I. I Told You So Yes, I did. Early last year. In a DU Journal titled
“Warrantless Wiretap is a Great Big Blackmail Scam: Why Do We Tolerate It?” http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2858703Pardon me while I pull a Corsi.
I have been waiting for someone to say what we all know. Warrantless wiretap---domestic spying---is a great big blackmail scam. One of the very first things that Dick Cheney did when he began to recreate Dick Nixon’s attempts to found a totalitarian regime was institute domestic spying. By now, we all know that this plan did not start after 9/11. The administration went to the telecoms early in 2001 and told them it wanted to be able to intercept phone calls, emails, faxes. We know that Verizon and AT&T went along with the plan and Qwest refused on the grounds that it was illegal. Verizon and AT&T have been well rewarded by the FCC. Qwest has been punished with criminal prosecutions. From a whistle blower, we know that every communication within the United States was funneled through a single room, where they could be analyzed.
snip
Obviously, when Dick Cheney, who considers himself the heir to Dick Nixon, institutes a massive domestic spying program, it is for one purpose. He plans to gather blackmail information to use to keep his political enemies, members of the press and businessmen in line, the same way that Nixon gathered blackmail information that he used to keep his many perceived enemies in check. Karl Rove is also a specialist in the use of blackmail. The AT&T program would have been invaluable for both men. With it, they could monitor the political strategies of the Democrats. They could discover secrets of Democratic politicians, their families and friends. They could discover secrets of journalists, their families and friends. Even foreign politicians could be targeted. Community and religious leaders, business leaders---anyone whom the Bush administration needed in their pocket could be monitored.
I had my suspicions even before the Democratic Congress began rolling over for the administration on warrantless wiretaps back in 2007. Here is toon I created for my webpage, Grand Theft Election Ohio. I called it
“Party Like Its 1984” II. No One Is Safe Who was spied upon? Better to ask who was not spied upon.
They spied on the lawyers. http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/88862The request for staying enforcement concerns Judge Walker's decision to admit as evidence a classified document showing that two American lawyers for a now-defunct Saudi charity were electronically eavesdropped on without warrants by the Bush administration in 2004.
When the U.S. Treasury Department accidently released the Top Secret memo to the lawyers --- Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoo --- they sued the Bush administration. At one point, the courts ordered the document, which has never been made public, returned and removed from the case.
So much for your right to a fair trial in this country. The federal government giveth and the federal government taketh away.
They spied on the journalists Russell Tice, a former NSA analyst appeared with Countdown host Keith Olbermann two days in a row this past week. Tice revealed that the NSA's warrantless surveillance program targeted U.S. journalists, and vacuumed up all domestic communications of Americans, including faxes, phone calls and internet traffic.
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Tice was told to monitor certain groups in order to eliminate them as suspects. Those groups were U.S. journalists and news agencies, along with 'tens of thousands of other Americans.' But rather than excluding the organizations from monitoring, he found out that the NSA was collecting the organizations' communications 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, meaning there was never any intent of eliminating anyone from the surveillance. Tice has not identified the reporters or the organizations that were allegedly targeted.
What was it our Founders said? Oh yeah.
"Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786.
Bye bye, liberty.
The spied on members of Congress http://static.cqpolitics.com/harman-3098436-page1.htmlWhat is new is that Harman is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA tap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington.
And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for "lack of evidence," it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush's top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.
Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.
Now we know why Congress would not impeach. Now we know why they voted to give the telecoms immunity for spying. Now we know why torture was sacrosanct. Congress reacted to Bush administration blackmail threats like a bunch of kindergarteners being shaken down for their milk money. Bad Congress. Weak Congress. Spineless Congress.
However, the real villain here is former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales III. Blame the VillainThat Jane Harman is
sooo bad. She ought to be booted from the Democratic Party. She ought to be kicked out of Congress for---
What exactly? Promising to intervene in a criminal case in exchange for political support? No, that can’t be it. Congressmen step in to defend their constituents and supporters all the time. This case is different, because the political supporters represented the interests of another country. However, plenty of Congressional leaders have tossed their ethics into the toilet when it comes to Israel. How many? Virtually all of them, as when they voted to give Israel their support when Lebanon was invaded.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071801415.htmlSovereign borders do not count when the country manning the tanks happens to be Israel. And they did it again, when Israel launched its anti-civilian military operations in Gaza.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zunes/congressional-support-for_b_167197.htmlLast month's decision by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, backed by an overwhelming majority of her Democratic colleagues, to go on record in support of Israel's war on the Gaza Strip does not give much hope that the expanded Democratic majority will be much more sensitive to human rights than we have seen after years of Republican rule.
In a direct challenge to the credibility of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Red Cross and other reputable humanitarian organizations, an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress went on record in a January 9 vote that the Israeli armed forces bear no responsibility for the large numbers of civilian casualties from their assault on the Gaza Strip.
Rep. Jane Harman’s
real crime is that she allowed herself to be blackmailed. And she is almost certainly not alone. Just review a list of people who initially opposed warrantless wiretap immunity and then changed their minds---starting with our current president, Obama---and you will have a pretty good idea whom the Bush administration targeted in its domestic spying/blackmail program.
Cheney’s blackmail ops was supposed to be foolproof. Since the people being targeted all had something to hide, there was less than zero chance that they would come forward to level accusations of blackmail against the Bush administration.
That is why we need a general amnesty for those who were the victims. Their testimony is needed to bring to justice the arch-villains in this case----starting with the man who was circumventing the law when he was supposed to be enforcing it, Alberto Gonzales. It is reprehensible for a Congressman to change his position on an issue, because he is being threatened. It is criminal if you are the one doing the threatening.
Unless those responsible for spying and extortion are brought to justice, agencies like the NSA, CIA and FBI, corporations like the telecoms and every presidential administration from now until the end of time will have every incentive to continue illegal domestic surveillance. Need a bigger budget for your agency? Put the thumb screws to members of Congress. Want to suppress a New York Times report about accounting irregularities at your telecom? Find out whom the reporters are sleeping with. Need to get the support of a couple of more Congressional members for your pet legislation? Sic the attorney general on them.
This madness has got to stop. And we now know that the Obama administration has no will to stop it. For all we know, certain people within the executive branch are counting upon the expanded powers of the presidential office to help them keep their political enemies in check. That is why the victims of the blackmail, the Congressmen and the reporters and everyone else needs to come forward en masse and tell their stories----
But to whom? With Congress compromised, with the press cowed, with the Department of Justice implicated, who is left to dig for the truth? No one, unless the current administration is pressured to appoint an
Independent Prosecutor assigned the task of preparing a criminal case against Alberto Gonzales and all the others who spied on us for eight long years.
IV. Eric Holder MUST Appoint a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Alberto Gonzales and His Misuse of (Illegal) Domestic Spying Period.