“A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. ” – Henry David Thoreau from ‘Civil Disobedience’

Daniel Ellsberg called Edward Snowden’s revelations of government spying, “the most important leak in American history.” As the public learns more and more about secret government programs to spy on U.S. citizens, it is tempting to believe that it is all about Edward Snowden and his startling disclosures. This is far from the truth. In fact, almost a decade ago, conscientious employees of United States government spy agencies such as the National Security Administration (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began reporting on abusive and seemingly unconstitutional government polices including torture and deliberate spying on innocent U.S. citizens.

Abby Martin interviewed three former employees of government spy agencies with a combined total of over 40 years experience in government positions. These interviews revealed that torture is official U.S. government policy, and that spying on innocent U.S. citizens is much more pervasive than the federal government’s response to Edward Snowden’s disclosures would seem to indicate. Taken together with Snowden’s revelations, these interviews paint a picture of an out of control federal government that has slipped the reins of morality and the US Constitution, and is determined and able to do whatever it desires without regard to legality or the Constitution.

Russell Tice, a satellite systems specialist, worked over 20 years in various government agencies including the NSA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). In 2004, while performing his government assigned duties, Tice was shocked to learn that the U.S. government was spying on innocent U.S. citizens. Tice revealed what he knew to reporters for the New York Times and the Austin American-Statesman, and the story was published. Tice hoped the exposure would help put an end to what he considered to be illegal and unconstitutional activity on the part of the government.

NSA Blackmailing Obama? Abby Martin Speaks to NSA Whistleblower Russ Tice 

Thomas Drake is a former NSA senior executive and NSA Chair at the National Defense University. He worked on the Trailblazer Project, another program that intercepted cell phone, email and internet communications, and was a predecessor to the PRISM project revealed by Edward Snowden. Convinced that Trailblazer was illegally violating innocent Americans’ privacy, Drake and several others reported their concerns through proper government channels including the Department of Defense Inspector General. In 2007, all those involved were raided by the FBI. Drake was charged with violating the Espionage Act. Meanwhile, he continued to reveal waste, fraud, abuse, and violations of privacy perpetrated by the NSA to reporters, including those from the Baltimore Sun and The New Yorker.

 Advice on Trusting Your Government from NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake

John Kiriakou is a former CIA analyst and case officer, a former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former CIA Chief of Counterterrorist Operations in Pakistan. He resigned from the CIA in 2004 after being recruited to supervise a program of water boarding and other “enhanced interrogation” methods. He refused to participate because he felt the methods to be immoral and equivalent to torture. In December 2007, while being interviewed on ABC News, Kiriakou stated his opinion that water boarding was torture and that he knew through personal experience that it was official U.S. government policy. From that day on, Kiriakou states that all his activities have been monitored and investigated by the Justice Department. Eventually, in 2012, he was charged and convicted under the Espionage Act and sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison. This made him the first and only CIA officer ever to be convicted under the Espionage Act.

CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou: ‘If I Tortured, I’d Be Free’

It’s a lot worse than you think.

On being briefed on Snowden’s revelations, Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Loretta Sanchez, said:

“What we learned in there is significantly more than what is out in the media today… I can’t speak to what we learned in there…but I will tell you that I believe it is just the tip of the iceberg”

In their discussions with Abby Martin, Tice, Drake, and Kiriakou all related their knowledge that illegal government activity is a great deal more intrusive and pervasive than even Snowden’s revelations illustrate. Russell Tice described a computer program known as ECHELON that allows the government to spy on innocent American’s phone calls, emails, and other internet activity. He personally witnessed a number of alarming examples of government abuse of this system including warrantless spying on:

– News organizations and journalists
– U.S. companies that do business internationally
– Financial institutions
– State Department personnel including Colin Powell
– 3-star and higher Admirals and Generals including David Petraeus
– Prominent law firms and lawyers
– Supreme Court Justices including Judge Alito
– United States Congressmen including Barak Obama when he was a Senator
– Friends, family members and personal residences of all of the above

A high level NSA source told Tice that orders to spy were coming from Vice President Cheney, himself.

Both Tice and Drake stated that they had personal knowledge that the government did look into the contents of the information they obtain and not just the “metadata” as President Obama now claims. Thomas Drake noted that the PRISM program revealed by Edward Snowden had taken the violations of privacy he objected to in the Trailblazer Project much further. “PRISM demonstrates that there is collusion between the U.S. government and the most powerful, largest internet service providers, not only in the country, but in the world. The government is essentially given direct access or the equivalent of direct access to subscriber information on a very large scale, including the content of their information.”

Attorney Jesselyn Radack is a Director of the Government Accountability Project, and the attorney who represents both Drake and Kiriakou. She explained that the PRISM program expands wiretapping without a warrant, like that which occurred in the Trailblazer Project under the Bush administration. Now, with PRISM, the government has direct access to the nine largest internet service providers in the world, including Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Radack stated that this is in direct violation of a number of federal laws as well as the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In addition to PRISM and the other spying efforts brought to light by Snowden, Drake believes that, “there are additional orders and there are additional programs that have not been revealed…I think that once those come out, several other shoes will drop. I think the government is desperate to protect the deepest of the secrets.” Drake believes that what will be revealed is that government spying treats U.S. citizens no differently than foreign nationals. He believes that the “Foreign” in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is irrelevant. The act might be more accurately called the Surveillance Act. He feels that all citizens in the U.S. and other countries are virtual subjects of one large surveillance state.

