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TechnoratiExposing Bush's Historic Abuse of Power
The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committee congressional investigation of the 1970s.
While reporting on domestic surveillance under Bush, Salon obtained a detailed memo proposing such an inquiry, and spoke with several sources involved in recent discussions around it on Capitol Hill. The memo was written by a former senior member of the original Church Committee; the discussions have included aides to top House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, and until now have not been disclosed publicly.
Salon has also uncovered further indications of far-reaching and possibly illegal surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency inside the United States under President Bush. That includes the alleged use of a top-secret, sophisticated database system for monitoring people considered to be a threat to national security. It also includes signs of the NSA's working closely with other U.S. government agencies to track financial transactions domestically as well as globally.
The proposal for a Church Committee-style investigation emerged from talks between civil liberties advocates and aides to Democratic leaders in Congress, according to sources involved. (Pelosi's and Conyers' offices both declined to comment.) Looking forward to 2009, when both Congress and the White House may well be controlled by Democrats, the idea is to have Congress appoint an investigative body to discover the full extent of what the Bush White House did in the war on terror to undermine the Constitution and U.S. and international laws. The goal would be to implement government reforms aimed at preventing future abuses -- and perhaps to bring accountability for wrongdoing by Bush officials.
"If we know this much about torture, rendition, secret prisons and warrantless wiretapping despite the administration's attempts to stonewall, then imagine what we don't know," says a senior Democratic congressional aide who is familiar with the proposal and has been involved in several high-profile congressional investigations.
"You have to go back to the McCarthy era to find this level of abuse," says Barry Steinhardt, the director of the Program on Technology and Liberty for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Because the Bush administration has been so opaque, we don't know [the extent of] what laws have been violated."
The parameters for an investigation were outlined in a seven-page memo, written after the former member of the Church Committee met for discussions with the ACLU, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Common Cause and other watchdog groups. Key issues to investigate, those involved say, would include the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance activities; the Central Intelligence Agency's use of extraordinary rendition and torture against terrorist suspects; and the U.S. government's extensive use of military assets -- including satellites, Pentagon intelligence agencies and U2 surveillance planes -- for a vast spying apparatus that could be used against the American people.
Specifically, the ACLU and other groups want to know how the NSA's use of databases and data mining may have meshed with other domestic intelligence activities, such as the U.S. government's extensive use of no-fly lists and the Treasury Department's list of "specially designated global terrorists" to identify potential suspects. As of mid-July, says Steinhardt, the no-fly list includes more than 1 million records corresponding to more than 400,000 names. If those people really represent terrorist threats, he says, "our cities would be ablaze." A deeper investigation into intelligence abuses should focus on how these lists feed on each other, Steinhardt says, as well as the government's "inexorable trend towards treating everyone as a suspect."
"It's not just the 'Terrorist Surveillance Program,'" agrees Gregory T. Nojeim from the Center for Democracy and Technology, referring to the Bush administration's misleading name for the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. "We need a broad investigation on the way all the moving parts fit together. It seems like we're always looking at little chunks and missing the big picture."
A prime area of inquiry for a sweeping new investigation would be the Bush administration's alleged use of a top-secret database to guide its domestic surveillance. Dating back to the 1980s and known to government insiders as "Main Core," the database reportedly collects and stores -- without warrants or court orders -- the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security.
According to several former U.S. government officials with extensive knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its current incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies. One former intelligence official described Main Core as "an emergency internal security database system" designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name, he says, is derived from the fact that it contains "copies of the 'main core' or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community."
Some of the former U.S. officials interviewed, although they have no direct knowledge of the issue, said they believe that Main Core may have been used by the NSA to determine who to spy on in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Moreover, the NSA's use of the database, they say, may have triggered the now-famous March 2004 confrontation between the White House and the Justice Department that nearly led Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI director William Mueller and other top Justice officials to resign en masse.
The Justice Department officials who objected to the legal basis for the surveillance program -- former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey and Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel -- testified before Congress last year about the 2004 showdown with the White House. Although they refused to discuss the highly classified details behind their concerns, the New York Times later reported that they were objecting to a program that "involved computer searches through massive electronic databases" containing "records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans."
According to William Hamilton, a former NSA intelligence officer who left the agency in the 1970s, that description sounded a lot like Main Core, which he first heard about in detail in 1992. Hamilton, who is the president of Inslaw Inc., a computer services firm with many clients in government and the private sector, says there are strong indications that the Bush administration's domestic surveillance operations use Main Core.
Hamilton's company Inslaw is widely respected in the law enforcement community for creating a program called the Prosecutors' Management Information System, or PROMIS. It keeps track of criminal investigations through a powerful search engine that can quickly access all stored data components of a case, from the name of the initial investigators to the telephone numbers of key suspects. PROMIS, also widely used in the insurance industry, can also sort through other databases fast, with results showing up almost instantly. "It operates just like Google," Hamilton told me in an interview in his Washington office in May.
