Monday, May 23, 2011

Whistle Blowers coming out of the woodwork.

Thomas Drake US Whistleblower on 60 Minutes
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/22/60minutes/main20064396.shtml

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/05/22/thomas-drake-complained-about-michael-hayden-spending-1b-to-do-what-3m-could-do/
Thomas Drake complained about Michael Hayden spending 1 billion to do what 3 million could do.
Excerpt:
So Drake was complaining about a program that cost 300 times as much as the one he championed (ultimately, Trailblazer cost $1.2 billion, so actually 400 times as much). It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. Trailblazer, according to a government filing, worked across more platforms. ThinThread, according to a Siobhan Gorman story, had additional functionality, including privacy protections.
But still, Drake complained about a program that did what ThinThread did–at 300 to 400 times the cost.
As one of the other NSA employees who whistleblew about Trailblazer, J. Kirk Wiebe, explains,
“How does a man see 9/11 happened, know that some part of it is due to corruption and mismanagement and sleep at night. How does a man do that? He obviously couldn’t,” Wiebe told Pelley.
Yet the government wants to put Drake in jail for 35 years because he tried to make sure incompetence that led to 9/11 doesn’t continue.

May 22, 2011 8:20 PM
The Espionage Act: Why Tom Drake was indicted
U.S. v. Whistleblower Tom Drake
(CBS News)  Nearly two years before 9/11, America's largest intelligence agency had recordings of three of the al Qaeda hijackers plotting an attack. But the information, obtained by the National Security Agency, wasn't analyzed in a way that could uncover the plot.

Inside the super-secret NSA, several analysts and managers believed the agency had a powerful tool that might have had a chance to head off 9/11. But it wasn't used.

One of those agency insiders was Thomas Drake, who thought taxpayer money was being wasted on useless intelligence gathering projects while promising technology was ignored.

Drake tried to get the word out. But now, as a result, he has been charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 and if convicted of all charges could spend the next 35 years of his life in prison. The government says he betrayed his country.

Drake says the only thing he betrayed was NSA mismanagement that undermined national security.

After a long career in U.S. intelligence, Drake never imagined he'd be labeled an enemy of the United States. As a young airman, he flew spy missions in the Cold War; in the Navy, he analyzed intelligence for the joint chiefs at the Pentagon.

Later, he worked for defense contractors in the highly technical world of electronic eavesdropping. He became an expert in sophisticated, top secret computer software programs and ultimately rose, in 2001, to a senior executive job at the NSA.

Drake told correspondent Scott Pelley his first day on the job was Sept. 11, 2001.

"NSA went into immediate crisis management mode. We had failed to protect the United States of America," he told Pelley.

Asked if he felt that was a failure of the NSA, Drake told Pelley, "The entire national security establishment - it was a failure, a fundamental systemic breakdown."

Extra: Spies and whistleblowers
Extra: Eavesdropping on the world
Extra: The anonymous source
Part of the failure at the NSA, the largest U.S. intelligence agency, was in its old technology. The agency eavesdrops on the communications of the world. But in the 1990s it was becoming ineffective, overwhelmed by the explosion of digital data.

"Vast volumes of data streaming across all kinds of different networks, wired, wireless, phones, computers, you name it," Drake explained.

"And what does that look like to NSA? Coming into building in Maryland?" Pelley asked.

"Choking on it," Drake said. "Just incredible amounts. Even just storing it was becoming a challenge."

Most of what the agency collected went unanalyzed, including clues pointing to 9/11. Kirk Wiebe and Bill Binney were career NSA intelligence analysts who were working on the problem.

"We were greatly saddened and shocked by 9/11, but it didn't come as a total surprise. We knew there was a vulnerability, a lack of understanding of the data that put NSA in a weak position," Wiebe said.

Recognizing that vulnerability in the late 1990s, Binney, a legendary NSA mathematician, led development of a revolutionary computer system to collect, isolate and connect important information like phone calls and financial transactions. Its code name was "Thin Thread."

"Thin Thread was fundamentally dedicated to collecting and processing and ultimately analyzing the vast reams of digital data. It was a breakthrough solution," Drake explained.

Produced Glenn Silber and Graham Messick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread
Excerpt:
ThinThread is the name of a project that the United States National Security Agency engaged in during the 1990s, according to a May 17, 2006 article in the Baltimore Sun.[1] The program involved wiretapping and sophisticated analysis of the resulting data, but according to the article, the program was discontinued after the September 11, 2001 attacks due to the changes in priorities and the consolidation of U.S. intelligence authority.
According to science news site PhysOrg.com, ThinThread evolved into the Trailblazer Project which lacks the privacy protections of ThinThread.[2] A consortium led by Science Applications International Corporation was awarded a $280 million contract to develop Trailblazer in 2002.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ridenhour_Prizes
Excerpt:
The Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhysOrg
Excerpt:
PhysOrg is a popular science, research and technology news website specializing in the hard science subjects of physics, space and earth science, biology, chemistry, electronics, nanotechnology and technology in general. It is known for timely updates of scientific breakthroughs and press releases from major research labs and universities across the world. Occasionally it also publishes comprehensive articles on new peer-reviewed papers.