On the issue of torture, John Kiriakou emphasized that torture was not just a rogue activity carried out by isolated U.S. government agents. Kiriakou knew from personal experience that torture, during his time in the CIA, was an official U.S. government policy authorized from the President of the United States on down.

Russell Tice summarized the feelings of the group: “Every means of communication in this country, everything, is being watched by the federal government, and that is Orwellian, and that is the trademark of a police state.”

Why is the government doing this to us?

Thomas Drake gave the most succinct explanation for the rogue actions of the U.S. government. When asked by Abby Martin why he felt the government was doing this, he answered, “Because they can. They have the power.” “ Information is the currency of power,” Radack added. “More and more information is the name of the game.”

There is nothing to stop the intelligence agencies from doing this. So called oversight of intelligence activities is no oversight at all, explained Drake. The FISA court operates in complete secrecy. Congressional oversight committees are being briefed in secret, and those present are sworn to secrecy regarding what they learned. Even taking oversight into account, there is only a very small number of people who know what is going on, explained Drake. The FISA court virtually never denies a request to spy. In 2012, the FISA court approved nearly 2,000 requests for surveillance and turned down none. “This is unprecedented,” Drake said. “How can such deep secrets exist in a democracy, a constitutional republic, without something giving – and what’s giving is our fundamental rights and liberties.”

Drake further explained that this spying serves what he refers to as the “surveillance state.” “It serves a very, very large contractor base. Staggering amounts of money are being made off the fear mongering since 9/11. You now have an entire industrial scale mechanism. A number of contractors are feeding off of it, and it’s a lot of money. You also have those in congress who are supporting and enabling it. This has become normalized.” Drake believes that this process has now taken on a life of its own. “They are not going to give up the secret power willingly,” he said.

Russell Tice suggested that the spying was a means of control. He believes that the upper echelons of the intelligence community collect compromising information on individuals in order to influence their future behavior. In this sense, the executives of the intelligence community comprise a sort of shadow government that has the power to vet candidates for leadership positions in government, and put leverage on the three branches of government to get what they want. As evidence of this theory, Tice pointed out that U.S. government intelligence agencies were not affected by the sequester, but nearly all other government agencies were.

Tice describes how candidate Obama pledged to stop National Security Letters and other forms of abusive government surveillance and to support whistleblowers. Even though Tice was a lifelong Republican, he supported Obama for that reason. Once he was elected, however, Obama changed. Those promises never materialized. Obama continues to lie about and cover up the extent of U.S. government spying, and he has prosecuted whistleblowers more zealously than any President before him. “Is it because he is being controlled?” Tice wonders. Tice notes that before Edward Snowden presented the world with incontrovertible proof of unconstitutional government spying, the media neglected to report on the issue. This was true even though Tice and others exposed this activity years ago. Tice suggests that “another interest” making use of compromising information obtained through illegal spying was applying leverage to the media to keep them quiet.

There is debate as to whether or not all this government spying is even effective or helpful. In light of the Boston bombing and the underwear bomber, internal government reports suggested that perhaps intelligence agencies were getting too much information to effectively analyze and predict attacks. Nonetheless, the government makes ample use of fear mongering to defend their actions. Drake and Radack, debunked the government claim that NSA spying programs have stopped at least 50 terrorist attacks. Drake posed the question, “How many of those “terrorist plots” were stopped, disrupted or prevented solely on the basis of secret surveillance programs and not by other means.” Radack added, “Even if we got that answer, there is no way to verify it. The government has told huge lies, and yet we are just supposed to trust them to tell us how many terrorist plots they have foiled.” It does not make sense. “They say they can only tell us so much, but this administration has not been at all shy about bragging about the “terrorist plots” that it disrupts,” she said. “Or that it manufactures then disrupts,” Abby Martin quipped.

If the US government does it, it’s not illegal.

There is a two tiered justice system operating in the U.S. today. There is one system of justice for those who do the government’s bidding without question, and another system of justice for those patriots who hope to improve the government by pointing out its flaws.

No one responsible for the illegal warrantless wiretapping that took place during the Bush administration is in jail. In fact, the government made it all legal after the fact. No one responsible for the unconstitutional surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden is being prosecuted or is in jail. The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, who lied to Congress about the extent of NSA surveillance, is not being prosecuted and is not in jail.

John Yoo, Alberto Gonzalez, Donald Rumsfeld, and others who conceived of, authorized, implemented, and oversaw torture are not in jail. None of the attorneys who papered over torture with tortuous legal analysis are in jail. Former CIA agent, Jose Rodriguez, the man responsible for destroying the tapes showing evidence of CIA torture, is not in jail. In fact, he is on a book tour discussing the great benefits of torture.

“None are in prison, none will ever be prosecuted,” says John Kiriakou.

Uncle Sam to the conscientious – proceed at your own risk!

John Kiriakou refused to take part in torture, and exposed torture by the U.S. government in hopes of putting an end to it. He is going to jail for 2 ½ years, convicted under the Espionage Act. Kiriakou was convicted even though the author of the law he supposedly violated testified on his behalf. He is in jail even though he demonstrated no mal intent. He is in jail because the presiding judge disregarded and disallowed legal precedent regarding mal intent. John Kiriakou is in jail after the government prosecutors were able to meet in secret with and give secret information to the presiding judge that Kiriakou was not allowed to hear or rebut. In fact, after she alone heard the secret so-called “evidence,” the presiding judge publicly stated that she wished she could have sentenced Kiriakou to 10 years instead of 2 1/2 years.

John Kiriakou has been audited by the IRS every single year since 2007, when he stated torture was official U.S. government policy.