Since the late 1980s, Inslaw has been involved in a legal dispute over its claim that Justice Department officials in the Reagan administration appropriated the PROMIS software. Hamilton claims that Reagan officials gave PROMIS to the NSA and the CIA, which then adapted the software -- and its outstanding ability to search other databases -- to manage intelligence operations and track financial transactions. Over the years, Hamilton has employed prominent lawyers to pursue the case, including Elliot Richardson, the former attorney general and secretary of defense who died in 1999, and C. Boyden Gray, the former White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush. The dispute has never been settled. But based on the long-running case, Hamilton says he believes U.S. intelligence uses PROMIS as the primary software for searching the Main Core database.
Hamilton was first told about the connection between PROMIS and Main Core in the spring of 1992 by a U.S. intelligence official, and again in 1995 by a former NSA official. In July 2001, Hamilton says, he discussed his case with retired Adm. Dan Murphy, a former military advisor to Elliot Richardson who later served under President George H.W. Bush as deputy director of the CIA. Murphy, who died shortly after his meeting with Hamilton, did not specifically mention Main Core. But he informed Hamilton that the NSA's use of PROMIS involved something "so seriously wrong that money alone cannot cure the problem," Hamilton told me. He added, "I believe in retrospect that Murphy was alluding to Main Core." Hamilton also provided copies of letters that Richardson and Gray sent to U.S. intelligence officials and the Justice Department on Inslaw's behalf alleging that the NSA and the CIA had appropriated PROMIS for intelligence use.
Hamilton says James B. Comey's congressional testimony in May 2007, in which he described a hospitalized John Ashcroft's dramatic standoff with senior Bush officials Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card, was another illuminating moment. "It was then that we [at Inslaw] started hearing again about the Main Core derivative of PROMIS for spying on Americans," he told me.
Through a former senior Justice Department official with more than 25 years of government experience, Salon has learned of a high-level former national security official who reportedly has firsthand knowledge of the U.S. government's use of Main Core. The official worked as a senior intelligence analyst for a large domestic law enforcement agency inside the Bush White House. He would not agree to an interview. But according to the former Justice Department official, the former intelligence analyst told her that while stationed at the White House after the 9/11 attacks, one day he accidentally walked into a restricted room and came across a computer system that was logged on to what he recognized to be the Main Core database. When she mentioned the specific name of the top-secret system during their conversation, she recalled, "he turned white as a sheet."
An article in Radar magazine in May, citing three unnamed former government officials, reported that "8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect" and, in the event of a national emergency, "could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and even detention."
The alleged use of Main Core by the Bush administration for surveillance, if confirmed to be true, would indicate a much deeper level of secretive government intrusion into Americans' lives than has been previously known. With respect to civil liberties, says the ACLU's Steinhardt, it would be "pretty frightening stuff."
The Inslaw case also points to what may be an extensive role played by the NSA in financial spying inside the United States. According to reports over the years in the U.S. and foreign press, Inslaw's PROMIS software was embedded surreptitiously in systems sold to foreign and global banks as a way to give the NSA secret "backdoor" access to the electronic flow of money around the world.
In May, I interviewed Norman Bailey, a private financial consultant with years of government intelligence experience dating from the George W. Bush administration back to the Reagan administration. According to Bailey -- who from 2006 to 2007 headed a special unit within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence focused on financial intelligence on Cuba and Venezuela -- the NSA has been using its vast powers with signals intelligence to track financial transactions around the world since the early 1980s.
From 1982 to 1984, Bailey ran a top-secret program for President Reagan's National Security Council, called "Follow the Money," that used NSA signals intelligence to track loans from Western banks to the Soviet Union and its allies. PROMIS, he told me, was "the principal software element" used by the NSA and the Treasury Department then in their electronic surveillance programs tracking financial flows to the Soviet bloc, organized crime and terrorist groups. His admission is the first public acknowledgement by a former U.S. intelligence official that the NSA used the PROMIS software.
According to Bailey, the Reagan program marked a significant shift in resources from human spying to electronic surveillance, as a way to track money flows to suspected criminals and American enemies. "That was the beginning of the whole process," he said.
After 9/11, this capability was instantly seen within the U.S. government as a critical tool in the war on terror -- and apparently was deployed by the Bush administration inside the United States, in cases involving alleged terrorist supporters. One such case was that of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation in Oregon, which was accused of having terrorist ties after the NSA, at the request of the Treasury Department, eavesdropped on the phone calls of Al-Haramain officials and their American lawyers. The charges against Al-Haramain were based primarily on secret evidence that the Bush administration refused to disclose in legal proceedings; Al-Haramain's lawyers argued in a lawsuit that was a violation of the defendants' due process rights.
