EXPOSING Bush's Spying:Salon Uncovers New Evidence Spying On Americans That Could Rival WATERGATE

[Segami]

Salon has uncovered new evidence of post-9/11 spying on Americans. Obtained documents point to a potential investigation of the White House that could rival Watergate.


"....July 23, 2008 | WASHINGTON -- The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committee congressional investigation of the 1970s.

While reporting on domestic surveillance under Bush, Salon obtained a detailed memo proposing such an inquiry, and spoke with several sources involved in recent discussions around it on Capitol Hill. The memo was written by a former senior member of the original Church Committee; the discussions have included aides to top House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, and until now have not been disclosed publicly.

Salon has also uncovered further indications of far-reaching and possibly illegal surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency inside the United States under President Bush. That includes the alleged use of a top-secret, sophisticated database system for monitoring people considered to be a threat to national security. It also includes signs of the NSA's working closely with other U.S. government agencies to track financial transactions domestically as well as globally.


The proposal for a Church Committee-style investigation emerged from talks between civil liberties advocates and aides to Democratic leaders in Congress, according to sources involved. (Pelosi's and Conyers' offices both declined to comment.) Looking forward to 2009, when both Congress and the White House may well be controlled by Democrats, the idea is to have Congress appoint an investigative body to discover the full extent of what the Bush White House did in the war on terror to undermine the Constitution and U.S. and international laws. The goal would be to implement government reforms aimed at preventing future abuses -- and perhaps to bring accountability for wrongdoing by Bush officials."


<http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/23/new_churchcomm/>

[stillcool]

1. rival Watergate?

we went past Watergate in the first year of the Bush Presidency.

[Segami]

I agree but nothing has been investigated as of yet and its still all very hush-hush and speculative

and nobody knows the full extent of the damage until an investigative sweep has been conducted.

[barbtries]

7. that was my first thought as well n/t

[Mme. Defarge]

44. No kidding! n/t

[Historic NY]

55. Dumb-ass's Watergate was a third class burglary gone wrong........

and then spiraled out of control. What we have here are "HIGH CRIMES" maybe even "Treason", if they lets this go unanswered even if it takes years for convictions then we might as well just roll over to a dictator.

[AlbertCat]

62. We went past Watergate...

....with the 2000 Supreme Court ruling!

[orleans]

2. well, we'll see

in the meantime:
"Keith talks to Jonathan Turley about Bush might pre-emptively pardon anyone who committed crimes in his administration and an Obama legal advisor Cass Sunstein who has said that only the most egregious crimes would or should be prosecuted."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x160431

watch the video

[Sam Ervin jret]

63. "most egregious crimes" still leaves all the Bush troop of fools in big trouble.

And Bush himself wide open for conviction on many counts.

[alfredo]

3. K&R

[seemslikeadream]

4. INSLAW *** PROMIS

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.

Hamilton's company Inslaw is widely respected in the law enforcement community for creating a program called the Prosecutors' Management Information System, or PROMIS. It keeps track of criminal investigations through a powerful search engine that can quickly access all stored data components of a case, from the name of the initial investigators to the telephone numbers of key suspects. PROMIS, also widely used in the insurance industry, can also sort through other databases fast, with results showing up almost instantly. "It operates just like Google," Hamilton told me in an interview in his Washington office in May.

Since the late 1980s, Inslaw has been involved in a legal dispute over its claim that Justice Department officials in the Reagan administration appropriated the PROMIS software. Hamilton claims that Reagan officials gave PROMIS to the NSA and the CIA, which then adapted the software -- and its outstanding ability to search other databases -- to manage intelligence operations and track financial transactions. Over the years, Hamilton has employed prominent lawyers to pursue the case, including Elliot Richardson, the former attorney general and secretary of defense who died in 1999, and C. Boyden Gray, the former White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush. The dispute has never been settled. But based on the long-running case, Hamilton says he believes U.S. intelligence uses PROMIS as the primary software for searching the Main Core database.