Thomas Drake exposed unconstitutional government spying as part of the Trailblazer program. Thomas Drake was prosecuted under the espionage act. To avoid an even worse sentence, Drake was forced to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. He lost his job and his pension and was required to serve one year of probation.

Bradley Manning exposed war crimes. He is in prison for many years. Edward Snowden exposed unconstitutional government spying. He had to flee the United States where he would certainly be in jail, to Russia where he is free.

John Kiriakou feels that this is all an intentional program of harassment on the part of the government. The government wants to punish critics in any way possible for the purpose of having a chilling effect on others other who would criticize, blow the whistle, point out evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse, or expose government crimes.

What hope do we have?

Forty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, was not above the law. Americans hailed whistleblowers for having brought down the President for his utter lawlessness. How did we get from prosecuting the criminal to prosecuting the messenger? “We have strayed so far,” notes Abby Martin.

Today, President Obama, who was elected to office promising to shut down Guantanamo Prison, closes the office responsible for doing just that shortly after he wins re-election

John Kiriakou observes that we have had an incremental loss in our civil liberties over the years that were accelerated after 9/11, but there has been surprisingly little public outrage.

Today, the United States government is known for:

– Intercepting phone calls and emails without a warrant
– Vaporizing innocent people including American citizens with missiles from predator drones
– Mistreatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay
– Extraordinary Rendition
– Indefinite pretrial detention
– Coercive “enhanced” interrogation techniques (A.K.A. torture)
– Zealous harassment and prosecution of political dissidents (whistleblowers)

Is there no hope? Have Americans accepted this loss of civil liberties without a fight?

Russell Tice does not believe so. He is still out there speaking out against government abuse.

Thomas Drake does not believe so. He is still speaking out too. “I do believe, if the conversations, debate, and discussions that people are now having are any indication, people are growing more uncomfortable with what’s been going on,” he says.

Jesselyn Radack does not believe so. She continues to defend and advocate for the whistleblowers. She notes, “Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner who wrote the Patriot Act is coming out against all this. Senators Wyden and Udall and others you think wouldn’t have a problem with this are coming out against this too, and Republican libertarians and progressive Democrats have joined forces saying it is unacceptable for the government to have this much power hidden from the people.”

John Kiriakou does not believe there is no hope. “I’ve come to realize this case is so much bigger than I am…It is so much more important for free speech and freedom of association, it is so much more important for freedom of the press. I just hope that there is enough rage out there…that it helps someone in the future stand up to the justice department and to stand up to these infringements on our civil liberties.”

Bradley Manning has not lost hope. He is going to jail rather than ignore the injustice he wanted to stop.

Finally, Edward Snowden has not given up:

“Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they’re talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.” “I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.”

The rest is up to us. As Abby Martin said, “We should all be speaking up. If we don’t stop this now, who knows where we are going with it.”

Written by David Wiggins

By now, you’ve probably heard about Edward Snowden, the 29 year old National Security Agency contractor who defected to Hong Kong after leaking explosive revelations about the extent of the agency’s spying program.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, Snowden explains that NSA analysts have the technological ability and blanket legal authority to snoop on anybody. “Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector, anywhere… I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President.” 
 
The story sent shock waves through diplomatic circles and the corporate media.  But it’s just the latest story in long wave of recent scandals, including the Associated Press phone records subpoena, the IRS- tea party investigation, the Rupert Murdoch phone hacking and Occupy Wall Street undercover police informant and provocateur revelations.  
 
Snowden further explained the far-reach of NSA capabilities to intercept every mode of our private lives, by saying “with this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your e-mails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your e-mails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.”
 
His bold confession is not to be understood in a vacuum.  There are countless videos of low level US government personnel poking gloved fingers around travelers’ genital areas, causing permanent distress and embarrassment.  Racial, religious profiling and clever contrary profiling of white infants and grandmothers  is now encountered at train stations, bus stations and highway checkpoints as well.  For more than two centuries, this heavy, iron fist did not figure anywhere in the American republic.

Now, police departments across the country issue “administrative subpoenas,” i.e. without a search warrant signed by a judge, to routinely seize troves of customer details from mobile carriers, enabling them to track the whereabouts of millions of subscribers.

High tech surveillance drones are being acquired to spy on Americans while the constitutional scholar and Nobel Peace Prize President uses predator drones to kill thousands abroad, including women and children and American citizens, without bothering to bring any criminal charges in court, let alone convict them of any crime.

Often, the targets’ names are unknown. The killing is based on appearances called signatures: purported intercepted speech, including emails and people the targets are associated with.  Its a remote, high tech way to profile targets and it is in this context that Snowden’s revelations should be digested.

The assertion that only bad guys need to worry about PRISM is very naive.  Something as innocent as dialing a wrong number could bring you unwarranted scrutiny.  Someone with an ax to grind could drop a dime on you and wreck your life.  
 
The intelligence services and the military take a prophylactic approach.  This means they increasingly believe that with programs like PRISM, they can identify
likely criminals and terrorists before a crime or terrorist act has occurred.  
 
For all its acronyms and technical jargon, the PRISM spy program rests on a simple premise: Secretly record all information about everybody, everywhere at all times, then archive it forever.  Since any human being has the potential to become a criminal or terrorist suspect in the future, a dossier on that person will be readily available, including who that person has associated with in the past

The dossier focuses on four areas: financial transactions, phone records, Internet records and travel logs.  This diary of bytes makes it possible to ruin anybody under any pretext at will.  It creates undreamed of leverage of the state to terrorize the individual and groups of individuals. All manor of abuse is justified under the ‘War on Terror.’
 
