Why I believe suppression of dissent by the WH is behind the NSA scandal

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Suppression of dissent. That's what some in the White House were using the tools of the Patriot Act for. I'm convinced of it, but, without any revelation of the names of the targets there is litte to pinpoint. Still, information revealed recently suggests they were muckraking with anything that they could dig up in their privileged positions in government offices, and not just those close to the president. Information collected from NSA intercepts was used by many disparate interests in all levels of government.

As Legal times noted in September of this year,

"During the confirmation hearings of John Bolton as the U.S. representative to the United Nations, it came to light that the NSA had freely revealed intercepted conversations of U.S. citizens to Bolton while he served at the State Department. . . . More generally, Newsweek reports that from January 2004 to May 2005, the NSA supplied intercepts and names of 10,000 U.S. citizens to policy-makers at many departments, other U.S. intelligence services, and law enforcement agencies."

and,

"The trouble here is that the loophole is bigger than the law itself. If the National Security Agency provides officials with the identities of Americans on its tapes, what is the use of making secret those names in the first place? More troubling still is the apparent lack of guidelines or controls on this process: the whole thing seems like an invitation to any Beltway Richelieu hoping to gain an edge on his political foes."

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/12/16/142620/20


Then there is the WP article on 12/18 that reminds us that this is just one in a series of NSA disclosures:

"Beginning in October, The Washington Post published articles describing a three-year-old Pentagon agency, the size and budget of which are classified, with wide new authority to undertake domestic investigations and operations against potential threats from U.S. residents and organizations against military personnel and facilities. The Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, began as a small policy-coordination office but has grown to encompass nine directorates and a staff exceeding 1,000. The agency's Talon database, collecting unconfirmed reports of suspicious activity from military bases and organizations around the country, has included "threat reports" of peaceful civilian protests and demonstrations.

"CIFA has also been empowered with what the military calls "tasking authority" -- the ability to give operational orders -- over Army, Navy and Air Force units whose combined roster of investigators, about 4,000, is nearly as large as the number of FBI special agents assigned to counterterrorist squads. Pentagon officials said this month they had ordered a review of the program after disclosures, in The Post, NBC News and the washingtonpost.com Web log of William M. Arkin, that CIFA compiled information about U.S. citizens engaging in constitutionally protected political activity such as protests against military recruiting."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10509407


The Patriot Act allows the investigation of Americans based on certain activities such as the participation in a protest or any form of activism. The American Civil Liberties Union has charged that at events attended by President Bush and other senior federal officials around the country, the Secret Service has been discriminating against protesters in violation of their free speech rights.

The ACLU's legal papers listed more than a dozen examples of police censorship around the country. According to their fact sheet, "such incidents have spiked under the Bush administration," prompting the ACLU to charge government officials with a "pattern and practice" of discrimination against those who disagree with its policies." The ACLU had asked a federal court for a nationwide injunction barring the Secret Service from directing local police to restrict protesters' access to appearances by President Bush and other senior administration officials.


This Bush foot stamping for the Patriot Act back is a symptom of their addiction to muckraking. We needed to cut off their heroin, take away their government search engine into our private affairs. Their pattern of behavior has been a Wilsonian assault on civil liberties and dissent. Woodrow Wilson urged legislative action against those who had "sought to bring the authority and 'good name' of the Government into contempt." He worried in his declaration of war, about "spies and criminal intrigues everywhere afoot" which had filled "our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government."

During his presidency more than 2,000 American citizens were jailed for protest, advocacy, and dissent, with the support of a compliant Supreme Court. The Wilson-era assaults on civil liberties; Schenck v. U.S.; Frohwerk v. U.S.; Debs v. U.S., Abrams v. U.S., were ratified by Supreme Court decisions which asserted that free speech in wartime was a hindrance to the efforts of peace.