[edit] Description

The site was founded in March, 2004, by two Ph.D. students who wanted a science news service for informed and educated readers. In 2005 it was purchased by US-based Omicron Technologies.[1] PhysOrg is registered as the property of Omicron Technology Limited of Douglas, Isle Of Man, in Great Britain.[2]
It has a full-time staff of seven with six contributing writers. Its editor-in-chief is John Benson (UK) and managing editors are Andrew Zinin and Alexander Pol (NL).[1][3]
In 2008, it published 75-100 news stories per day and hosted about 100,000 daily readers. It had 25,000 registered members.[3]
In 2009, Quantcast listed it as a top 1,800 site with 880,000+ U.S. people visiting per month and this being 57% of all visitors. It said the site is popular among a more educated, older, somewhat male audience.[4] Trends Updates named PhysOrg amongst the Top 25 Technology Blogs for 2008.[5]


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Marcospinelli/national-security-strategy-board-obama-cameron-_n_865469_89465323.html
Excerpt:
Obama, Cameron To Start U.S.-Britain National Security Strategy Board
Read More: Britain, Afghanistan, Middle East, David Cameron, National Security Strategy Board, Us, Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, World News

“Thomas Drake, the NSA whistleblo­wer, was on 60 Minutes this evening. I’ll have more to say about his appearance and case going forward, but I just wanted to highlight a critical detail revealed by 60 Minutes: the relative cost of Trailblaze­r–the SAIC implemente­d program Michael Hayden championed­–and ThinThread­–the program Drake and others claim was more effective and had privacy protection­s.
One of them was Lieutenant General Michael Hayden, the head of the agency: he wanted to transform the agency and launched a massive modernizat­ion program, code named: “Trailblaz­er.” It was supposed to do what Thin Thread did, and more.
Trailblaze­r would be the NSA’s biggest project. Hayden’s philosophy was to let private industry do the job. Enormous deals were signed with defense contractor­s. [Bill] Binney’s Thin Thread program cost $3 million; Trailblaze­r would run more than $1 billion and take years to develop.
“Do you have any idea why General Hayden decided to go with Trailblaze­r as opposed to Thin Thread, which already existed?” Pelley asked.
“I believe he was convinced by others that going with a large-scal­e, industrial strength solution was the approach that NSA needed to take. You can’t really understand why they would make that kind of a decision without understand­ing the culture of NSA,” Drake said.
Asked to elaborate, Drake said, “Careers are built on projects and programs. The bigger, the better their career.” [my emphasis]
So Drake was complainin­g about a program that cost 300 times as much as the one he championed (ultimatel­y, Trailblaze­r cost $1.2 billion, so actually 400 times as much). It’s not an apples-to-­apples comparison­. Trailblaze­r, according to a government filing, worked across more platforms. ThinThread­, according to a Siobhan Gorman story, had additional functional­ity, including privacy protection­s.
But still, Drake complained about a program that did what ThinThread did–at 300 to 400 times the cost.
As one of the other NSA employees who whistleble­w about Trailblaze­r, J. Kirk Wiebe, explains,
“How does a man see 9/11 happened, know that some part of it is due to corruption and mismanagem­ent and sleep at night. How does a man do that? He obviously couldn’t,” Wiebe told Pelley.
Yet the government wants to put Drake in jail for 35 years because he tried to make sure incompeten­ce that led to 9/11 doesn’t continue.

http://emp­tywheel.fi­redoglake.­com/2011/0­5/22/thoma­s-drake-co­mplained-a­bout-micha­el-hayden-­spending-1­b-to-do-wh­at-3m-coul­d-do/”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Core
Excerpt:
Main Core is the code name of a database maintained since the 1980s by the federal government of the United States. Main Core contains personal and financial data of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security.[1] The data, which comes from the NSA, FBI, CIA, and other sources,[1] is collected and stored without warrants or court orders.[1] The database's name derives 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."[1]
The Main Core database is believed to have originated with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1982, following Ronald Reagan's Continuity of Operations plan outlined in the National Security Directive (NSD) 69 / National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 55, entitled "Enduring National Leadership," implemented on September 14, 1982.[1][2]
As of 2008 there are reportedly eight million Americans listed in the database as possible threats,[3][dead link] often for trivial reasons,[4][dead link] whom the government may choose to track, question, or detain in a time of crisis.[5][dead link]
The existence of the database was first reported on in May 2008 by Christopher Ketcham and in July 2008 by Tim Shorrock.[2]