An exhaustive review is beyond the scope of this article, but a few simple but clever changes of habit can go a long way towards protecting yourself from warrantless, illegal, unconstitutional and invasive collection of your genuine private information.  To begin, I will focus on the encrypted payments and communication system called Swiftcoin.  From a recent press release:
 
“Users running the Swiftcoin application present a challenge to eavesdroppers. This free application requires no identification or payment to download. Once installed, it enables users to opt out of the common email servers operated by large corporations that are obliged, under gag orders, to provide back door access to invasive, over reaching public and private interests.

Swiftcoin, like numbered Swiss bank accounts, does not identify users by their names. Unlike bank accounts, the user number changes every time he/she presses the send button. The Swiftcoin application may be moved off the user’s computer into a pen drive and opened up again on another computer at will. Swiftcoin users can not be traced by name, by IP address or by device. “
 
This is called deep encryption because the literally encrypted communication, including its “meta data,” is not identifiable unless the user chooses to make her wallet id public.  Every sent message departs from a new “location” or the same location as the user wishes.  The same is true for the recipient.  Every message or payment is unique and may employ disposable meta data.   In addition, the user device itself can be substituted at will.  Furthermore, a Swiftcoin wallet can be moved to a pen drive and uploaded to a different device.  All of this makes it substantially more difficult to spy on and record a user’s activity, because the correlation between a Swiftcoin id and a particular person is tenuous.  Swiftcoin does not rely entirely on encryption which, at the end of the day, can be cracked by cryptographers.  The very way that Swiftcoin is designed to be used does not lend itself to tracking any individual over time.

 
Alas, the Swiftcoin homepage states that it is not available to U.S. citizens.  However, the Swiftcoin telegram remains freely available to all regardless of nationality.  Every new user may receive ten free Swiftcoins, ( good for 10 000 telegrams; every Swiftcoin ” telegram ” costs 0.001 Swiftcoin ) which is returned to sender upon a return mail from recipient, for a net cost of zero to send and receive a telegram.  No money or purchase of Swiftcoin is required to download the program and use the telegram feature.

Written by Daniel Bruno for Media Roots

It is no secret that the Pentagon’s hefty wallet influenced U.S. academia during the Cold War. Well-known examples include: funding MIT; establishing the JASON Defense Advisory Group; and creating RAND and DARPA. Much has been written on this subject. Even though the Soviet Union has fallen, the Pentagon’s dominance over U.S. academia has only increased.

Labs, NSA and Cyberspace

To this day, Los Alamos National Laboratory operates in conjunction with the University of California system while Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory works with Texas A&M and UC. Aside from its traditional nuclear focus, Lawrence Livermore works with the Naval Postgraduate School to process real-time data feeds from USSOUTHCOM’s missions. NPS Professor Bordetsky calls the program an example of a “classic, applied research project.” If this is a “classic,” one wonders what atypical research projects they’re working on.

MIT’s alliance with the Pentagon has grown considerably, with the duo planning to build a $450 million research facility at Hanscom AFB. According to the Boston Globe, MIT receives more than $750 million per year from the Pentagon. Leaving no stone unturned along Mass Ave., the Pentagon even runs a program for Senior Executives in National and International Security at Harvard’s Kennedy School, a forum which allows high-ranking military officers and SES personnel to hobnob for two weeks.

With the advent of “cyberspace” as the military-industrial-congressional complex’s next great hype, the Pentagon has redirected its coffers towards obsequious universities, which are willing to compromise academic integrity for the sake of lucrative funding. Culprits include Georgia Tech’s Research Institute, Kansas State, and the University of North Dakota, which has established a bachelor’s degree for aspiring drone operators. Aside from the usual suspects of KSU and Georgia Tech, other institutions deeply involved with the Pentagon’s agenda include: Middle Tennessee State University, University of Michigan, and MSU.

As Salon has reported, over twenty universities have begun working with the Pentagon to establish drone programs of varying degrees and foci. Is your local college or university colluding with the Pentagon to manufacture weapons of war? Call and ask. The Office of the Registrar and various academic deans’ offices are good places to start.

Although it is often overlooked, NSA also harms U.S. academia; NSA’s estimated $6 billion budget allows it to absorb USA’s most talented mathematicians and computer scientists, who are then placed deep under the Old Line State to focus entirely on matters relevant to “national security.” Imagine the benefits to humankind if an agency with a benevolent mission (perhaps the EPA or the Department of Education) were allocated untold billions and given free reign with USA’s best and brightest. Consider the following example: the complex algorithm used to weigh whether to attack military-aged males via drone was created by CIA brains. Imagine if minds like these were put to good use.

Social Science and Human Terrain

The Pentagon also engages the social sciences, which are traditionally a liberal refuge and averse to complicity in warfare. In its own words, the Department of Defense (sic) then “leverage[s] the expertise and infrastructures of a wide range of existing mechanisms for funding basic research.” This initiative, known as Minerva, allows the Pentagon to actively direct academia towards militant purposes. The result is dismal, as Hugh Gusterson indicates:

“The Pentagon will have the false comfort of believing that it has harnessed the best and the brightest minds, when in fact it will have only received a very limited slice of what the ivory tower has to offer – academics who have no problem taking Pentagon funds… Details like the source of one’s funding can make or break the legitimacy of ones work.”

All sides lose. The Pentagon doesn’t obtain voices representative of academia, while those academics who collude with the Pentagon produce tainted research and are often ostracized by their independent peers.