Hamilton was first told about the connection between PROMIS and Main Core in the spring of 1992 by a U.S. intelligence official, and again in 1995 by a former NSA official. In July 2001, Hamilton says, he discussed his case with retired Adm. Dan Murphy, a former military advisor to Elliot Richardson who later served under President George H.W. Bush as deputy director of the CIA. Murphy, who died shortly after his meeting with Hamilton, did not specifically mention Main Core. But he informed Hamilton that the NSA's use of PROMIS involved something "so seriously wrong that money alone cannot cure the problem," Hamilton told me. He added, "I believe in retrospect that Murphy was alluding to Main Core." Hamilton also provided copies of letters that Richardson and Gray sent to U.S. intelligence officials and the Justice Department on Inslaw's behalf alleging that the NSA and the CIA had appropriated PROMIS for intelligence use.

Hamilton says James B. Comey's congressional testimony in May 2007, in which he described a hospitalized John Ashcroft's dramatic standoff with senior Bush officials Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card, was another illuminating moment. "It was then that we started hearing again about the Main Core derivative of PROMIS for spying on Americans," he told me.





http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=2836046

[janet118]

38. More about PROMIS

PROMIS and 9/11

[librechik]

41. MAIN CORE

http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2008/05/government_surveillance_homeland_security_main_core_01-print.php

[seemslikeadream]

56. Thanks janet118

:hi:

[AntiFascist]

61. Great article...

I wonder if Indira Singh knows anything about what records or databases may have been destroyed in the SEC, IRS, DOD, CIA, INS, SS, and/or NSA offices of WTC Building 7?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. impeach!

[Joanie Baloney]

6. Too little...too late

and this is not MY goal:

"The goal would be to implement government reforms aimed at preventing future abuses --..."

(Oh yeah...and BTW, if it's not too much FUCKING trouble!!!)


"...and perhaps to bring accountability for wrongdoing by Bush officials."

Perhaps?? PERHAPS?!?!

sigh

:banghead:

[barbtries]

8. well, yeah,

but at this point i'll take what i can get. maybe if the lawmakers leaning in this direction hear from enough of their constituents they'll get the message and follow through. if they follow through they will have no choice but to act. better late than never. i'm hopeful without wasting my energy on ecstasy. but i gotta hope.

[Segami]

12. I know its frustrating to say the least but I would rather see an Independent Investigation later

than NONE at all. There are murderers that are finally caught after 25+ years because the police lacked the tech to comb for clues. I don't hear anyone saying " Who cares, let him go, it happened such a long time ago and quite frankly, no one cares ".....I doubt that very much and justice needs to be served here against B*sh & Company regardless of how long it takes.

[Drum]

18. 'Zactly.

Discredit the motive, discredit the actions, discredit the perpetrators.

Outcome of such a procedure: justice, and a warning.

Absence of such a procedure: permission.

[lonestarnot]

9. Refresh my memory on the Church Committee investigations of the 70's.

I was into partying in the 70's. :P

[TahitiNut]

16. Here...

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

[lonestarnot]

21. Thanks T.H. also within OP's article posted.

The Church Committee was formed in 1975 in the wake of media reports about illegal spying against American antiwar activists and civil rights leaders, CIA assassination squads, and other dubious activities under Nixon and his predecessors. Chaired by Sen. Frank Church of Idaho, the committee interviewed more than 800 officials and held 21 public hearings. As a result of its work, Congress in 1978 passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which required warrants and court supervision for domestic wiretaps, and created intelligence oversight committees in the House and Senate.


Wasn't the Church Lady afterall.:P

[debunkthelies]

54. PROMIS

A link to wikipedia PROMIS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor's_Management_Information_System

[dailykoff]

10. They need another committee to figure out what crimes Bush committed?

Do they need a committee to tell them how to turn on the f#cking TV? :grr:

[orleans]

15. lol! no shit! n/t

[The Backlash Cometh]

11. Is this recycled whimsy?

Too tired to read it completely. Will bookmark for tomorrow, meanwhile, is this giving us a new angle that we haven't seen before?