http://www.altnews.info/tag/domestic-terrorism/
Excerpt:
While most of the N.S.A. was reeling on September 11th, inside SARC the horror unfolded “almost like an ‘I-told-you-so’ moment,” according to J. Kirk Wiebe, an intelligence analyst who worked there. “We knew we weren’t keeping up.” SARC was led by a crypto-mathematician named Bill Binney, whom Wiebe describes as “one of the best analysts in history.” Binney and a team of some twenty others believed that they had pinpointed the N.S.A.’s biggest problem—data overload—and then solved it. But the agency’s management hadn’t agreed.
Binney, who is six feet three, is a bespectacled sixty-seven-year-old man with wisps of dark hair; he has the quiet, tense air of a preoccupied intellectual. Now retired and suffering gravely from diabetes, which has already claimed his left leg, he agreed recently to speak publicly for the first time about the Drake case. When we met, at a restaurant near N.S.A. headquarters, he leaned crutches against an extra chair. “This is too serious not to talk about,” he said.
Binney expressed terrible remorse over the way some of his algorithms were used after 9/11. ThinThread, the “little program” that he invented to track enemies outside the U.S., “got twisted,” and was used for both foreign and domestic spying: “I should apologize to the American people. It’s violated everyone’s rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world.” According to Binney, Drake took his side against the N.S.A.’s management and, as a result, became a political target within the agency.
…
Binney, for his part, believes that the agency now stores copies of all e-mails transmitted in America, in case the government wants to retrieve the details later. In the past few years, the N.S.A. has built enormous electronic-storage facilities in Texas and Utah. Binney says that an N.S.A. e-mail database can be searched with “dictionary selection,” in the manner of Google. After 9/11, he says, “General Hayden reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didn’t put out dragnets, and that was true. It had no need—it was getting every fish in the sea.”
Binney considers himself a conservative, and, as an opponent of big government, he worries that the N.S.A.’s data-mining program is so extensive that it could help “create an Orwellian state.” Whereas wiretap surveillance requires trained human operators, data mining is automated, meaning that the entire country can be watched. Conceivably, U.S. officials could “monitor the Tea Party, or reporters, whatever group or organization you want to target,” he says. “It’s exactly what the Founding Fathers never wanted.”
Former NSA Genius Apologizes for His Super Spying Software (Gizmodo):
Long before 9/11, brilliant NSA crypto-mathematician Bill Binney had developed an algorithm to make sense of the unbelievably massive amounts of data American spies were pulling in—he called it ThinThread. And then it went very, very wrong.
ThinThread, the New Yorker reports, proved to be too good: designed to track foreign enemies via their electronic footprints, Binney was horrified to find that the powerful software processed mammoth amounts of American communications as well. Without a warrant—illegally. Binney implemented an encryption scheme that blurred out American chatter unless it was flagged by a judge, but his system was discarded by the NSA for being too invasive.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/50168.html
Excerpt:
Feds spy on reporter in leak probe
James Risen is shown. | AP Photo/Columbia University
'We’ve argued that I was a victim of harassment by the government,' said James Risen. | AP Photo Close
By JOSH GERSTEIN | 2/24/11 11:06 PM EST Updated: 2/25/11 12:15 PM EST
Federal investigators trying to find out who leaked information about a CIA attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program obtained a New York Times reporter’s three private credit reports, examined his personal bank records and obtained information about his phone calls and travel, according to a new court filing.
The scope and intrusiveness of the government’s efforts to uncover reporter James Risen’s sources surfaced Thursday in the criminal case of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer facing federal criminal charges for allegedly disclosing classified information. Sterling is accused of giving Risen details about what Risen describes as the CIA’s plan to give Iran faulty nuclear blueprints, hoping to temporarily thwart the regime’s ambitions to build an atomic bomb.

In a motion filed in federal court in Alexandria, Sterling’s defense lawyers, Ed MacMahon Jr. and Barry Pollack, reveal that the prosecution has turned over “various telephone records showing calls made by the author James Risen. It has provided three credit reports—Equifax, TransUnion and Experian—for Mr. Risen. It has produced Mr. Risen’s credit card and bank records and certain records of his airline travel.”

The revelation alarmed First Amendment advocates, particularly in light of Justice Department rules requiring the attorney general to sign off on subpoenas directed to members of the media and on requests for their phone records. And Risen told POLITICO that the disclosures, while not shocking, made him feel “like a target of spying.”
“We’ve argued that I was a victim of harassment by the government. This seems to bolster that,” Risen said. “Maybe I should ask them what my credit score is.”
Sterling’s attorneys and a Justice Department spokeswoman declined POLITICO’s request for comment.
The government’s interest in Risen’s sources for his 2006 book, “State of War,” has been known since 2008. In particular, investigators have zeroed in on a chapter which details what Risen describes as a botched CIA effort to trip up Iran’s nuclear program. The scheme involved using a Russian defector to deliver the faulty blueprints to the Iranians, but the defector blew the CIA’s plot by alerting the Iranians to the flaws — negating the value of the program, and perhaps even advancing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Risen was twice subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury to testify about his sources, but the first grand jury dissolved before a judge acted on Risen’s motion to quash the subpoena. Last year, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema sided with Risen and quashed the second subpoena, though details of her reasoning haven’t been made public.
Soon after that decision, Sterling was indicted.
First Amendment advocates said the Justice Department’s use of business records to find out about Risen’s sources was troubling. Those records, they argue, could potentially expose a wide array of Risen’s sources and confidential contacts — information that might fall beyond the initial investigation that led to Sterling’s indictment.
“To me, in many ways, it’s worse than a direct subpoena,” said Jane Kirtley, a University of Minnesota law professor and former director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “Third-party subpoenas are really, really invidious…. Even if it is targeted, even if they’re trying to just look at the relevant stuff, they’re inevitably going to get material that exposes other things.”
Kirtley also said journalists often aren’t notified when the government asks telecom companies, banks or other service providers for their records.
Asked how journalists could credibly complain about such techniques when most also refuse more direct demands for information about their sources, Kirtley said reporters who become the focus of determined investigators face a “Hobson’s choice.”

http://abcnews.go.com/US/Blotter/cia-agent-jeffrey-sterling-arrested-accused-leaking-reporter/story?id=12557291
Excerpt:
By PIERRE THOMAS (@PierreTABC) , JACK CLOHERTY, JASON RYAN and LISA JONES
Jan. 6, 2011

Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling was arrested today on charges that he leaked national defense information to the media and revealed the identity of a "human asset."
The motive, according to the Justice Department, was revenge.
Sterling, 43, worked for the CIA from May 1993 to January 2002, and for two years was assigned to "a classified clandestine operational program designed to conduct intelligence activities related to the weapons capabilities of certain countries," according to the indictment. During that time, he also was handling a "human asset" associated with that program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Merlin
Excerpt:
Operation Merlin is an alleged United States covert operation under the Clinton Administration to provide Iran with a flawed design for building a nuclear weapon in order to delay the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Alexander_Sterling
Excerpt:
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling is a former CIA employee, who was indicted and subsequently arrested under the Espionage Act for allegedly revealing details about Operation Merlin to journalist James Risen.[1]