The Pentagon has already succeeded in absorbing some social scientists under its Human Terrain program, albeit with negligible results as seen on National Geographic, which conveniently avoids questioning the imperial presence of the U.S. military in the nation of Afghanistan. The hard fact is that anthropologist academics attached to imperial misadventures in Afghanistan are nothing more than gilded PSYOP operators.

Funding and Abuse

On 8 May 2012, the Pentagon announced plans to award $54.7 million to various academic institutions “to support the purchase of state-of-the-art research equipment.” This funding – made under the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) – is divided into 190 separate awards to over 100 distinct academic institutions. Its stated intent is to augment “current university capabilities or [develop] new university capabilities to perform cutting-edge defense research.” In other words, these funds supplement, and are completely outside of, normal Pentagon funding of academia. But these millions are just a drop in the bucket.

Eight days after the Pentagon dropped the $54.7 bomb on academia, it issued $155 million in funding “to academic institutions across the country to perform multidisciplinary basic research.”  This Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) “supports the research of teams of investigators whose backgrounds intersect multiple traditional science and engineering disciplines in order to accelerate research progress… A total of 63 academic institutions are expected to participate in the 23 research efforts.”

In its own words, the Pentagon divvies out over “$2 billion each year in basic, applied, and advanced research” to dozens of universities. According to the Pentagon, the recent DURIP funding “meets a critical need by enabling university researchers to purchase scientific equipment costing $50,000 or more.” Once in control of the coffers that fund academic projects, the Pentagon then has a direct say in how university research is directed, used, and implemented.

All bases are covered. According to the Pentagon’s own press release, it is able to penetrate numerous fields, including “research underpinning advances in surface chemistry and physics, computing and networks, electronics and electro optics, neuroscience, fluid dynamics and propulsion, robotics and autonomous systems, and ocean, environmental, and biological science and engineering.”

In this hegemonic spirit, the Office of Naval Research runs a Young Investigator Program whose explicit goal is to “attract outstanding faculty members of Institutions of Higher Education to the Department of Navy’s research program, to support their research, and to encourage their teaching and research careers.” Cooptation of academia has never been so brazen.

Pentagon State University

The Pentagon also runs its own network of universities and colleges, which effectively bypasses any dissent that might arise from close working relationships with civilian institutions. Through its own academic institutions, the Pentagon is able to create a mutant form of academia, which justifies war and couches acts of imperial aggression in martial academics.

The Pentagon’s schools of higher learning include: the National Defense University (which encompasses the National War College, the Institute for National Strategic Studies, the College of International Security Affairs, the Eisenhower School for National Security & Resource Strategy, the Joint Forces Staff College, and the Information Resources Management College); the Naval War College; the Naval Postgraduate School; the Army War College; the Marine Corp University; and the Air University (which includes the Air War College, among others).

The U.S. Army also operates the Army Command & General Staff College, the Army School of Advanced Military Studies, and the Army Management Staff College, many of which overlap in ambit and mission. This list is woefully incomplete, as it is difficult to ascertain the size of the Pentagon’s bloated pseudo-academic colossus.

Military personnel often leave the Pentagon’s corridors in order to teach throughout U.S. academia. General David Petraeus, who co-authored the dismal COIN doctrine and oversaw USA’s occupation of multiple countries, is about to enlighten young minds at CUNY and USC. General Stanley McChrystal, former Commander of JSOC, now teaches leadership at Yale. (Yale even went so far as to once plan on building an interrogation training center on its campus for use by U.S. special operations forces).

Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has taught at Princeton. Admiral Eric Olson, former Commander of USSOCOM, has taught at Columbia. Admiral Stavridis, former commander of NATO, was recently appointed Dean of Tufts’ Fletcher School. Tufts’ press release quoted the Admiral: “We are excellent at launching Tomahawk missiles; we need to get better at launching ideas.” Tufts’ official paean gave no comment on the number of civilian casualties that are known to accompany USA’s aforementioned missile strikes.

Through various approaches, the Pentagon has succeeded in contorting U.S. academia. Considering how many communities across the United States have suffered mass school closings, it is difficult to justify continued funding of educational institutions whose primary focus is on preparing for and conducting war. Our country would be better served spending limited discretionary funding on un-militarized educational objectives, healthcare, or clean energy.

Christian Sorensen for Media Roots

Photo by Flickr User: JHF

MEDIA ROOTS – Dissection of a 20 February 2013 New York Times article demonstrates the extent to which the “newspaper of record” muddles the truth on issues pertaining to Israel. Even the article’s title, Trial Offers Rare Look at Work of Hezbollah in Europe, is deceptive since the article is filled with superficial, Zionist axioms and mere conjecture.

The opening paragraph asserts the testimony of an alleged Hezbollah operative provides “a rare look inside a covert global war between Israel and Iran.” This is highly misleading. There is no global war of parity between the two countries. In reality, the Iranian people have been victimized by cyber-attacks, unjustifiable sanctions, and a wide array of insidious propaganda. Instead of responding in kind, Iran has taken caution not to provoke Zionism’s itchy trigger finger.

According to the Times, this so-called operative “described being handled by a masked man he knew only as Ayman.” Conveniently, the operative “never saw the face of Ayman” because Ayman “was always wearing a mask.”

At the mysterious Ayman’s behest, this operative transported bags, a package, a cellphone, and two SIM cards around Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. When the operative was arrested, he was in possession of a “small red notebook with the license plate numbers of two buses ferrying Israelis.” Two weeks after he was arrested, a bomb blew up alongside a bus in Burgas, Bulgaria, killing a Bulgarian chauffeur and five Israeli tourists.

