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NSA
Whistleblower: NSA Spying On—and Blackmailing—Top Government Officials
and Military Officers
The
whistleblowers are coming out of the woodwork, just as we had hoped.
Snowden may have set off a chain reaction that will be the undoing of
the U.S. shadow government.
Whistleblower
Says Spy Agency Targeting Top American Leaders
NSA
whistleblower Russel Tice told Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frog
Post News (the website of high-level FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds):
Tice: Okay. They went after–and I know this because
I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they
went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of
Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence
committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and
judicial. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers
and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went
after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court
that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA
court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went
after people in the executive service that were part of the White
House–their own people. They went after antiwar groups.
They went after U.S. international–U.S. companies
that that do international business, you know, business around the
world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do
international business. They went after NGOs that–like the Red Cross,
people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went
after a few antiwar civil rights groups. So, you know, don’t tell me
that there’s no abuse, because I’ve had this stuff in my hand and
looked at it. And in some cases, I literally was involved in the
technology that was going after this stuff.
And
you know, when I said to [former MSNBC show host Keith] Olbermann, I
said, my particular thing is high tech and you know, what’s going on is
the other thing, which is the dragnet. The dragnet is what Mark Klein
is talking about, the terrestrial dragnet. Well my specialty is outer
space. I deal with satellites, and everything that goes in and out of
space. I did my spying via space. So that’s how I found out about this.
Collins:
Now Russ, the targeting of the people that you just mentioned, top
military leaders, members of Congress, intelligence community leaders
and the–oh, I’m sorry, it was intelligence committees, let me correct
that–not intelligence community, and then executive branch appointees.
This creates the basis, and the potential for massive blackmail.
Tice:
Absolutely! And remember we talked about that before, that I was
worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going
on. Now here’s the big one. I haven’t given you any names. This was is
summer of 2004. One of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap
a bunch of numbers associated with, with a 40-something-year-old
wannabe senator from Illinois. You wouldn’t happen to know where that
guy lives right now, would you? It’s a big white house in Washington,
DC. That’s who they went after. And that’s the President of the United
States now.
Other
whistleblowers say the same thing. When the former head of the
NSA’s digital spying program – William Binney – disclosed the fact that
the U.S. was spying
on everyone in the U.S. and storing the data forever, and that the
U.S. was quickly becoming a totalitarian state, the Feds
tried to scare him into
shutting up:
[Numerous]
FBI officers held a gun to Binney’s head as he stepped naked from the
shower. He watched with his wife and youngest son as the FBI ransacked
their home. Later Binney was separated from the rest of his family, and
FBI officials pressured him to implicate one of the other complainants
in criminal activity. During the raid, Binney attempted to report to
FBI officials the crimes he had witnessed at NSA, in particular the
NSA’s violation of the constitutional rights of all Americans. However,
the FBI wasn’t interested in these disclosures. Instead, FBI officials
seized Binney’s private computer, which to this day has not been
returned despite the fact that he has not been charged with a crime.
Other
NSA whistleblowers have also been subjected to armed
raids and criminal prosecution.
After
high-level CIA officer John Kiriakou blew the whistle on illegal CIA
torture, the government prosecuted him for
espionage.
Even
the head
of the CIA
was targeted
with extra-constitutional spying and driven out of office.
Indeed, Binney makes it very clear that the government will use
information gained from its all-pervasive
spying program to frame anyone it
doesn’t like.
(More
examples here.)
Retired
high-level CIA analyst Ray McGovern – the top CIA briefer to
numerous presidents – said this a few weeks ago on a radio program:
Which
leads to the question, why would [Obama] do all these things? Why would
he be afraid for example, to take the drones away from the CIA? Well,
I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s afraid. Number one, he’s afraid
of what happened to Martin Luther King Jr. And I know from a good
friend who was there when it happened, that at a small dinner with
progressive supporters – after these progressive supporters were
banging on Obama before the election, “Why don’t you do the things we
thought you stood for?” Obama turned sharply and said, “Don’t you
remember what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.?” That’s a quote, and
that’s a very revealing quote.
McGovern
also said:
In a
speech on March 21, second-term Obama gave us a big clue regarding his
concept of leadership – one that is marked primarily by political
risk-avoidance and a penchant for “leading from behind”: “Speaking as a
politician, I can promise you this: political leaders will not take
risks if the people do not demand that they do. You must create the
change that you want to see.”
John
Kennedy was willing to take huge risks in reaching out to the USSR and
ending the war in Vietnam. That willingness to take risks may have
gotten him assassinated, as James Douglass argues in his masterful JFK
and the Unspeakable.
Martin
Luther King, Jr., also took great risks and met the same end. There is
more than just surmise that this weighs heavily on Barack Obama’s mind.
Last year,
pressed by progressive donors at a dinner party to act more like the
progressive they thought he was, Obama responded sharply, “Don’t you
remember what happened to Dr. King?”
We’re
agnostic about McGovern’s theory. We don’t know whether Obama is a
total corrupt sell-out … or a chicken. We don’t think it matters … as
the effect is the same.
http://2012thebigpicture.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/nsa-whistleblower-nsa-spying-on-and-blackmailing-top-government-officials-and-military-officers/
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