 


[edit] Education

Sterling earned a political science degree at Millikin University in Decatur, Il, in 1989. In 1992, he graduated from the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis.[2]

[edit] CIA employment

Jeffrey Alexander Sterling joined the CIA on 14 May 1993, and in 1995 became Operations Officer in the Iran Task force of CIA's Near East and South Asia division. He held a Top Secret security clearance and had access to Sensitive Compartmented Information, including classified cables, CIA informants and operations. After training in Persian in 1997 he was sent first to Bonn, Germany, and two years later to New York City to recruit Iranian nationals as agents for the CIA, as part of a secret intelligence operation related to the weapons capabilities of Iran. In April 2000, Sterling filed a complaint about racial discrimination practices by CIA management with CIA's Equal Employment Office. The CIA subsequently revoked Sterling's authorization to receive or possess classified documents concerning the secret operation, and placed him on administrative leave in March 2001.[3][4] After the failure of two settlement attempts, his contract with the CIA was terminated on 31. January 2002.[5]

[edit] Equal Employment law suit

Sterling's law suit accusing CIA officials of racial discrimination was dismissed by the judge invoking the State secrets privilege, as the litigation would have required the disclosure of classified information. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal, ruling in 2005 that “there is no way for Sterling to prove employment discrimination without exposing at least some classified details of the covert employment that gives context to his claim.”[6][7][8][9]

[edit] Indictment and arrest under the Espionage Act

Between 2002 and 2004 the U.S. federal government intercepted several interstate emails to and from Sterling, which were "(...) routed through a server located in the Eastern District of Virginia (...)". The authorities also traced telephone calls between Sterling and - according to a senior government official[1] - the journalist and book author James Risen. In the intercepted communications Sterling allegedly revealed national defense information to an unauthorized person.[5]
On 22 Dec 2010, U.S. attorney Neil H. MacBride filed an indictment against Jeffrey Alexander Sterling on the Unlawful Retention and Unauthorized Disclosure of National Defense Information, Mail Fraud, Unauthorized Conveyance of Government Property, and Obstruction of Justice. Sterling was arrested on 6 January 2011.[5] Sterling became the fifth individual in the history of the United States who has been charged under the Espionage Act with mishandling national defense information.[10][11][12][2]
In a hearing at the U.S. District Court on 14 Jan 2011, Sterling's defense attorney Edward MacMahon entered a not guilty plea.[13][14] MacMahon reported to the court that he was still waiting for clearance to discuss the case in detail with his client.[15]

[edit] Awards

Sterling earned a national 2010 Anti-Fraud Award from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association for helping break up a Medicare fraud ring, leading to estimated recoveries and savings of US$ 32 million.[2][16]


http://mensnewsdaily.com/2009/06/15/operation-merlin-clinton-cia-helped-irans-nuclear-program/
Excerpt:

Operation Merlin: Clinton, CIA Helped Iran’s Nuclear Program

2009-06-15
By Jim Kouri, CPP
by Jim Kouri
Radio talk show host and former US Justice Department official Mark Levin shocked many listeners when he reported that President Bill Clinton gave nuclear technology to the Iranians in a harebrained scheme.
He said that the transfer of classified data to Iran was personally approved by then-President Clinton and that the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program.

http://cryptome.org/0001/cia-merlin.htm
Excerpt:
29 April 2010

Related:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/us/29justice.html
U.S. Subpoenas Times Reporter Over Book on C.I.A.
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: April 28, 2010
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is seeking to compel a writer to testify about his confidential sources for a 2006 book about the Central Intelligence Agency, a rare step that was authorized by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
The author, James Risen, who is a reporter for The New York Times, received a subpoena on Monday requiring him to provide documents and to testify May 4 before a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., about his sources for a chapter of his book, “State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration.” The chapter largely focuses on problems with a covert C.I.A. effort to disrupt alleged Iranian nuclear weapons research. ...
Justice Department was seeking information only about Mr. Risen’s sources for the ninth chapter, which centers on the C.I.A.’s effort to disrupt Iranian nuclear research. That material did not appear in The Times.
The book describes how the agency sent a Russian nuclear scientist — who had defected to the United States and was secretly working for the C.I.A. — to Vienna in February 2000 to give plans for a nuclear bomb triggering device to an Iranian official under the pretext that he would provide further assistance in exchange for money. The C.I.A. had hidden a technical flaw in the designs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Risen
Excerpt:
Risen and Eric Lichtblau were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2006 for a series of controversial investigative reports that they co-wrote about the National Security Agency's surveillance of international communications originating or terminating in the United States codenamed "Stellar Wind" and about a government program called Terrorist Finance Tracking Program designed to detect terrorist financiers, which involved searches of money transfer records in the international SWIFT database.[1][2] Risen then was the subject of an illegal search in the Jeffrey Sterling trial, in which the DOJ attempted to use it's illegal behavior in another case to force Risen to testify against Sterling. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR2011010604001.html
The White House Press Office issued a statement on August 6, 2007 that the New York Times article on the Congressional and Presidential approval of a six-month extension of terrorism monitoring in the United States was misleading.[citation needed]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_wind_(code_name)
Excerpt:
Stellar Wind is the open secret code name for certain information collection activities performed by the United States' National Security Agency and revealed by Thomas M. Tamm to New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau.[1]. The operation was approved by President George W. Bush shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001.[2]
The information collection activities involved data mining electronic data about tens of millions of American citizens within the United States. This data included information about e-mail communications, phone conversations, financial transactions, and internet activity.[1]
There were internal disputes within the Justice Department about the legality of the program, since overcollection of data meant data was collected for large numbers of people, not just the subjects of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants.[3] In March 2004 the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft ruled that program was was illegal. The day after the ruling Ashcroft became critically ill with acute pancreatitis. Bush sent White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and chief of staff Andrew Card Jr. to Ashcroft's hospital bed where Ashcroft lay semiconscious to request that he sign a document reversing the Justice Department's ruling but they were forced to leave because Ashcroft was incapable of signing the document. Bush then reauthorized the operation over formal Justice Department objections. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Robert Mueller, Acting Attorney General James Comey and nearly the whole top level of the Justice Department were prepared to resign over the matter. According to Valerie Caproni the FBI general counsel "From my perspective, there was a very real likelihood of a collapse of government." Bush then reversed the authorization.[2]
During the Bush Administration the Steller Wind cases were referred by FBI agents as "pizza cases" because seemingly suspicoius cases turned out to be food takeout orders. While around 99 percent of the cases lead nowhere 1 percent bear fruit.[2] One of the known uses of this data was the creation of suspicious activity reports or "SARS" about people who may or may not have been suspected of terrorist activities. It was one of these SARS that tipped FBI agents to former NY governor Elliot Spitzer's use of prostitutes even though he was not suspected of terrorist activities.[1]