According to Bailey, the NSA also likely would have used its technological capabilities to track the charity's financial activity. "The vast majority of financial movements of any significance take place electronically, so intercepts have become an extremely important element" in intelligence, he explained. "If the government suspects that a particular Muslim charitable organization is engaged in collecting funds to funnel to terrorists, the NSA would be asked to follow the money going into and out of the bank accounts of that charity." (The now-defunct Al-Haramain Foundation, although affiliated with a Saudi Arabian-based global charity, was founded and based in Ashland, Ore.)
The use of a powerful database and extensive watch lists, Bailey said, would make the NSA's job much easier. "The biggest problems with intercepts, quite frankly, is that the volumes of data, daily or even by the hour, are gigantic," he said. "Unless you have a very precise idea of what it is you're looking for, the NSA people or their counterparts [overseas] will just throw up their hands and say 'forget it.'" Regarding domestic surveillance, Bailey said there's a "whole gray area where the initiation of the transaction was in the United States and the final destination was outside, or vice versa. That's something for the lawyers to figure out."
Bailey's information on the evolution of the Reagan intelligence program appears to corroborate and clarify an article published in March in the Wall Street Journal, which reported that the NSA was conducting domestic surveillance using "an ad-hoc collection of so-called 'black programs' whose existence is undisclosed." Some of these programs began "years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach." Among them, the article said, are a joint NSA-Treasury database on financial transactions that dates back "about 15 years" to 1993. That's not quite right, Bailey clarified: "It started in the early '80s, at least 10 years before."
Main Core may be the contemporary incarnation of a government watch list system that was part of a highly classified "Continuity of Government" program created by the Reagan administration to keep the U.S. government functioning in the event of a nuclear attack. Under a 1982 presidential directive, the outbreak of war could trigger the proclamation of martial law nationwide, giving the military the authority to use its domestic database to round up citizens and residents considered to be threats to national security. The emergency measures for domestic security were to be carried out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Army.
In the late 1980s, reports about a domestic database linked to FEMA and the Continuity of Government program began to appear in the press. For example, in 1986 the Austin American-Statesman uncovered evidence of a large database that authorities were proposing to use to intern Latino dissidents and refugees during a national emergency that might follow a potential U.S. invasion of Nicaragua. During the Iran-Contra congressional hearings in 1987, questions to Reagan aide Oliver North about the database were ruled out of order by the committee chairman, Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye, because of the "highly sensitive and classified" nature of FEMA's domestic security operations.
In September 2001, according to "The Rise of the Vulcans," a 2004 book on Bush's war cabinet by James Mann, a contemporary version of the Continuity of Government program was put into play in the hours after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when Vice President Cheney and senior members of Congress were dispersed to "undisclosed locations" to maintain government functions. It was during this emergency period, Hamilton and other former government officials believe, that President Bush may have authorized the NSA to begin actively using the Main Core database for domestic surveillance. One indicator they cite is a statement by Bush in December 2005, after the New York Times had revealed the NSA's warrantless wiretapping, in which he made a rare reference to the emergency program: The Justice Department's legal reviews of the NSA activity, Bush said, were based on "fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government."
It is noteworthy that two key players on Bush's national security team, Cheney and his chief of staff, David Addington, have been involved in the Continuity of Government program since its inception. Along with Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's first secretary of defense, both men took part in simulated drills for the program during the 1980s and early 1990s. Addington's role was disclosed in "The Dark Side," a book published this month about the Bush administration's war on terror by New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer. In the book, Mayer calls Addington "the father of the [NSA] eavesdropping program," and reports that he was the key figure involved in the 2004 dispute between the White House and the Justice Department over the legality of the program. That would seem to make him a prime witness for a broader investigation.
Getting a full picture on Bush's intelligence programs, however, will almost certainly require any sweeping new investigation to have a scope that would inoculate it against charges of partisanship. During one recent discussion on Capitol Hill, according to a participant, a senior aide to Speaker Pelosi was asked for Pelosi's views on a proposal to expand the investigation to past administrations, including those of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. "The question was, how far back in time would we have to go to make this credible?" the participant in the meeting recalled.
That question was answered in the seven-page memo. "The rise of the 'surveillance state' driven by new technologies and the demands of counter-terrorism did not begin with this Administration," the author wrote. Even though he acknowledged in interviews with Salon that the scope of abuse under George W. Bush would likely be an order of magnitude greater than under preceding presidents, he recommended in the memo that any new investigation follow the precedent of the Church Committee and investigate the origins of Bush's programs, going as far back as the Reagan administration.
The proposal has emerged in a political climate reminiscent of the Watergate era. The Church Committee was formed in 1975 in the wake of media reports about illegal spying against American antiwar activists and civil rights leaders, CIA assassination squads, and other dubious activities under Nixon and his predecessors. Chaired by Sen. Frank Church of Idaho, the committee interviewed more than 800 officials and held 21 public hearings. As a result of its work, Congress in 1978 passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which required warrants and court supervision for domestic wiretaps, and created intelligence oversight committees in the House and Senate.
