Revealed: NSA pushed 9/11 as key 'sound bite' to justify surveillance

[Indi Guy]

Source: Al Jazeera America

The National Security Agency advised its officials to cite the 9/11 attacks as justification for its mass surveillance activities, according to a master list of NSA talking points.

The document – obtained by Al Jazeera through a Freedom of Information Act request – contains talking points and suggested statements for NSA officials (PDF) responding to the fallout from media revelations that originated with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Invoking the events of 9/11 to justify the controversial NSA programs, which have caused major diplomatic fallout around the world, was the top item on the talking points agency officials were encouraged to use.

Under the sub-heading, “Sound Bites that Resonate,” the document suggests the statement: “I much prefer to be here today explaining these programs, than explaining another 9/11 event that we were not able to prevent.”...




Read more: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/30/revealed-nsa-pushed911askeysoundbitetojustifysurveillance.html

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NSA talking points PDF - https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/813055/nsa-talking-points.pdf

[Ezlivin]

1. Cui Bono

Those of us who question the official account of 9/11 suspect that it was the key to unlock unending war. Additional information only seems to support this theory.

Osama bin Laden certainly didn't benefit.

[billhicks76]

6. People Can't Handle The Truth

Yes...911 'forced' us to accept neverending wars for oil/geopolitical dominance and endless surveillance...changed the world we are told to accept...interesting that hundreds of flights that veered off their flight paths were intercepted the previous couple years but 4 passenger jets do it on one day and nothing? Bush wasn't allowed to testify without Cheney whispering in his ear, many warnings of jets being used as kamikaze bombs...I have to stop because the list goes on and on and I can't stomach apologists that can't threaten their own belief systems and resort to name calling. Here's one big lie : Condaleeza Rice stated to Congress (she refused to take an oath) that they had never thought of an airliner being used as a weapon...well, I clearly remember on CNN in 2000 that at the G8 meeting on the island of Genoa in Italy they put anti-aircraft weaponry all around the Island out of fear that someone could hijack an airliner and fly it into the meeting and wipe out all the world leaders at once. I guess she doesn't watch CNN. As long as 911 is whitewashed and not investigated as democratic senator Max Cleland said it was a sham and a lie then we will always be under the boot of the real power brokers in our government, the intelligence 'community'.

[Indi Guy]

10. Welcome to DU.

yeah, 9/11 sure opened the door for all the crap that Cheney/Bush ushered in (can anyone say "New Pearl Harbor?&quot .

[truedelphi]

13. Welcome to DU. n/t

[olddad56]

29. I'll go to my grave convinced it was an inside job....

Since Operation Northwoods, circa 1962, our govt. has at least had the idea for a false flag attack. That is an fact. My opinion is that 911 was a deliberate attack on the US by the Bush Cheney gangsters. That is my opinion, just an opinion. You can have your opinion and I can have mine. I'm not trying to change the mind of anyone else. We are all entitled to our opinion.

[Indi Guy]

30. I think that anyone who has the capacity for rational thought without emotional bias...

...and possesses intellectual curiosity should look closely into the facts surrounding 9/11.

The person which I just described would have to conclude, at minimum, that there is much in the official narrative that simply cannot be true; and that there is much empiricle fact absent from the official story.

[olddad56]

32. the official story is real 'conspiracy theory'.

[Indi Guy]

33. Having spent countless hours...

...studying various aspects of this subject, it's clear that we've been lied to. I'm reluctant to go into specifics in this forum; but suffice it to say that there's such a vast amount of evidence contradictory to and excluded from the official narrative that anyone with an open mind, who hasn't been exposed to this info, would be stunned and amazed by the revelation of all the salient facts (unreported by the MSM).

[billhicks76]

38. Thanks

Thanks for the welcome. Things are so dark in this country that I don't even feel comfortable voicing my opinion online, a thoughtful one I believe. Something is very wrong and should be an indicator of too much control by vested interests. I rarely if ever comment about nine eleven because of the defensive replies and the weird sensation that came along with East Germany's repressive surveilling in the cold war.

[Indi Guy]

39. There's been allot of intimidation...

...to be had by those who haven't readily adhered to the official theory re: the events of 9/11. This alone should spur an open minded person to glean the facts for him/herself, and come up with a conclusion independent of propaganda & coercion of any sort (including that fostered by adherents to either side of the debate).

[truedelphi]

12. Very much agree.

I knew within three days of the event that it would unite both parties in an eternal quest against the Muslim and "terrorist" world.

And it did. Now all of the Peace Dividend that should have allowed this nation to offer its citizens Universal HC, paid kindergarten to grad school education, re-built infra structure, etc has gone to feed the MIC-Surveillance society.

And you are deemed a terrorist if you don't embrace the MIC Surveillance people.

[Indi Guy]

28. The MIC has no intentions of letting tax money benefit the taxpayers. Quite the opposite.

These global elite are among the players who bought the politicians cutting back on education, infra structure, food stamps & the like.

It's no coincidence that there's a glut of money for the spooks & precious little for quality of life programs.

[Indi Guy]

36. Indeed...

...Cui Bono is the obvious question.

[Blue Owl]

2. Note to CNN: this might be worthy of "uncovering"

n/t

[Indi Guy]

4. Not likely...

...since CNN's investigative unit has been disbanded.

[christx30]

20. In 2 years,

CNN will just report stories that happen within the building in Atlanta.
"This just in to our Breaking News desk. Jim from accounting burned the popcorn in the 5th floor breakroom. This comes only a week after he bought the last 2 bags of M&M's, claiming they help him think. For more on this shocking story, we go to Wolf Blitzer in the Situation Room. Wolf?"