[dailykoff]

14. They want to appoint a committee to investigate Bush crimes

after he's out of office. :crazy:

[Drum]

20. Even in the first term alone,

the scope of it beggars belief.

Rove and the gang probably figure to choke investigators with the glut of workload and the level of obfuscation. :(

[bjobotts]

66. What a load of crap."Possibly investigate illegal activity".We already know the truth

[Segami]

19. Maybe the story is putting out trial balloons to shake off smaller leaves off the Bush tree

that might be spooked into cooperating with an investigation to save their own hides.

[Dr.Phool]

13. OMG!!! I can see it happening now!

Here comes another strongly worded letter. And if that doesn't work, a snarky rebuke!

That'll fix 'em.

[Marr]

17. Our representatives will do nothing about this.

The best we can hope for in the short term is that Democratic representatives will abuse the system just as thoroughly as the Bush cabal did, and use it to destroy their political rivals.

In the long term, we have to remove all of these corporate servants pretending to be public servants.

[Segami]

23. Don't they refer to 2+ term congressmen/women & senators as ' career politicians '?

[Imagevision]

22. Pelosi, what a loser!

[Segami]

24. Pelosi, absolute power corrupts absolutely! Take it easy on the BOTOX injections, the serum has

migrated to you head.

[lurky]

25. Drip drip drip

recommended.

[nosmokes]

26. wake me when they have the gumption to indict someone from Bushco

Rip VW

[Trillo]

27. I have melancholy moments when I wonder whether then entire Internet

was promoted to the masses to collect data about us. :tinfoilhat:

[Segami]

28. How many chess moves ahead can you strategize to trap your opponent? Maybe the Internet Platform

didn't begin that way but maybe in time, its primary function morphed into a whole new data mining tool for them to use against us.

[Segami]

32. Moves & counter-moves, its all about maneuvering the masses toward their hidden agenda. By the time

we realize where we're heading, the door behind closes shut.


"....".....Main Core may be the contemporary incarnation of a government watch list system that was part of a highly classified "Continuity of Government" program created by the Reagan administration to keep the U.S. government functioning in the event of a nuclear attack. Under a 1982 presidential directive, the outbreak of war could trigger the proclamation of martial law nationwide, giving the military the authority to use its domestic database to round up citizens and residents considered to be threats to national security. The emergency measures for domestic security were to be carried out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Army.

[Trillo]

35. The odd thing is that they consider us the enemy,

while many of us were indeed redundantly trained in compulsory schools to consider the government our friend, not the enemy. That the government would follow the law, and that everyone had equal standing before the law. Then, years later, we find out they were just liars and considered us the enemy the entire time, while they got us when we were young and with 'moldable minds'. The government's conspiracy has roots predating the Internet, apparently.

[Segami]

50. That has always been the case, the ' haves ' were always preoccupied with

controlling the ' have nots ' because they knew there existed one hell of a lot more ' have nots ' than there were ' haves ' and if the ' have nots ' ever sniffed out what the ' haves ' control game was from day one, we might have seen them hanging from the tree tops throughout the nation. I wonder how many people without means have been hurt or destroyed by their antics?

[DCKit]

29. "...to track financial transactions domestically as well as globally. "

I'm sure Eliot Spitzer will want some of that action.

[MasonJar]

30. And all the info they need will be shredded and no one will arrive

when subpoened. That said, I certainly hope the article is correct and the investigation takes place.

[malaise]

31. Bushco has long made Watergate look like

a fugging picnic.

[jazzjunkysue]

33. It's called Main Core. Wave to the nice camera, Billy!

George Orwell had a crystal ball, evidently.



"You have to go back to the McCarthy era to find this level of abuse," says Barry Steinhardt, the director of the Program on Technology and Liberty for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Because the Bush administration has been so opaque, we don't know what laws have been violated."

A prime area of inquiry for a sweeping new investigation would be the Bush administration's alleged use of a top-secret database to guide its domestic surveillance. Dating back to the 1980s and known to government insiders as "Main Core," the database reportedly collects and stores -- without warrants or court orders -- the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security.