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2009/01/27/main-core-promis-and-the-shadow-governme-1
Main-Core, Promis and the shadow Government.
Excerpt:
George Orwell so accurately predicted Big Brother is now watching over us, protecting us and ensuring that we understand that war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.
But I digress...
Main Core has received attention in two 2008 articles, one a piece by investigative journalist Christopher Ketcham entitled The Last Roundup (which also looks at Continuity of Government programs but more on that in a little while) and Tim Shorrock entitled Exposing Bush's Historic Abuse of Power. Both articles tie Main Core to the now legendary PROMIS software, an extremely advanced program designed to aid federal prosecutors in case management tracking. PROMIS could pull and put together a wide range of data from disparate sources into a single record. The PROMIS software was created by INSLAW Inc., a company owned by a former NSA intelligence officer named William Hamilton. PROMIS was to have been licensed to the U.S. government in the early 1980's before the technology boom became widespread but was then stolen by the seamy officials in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department. The software was modified for espionage purposes to include a 'back door' that could be used for spying on those that it was sold to and in a detail that should be especially relevant with the economic crisis that threatens to crash the global financial system, the software could also be used to track in real time (in order to manipulate?) stock market transactions, once can certainly speculate as to how such a tool could have contributed to an economic catastrophe as we are now facing if it were used for such a thing. It is important to keep in mind the period when PROMIS was stolen in the early 1980's and the fact that the techology boom was still years in the future which should give one an idea to just how far advanced and therefore how important that it was to those who would use it in order to promote a sinister agenda.
Mr. Shorock's piece goes into the relationship between PROMIS and Main Core in some detail:
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.

http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/176822.html
Excerpt:
In all likelihood, smartphone geolocation data has now been added to the dossier creation mix, another component of the secret state's massive national security index called "Main Core" by investigative journalists Christopher Ketchum and Tim Shorrock.

As Ketchum reported in his 2008 piece, three unnamed former intelligence officials told him 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."

We've now learned that Apple's iPhone and iPad and Google's Android smartphone platforms "constantly track users' physical location and store the data in unencrypted files that can be read by anyone with physical access to the device," The Register disclosed.



Posted by at 1 comment:

USAA Crooked insurance

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/pmshue.htm
Excerpt:
REWARD OFFERED
Tracy Shue and her family are offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for her husband's abduction and torture.
"Hopefully that amount of money will result in someone coming forward with what they know," Mrs. Shue said.
Anyone having information is asked to call (800) 848-8500

http://www.militarycorruption.com/shue15.htm
Excerpt:
A SUDDEN CHANGE IN DIRECTION - "FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL"
When did the Widow Shue abruptly shift gears and stop talking to MilitaryCorruption.com? Was it after the Cyril Wecht autopsy result arrived in April 2004 and we were the last to know?  Already, we'd noted uneasily there was no more talk like: "I'm determined to find who killed my husband."  Why, there was almost no talk about Philip Shue at all.  But there was plenty said about mounting a huge lawsuit against the deep-pockets USAA Insurance Company of San Antonio, Texas.  Winning that one would mean the two million bucks she'd already realized from her husband's tragic demise would be "chump change" indeed.

Excerpt:
Phil Shue tried canceling the policy, but the insurance company told him he couldn't.

"They told him that she owned the policy. And therefore she had total authority over that policy. They could not cancel it," Tracy says.