So far, no lawmaker has openly endorsed a proposal for a new Church Committee-style investigation. A spokesman for Pelosi declined to say whether Pelosi herself would be in favor of a broader probe into U.S. intelligence. On the Senate side, the most logical supporters for a broader probe would be Democratic senators such as Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who led the failed fight against the recent Bush-backed changes to FISA. (Both Feingold and Leahy's offices declined to comment on a broader intelligence inquiry.)
The Democrats' reticence on such action ultimately may be rooted in congressional complicity with the Bush administration's intelligence policies. Many of the war on terror programs, including the NSA's warrantless surveillance and the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques," were cleared with key congressional Democrats, including Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Rockefeller, and former House Intelligence chairwoman Jane Harman, among others.
The discussions about a broad investigation were jump-started among civil liberties advocates this spring, when it became clear that the Democrats didn't have the votes to oppose the Bush-backed bill updating FISA. The new legislation could prevent the full story of the NSA surveillance programs from ever being uncovered; it included retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that may have violated FISA by collaborating with the NSA on warrantless wiretapping. Opponents of Bush's policies were further angered when Democratic leaders stripped from their competing FISA bill a provision that would have established a national commission to investigate post-9/11 surveillance programs.
The next president obviously would play a key role in any decision to investigate intelligence abuses. Sen. John McCain, the Republican candidate, is running as a champion of Bush's national security policies and would be unlikely to embrace an investigation that would, foremost, embarrass his own party. (Randy Scheunemann, McCain's spokesman on national security, declined to comment.)
Some see a brighter prospect in Barack Obama, should he be elected. The plus with Obama, says the former Church Committee staffer, is that as a proponent of open government, he could order the executive branch to be more cooperative with Congress, rolling back the obsessive secrecy and stonewalling of the Bush White House. That could open the door to greater congressional scrutiny and oversight of the intelligence community, since the legislative branch lacked any real teeth under Bush. (Obama's spokesman on national security, Ben Rhodes, did not reply to telephone calls and e-mails seeking comment.)
But even that may be a lofty hope. "It may be the last thing a new president would want to do," said a participant in the ongoing discussions. Unfortunately, he said, "some people see the Church Committee ideas as a substitute for prosecutions that should already have happened."
Tim Shorrock is an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in many publications in the United States and abroad, including The Nation, Salon, Mother Jones, Harper's, Inter Press Service.
© 2008 Salon
34 Comments so far
Show All"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
-- Abraham Lincoln
ONE CORPORATION RULES THE WORLD!
Decorpiratize and Democratize!
Privatization = Corporatism = FASCISM ='s SLAVERY
Repatriate!
ONE CORPORATION RULES THE WORLD with
Interlocking boards.
TRILLIONAIRES-R-US
The Game is FIXED!
You are the monkey in the middle.
Jumping between their Two Hand Puppets.
They have Privatized 75% of our Government and Military.
The Dark Army anyone?
A Corpirate Mercenary Army is standing on American soil in San Diego as we speak.
While our local Militia dies in IRAQ!
The last time we had a Mercenary Army on American soil, it was The British Army at The Battle of New Orleans in The War of 1812.
Funny how history repeats itself, if your watching?
European Aristocratic Euro Trash occupies the Black House.
He was selected, never elected.
The Alien Aristocracy's Golden Child
The King of thieves:
King George II
Everything is being sucked into
The Corpirate's Black Hole
Where is the accountability and oversight?
Who will stop their:
Spying, Lying, Torture and Terror?
All are UNCONSTITUTIONAL and ALL are
IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES!.
Shut it DOWN!
Invest in yourself and your local community.
Punch the Corpirate Boogie Man
The Halliburton Hunchback,
DEAD EYE DICK,
Gas-bag Chainey
In the face.
Withdraw your support from The Corporate System.
We need Consumer and Human Rights!
Stop watching and buying their hypnotic, poisonous Garbage.
It is the conditioning, used to enslave you.
Corporate GREED is imploding on itself as we speak.
Stand clear
STAND BACK 500 FEET
Then:
Repatriate.
Turn off The FAUX Media.
Shut it down and start over.
Decorpiratize and Democratize!
Survive and Prosper!
Self-sufficiency, efficiency, conservation and decentralization.
Let's take the best of what we know and start over.
Take out the bad and put in the good.
Reaffirm our common positive, inalienable, Humanistic, Constitutional: Rights, Goals and Ideals.
All for one and one for all.
Remember to take a Baby Step for Mankind.
SURGE
PURGE
UPDATE and
REBOOT!
POETIC JUSTICE: Good fleshing out of THE plot.
NativeSon
good post
i am not surprised that bush the granddaddy was a grave robber
he was also affectionately known as the "banker to the nazis"
I am reminded of the story of recent (4 yrs anyway) when GW Bush admitted that Prescot Bush had robbed the grave of Geronimo to bring back the skull and long bones to the "Skull and Bones" club/org/--of/at Yale.