According to the Times, “experts say” the Burgas attack was “similar to the one he [the operative] seemed to be planning.” Conveniently, unbiased “experts” are nowhere to be found in the Times’ article, which quotes only two pundits of sharp proclivity.

The first pundit is Daniel Benjamin, a Zionist, who comments on how the operative’s trial might tip European hesitancy in favor of designating Hezbollah as a “terrorist organization.” He also commented on Cyprus’ dedication to see this trial proceed, remarking how Cypriot authorities have “done the right thing and they’ve been resolute about it.” Benjamin has worked tirelessly against Hezbollah. As a careerist whose professional brand thrives implicitly on the pursuit of the United States’ foes, whether real or imagined, Benjamin is hardly an unbiased “expert.”

The second “expert” is Matthew Leavitt, a director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which was founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful, right-wing, Israeli lobby located in Washington, DC. (AIPAC used to be known as the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs). Instead of disclosing Levitt’s ties to this particular Zionist establishment, the New York Times provided him a platform through which he states “the evidence seems quite compelling that what he [the operative] was doing was conducting surveillance for a bombing that would parallel almost exactly what happened in Bulgaria.”

Belén Fernández, a scrupulous author and acclaimed analyst, reports on how much of the so-called evidence in the Burgas bombing was non-existent or manufactured. Investigative journalist Gareth Porter reveals how Bulgaria eventually conceded extremely tenuous evidence, which pertained to Hezbollah’s potential involvement, but only after Bulgarian officials received immense pressure from U.S. and Israeli officials.

For their part, Bulgarian authorities could only note Hezbollah’s potential involvement after relying “heavily on resources from foreign security services,” according to Tihomir Bezlov of the Sofia-based Center for the Study of Democracy. Even with all these externally-supplied “resources,” Bulgarian officials could only allude to “traces in this attack,” which might lead to “Hezbollah’s military wing.” The Times admits “officials in Cyprus have tried to keep the case as low-key as possible, declining in most instances to comment or to release documents.” Perhaps they too are being fed “resources” from foreign nations.

This lack of context – or perhaps selective detailing – plaguing the New York Times’ article is noteworthy.

The Times was generous enough to concede the so-called operative “described himself as ‘threatened, scared and confused,’ during his initial interrogation.” He was also “adamant that he was not participating in a plot to kill Israeli tourists.”

Perhaps the individual in question, who works as an administrator of a Lebanese trading company and aspires to become a fruit juice importer, will turn out to be a verified Hezbollah “operative,” but he could easily have been working for Mossad, whose patronage boasts a lurid history of conducting false flag operations against a variety of targets.

Unfortunately, the Times paints the suspect, who is still undergoing trial, as genuinely nefarious without disclosing their aforementioned prejudices.

Analysis of this article reveals the New York Times’ bias, which is consistent with their record of erasing Israel’s crimes and altering articles to favor Zionist narratives.

Christian Sorensen for Media Roots 

Photo by Flickr User Ron Almog

Obama’s Normalization of Neo-Conservatism Part 4 of 4: Obama’s War on Whistleblowers. Read Part 1 of Obama’s Normalization of Neo-conservatism: Drones. Read Part 2 of Obama’s Normalization of Neo-conservatism: Continuing Coverup of Torture  Read Part 3 of Obama’s Normalization of Neo-conservatism: Obama Evokes State Secrets

MEDIA ROOTS – “Protect Whistle blowers: …Such acts of courage and patriotism….should be encouraged rather than stifled.  Barack Obama will strengthen whistle blower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud and abuse of authority in government.  Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistle blower claims and whistle blowers have full access to courts and due process.” – from the official Obama / Biden campaign website posted in 2008.

In 1917, during World War I, the Espionage Act was passed in the United States.  Since the inception of the Espionage Act up until 2012, this law has been used on 9 people, 6 of whom were charged between 2008-2012, all under the direction and oversight of President Obama.

How has something so seemingly draconian and Bush-like been used so excessively by an administration that promised change and an end to “Scooter Libby justice”?  Is the Obama administration simply trying to ‘plug all the leaks’?  After all the research for Media Roots’ series of ‘Obama’s normalization of neoconservatism,’ it is clearer than ever that Obama has gone above and beyond any other president in US history to protect a prior administration from investigations, repercussions and criminal punishment.

Amidst the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned after being faced with criminal charges and impeachment.  He was later pardoned by Gerald Ford, who ascended unelected to the presidency in the wake of Nixon’s resignation before he went to trial.  A president, even an unelected one, always has the legal right to pardon someone for any reason he deems necessary. In the case of Obama, he would not and could not allow the justice system to function organically as he put up road blocks at every opportunity so that no one from the Bush administrations could face prosecution or charges.  Worse and even more insulting to the law than even a pre-emptive pardon was blanket retroactive immunity for any and all blatant crimes committed by Bush and his administration

In a few of the cases against whistle blowers, the government has dropped most of the charges long after making a public spectacle of the event.  One might think that the government was simply trying to get to the bottom of the the matter and dropped charges in certain instances once no evidence of guilt was found.  Studying each whistle blowing investigation individually, it becomes clear that intimidation was the primary goal regardless if the charges stuck or not.  Sucking mainstream journalists into a vortex of potential litigation and prosecution, the government sends a message to all interested in true investigative journalism in the United States. 