Tracy says her husband feared for his life. "That fear never left him; he didn't know what to do. He felt that he tried everything - every avenue to try and address this, including his ex-wife. And it was a brick wall. He couldn't control it."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAA
Excerpt:
Legal structure
One of the characteristics that allows USAA to operate differently than almost every other Fortune 500 company is that it is not a corporation. The parent company, United Services Automobile Association is an inter-insurance exchange, the establishment of which is provided for under the Texas Insurance Code.[28] This insurance exchange is made up of current and former military officers and NCOs who have taken out P&C policies with USAA; thus they simultaneously are insured by each other and, as a group, own USAA's assets. Theoretically, this implies that each member could be held completely responsible for all the losses of all the other members. However, the insurance code (Sec 942.142) stipulates that should an entity such as USAA accrue a substantial amount of assets, member liability is limited only to the premiums they have paid to USAA. In other words, if an enormous disaster were to result in claims that would wipe out all the assets of USAA, individual members could not legally be called upon to pay for any amount USAA is unable to pay out in claims.
Other insurance services are provided by a variety of wholly owned subsidiaries. Adult children of USAA members and U.S. military junior enlisted personnel make up a group known at USAA as "associate members" insured through a subsidiary called USAA-Casualty Insurance Company (USAA-CIC). USAA-CIC is not an insurance exchange but rather a Delaware Insurance Corporation. This is a subtle nuance but is important concerning the return of profits - described below. Non-standard-risk drivers are insured by subsidiaries like USAA's County Mutual Insurance Company or USAA-General Indemnity Company. USAA also insures members in Europe through its subsidiary, USAA Limited. It is uncommon for a U.S. based insurance company to provide international P&C coverage, but USAA does so because so many military families are stationed out-of-country.

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/people/secnav/johnsonht/johnsonhtbio-acting.html
Excerpt:
Hansford T. (H.T.) Johnson






Acting Secretary of the Navy1000 Navy PentagonWashington, D.C. 20350-1000Mr. Johnson was nominated on August 3, 2001, by President George W. Bush to serve as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Installations and Environment) and was sworn in on August 7, 2001. The President directed him to assume the duties as the Acting Secretary of the Navy on February 7, 2003. The Secretary of the Navy leads the Department of the Navy consisting of 383,000 active duty and 89,000 Reserve Sailors; 172,000 active duty and 40,000 Reserve Marines; and 186,000 civilians. It includes 308 warships, 4,100 aircraft, and an annual budget of over $110 billion.Prior to his nomination to serve in the Bush-Cheney administration, Mr. Johnson served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) in Madison, Wisconsin. He also served as President and CEO of EG&G Technical Service and later of EG&G when purchased by The Carlyle Group. Previously, Mr. Johnson joined USAA Capital Corporation, part of one of the largest and most successful financial services organizations in America. He was responsible for providing non-insurance services to USAA members through the USAA Federal Savings Bank (selected as the best bank in America by Money Magazine), the USAA Investment Management Company, the USAA Real Estate Company, and USAA Buying Service. These companies managed $13 billion in USAA insurance portfolios, over $16 billion in mutual funds, a $10 billion bank, and $1 billion in real estate holdings. While at USAA, President George H. W. Bush appointed him to the 1993 Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

http://www.nationalcorruptionindex.org/pages/profile.php?category=individuals&selectcats=20&pagenos=2&checkview=1&profile_id=214
Excerpt:
Johnson is once again back in the private sector, this time working with his former undersecretary Douglas Combs. Their company, Windmill International Ltd., , bought out contracts issued to a firm so corrupt, the military banned it. That firm, Custer Battles LLC, has been sued twice by whistleblowers, who say that while employees committed atrocities like shooting at unarmed civilians, its executives were bilking the government of up to $50 million.

Now, Johnson stands accused, with Combs, of helping Custer Battles get around the military ban and win new Iraq contracts. A whistleblower accused Johnson and Combs of fraud in a federal lawsuit.,and as of late 2007,the Justice Department was conducting a criminal investigation.

Johnson served for more than 30 years in the Air Force, including a stint as a combat pilot in the Vietnam War. He retired in 1992 at the end of the Persian Gulf war and, after a stint as an Executive Vice President of the Credit Union National Association, he joined EG&G Technical Services as its CEO. EG&G at the time was an independent company that provided engineering services to agencies like NASA and made products like sensors and electronics for the Department of Defense, among others.

While Johnson was EG&G’s CEO, the firm was acquired by the Carlyle Group, a behemoth investment firm whose executives and investors include former President George H.W. Bush, former Secretary of State James Baker III, and the royal family of Saudi Arabia. Carlyle piad $250 million for EG&G, then sold it three years later in 2002 for double that price.

http://www.socnet.com/showthread.php?t=58927
Excerpt:
The probe of Douglas Combs, who served as a special assistant to then-acting Secretary of the Navy Hansford Johnson in 2003, stems from a series of probes into Custer Battles LLC.

The probe may mark the first time a former high-ranking Pentagon official has been linked to the recent wave of government-contracting scandals.

In March, a federal jury found Custer Battles guilty of using sham companies and fake invoices to bilk the government out of millions of dollars related to its work in Iraq, and ordered it to pay fines and restitution totaling $10 million. It was the first time that an American contractor had been found guilty of fraud in Iraq.http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2405220Excerpt:
Two former Pentagon officials, including an acting secretary of the Navy, have been accused of scheming with a banned American contractor to get lucrative rebuilding contracts in Iraq, The Associated Press has learned.

The contracting firm, Custer Battles LLC, was suspended two years ago by the military for submitting millions of dollars in fake invoices.

The charges come in a sealed federal lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by The AP. It was filed by two whistleblowers - one of whom won a $10 million judgment in another suit when a federal jury agreed that Custer Battles had swindled the government.

