Blackmail and extortion is no longer the exception, it is the norm.

It is a forgone conclusion that some percentage of personality types will look for a way to parlay that knowledge (the dirt) into cash or political advantage. And I am guessing that percentage increases sharply among people who already think it's ok to spy on innocent people or without a warrant.

It's probably why Ed Snowden has them all panicky and shitting their pants.

Frank Church and Howard Bakers's phone calls?

Best I can tell it was in the early 70's but I'm wondering specifically what the years were.

National Security Archives says it was late 60s, early 70s -- may've been before Church Committee!

I don't recall Baker opposing the Vietnam War but he did seem to be an honest broker in regards to the Senate Investigation of the Watergate Scandal and he was an accomplished compromiser with the Democratic Senators of his day.

Seems that Howard Baker had integrity, which, as every crook knows, is not a good thing to have in a trusted associate, or, cough, co-conspirator.

I think they went rogue at their inception.

This was a particularly interesting link--http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/nsa-whistleblower-nsa-spying-on-and-blackmailing-high-level-government-officials-and-military-officers.html

In long piece for the paper.

Like John J. Kokal, Gus Weiss, Paul Sanford?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=397748

Thank you for the OP.

that is the proper term.

The very words of George W Bush on Feb. 14, 2007, uttered at a press conference in which not a single of the callow, cowed press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up.

It's clear to me he was repeating from memory almost verbatim the way one of his handlers explained it to him. A simple minded breakdown of NeoCon Machiavelli for the complete idiot. And he thought it was funny.

America went insane after 9/11

Not ONE.

Thank you for posting this.

us of ours.

I've had this image in my head constantly since realizing what the PTB are doing to us. It's an image of a graph with two lines plotted on it. One line represents our remaining power, and it keeps going down over time. The other line is their power, and it keeps going up. And I have wondered exactly where that critical point is in the future when our line is too low, and theirs is too high, to have any chance of stopping them anymore.

It *is* a race. Every single day they are stripping us more of what we need to stop them.

Of why when no matter who is president nothing much changes.

The first inclining I had of this is when I saw an interview with Jimmy Carter where they asked him what surprise him the most about the presidency...and he said "how little power he has"
And it was not so much the words as the look on his face...his eyes are expressive...and they said there was something there he could not say.

This shit has been going on a long time.

The national security state exists to maintain national sovereignty; to perpetuate itself requires maintaining an elite of insiders, secret, anonymous, and all-powerful in martial and financial terms compared to the barbarians outside the walls of the fortress and the serfs and slaves within.

Thanks for the OP, Octafish. Seriously. I'm getting "up there", as in geezerville, but I remember reading Bamford's Puzzle Palace when it first came out way back when and thought it was bad that we were all being spied upon. Now, they are not only spying on all of us, they are spying on the whole GD world! WTF? We're ALL enemies now. Who died and made the USA the effing boss of the world? That is some Hellacious hubris. I've been saying for years: "...they're 'gonna get us one of these day, they're 'gonna get us." They, as in "the world" is 'gonna get us.

we've painted a big bulls eye on our children and grand children's future.

... since I posted a reply to the thread earlier. I guess because I seen a French report while ago talking about the spying, and also about spying on Merkel /Germans. You know... the world could conceivably start some sort of sanctions or boycott against the U.S. All I know is that the world got pissed when GWB's junta invaded the world, and again, they are pissed off with the current knowledge of massive world spying by us. Looks to me like we're painting ourselves into a corner. Doesn't make a lick of sense to me. The WORLD isn't our enemy!

...not "loyal opposition" to be listened to in confidence. These are most un-democratic people -- including the Democrat who took office after Kennedy.

as their OC! How can you not love the genus ironicls of THAT!? Oct why do you hate them for their freedumbs? Don't you wont grown men in military uniform 'traversing' cyber space on a daily basis decked out like Scotty and Kirk?

Zoooom zoooooommm!!!!





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No telling how much information is stored, who knows where.

...prolly took impeachment off the table, too.

That is what I keep reading on DU. Heck, I knew it. Didn't KNOW it really, but had this conspiracy theory going that they were conspiring to listen....

I am not paranoid, I know they are watching me.....<grin>

Even those who were afraid of thinking the world actually had conspirators, now believe in conspiracies, and are even theorizing themselves, what do we do?

Do we make it so that all info gathered is plastered on the internet? That basically everyone has a Facebook page and the NSA daily posts what we are up to? We could start with our government officials. Foreign and domestic, and see how it goes from there?

using Terror as the reason, the real work they do is for Corporations. Eg, the spying on phones and emails of ordinary people, the 'collection and storing of data' is like a high tech, multi-billion dollar way to collect info on the buying habits of billions of people (the whole world now we are told).

I think that is why they are so desperate to try to suppress all of this because if it emerges that it was all about Multi-Billion Corporations and their profit margins and not about 'Terror' at all, the funding would have to stop and investigations would have to start.

So far it does seem like there is not much work on terror going on. Unless they think Merkel is a terrorist or has 'terrorist ties'.

On the good side, all of this is leading to calls now from the International Community for International laws to curb all this spying.

The US should have led the way when they saw the potential for abuse with all the new technology, instead they took advantage of this relatively early phase before laws would be passed, which was inevitable, to abuse the technology themselves.

Thanks Octafish ...

stifling criticism of the bank fraudsters that continue to fleece America and the world.

If you doubt this just look at the coordinated attack on the Occupy movement. It was a two pronged attack with the media smearing Occupy while the police physically attacked them.

This is your NSA tax dollar at work.

And they want to cut your social security.

Thanks for posting it.

of the establishment, including Wall Street, as evidenced by the OWS movement being crushed through unconstitutional means including assault, pepper-spraying, arrest et al.

for giving us the opportunity to see how the System really works.

General Alexander anti NSA people are 'like children who don't want to take a bath'

Previously in the interview, Alexander compares the public's negative reaction to the necessity of intelligence collection to a child's refusal to take a bath. "It's like when you were younger — well, this is for boys," he said. "You know, when you're younger, you say, 'I don't want to take a bath.' You say, 'No, I'd never take a bath. Why would we want to take a bath?' Well, you've got to take a bath, cleanliness, (et cetera). I said, 'But isn't there a better way?' Well we don't, so we had to take baths, right, or showers. What about here, what's a better way to stop terrorists?"

that is at 16mins 22 seconds