The writer of the infamous NSA wiretapping story in the NY times was subpoenaed over three times in an effort to reveal his sources. The delay in the NY times releasing the article (almost a year after they got the scoop) could possibly be explained by their fear of disrupting the 2004 election results with negative press. Perhaps if they caused too much of a ruckus, the governments’ intimidation would have been much worse, possibly resulting in the journalist’s arrest.  Interestingly, this scandal was leaked four years before Obama came into office.  When Obama took office and the investigation went into full force, his Justice Department went after the journalists and government employees involved in the leak.

The US government claimed that former Justice Department lawyer, Thomas Tann, was the source of the leak, and was under investigation for over five years until the charges were eventually dropped.  One may say ‘no harm no foul’ without taking into account that during this investigation the US government made a point to drag his name through the mud in the form of a public smear campaign.

Thomas Drake is another NSA employee who found out about an NSA no bid contract of 1.2 billion dollars when the same services could be provided in house for merely 2 million.  When he leaked this information, he was fired and investigated then subsequently charged with espionage.  “It is now apparently a federal crime to report illegalities, malfeasance, broad waste and abuse perpetrated by our own government, but now government is making whistle-blowing a crime. They are making dissent a crime, especially when it embarrasses the government and calls the government to account.”…”speaking truth to power makes one the enemy of the state” – Thomas Drake.  Under Obama’s new law, reporting extreme government waste is seen as one of the highest threats against national security, espionage.  Eventually all charges were dropped except “exceeding authorized use of a computer” for which he pleaded guilty and received a misdemeanor.

Jeffery Sterling is a former CIA agent who is alleged to have told the New York times about the identity of an ‘asset’ who was involved in an embarrassing botched covert attempt to thwart Iran’s nuclear program.  The reporter who wrote the article, James Risen, was subpoenaed to reveal his source.  Risen refused to give up his sources and later revealed in court via his lawyers that the US government under the authority of Eric Holder and Michael Mukassey (effective continuity between Bush’s and Obama’s Justice Department) spied on him and gained personal information such as bank records and airline travel schedules. For what purpose? The government will not say. Acts like this, regardless of the official reasoning, can again be seen as acts of intimidation.  If a journalist knows a whistle blower wanting to reveal a juicy story about government negligence, crimes, waste or just outright ineptness, they should be very careful because the government might start spying on them if they even consider publishing the information.  The Espionage Act was also used against dual US-Israeli citizen and FBI translator, Shamai Leibowitz, who was sentenced to twenty months in prison for leaking information to a blogger about a proposed disastrous Israeli strike on Iran.  The blogger in response to the charges told the New York Times that Leibowitz was an “American Patriot”.

John Kiriakou is the CIA’s former director of counter terrorism operations in Pakistan who was charged under the Act for allegedly leaking to reporters the names of two agency operatives involved in the interrogation of terrorism detainees under the George W. Bush Administration.  Besides evoking state secrets and squelching potential investigations into one of the most egregious Bush war-crimes, torture, Obama’s Justice Department was willing to use the Espionage Act to stop one of it’s own from going public with even more incriminating information about Bush law breaking.  Eventually a reporter or a blogger might need to proxy to escape criminal prosecution, just like the whistle blower in which he is basing his story.  Twenty-four year old US soldier  Private First Class Bradley Manning thought he had a proxy in the form of Wikileaks when he allegedly smuggled out of military intelligence thousands of diplomatic cables and classified videos, one in particular showing the US military killing two unarmed journalists and injuring a small girl from an Apache helicopter.  The video later named Collateral Murder’ by Wikileaks is chilling.  As the soldiers in the helicopter realize they’ve shot a young child, they callously scoff “shouldn’t of brought your kids to battlefield.” 

Of all the whistle blowers under the Obama administration, Manning was the subject of the loudest public smear campaign initiated by none other than hip technology magazine Wired after an FBI informant, Adrian Lammo, turned him into the authorities for his supposed role in leaking the famous “Collateral Murder” video.  Before Manning was even charged with a crime (which would later officially be the Espionage Act), President Obama proclaimed Manning’s guilt on national television.  Regardless if he were guilty of the leak or not, the message was clear.  A person will be thrown in jail and never heard from again if they leak something of this magnitude and the most powerful man in the country will deem you guilty to hundreds of millions of Americans.   Private Manning has been kept in solitary confinement on ‘suicide watch’, forced to strip naked daily with no bed sheets for the first 200 days of his detention.  To date, he has spent over 850 days in a tiny jail cell, at least 730 days longer than legally allowed in the united states.  The normal legal limit is four months or 120 days until you are required to face a judge and go to trial. 

Bradley Manning was inspired by the International organization Wikileaks to do what he was alleged to have done.  Wikileaks is headed by an Australian citizen, Julian Assange, who up until recently has managed to continue the organization’s work unscathed.   Assange argues, as does Wikileaks supporters, that to punish Wikileaks itself would be the equivalent to punishing actual mainstream journalistic outlets like the NY times or Washington Post.  The reason being that once wikileaks publishes information handed over to them from insider whistle blowers, the information becomes public domain over the internet. What is technically the difference between Wikileaks publishing information given to them by whistle blowers and the NY Times for instance publishing the same information?  The answer is none, that the distinction between the two acts does not exist.  The real difference is that an outlet like the NY times would be far more careful in upsetting the status quo in order to be equally as unfiltered of an outlet like Wikileaks.