The current suit names former acting Navy Secretary Hansford T. Johnson, former acting Navy Undersecretary Douglas Combs, and Custer Battles LLC officials including founders Scott Custer and Mike Battles, who were barred in 2004 after billing the government for work that was never done and for padding invoices by much as 100 percent.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Michael_J._Bayer
Excerpt:
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Saturday, May 21, 2011

Jackie Kennedy and the Auchincloss family


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Burr_Jennings
Excerpt:
Jennings was born in 1825 in Fairfield, Connecticut to Abraham Gold Jennings and Anna Burr.[1] At a young age he came to New York to learn the dry goods business.[2] In 1849 he headed West to seek his fortune in the California Gold Rush. He set up a general mercantile store in San Francisco with Benjamin Brewster and amassed a considerable fortune by outfitting prospecting camps along the coast and around Sacramento.[3]
On December 13, 1854, he married Esther Judson Goodsell (1828–1908) in Fairfield. Her sister, Almira Geraldine Goodsell, married William Rockefeller in 1864.[4] They had five children:[1]

Standard Oil

In 1862 he returned to New York with the intention of retiring from all business activities. However, as a consequence of his relation by marriage to William Rockefeller, he became interested in the affairs of the Standard Oil Company.[2] In 1871, when Standard Oil was incorporated in Ohio, Jennings was one of the original stockholders. Of the initial 10,000 shares, John D. Rockefeller received 2,667; William Rockefeller, Henry Flagler, and Samuel Andrews received 1,333 each; Stephen V. Harkness received 1,334; Jennings received 1,000; and the firm of Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler received 1,000.[5]
Jennings served as a director of Standard Oil of Ohio and then as a trustee of the Standard Oil Trust that resulted from the company's reorganization in 1882.[4]

Death

Jennings died in 1893 at his residence in New York City.[2] His estate amounted to $10 million, which he left entirely to his family.[6]

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/11/style/katharine-dupont-sanger-marries-lewis-rutherfurd.html
Excerpt:

Katharine duPont Sanger Marries Lewis Rutherfurd

Published: June 11, 1989
Katharine duPont Sanger and Lewis Polk Rutherfurd were married yesterday at St. John's Episcopal Church on Fishers Island, N.Y., by the Rev. John C. Harper, an Episcopal priest, assisted by the Rev. J. Clifford Curtin, a Roman Catholic priest.
The bride, the widow of Peter Durant Sanger, is a daughter of Mrs. George Tyler Weymouth of Wilmington, Del., and Fishers Island, and the late Reynolds duPont. The bridegroom, the widower of Janet Auchincloss Rutherfurd, is a son of Mrs. Winthrop Rutherfurd of New York and Fishers Island and the late Mr. Rutherfurd.
Natalie duPont Lyon was matron of honor for her sister and Alexandra Rutherfurd was flower girl for her stepmother, who was escorted by her sons, Penn duPont Sanger and Christopher Durant Sanger. Andrew Hugh Auchincloss Rutherfurd and Lewis Stuyvesant Rutherfurd served as best men for their father.
Mrs. Rutherfurd, who is president of Windsurfing of Sanibel, a Florida sailboard and sports clothing shop, graduated from Wheelock College. Her father was a Republican state senator and president pro tem in Delaware. Her stepfather is the retired president and founder of Laird and Company, an investment concern in Wilmington. She is a granddaughter of the late Lammot duPont, a president and chairman of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company in Wilmington.
 
Mr. Rutherfurd is the managing director of Royal Trust Enterprise Capital, a venture capital concern in Hong Kong. He graduated from Princeton University and received an M.B.A. degree from Harvard University. His father was president of Coast Metals, a manufacturer of hard-surface metals in Little Ferry, N.J.
The bridegroom is a grandson of the late Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop Rutherfurd of Allamuchy, N.J., and Aiken, S.C. Mr. Rutherfurd was an investment banker in New York. He is also a grandson of the late Mr. and Mrs. Frank L. Polk of New York, where Mr. Polk was a founding partner in the New York law firm now known as Davis Polk & Wardwell.


http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/the_kennedy_bloodline.htm
Excerpt:
"One can fairly hear the woof and tweet of history whistle through the names of the ramified Auchincloss tribe: Bunt, Grosvenor, Rockefeller, Saltonstall, Tiffany, Vanderbilt and Winthrop among others."5 For instance, Hugh D. Auchincloss, Sr. married Emma Brewster Jennings, daughter of Oliver B. Jennings, who co-founded Standard Oil with John D. Rockefeller. As for the numerous Kennedy intermarriages with notable names, for instance, Bernet Shafer Kennedy (1798-1878) married Phebe Freeman in 1820.6 But then the question arises--were either of these people secretly part of the occult? Andrew Kennedy married Margaret (Penny) Hatfield (1824-1989). The Andrew Kennedy family is allied with the Hatfield, Bailey, Collins, and Mullins families.8 Again a person is confronted with a great deal of clues, but precious little time and resources to try following up the numerous leads.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Bouvier_Beale
Excerpt:
In her youth, Little Edie was a clothes model at Macy's in New York[1] and Palm Beach, Florida. She later claimed to have dated J. Paul Getty and to have once been engaged to Joe Kennedy, Jr. (although in reality she only met him once).[2] During the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy, she told Joe Kennedy, Sr. that if young Joe had lived she would have been First Lady instead of Jackie.[1]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/jul/08/fashion1
Excerpt:
The original Grey Gardens began as a vanity project. In 1974, Jackie O's sister Lee Radziwill commissioned Albert and David Maysles (best known for their Rolling Stones documentary Gimme Shelter) to record a family portrait. Two relatives were particularly camera-friendly - Jackie's aunt and cousin, both named Edie; both faded debutantes. But when the Maysles showed the footage to Radziwill, she was aghast and ordered that the negatives be destroyed. But Big Edie and Little Edie had rather enjoyed the attention and invited the Maysles back to film more.