[Segami]

34. Sounds more to me like the elite privileged are worried that the masses are starting to wake up so

they retaliate by inventing a domestic terrorist ' black list ' made up of grandmothers talking long distance to their grandchildren. I wonder why THEY aren't on that list?

[jazzjunkysue]

36. There's no question that this is political spying, to catch any dem leaders

in whatever compromising circumstances they can. Then, they can blackmail them into compliance.

We need some solid evidence that they're spying on dem legislators.

[Segami]

40. The republican ' Gotcha ' doctrine has been their preferred poison pill choice of strategy

against Democrats for decades. Nothing new to see here folks, move along in an orderly single line.

[BonnieJW]

46. I have long believed the Dems have been spied upon,

and then blackmailed. But they have ALL been blackmailed, then why can't they all get together and claim it and have this administration charged?

[Segami]

52. It might not be as simple-a-solution as such. Who knows, maybe they HAVE compiled dirt on members

to be blackmailed or something even more precious to them,...their children. Maybe they have info that can put the Kibosh on their children's future to ruin so looking the other way on these issues and not making too many ' criminal investigation ' public waves might be what we are seeing by many in Congress who continue to sit on their hands and refuse to uphold the Constitution and hold everyone in this administration accountable for their criminal deeds.

[Jackpine Radical]

37. A little overblown, dontcha think?

Nothing here that a dose of retroactive immunity and some small changes in the law can't handle.

[Segami]

39. Seems that line of thinking ( immunity , pardons ) has become the standard ' soup de jour '

with today's politicians.

[wildbilln864]

42. Kick to read later and rec'd. nt

[Trillo]

43. Here's a nice little tidbit (from the OP's article):

Since the late 1980s, Inslaw has been involved in a legal dispute over its claim that Justice Department officials in the Reagan administration appropriated the PROMIS software. Hamilton claims that Reagan officials gave PROMIS to the NSA and the CIA, which then adapted the software -- and its outstanding ability to search other databases -- to manage intelligence operations and track financial transactions.

So, these agencies had the ability to track financial information and moneys' changes of hands, yet, it took a bank whistleblower to find rich folks' Lictenstein bank accounts that were said to be used to avoid taxes (100 Billion or more)? What else were they using those accounts for?

... a senior aide to Speaker Pelosi was asked for Pelosi's views on a proposal to expand the investigation to past administrations, including those of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. "The question was, how far back in time would we have to go to make this credible?" the participant in the meeting recalled.

That question was answered in the seven-page memo. "The rise of the 'surveillance state' driven by new technologies and the demands of counter-terrorism did not begin with this Administration," the author wrote. Even though he acknowledged in interviews with Salon that the scope of abuse under George W. Bush would likely be an order of magnitude greater than under preceding presidents, he recommended in the memo that any new investigation follow the precedent of the Church Committee and investigate the origins of Bush's programs, going as far back as the Reagan administration.

So, Democrats could also be implicated. Maybe if they investigate slower, and obstruct, it can all be swept under the rug.

[Jackpine Radical]

48. And that is the problem.

I think it's also why there has been no serious move toward impeachment. Any honest investigation would turn up a lot of Democratic fingerprints on the cookie jar.

[Segami]

49. The INSLAW Octopus

Mar/Apr 1993



" The House Judiciary Committee lists these crimes as among the possible violations perpetrated by "high-level Justice officials and private individuals":

>> Conspiracy to commit an offense
>> Fraud
* Wire fraud
* Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies and committees
* Tampering with a witness
* Retaliation against a witness
* Perjury
* Interference with commerce by threats or violence
* Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) violations
* Transportation of stolen goods, securities, moneys
* Receiving stolen goods


A House Judiciary Committee report released last September found evidence raising "serious concerns" that high officials at the Department of Justice executed a pre-meditated plan to destroy Inslaw and co-opt the rights to its PROMIS software. The committee's call for an independent counsel have fallen on deaf ears. One journalist, Danny Casolaro, died as he attempted to tell the story (see sidebar), and boxes of documents relating to the case have been destroyed, stolen, or conveniently "lost" by the Department of Justice.