[Indi Guy]

21. Thank you Piers. ...

...Yes shocking indeed, as Jim was severely burned along with the popcorn. It appears that the malfunctioning microwave is of suspicious foreign origin, and Jenny from makeup says she's against red China unless you you use it with a white tablecloth.

...And now for a weather update. Since we did away with our weather staff along with our investigative reporting bureau, we turn to our own Soledad O'Brien. Soledad?

Thank you Wolf. The forecast for tonight is darkness -- continued darkness through to morning where there is expected to be scattered light. This forecast may vary if you remain indoors.

[frylock]

3. hunh. interesting in that there is a subset of posters here pushing that same meme.

[Indi Guy]

22. Yes but...

...the crowd you speak of has been conspicuously silent recently. Maybe they got tired of trying to shoot pool with a rope.

[Ash_F]

23. I think they finally realized the NSA is mostly Republicans. /nt

[neverforget]

5. They have to justify the massive surveillance state somehow but more importantly the

excessive budgets for the spy agencies. A lot of contractors are making big money off of this.

[Indi Guy]

16. Exactly; and what ever happened to the $3Trillion that Rumsfeld said went missing on 9/10, 2001?

...The corporate MSM "forgot" about it after things settled down?

[JackRiddler]

26. This is not exactly what was announced...

After an audit in 2000-2001 the Pentagon failed to square a couple of decades worth of its own balance sheets, with the unaccounted-for portion estimated at $2.4 trillion. This indicates that the enormous secret budgets and the waste and inefficiency allow room for potentially hundreds of millions in diverted funds as well as graft and embezzlement, but it does not mean that $2.4 trillion was simply lifted and disappeared in one day. To a large extent it's because they're unable to track or assess values on obsolete equipment and old programs dating back to the 1970s.

Again, there is a real problem here, the Pentagon is an open gateway to public-private plunder as well as secret program budgets that make a mockery of democracy. It should have been the scandal of 2001, and 9/11 conveniently covered it up.

[Indi Guy]

27. Here's an interesting report...

[grasswire]

7. sounds like Frank Luntz has trained them too nt

[jsr]

14. +1.

[underpants]

8. That's a d'uh

Not you Indi

We were all over this 11 years ago and that was when there were NO WARRANTS. We were told "stop hating your country! and SHUT UP!". We told them not to let this out of the bottle.
Now, that being said, President Obama should have stopped it or known about it (I think he did) or something.

Still , this is no surprise.

[Indi Guy]

25. Well, this is after all a "post 9/11 world"...

I'm so tired of hearing that phrase reverberating in the echo chamber...


This is a post 1776 world!.

The phrase was:
"Give me liberty or give me death."...not, "Give up your freedoms or we're all going to die."

...and I'm tired of hearing from the ass-kissing fear mongers of both parties.

[jakeXT]

9. It's a classic

[Indi Guy]

19. That was well done, and quite entertaining.

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

11. same tactic the IRS used

Farris Finch of the irs sited a plane crashing into a irs building in Texas when he addressed congress on the floor. apparently he to over stepped his boundaries.

Farris Finch was Dr. Spock in one his comedy skits designed to be a motivator at their conference holiday in California.

[Octafish]

15. Propaganda used to be un-American

Like the Constitution now is.

[Indi Guy]

37. "Propaganda?" I remember when...

...that word was all over the MSM when describing the discourse of U.S.S.R., "Red" China (China is still red but the corporate media overlooks this now), N. Korea et al. Now we ourselves are inundated with propaganda and many Americans are unaware.

"News" that attempts to convince rather than inform is propaganda. ...And when we the same hear buzzwords & phrases over and over from different personalities -- that's patently propaganda. jakeXT's video in post #9 is a textbook in terms of repetitive propaganda. It's also quite amusing. Check it out:

[KansDem]

17. Ahhh, now we're getting to the right time in American history...

Time to release communications dated on or around 9/11/2001...

[BadgerKid]

18. Gee, who could have imagined that?!

[blkmusclmachine]

24. They promised 9/11 would "change everything." An "Operation Northwoods" type thing?!?!

So, which came first? The chicken or the egg?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

31. cheney and friends pushed the NSA over 9/11

he seemed to be able to have pushed a lot of people

[bobGandolf]

34. Not surprising...

I believe ALL the investigative agencies did that to one degree or another.

[Indi Guy]

35. It's one thing to play the 9/11 card...

...and it's quite another to make it policy visa vi an inter-departmental talking points memo.

After all the abuses heaped upon our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms (also known as "the law&quot in the name of 9/11, the last thing we need is the spy agencies, as policy, justifying said abuses and covering their butts with emotional 9/11 appeals.

[font size="4" face="verdana" color="darkred"]These agencies are supposed to exist to protect us ...not themselves.[/font]

[bobGandolf]

40. No dispute from me.... n/t

[Le Taz Hot]

41. Yeah, like we didn't know this a decade ago

and tried like hell to sound the alarm. We tried to sound the alarm that there were no WMD. We tried to sound the alarm that Bush the Lesser STOLE the fucking election in 2000. I can't even venture a guess as to how many times LIBERALS tried to sound the alarm and were ignored. Hell, we're STILL being ignored.

[Indi Guy]

42. All too true.

But people seem to be better listeners these days; and more distrustful of those who claim to be working in our best interests, while carving up our Constitution.