I happen to know several descendants of those who were present when Geronimo died, a prisoner of war at Ft. Sill, Okl, 1904.
The "Indian Agent" at Ft.Sill "insisted" that Geronimo be buried in the Fort Cemetery, which was contracdictory the the Chiricahua tradition of leaving the body dressed in their finest for the scavengers to take and spread the remains after consumption---in this way, they "joined the earth once again".
When it was relayed to these people what Mr. Bush had admitted to---- they all laughed and said "awh we knew all along that the scavengers had his bones, we just didn't know WHICH SCAVENGERS".
GW Bush is just one of many who are members of a multi-generational social parasite group. They do the bidding of the powerful money people, and when they are eaten up by the other scavengers--- there are others ready to take the place of those eaten by the others.
If the American people truly want to have control over their country, they will eliminate the avenues where the money people can have leverage, then the scavengers like the Bushes and others will be left to their own resources without the "connections" that make them wealthy.
I have often said that if Mr. Bush's name were not THAT Bush, he would be in a Texas Prison for repeat offenders turning sexual favors for cigarettes and candy bars. He might still end up somewhere in a prison.
That so many people have turned on him recently is either a direct indication that many have been rudely awakened from their heavy slumber-----or they---like the other scavengers are ready to eat this one.
I'm not on the menu so I really care little for the ones who are on the menu.
Thanks for your time.
Rasmus 11 ---
Thank you for providing those links ...
Mr. Shorrock,
You are working a story that perhaps is the most significant in a generation; one that will make Watergate quaint by comparison.
However, I believe it is a red herring to tag President Bush with this, as the "story" is much, much larger.
As we now know, 9/11 caused our government to shift away from its constitutional foundation in an apparent evolutionary effort to flesh out the "Unitary Executive" from theory into practice.
Now we are beginning to get a "vision" of how this can work in reality. For example...
The Unitary Executive links seamlessly with the executive committees of the major corporations. With the CEOs being mandated to do their fiduciary duty in hiring and advancing the "right kind of people," they can turn to a board member who happens to have contractor connections with the government and consequently has a person's name run through the system described in your article. That little dalliance at a DC hotel 23 years ago picked up by the NSA and FBI is now part of your PERMANENT RECORD. The software capability here will make a person's behavior profile stand out far beyond anything FBI profiles do currently. I doubt this character analysis is what Dr. Martin Luther King had in mind.
Or let's say an up and coming woman politician who can be "worked with" had a certain boyfriend in her background, and the powers that be in the government want that person "discredited."
Or let's say a enterprising new company has expanded aggressively and is posing a "threat" to a company's existing line of business. Access to "profiles" on that company's key executives might give them a leg up when talking to customers on the golf course.
It is the "evolutionary" consequences of this technological capability that is most concerning; requiring perhaps artistic vision to flesh out...maybe something like "Righteous Kill."
I propose we could see the possibility of an American version of "ethnic cleansing" if eternal vigilance is not maintained.
.
http://www.libertyforlife.com/jail-police/us-concentration_camp-locations.htm
Where do you live?
44 States listed…
http://www.libertyforlife.com/jail-police/us_concentration_camps.htm
.
G A I L,
Very good points, Thank you.
Of course, just like the Fed Reserve Banker's twist of convenience in NAME -- perhaps something is hidden in plain sight again:Federal Emergency
Management Agency
Perhaps the organization is for responding to and "managing" any emergency that threatens the FEDERAL level of gov't ( e.g. Loonitary Executioner_&_thief ) ?
What we need is aCitizens Emergency
Responder Agency
Namaste « Presence »
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world » — Gandhi
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed » — Gandhi
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — ML King
bryanD sez: "fema prison camps - the agency that couldn't deliver anything better to katrina victims than toxic trailers has built over 100 prison camps in the continental us - with the cheerful assistance of haliburton, bechtel and the boys"
***
Minor correction: Haliburton, Bechtel and the boys have built more than 100 prison camps with the grinning assent of FEMA, which exists only as an intermediary for funneling public money their way.
It's ALL the benjamins ... every noun, verb, conjunction and modifier in the article above. NOTHING changes until K Street is leveled and turned into a public park. Even that is only step 1.
"During the Iran-Contra congressional hearings in 1987, questions to Reagan aide Oliver North about the database were ruled out of order by the committee chairman, Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye, because of the "highly sensitive and classified" nature of FEMA's domestic security operations."
After their major srew-up with "Katrina", it's fairly obvious that FEMA was designed to monitor and gather intelligence on peaceful protesters and others who might be considered "potential" terrorists and not to help us with any real emergency disaster relief!
This BS is not about combating terrorism - it's about repressing political dissent!
Perhaps American citizens should demand that the rule of law be suspended, insofar as it applies to us peons, until GW Bush and all legislators who've supported his unlawful actions have been arrested and brought to justice.
