NSA Whistleblower Russell Tice Reveals that Obama, Many Top Officials Were Targets of NSA Surveilla

[kpete]

Some highlights from the interview: 48:55: When Barack Obama was running for the Senate in the summer of 2004, NSA checked him out. 58:08: Tice says, “Do I know if they’re blackmailing our elected officials and our Supreme Court judges? . . . I don’t know the answer. . . . But NSA is . . . out of control and they must be stopped. This nonsense that there’s no abuse . . . is just plain foolish.” 1:03:03: “There are outrageous abuses that have happened and it’s all being kept hush-hush.” 1:07:50: “They literally have everything on everybody all the time.” 1:10:40: “There is no oversight.” 1:15:47 “I truly fear for our democratic republic, because this is far beyond anything that I think even George Orwell could conceive.” - See more at: http://agonist.org/what-happened-to-barack-obama/#more-108446



Back in 2004, what did NSA do with whatever they got on Obama? What can a corrupt surveillance agency do with the info it gets? It can publicize – or threaten to publicize – indiscretions from the past to control behavior in the present. Even for someone so squeaky clean as to provide no tiny little indiscretion that can be blown up to look like something truly evil, a secret agency like NSA need not be at a loss: It could even make up what it needs to ruin a person’s life. In short, NSA is in a good position to blackmail.

So there’s one possible answer for what happened to Barack Obama: When he sides with the powerful again and again maybe it’s because he’s been blackmailed. And consider Congress, and the way we continue to marvel at the lack of spine among Democrats there. Maybe this explains it; maybe they too been blackmailed into doing the bidding of the powers that be.

- See more at: http://agonist.org/what-happened-to-barack-obama/#more-108446

[Trillo]

1. Pretty amazing, isn't it?

Why is past tense always used in this and similar headlines?

"Many Top Officials Were Targets of NSA"

[think]

2. K&R for Russ Tice telling the truth that our govt has been compromised

[Laelth]

3. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[temmer]

4. plausible

there's not even the need to use the term "blackmail". If you control the communication flow, you control the people who are communicating. No eerie calls or dead rats in front of the door necessary.

Question: Clapper and Obama - who knows more about the other?

[think]

7. I'd put my money on "The Company"

Wikipedia: James R Clapper Military Career

Clapper's final military post was as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. After this he briefly served as an executive in several private companies such as Booz Allen Hamilton and SRA International..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper#Military_career

[WillyT]

5. K & R !!!

[Waiting For Everyman]

6. Surveillance like this has always been recognized as a security risk -- for good reason.

It is textbook. It is a situation you can never allow. It's the reason why it was a scandal for a highly placed person to be cheating on the side -- the person might be a spy or connected to one, or to a blackmailer. It wasn't about morality, it was about security.

This is way, way, way beyond that. AND it is not some individual doing it, it is institutionalized within our government. That is the aspect that is "KGB-type stuff".

Tice called it "Hoover on steroids". That is no exaggeration.

[rhett o rick]

8. Isnt the NSA supposed to be concerned with foreign intelligence? nm

[felix_numinous]

9. K&R

Been saying this for years, but most thought it CT. Amazing.

[think]

10. Use to be CT. Now it's "old news" and "yesterday's story"

or mostly ignored which is even scarier.

It is incredible that the whistle blower who exposed the Bush illegal wiretapping is completely ignored when making these huge accusations public.

Tice should be testifying before congress with the cameras rolling.....

[leveymg]

11. He_did_testify_to_Congress,_but_they_hushed_it_up.

The_MSM_don't_run_anything_that_the_PSTB_hush_up_"for_the_good_of_the_nation."

The_nation:

[Agony]

12. "we can't possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us"

Expanding on the nature of that problem, a second administration official added that while "we're not going to end up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying 'we love America'", there needed to be a recognition that "we can't possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us".

The people running our national security state can not possibly be trusted to do the right thing in secret. They are living in a F'ing bubble. Tice, Snowden et al are doing more to represent my interests than a couple of Senators who could not bring themselves to do the right thing.

Agony

[freedom fighter jh]

13. Tice says it's beyond Orwellian. I'd say it's all the way to Kafkaesque.

Thanks for posting, Kpete.

[autorank]

15. Nice one eh

[Ichingcarpenter]

14. Ha.... that may explain Obama's love fest for Bush last night.

Since Bush was in charge of the CIA.

just kidding