In a government CIA document titled “Wikileaks.org – an online reference to foreign intelligence services, insurgents or terrorist groups” (which was ironically leaked by Wikileaks itself) it states, “Web sites such as Wikileaks.org use trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers, or whistle blowers. The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistle blowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site.”  “The possibility that a current employee or mole within DOD or elsewhere in the US government is providing sensitive information or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out.  Wikileaks.org claims that the leakers or whistle blowers of sensitive or classified DOD documents are former US government employees.  These claims are highly suspect, however, since Wikileaks.org states that the anonymity and protection of the leakers or whistle blowers is one of its primary goals.”

The heat against Wikileaks peaked in late 2010 when the ‘Collateral Murder’ video made them a household name in the United States.  Many independent civil liberties focused media outlets and reporters such as Glenn Greenwald (one of wikileaks earliest and most high profile supporters) encouraged people who strongly believed in freedom of the press and the 1st amendment to donate money to Wikileaks using Paypal or credit card.  The next noteworthy leaks by Wikileaks included thousands of internal diplomatic cables from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Again Wikileaks was dominating the news and Julian Assange had become so well known at this point that they parodied him on Saturday Night Live.  Then the government unexpectedly announced that they have a suspect who they knew provided the classified snuff film about the Iraq murders to Wikileaks, namely Bradley Manning.  At this point, the reality of the situation was undeniable, that Wikileaks was generating a serious threat against the PR apparatus of the United States.  As clearly stated in US government documented about Wikileaks, “The disclosure of sensitive or classified information involving a foreign government or corporation will eventually result in the increased accountability of a democratic, oppressive, or corrupt the government to its citizen.”  Shortly after Bradley Manning was arrested, Wikileaks’ web host suddenly discontinued service.  Amazon.com, their web provider,  pulled the site within 24 of hours of an apparent phone call from the chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, Joe Lieberman.  The day after Amazon pulled the plug, its domain-name service provider, EveryDNS, stopped resolving WikiLeaks.org, after the DNS provider was battered by the DOS attacks.

On December 7th, 2010, Forbes Magazine wrote that Visa suspended payments to WikiLeaks… MasterCard told Cnet that it would also attempt to block payments to WikiLeaks, arguing that its “rules prohibit customers from directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal.”  And only one day later Readwrite.com writes, “In the latest in a series of blows to Wikileaks, PayPal says it will no longer support money transfers to the whistle blower site.”  Although these companies have said that their terms of service forbid the support or facilitation of illegal activity, such pronouncements about Wikileaks are debatable. While it is a crime to leak classified information, receiving and publishing it is not.

Whether it was actually a crime or not was of no consequence to the State Department and apparently not to the corporations who strategically blocked Wikileaks’ efforts.  Over 95% of all online payments are in the form of Visa, Mastercard or Paypal. This was a genuine conspiracy of government and corporations to squelch Wikileaks from receiving funding from a now exponentially growing supportive group of donors. The US government effectively intimidated journalists, whistle blowers and now private corporations into submission.   Julian Assange found ways around these problems, switching web hosts and encouraging people to donate with American Express and Bitcoin. These companies, luckily did not cave to US pressure.

If there was any doubt left that corporations and government work together to suppress the free flow of information, there is no longer.  It was now right out in the open that once the US government felt threatened by a force who are technically breaking no laws, they will do anything and everything to lessen and suppress that threat.  This all came to a head when Julian Assange was wanted for questioning in Sweden on suspicion of rape charges.  At this point in time, it became clear to Julian that the US was going to try and find a way to take him back to the US and detain him.  Mainstream media outlets were suspicious about the rape accusations and Julian Assange agreed to go in for questioning if Swedish authorities promised they would not extradite him to the US.   They could not make such a promise, so he refused to go in for questioning.  He now stays indefinitely inside the Ecuadorian embassy inside the UK and has been there for over 4 months.  If he leaves the UK, authorities will immediately arrest him, and after that the US will do everything in their power to take him into custody.  Legally speaking they would use the Espionage Act and he would suffer the same fate as Private Manning most likely never seeing the light of day in his lifetime.  Most legal experts warn that if Assange can be charged under the act, that any US journalist who also shared Wikileaks information could be charged as well.  This is a legal slippery slope that sends an immense chilling effect to working journalists.  It sends the message if sensitive information is published, even information available publicly on the internet, criminal charges could proceed.

Most average citizens might feel totally unaffected by the US government’s battle to stop whistle blowers and journalists from revealing embarrassing information, just as most Americans feel unaffected by the marginalization of Muslims and Arabs in this country in the wake of 9/11 but there is a dangerous trickle down effect as a result of these intimidation tactics.  When the US government goes after suspicious Muslims, whistle blowers, journalists, activists or political radicals, it affects us all whether we realize it or not.  The next time a journalist receives private information that might be in the public interest, they may not want to act on it out of fear of aiding a criminal.  The next time someone wants to say something controversial on the internet about the US government, they might think twice out of fear.  If someone feels compelled to donate to Wikileaks or another outspoken human rights organization like the ACLU, they might think twice out of concern of ‘showing up on some government list’.  This is the chilling effect which insidiously sneaks up on all Americans.  Unfortunately, this has been historically the best deterrent for keeping a populace in check, stopping citizens from even thinking about challenging the power structure.  The strategy is to eliminate potential challenges to the power structure through the power of fear and intimidation.  Since the war on terror has already been waged for over a decade, and the recently revealed ‘disposition matrix’ reveals it will go on for at least another two decades, is there a chance that American journalists, activists and average citizens will stand up and seize whatever power the 1st amendment still grants them?  Let us all hope so. 

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Written by Robbie Martin for Media Roots

Photos provided by Dick Swanson, White House photographer used under public domain based on works by the US government