M E A D O W L A R K,
You may find some ideas here, although it isn't "normal" fare, as this is not going to be solved solely in the field of action ( organization ), we must all go further beyond the pale:Real Change Happens Off-Line
Namaste « Presence »
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world » — Gandhi
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed » — Gandhi
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — ML King
Compared to today, the pre-Bill Clinton Democratic party did not hesitate to investigate and then indict Richard Nixon for crimes equally as heinous as those committed by George Wanker Bush and Fat Death Cheney. The same can be said of the MSM. The post-Bill Clinton Democratic party now believes in letting bygones be bygones because they mistake cynicism for patriotism. The mistake was not made for any sincere or true reasons; and that's what makes it such a tragedy. Clinton's utterly cynical move of throwing working people and labor unions overboard made the current Democratic party a vessel the for the snidely facile thinking that lets most of their congressional members not fear their own lying and inaction. Most of the Democrats, personified by Pelosi, made this short emotional jump a long time ago and are pleased as punch on how easy it was to do. George Wanker Bush learned the same thing at about the age of 12 or 13 and was also so pleased on how easy it was to do that he stayed there. The same can be said for the MSM. This is the water Obama has to swim in. The only place there's any oxygen left is at the bottom.
i see no reason to bring the individuals who post here together - too much potential for shattering the fragile "peace" we enjoy by our relative anonymity. i don't know if you fully appreciate what a boisterously difficult lot we are. i'm quite sure many would have no qualms about haad-to-hand combat.
this venue serves the need for a healthy cross-pollination of ideas, without requiring the usual social graces. it may be that we're all that much better off for our e-lusive connections.
As possible for me, I always try to verify information that articles like this one provide about Big Brother's expanding reach. For one thing, it's because I know I need to have reliable iformation about what is really happening in order to fight against it. For another thing, I don't want to believe in any more depressing facts than I absolutely need to, as I often feel almost hopeless by what I already do see and believe.
I wonder how this march toward an evil total state can be stopped?
I define an evil total state as one where people with power feel only their own pain, and are required to maintain their power by being numb to the pain of those they weild power over.
But I ask myself - just who and what is behind such a barbaric way of life on earth? What is the source of such an evil state's energy?
Historically, is it just that a few aggressive insensitive people always co-opt from within a passive disorganized majority of otherwise good people?
If so, then why do so many initially un-bad people turn bad as soon as they get worldly power over their brothers and sisters?
Does Nature itself intend or cause a few people to be born bad and agressive, and then set the rules for the many who are born otherwise non-bad but passive?
Or is it an organizing culture that determines most of these dynamics and outcomes?
If it is a racial or nationl peoples' culture that mostly determines the shape and function of states, then how do we explain why a culture that started out with good intentions and a humanly-healing political state, later goes on to become horridly bad?
I can't answer these bigger questions with any certainty.
One thing I feel more certain about is that people who do feel the suffering of others and intend a good culture and a humanist state out of that feeling, need know each other in real time. They need to know each other as live beings. They need to physically break bread with each other and put their arms around each other and solidify a fleshly spirited affirmation and energy for the better struggle.
Cyberspace websites like Common Dreams are a beginning place for this kind of live good human bonding to happen. But they are only simulacrums of a live solidarity so far. Common Dreams for one, needs to be become something more than a structurally disembodied complaint station.
There needs to be a way for those of us CD'ers in close geographical proximities to begin to physically meet, directly connect, and real-time organize without blowing our sense of online identity covers, no matter how useless those covers probably are.
I feel there is a crying need for a more direct human interfacing among us progressives, but I don't know how to enable it. First of all, like most here, I'm ultra skittish about revealing my real identity online. Secondly, I don't know enough about cyberspace technics to conceive of how to better connect otherwise.
But deeper connection need to happen. So if anybody has suggestions as to how it might, please speak.
Wasn't Ed Meese involved with the Inslaw case?
We encounter the Grendel of our democracy. It is that you cannot have a democracy where such power is restricted only to a secretive and self perpetuating elite.
This secrecy enables the creation of a surveillance elite whose activities remain outside the workings of our democracy.
Who gets hired for a program that is unknown? Only people selected by that secret elite. Self perpetuating!
Who are the 'they' and what do they do? Like I would know as a citizen? Well I don't and neither do you.
How do you have real democracy - of, for and by? This secrecy elite are OUTSIDE of our democracy.
Beyond it's reach since we do not even know what is being done or by whom or what will they do over the years. Do I have a vote on it? Do you have a choice? How is that democracy? No choice.
In seven years we have watched our democracy be undone. The forms remain but the substance (of, for and by) has been dismantled in favor of rule by a few, who know and do ...what we cannot.
They are the ones who have power not the citizens. We seem to have no power over what is being done.
Or undone... like an open and responsive democracy.
To a democracy of, for and by the people... a secret elite whose activities are so secret they are unknown... is of, for and by definition, outside of this democracy.