The Bush White House has also been reported to maintain an enemy's list that was aided by the authority of the Patriot Act. Remember, the Bush White House still insists that their actions investigating Joe Wilson's wife were appropriate and necessary to their mission. No doubt, there is information gathered from many sources that made it's way into the Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame dossier. It's more than a possibility that some of that info came from the NSA, especially in light of the ease and frequency in which the material was given up to various agencies within the government. It's not a stretch of thought to imagine that other political rivals of the Bush White House had their private e-mails or phone conversations perused by operatives in the WH war room.


Here are some excerpts from an article from Nov. 8 that purports to have discovered an enemy's list kept in the White House that dates back to Bush's governor days: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7625.shtml

". . . aided by the USA Patriot Act, the Bush Administration has compiled dossiers on more than 10,000 Americans it considers political enemies and uses those files to wage war on those who disagree with its policies.

The “enemies list” dates back to Bush’s days as governor of Texas and can be accessed by senior administration officials in an instant for use in campaigns to discredit those who speak out against administration policies or acts of the President."

The computerized files include intimate personal details on members of Congress; high-ranking local, state and federal officials; prominent media figures and ordinary citizens who may, at one time or another, have spoken out against the President or Administration."

and this from the CHB article:

"White House insiders tell disturbing tales of invasion of privacy, abuse of government power and use of expanded authority under the USA Patriot Act to dig into the personal lives of anyone the administration deems an enemy of the state."


(In an earlier post I wrongly wrote that Patrick Fitzgerald had discovered the database in the WH. Wishful thinking, I suppose, but a stupid mistake, nonetheless. The article did claim that operatives in the WH had access to the "off-site' database.)

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1. Dissent at CPB-NPR-PBS

:bounce: Bill Moyers' speech on Dec 9 - link: <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/anniversary/moyers.htm> -
relative to the despot Ken Tomlinson and his attempts to undermine Moyers, leads me to
surmise that Tomlinson had access to Moyers' e-mails, which access is part of the right-wing's
continuous attack on our privileges, rights and freedoms. Bill Moyers is a true American patriot;
please read his speech, about eight pages. It will curl your hair.
OUT with all of the GWB criminal gang! NOW!

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2. thanks for the link. Remember Frank Church? This article from 2000

This article is by republican Paul M. Weyrich, conservative shill. He worries aloud about the NSA:

"Back during the Vietnam war, there was no Senator more despised on the Right than Frank Church of Idaho. If an amendment was offered to bring home the troops, Church was in the middle of it. If demonstrations were held against the war, Church was one of the stars. Church, although soft spoken and pleasant looking, was as militant a Senator as ever was elected when it came to opposition to the war.

While pursuing that effort, Church held hearings on the National Security Agency. He revealed in the course of the hearings that the NSA, in violation of U.S. laws, had spied on the likes of Jane Fonda and Benjamin Spock, who were openly giving aid and comfort to the Communists in that era. We castigated Church. Just another example of his pro-Communist sympathies, we said. And we may have been right about that at the time.

But recent developments suggest that Church may have actually been on to something as he tried to establish rules by which the National Security Agency operates. Church saw to it that clear guidelines were established as to what the NSA could and could not do when it conducted its eavesdropping activities.

Well, the shoe is on the other foot now. It seems that the NSA has been collecting data on lots of Americans. They even spied on former President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Before you cheer, understand that they were also collecting data on all of us who were speaking out on national security questions. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (known as EPIC) filed a suit under the freedom of information act and learned that the NSA is, in effect, spying on thousands of Americans. This is done in the name of eavesdropping on suspected terrorists."

http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0700nsa.htm

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4. boy, Bill's really out there working. I like the FOIA stuff

"Obsessed with secrecy, Bush and Cheney have made the Freedom of Information Act their number one target, more fervently pursued for elimination than Osama Bin Laden."

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3. a more friendly comparison of recent NSA politicization w/Church era

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,33026,00.html

"The Church committee eventually prepared an exhaustive -- and damning -- 396-page report that detailed how the NSA and other agencies had run amok for the previous few decades. One conclusion by the panel's chairman: Congress has a "particular obligation to examine the NSA, in light of its tremendous potential for abuse.... The danger lies in the ability of NSA to turn its awesome technology against domestic communications."

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5. same as it ever was