Grey Gardens Video Essay (little over 10 mins.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z_4gLfUGrE

http://www.criterion.com/films/664-grey-gardens
Excerpt:
SYNOPSIS: Meet Big and Little Edie Beale—high-society dropouts, mother and daughter, reclusive cousins of Jackie O.—thriving together amid the decay and disorder of their ramshackle East Hampton mansion. An impossibly intimate portrait and an eerie echo of the Kennedy Camelot, Albert and David Maysles’s 1976 Grey Gardens quickly became a cult classic and established Little Edie as a fashion icon and philosopher queen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Norton_Lee


http://www.thewatcherfiles.com/bloodlines/onassis.htm
Excerpt:
EVIDENCE OF THE CONSPIRACY
One of the most telling papertrail signs that the conspiracy has left behind was an executive order that FDR signed just after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. This executive order was a semi-secret amendment to Trading With The Enemy Act which made it LEGAL to trade with the enemy if the Sec. of the Treasury (then Hans Morganthau) gave permission. Morganthau was a tool of the conspiracy, and of course he gave permission to the top Illuminati to trade with the enemy. (In 1983, a book came out Trading With The Enemy which exposes how the elite secretly kept Hitler going by supplying him, rebuilding his communications etc. Onassis as an Illuminati king worked with other elites Rockefeller, Kennedy, and Getty, to quietly make a profit and keep the war going longer. Onassis sold oil and guns to both sides. ITT telephones were used in German submarines. [This Executive Order shows that at the top their is a conspiracy--it is reproduced on the following pages.] There were 450 merchant ships owned by Greeks before W.W. II. Out of those Aristotle said 410 were sunk during the war. The official count was 360. Either way it is clear that most of the Greek shippers lost their large merchant ships. However, the German submarines and aircraft never once touched Aristotles’ ships although they sailed through war zones. Neither did the Allies. Aristotle alone did not suffer any losses. Aristotle’s large fleet did not lose a single ship even the ones that were in Scandinavia when the Germans invaded. Only the full colloboration at the highest levels could have pulled that one off.

The second and third pictures below are page-numbers 1396 and   1328 of the "Code of Federal regulations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_D._Auchincloss
Excerpt:
Hugh Dudley Auchincloss, Jr. (August 15, 1897 – November 20, 1976) was an American stockbroker and lawyer who became the second husband of Janet Lee Bouvier, the mother of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

[edit] Biography

Auchincloss was born at Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. He was the son of Hugh Dudley Auchincloss (1858–1913), a merchant and financier, and Emma Brewster Jennings, daughter of Oliver B. Jennings, a founder of Standard Oil. His uncles were Edgar Stirling Auchincloss (father of James C. Auchincloss) and John Winthrop Auchincloss (grandfather of Louis Auchincloss).[1][2] He had two older sisters, Esther Judson Auchincloss and Ann Burr Auchincloss.
Auchincloss graduated in 1920 from Yale University, where he was elected to the Elihu Senior Society. He earned a law degree from Columbia University in 1924. Auchincloss served in the United States Navy during World War I and worked for the Office of Naval Intelligence and the War Department during World War II. Auchincloss had been a special agent with the Commerce Department before joining the State Department as an aviation specialist in 1927. Four years later, he resigned government service and used some of the enormous inheritance from his mother to found the Washington brokerage firm of Auchincloss, Parker & Redpath.
His first marriage, from June 4, 1925 to 1932, was to Maya de Chrapovitsky, a Russian noblewoman. They had one child, Hugh D. "Yusha" Auchincloss III (born 1927). His second, from 1935 to 1941, was to Nina S. Gore (1903–1978), mother of author Gore Vidal. They had two children, Nina Gore Auchincloss (born 1935) and Thomas Gore Auchincloss (born 1937). On June 21, 1942, he married Janet Lee Bouvier, who was already mother of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill. They had two children, Janet Jennings Auchincloss (1945–1985) and James Lee Auchincloss (born 1947). Auchincloss was responsible for the then Jacqueline Bouvier getting her first job in journalism at the Washington Times-Herald. He gave her away at her wedding to future president John F. Kennedy, the reception of which was held at Hammersmith Farm on September 12, 1953. A long-time financial contributor to the US Republican Party, he contributed to the campaign of his Democratic son-in-law, saying "I want to live in harmony with Mrs. Auchincloss and all the other members of the family."

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/feature/2000/08/15/vidal
Excerpt:
Tuesday, Aug 15, 2000 18:38 ET

"A dangerous family"

Gore Vidal talks about Cousin Al, the evils of corporate America and why he's supporting Ralph Nader.

By Fred Branfman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Cincinnati
Excerpt:
The Society of the Cincinnati is a historical organization with branches in the United States and France founded in 1783 to preserve the ideals and fellowship of the Revolutionary War officers and to pressure the government to honor pledges it had made to officers who fought for American independence.[2] Now in its third century, the Society is a nonprofit historical, diplomatic, and educational organization that promotes public interest in the American Revolution through its library and museum collections, exhibitions, programs, publications, and other activities.

http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/the_onassis_bloodline.htm
Excerpt:
Senator Estes Kefauver, whose Crime Commission had discovered the 1932 deal that Onassis, Kennedy, Meyer, Roosevelt, Lansky and other Illuminati--Mafia figures had made. Kefauver was poisoned so that he had a secret poison induced "heart attack" on Aug. 8, 1963. One suspect that might have done it was his subordinate Bernard Fensterwald, who was also a CIA assassin. The other was Phillip Graham.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estes_Kefauver

http://www.commondreams.org/news2000/0619-11.htm

http://www.smokershistory.com/Farmers.html

http://xdell.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html
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