Secrecy manipulated by a secret elite ... who fires them for wrongdoing when that wrongdoing is completely unknown?
Our rights and freedoms are assailable from without, yet we succumb from within. Yes the elite will believe they protect the democracy they dismantle and will come to believe that any attempt to restore open democracy (ending what they do in secret) as a threat ... to 'their' democracy.
Grendel stalks in the night ... the monster taht consumes our democracy.
Secrecy!
We are not equals. Nor will your children be equals... in such a non democracy.
They will not have a choice either. By definition...no choice, no rights (now reduced to revokable privileges), no accountability ... is no democracy.
Democracy vs a secret elite.
Our Grendel.
Secrecy
I imagine that the "average" American will feel a sense of relief. One less handicap being imposed on us by avaricious lice in Washington would be a good start.
The People do not fear the truth: they so seldom hear it spoken aloud that it would be a real treat.
I believe that many Americans would have a "deer in the headlights" response to this information. These possibilities are indeed the "Russian invasion", "alien invasion" & "attack of the killer bees" that we were programed to fear decades ago.
Meanwhile we learned about George Washington & the cherry tree; Columbus; Honest Abe; and so on and so forth. Wake up folks are realize that we are living in Stepford aka Uh-Mer-Uh-Kuh.
Galen - 5:13 pm
Now imagine what the average American will feel when that information is available.
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I imagine that the average American will damn well feel what they're TOLD to feel. 8)
My question is: Are these disclosures the brave "heads up" of from concerned public servants, or psy-ops leaks designed to promote paranoia, fear, and loathing?
Steady Common Dreamers, beware of the cult Kool-Ade of "informed sources".
A few years ago, I heard Mr.Nader talk about how things have changed since he began his career. It used to be he could create positive change by investigation and revealing the truth. Because once the truth was out there, there were at least some officials who took it as their responsibility to do something about it. If his group released a critical report, it would get headlines, the headlines would lead to an investigation, an investigation could lead to charges and fines. Things could change.
Nowadays, a group can investigate and issue a critical report. It might get a few headlines, maybe. Something like Congressional hearings might ensue. But they are just a sham of politicians posing for cameras, and nothing further would result.
Judge the Democrats by their ACTIONS. Exactly what ACTIONS are they taking. Did this hearing Friday really DO ANYTHING?
If you want something different, go support your local Green Party. Or maybe an independent. Heck, a Libertarian would be an improvement. Just please stop voting Democrat.
Entertain this hypothetical idea: During the investigation, incontrovertible and conclusive evidence proving once and for all that 9/11 was an operation committed by agents of the Bush Administration for the express purpose of instigating the illegal invasion of Iraq and the destruction of the US constitution, with the overarching goal of creating a clandestine Fascist empire.
Imagine that this evidence is made widely available to the public, and could not be denied by the likes of Limbaugh and Fox News.
Now imagine what the average American will feel when that information is available.
Very precisely written article, the type we need to see more of. Too bad so many media outlets are dumbed down, as bryanD says above. By keeping most Americans in the dark, these nefarious dealings can continue; exposed they wouldn't last long, like vampires. This is why censorship plays a huge part of the secretive and unchecked Ziofascist agenda.
Illegal under our Constitution, unwarranted domestic surveillance is being conducted on American citizens as we speak. The declaration of war against terrorism has chosen the wrong enemies. They are in a word--us. We are tearing our nation apart trying to find the political enemies of the day, like we did during the Red Scare/McCarthyism.
Our rights have been systematically liquidated because we citizens are perceived to pose a threat to the continued amalgamation of power by the investor class and their proxies in government. How much will they get away with? As much as we let them. If we don't stop this travesty of justice, don't be surprised when you wake up one day a victim, homeless in the land of our fathers, as Jefferson put it. At the very least we are seeing the economic manifestations of de-regulation, which have brought great wealth to the investor class at great cost to the little guy--us--who now risk losing the standard of living we formerly enjoyed while the rich sneer at us from their McMansions.
Main Core...McCain. I get it.
The abuses also include lies and suppression of real science, including a political "litnus test" to decide who can be hired. The Union of Concerned Scientists has documented many of these.
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/restoring/federal-science.html
Many agencies now have "political respresentatives" to ensure that any statements from the agency are consistent with the viewpoint of the administration. It sounds more like the old Soviet Union than like this country.
America allows this. While it is appropriate to "forgive" America for voting for Bush in 2000, it's citizens have been AWOL since. Blaming a Dem-controlled Congress is passing the buck. Had a majority of Americans truly concerned about the cascading infringement on their rights and shredding of the Constitution, they would have taken to the streets and wrought immediate change.
Nope. Instead, the fight is ineffectively carried out by a small minority. Obscene Executive Power is here to stay. Privacy has gone for generations.