But so far, not a single person has been held accountable.

...What this means is that PROMIS can provide a complete rundown of all federal cases in which a lawyer has been involved, or all the cases in which a lawyer has represented defendant A, or all the cases in which a lawyer has represented white-collar criminals, at which stage in each of the cases the lawyer agreed to a plea bargain, and so on. Based on this information, PROMIS can help a prosecutor determine when a plea will be taken in a particular type of case.

But the real power of PROMIS, according to Hamilton, is that with a staggering 570,000 lines of computer code, PROMIS can integrate innumerable databases without requiring any reprogramming. In essence, PROMIS can turn blind data into information. And anyone in government will tell you that information, when wielded with finesse, begets power. Converted to use by intelligence agencies, as has been alleged in interviews by ex-CIA and Israeli Mossad agents, PROMIS can be a powerful tracking device capable of monitoring intelligence operations, agents and targets, instead of legal cases.

Apparently, Israel was not the only country interested in using PROMIS for internal security purposes. Lt. Col. Oliver North also may have been using the program. According to several intelligence community sources, PROMIS was in use at a 6,100-square-foot command center built on the sixth floor of the Justice Department. According to both a contractor who helped design the center and information disclosed during the Iran-Contra hearings, Oliver North had a similar, but smaller, White House operations room that was connected by computer link to the DOJ's command center.

Using the computers in his command center, North tracked dissidents and potential troublemakers within the United States as part of a domestic emergency preparedness program, commissioned under Reagan's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), according to sources and published reports. Using PROMIS, sources point out, North could have drawn up lists of anyone ever arrested for a political protest, for example, or anyone who had ever refused to pay their taxes. Compared to PROMIS, Richard Nixon's enemies list or Sen. Joe McCarthy's blacklist look downright crude. This operation was so sensitive that when Rep. Jack Brooks asked North about it during the Iran-Contra hearings, the hearing was immediately suspended pending an executive (secret) conference. When the hearings were reconvened, the issue of North's FEMA dealings was dropped.



<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=>

[AntiFascist]

60. Excellent post...

PROMIS may have been modified, with the cooperation of the NSA, to work with back-end banking software. Look into Systematics of Arkansas and the potential use in money laundering surrounding MENA airport, in one of the major Iran-Contra operations during the Reagan-Bush era.

[Douglas Carpenter]

45. Kick and recommended -- very important !!!!!

[montanto]

47. Wake me when it gets started.

I'm so tired of hearing about how something is going to get done.

[McCamy Taylor]

51. The country needs this, but will it happen? Depends on whether David Rockeffer will let it happen.

There are too many special interests who benefit when their bought politicians have too much power.

[Segami]

53. Even the Rockefeller's need to heed the coming ' singularity ' of change. But having said that,

through their wealth, they find themselves in a much more dominant position of evolving adjustments that nurtures the continuance of controlling the masses through manipulation and propaganda techniques.

[kestrel91316]

57. This administration left Watergate in the dust years ago.

[Tab]

58. Watergate isn't even in my rear-view mirror anymore

That was SOOOOO 20th century compared to the shit this administration's been doing.

[Segami]

59. It doesn't matter what century they've been conducting this brand of criminal activity,

f*cking the american people in every orifice is always packaged the same with the same end shaft result for those who can't fend for themselves while these snakes continue to just slither away into the dark all unscathed. Thats what continues to remain the same, unless the people stand up and begin to shout & demand that justice be served to the guilty. It has to begin somewhere.

[nankerphelge]

64. I'll believe it when I see it

[ejbr]

65. Ditto that n/t

[elleng]

67. "Implement government reforms

aimed at preventing future abuses" like prohibit LYING?

Such would provide huge amount of 'entertainment' for political junkies.

[Segami]

68. Sounds like a ' Woody Allen ' idea.