of radio and

television stations and networks and impose martial law " in times of

national emergency. "

 

It should be remembered that NORTHCOM flexed its muscles last

September when it conducted the highly classified Granite Shadow

" demonstration " In Washington. " Granite Shadow is yet another new Top

Secret and compartmented operation related to the military's

extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows

for emergency military operations in the United States without

civilian supervision or control, " William Arkin reported at the time.

Of course, as the NSA revealed when it snooped on the Pledge of

Resistance-Baltimore, a Quaker peace group, nonviolent dissent is

considered a " weapon of mass destruction " and will be treated accordingly.

 

As I noted earlier this week, the NSA spied on Pledge of Resistance in

July of 2004. In documents released by NSA under an FOIA request, it

was discovered that the NSA kept a log " of reports filed every 15

minutes of the group's activities. The details include everything from

license plates to the number of balloons used, " reports ShortNews.

" The documents also show that for a later protest by the group, the

NSA would have video surveillance, K9 patrols, officers armed with

shotguns, as well as a WMD response team. "

 

Arkin continues:

 

Granite Shadow posits domestic military operations, including

intelligence collection and surveillance, unique rules of engagement

regarding the use of lethal force, the use of experimental non-lethal

weapons, and federal and military control of incident locations that

are highly controversial and might border on the illegal…. Both plans

[Granite Shadow and a complimentary plan, CONPLAN 0400] seem to live

behind a veil of extraordinary secrecy because military forces

operating under them have already been given a series of `'special

authorities'' by the President and the secretary of defense. These

special authorities include, presumably, military roles in civilian

law enforcement and abrogation of State's powers in a declared or

perceived emergency.

 

" The authority to declare what is or is not a national emergency rests

entirely with Bush who does not have to either consult or seek the

approval of Congress for permission to assume absolute control over

the government of the United States, " writes Thompson.

 

The White House press office would neither confirm nor deny

existence of Bush's executive orders or the existence of the Northern

Command for National Defense. Neither would the Department of Homeland

Security.

 

But my sources within the White House and DHS tell me the plans

are in place, ready for implementation when the command comes from the

man who keeps telling the American public that he is a " war time

president " who will " do anything in my power " to impose his will on

the people of the United States.

 

And as we know, Bush's " will " —or rather the will of the neocons—is to

foment total war, beginning in the Middle East, and the American

people, or rather a small number of Americans who vocally oppose this

draconian master plan of mass murder and incalculable suffering, will

not be allowed to intervene. If need be, they will be rounded up en

masse by way of " extra-legal powers " (that is, illegal and

unconstitutional powers) using " emergency military operations in the

United States without civilian supervision or control, " likely after

the next engineered terrorist even that our rulers repeatedly promise.