This is the future that America has permitted.
here is a quote from the radar article cited in the article above:
According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention."
here is a link to the fema prison camps - the agency that couldn't deliver anything better to katrina victims than toxic trailers has built over 100 prison camps in the continental us - with the cheerful assistance of haliburton, bechtel and the boys
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/prison_camps.htm
this article lists the prisons state by state - they have a capacity to hold over 1 million guests
then ask yourself - why would the government build these things - what the hell is on their minds
bryanD...you say it so well. Perhaps too well.
Your name is no doubt on the list. And we thought FEMA was only out to exterminate the poor.
Ah, those wonderful Reagan years! Maybe, if the Ministry of Truth doesn't destroy all the history, someday, we'll finally get to the bottom of how insidious Reagan really was. The grinning great communicator...probably saying to himself, "what a bunch of suckers!" as he waved to the admiring crowd from the podium.
I have lived in DC and I have met some of these people. The malevolence gushes from their pores. Their egos preceed them into the room by several minutes and these raging egos feed on power and control...to the point of becoming orgasmic over the possibilities. They claim to be "christian" but I suspect they are really secret devotees of the goddess, Kali...who demands victims, blood and death.
They are helping to create their own reality. That is what control of the media and the internet is all about.
There are millions of people who will believe exactly what they read as being fact. If you break it down for them using numbers and facts and critical thinking, they will simply ignore the facts and the truth in favor of what they want to believe.
The truth of the matter is that while the TRUTH is important and critical to a properly functioning democracy, those in power do not want a properly functioning democracy and millions of people do not want the truth.
pk
The House Judiciary Committee Hearing on the Limitations of Executive Power (July 25, 2008) was not impeachment, but it's more than worth watching.
Vincent Bugliosi can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDAFozFn4kU
Bruce Fein can be seen and heard at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80IphtHrFzg
Dennis Kucinich can be seen and heard at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRAcenaTVkQ&feature=related
Robert Wexler can be seen and heard at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T1ojrKhp6E&feature=related
Jerrold Nadler can be seen and heard at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL7259BAP9s&feature=related
most folks who are not well versed on databases and computing will not fully grasp this article and its importance
as we all know (sort of) computing is the cornerstone of our world today, we can no longer function without it
that is kind of the extent of most folks understanding
the stock market now runs in milliseconds - stock and currency transactions can no longer be captured on paper and as a result we now need the computer screen to tell us where we are at any particular millisecond
getting your mind around the penetration of computers into our daily life is beyond most folks already - but this article touches on some applications - PROMIS and others - who have abilities are beyond the scope of even computer literate people to understand
people use google without ever thinking about how google is creating a database to rank with any other in the world. many informed people are deeply concerned about this massive collection of information - it is both deep and wide - that contains the user habits of hundreds of millions of people in the world every day of their lives
powerful information
they know your credit card numbers, your purchases, the sites you visit, how long your stay on them, which pages you look at, which articles you read etc
they know which porno sites you watch
they know if you torrent and file share - what you torrent and file share
google knows you better than your wife, husband or children
i mean they really know you
they know how much you have in the bank, how much you owe, and to whom, they know your medical history - they know everything
and they collected this information with the tacit and ignorant approval of users who never read any agreements they sign on line for user rights
google is well funded - they have piles of cash sitting around to grow their database management and add new products as they come along
even micrsoft can't lay a glove on them
now, multiply that number by what - a million, add an unlimited budget, fifty years of online experience and unbridled access to all of the government databases and you begin to get an understanding of what has been going on in secret in the rancid bowels of the black government for a long long time
it should be of concern to us all but we, as a group, have been dumbed down by the elite controlled education system to the extent that we can't appreciate anything more complex than brittney spears' little pussycat peaking out from her miniskirt
throw in complete control of the mass media and you have the power to spin the iraq invasion and power grab of the oil into anything you want:
the spread of democracy
search for non-existent wmd
that ever illusive pipe dream: freedom
deposing that evil cia employee saddaam
9/11
the war on terror
homeland security
fema
patriot act
genetically modified foods
eugenics
full spectrum dominance
and on and on
as the article suggests, we need to look into this shit
and we can no longer accept the secrecy in which more and more of the government functions
we need to reject this absurd notion that somehow: we can't handle the truth
we need to, for the sake of our children, break this fantasy parallel reality presented to us by our "masters"
this fantasy world powered by these massive computing programs and our co-opted government
this fantasy is resulting in more and more disturbed and fragmented young people who are unable to function and find a place in life
it is to our shame that we are so impotent in helping them and protecting them from these mad people bent on total domination of the world
as enunciated by the american military and government: full spectrum dominance - the mother of all sick scenario world views (hello mr rockefeller)
All the more reason to enmesh the US in a war with Iran, which will set the Middle East ablaze.
Do you really think that the power-brokers (who are sophisticated enough to run these black budget domestic spying programs, etc, etc) plan to allow themselves to be investigated --- their dark deeds discovered?
Oh, dear me. Bush lied to save us all.