Robert Scheer: The Terror Con

[marmar]

from truthdig:


The Terror Con

Posted on Jun 18, 2013
By Robert Scheer


For defense contractors, the government officials who write them mega checks, and the hawks in the media who cheer them on, the name of the game is threat inflation. And no one has been better at it than the folks at Booz Allen Hamilton, the inventors of the new boondoggle called cyber warfare.

That’s the company, under contract with the National Security Agency, that employed whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the information security engineer whose revelation of Booz Allen’s enormously profitable and pervasive spying on Americans now threatens the firm’s profitability and that of its parent hedge fund, the Carlyle Group.

Booz Allen, whose top personnel served in key positions at the NSA and vice versa after the inconvenient collapse of the Cold War, has been attempting to substitute terrorist for communist as the enemy of choice. A difficult switch indeed for the military-industrial complex about which Dwight Eisenhower, the general-turned-president, had so eloquently warned us.

But just when the good times for war profiteers seemed to be forever in the past, there came 9/11 and the terrorist enemy, the gift that keeps on giving, for acts of terror always will occur in a less than perfect world, serving as an ideal excuse for squandering resources, as well as our freedoms. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_terror_con_20130618/

[cantbeserious]

1. Scheer Nails It - Most Of Us Have Fallen Victim To This Bait And Switch Con

eom

[boilerbabe]

2. sickening.

[xchrom]

3. du rec.

[geckosfeet]

4. Mike McConnell, Vice Chairman of Booz Allen Hamilton: guys like this used to be called stool pigeons

Mike McConnell, Vice Chairman of Booz Allen Hamilton: guys like this used to be called stool pigeons, rats and snitches. Now they are called vice chairmen.

The Terror Con

As The New York Times reported Saturday: "When the United Arab Emirates wanted to create its own version of the National Security Agency, it turned to Booz Allen Hamilton to replicate the world’s largest and most powerful spy agency in the sands of Abu Dhabi. It was a natural choice: The chief architect of Booz Allen’s cyber strategy is Mike McConnell, who once led the NSA and pushed the United States into a new era of big data espionage. It was Mr. McConnell who won the blessing of the American intelligence agencies to bolster the Persian Gulf sheikdom, which helps track the Iranians."

Tracking the Iranians, you say? But they’re not the enemies who attacked us on 9/11, and indeed they are Shiites, who were implacably hostile to the Sunni fanatics of al-Qaida. The reasoning makes sense only if you follow the money that the UAE can pay. "They are teaching everything," one Arab official told The New York Times about Booz Allen’s staffers. "Data mining, web surveillance, all sorts of digital intelligence collection."

"The NSA data mining," Keller assures us, "is part of something much larger. On many fronts, we are adjusting to life in a surveillance state, relinquishing bits of privacy in exchange for the promise of other rewards."

Behold McConnell. While director of national intelligence from 2007-09, he did much to inflate the threat of cyber terrorism; he then returned to the private sector and was rewarded with $4.1 million his first year back at Booz Allen, solving the problem he had hyped while heading the NSA. There's a guy who knows how to play the game.

The Terror Con

(bolding mine) - who is this Mike McConnell guy and why is he selling our privacy to the highest bidder?

Booz Allen Executive Leadership

Mike McConnell is Vice Chairman of Booz Allen Hamilton, where his primary roles include serving on the firm’s Leadership Team and leading Booz Allen’s rapidly expanding cyber business. After retiring from the Navy in 1996 as a Vice Admiral, Mr. McConnell joined Booz Allen, and led the development of the firm’s Information Assurance business and the firm’s Intelligence business focused on policy, transformation, homeland security, and intelligence analytics, rising to the position of senior vice president.

Upon being asked by President George W. Bush in 2007 to become the second Director of National Intelligence, he left Booz Allen and served as the DNI for two years under Presidents Bush and Obama. As the DNI he managed the expansive national Intelligence Community – an organization of over 100,000 people, and an annual global enterprise budget of over $47B – and had extensive interactions with the White House, the President’s Cabinet, Congress, international leaders, and the US business community. In 2009, Mr. McConnell returned to Booz Allen as an executive vice president to lead the firm’s Intelligence business. In 2011 he was elevated to his current position as Vice Chairman of the firm.

Booz Allen Executive Leadership

Talk about cashing in on national intelligence systems. Now he is out peddling it to the world. And these are the same guys who wave the flag and talk of being patriots. Intel for sale. This is the face of our business community. Open greed. Willing to sell granny up the river for a stack'o green and quarterly profits. These are the kind of people who become leaders in our business and intelligence communities folks. How do you feel about that?

The big con indeed.

[starroute]

7. There's a lot more to McConnell's history

It starts with Gulf War I, when he was director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the chief intelligence officer for then-General Colin Powell. Among other things, he was involved in defending the intelligence behind the bombing of the bunker in which 200 civilians were killed and with minimizing the uprisings in Iraq after the war that the US failed to support.

This role led directly to his serving as head of the National Security Agency from 1992 to 1996. In both positions, he had a reputation as a strong promoter of "signals intelligence" -- basically the same eavesdropping and surveillance stuff that we're dealing with now.

Here's what the New York Times wrote about him in 2007:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05mcconnell.html?_r=0

John Michael McConnell, a Member of the Club

Like Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the Central Intelligence Agency director, Mr. McConnell, 63, a retired vice admiral, has served as director of the National Security Agency, the eavesdropping giant. Like Robert M. Gates, the new defense secretary and former C.I.A. director, Mr. McConnell first operated in the highest circles of government in the tumultuous time that included the Persian Gulf war of 1991 and the fall of the Soviet Union. . . .

Mr. McConnell first came to public attention as the top intelligence officer to Gen. Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during the 1991 war. He conducted daily briefings not only for General Powell but for the defense secretary, Dick Cheney, now the vice president. He had contact with Mr. Gates, Mr. Hayden and Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state, all of whom worked on the National Security Council in the administration of Mr. Bush’s father. . . .

Mr. McConnell became a familiar figure on television during the gulf war, explaining troop movements and airstrikes. But on becoming director of the security agency in 1992 he retreated behind its traditional curtain of secrecy.

Matthew M. Aid, a historian of the agency, said that during his four-year tenure, the agency’s monitoring did not keep up with the revolutionary technological changes in communications, including the Internet, cellphones and fiber-optic cable. But he said Mr. McConnell had been handicapped by a steadily declining budget and work force.

[starroute]

8. And one more bit - McConnell's role as intelligence contractor lobbyist

In November 2005, McConnell became chairman of the board of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance -- basically an industry lobbying group passing itself off as a source of outside research and analysis for the Director of National Intelligence and the intelligence community in general.

(Not surprisingly, INSA was created by Lt. General Ken Minihan, USAF (Ret.), another former head of the NSA, who then passed the position along to McConnell.)

And this was just over a year before he became Director of National Intelligence. This is not just about cashing in -- it's a revolving door, where the well-connected play for industry profits no matter who they're nominally employed by at the moment.

[geckosfeet]

9. If is clearly beyond the revolving door stage.

These guys are selling intrusive technologies to anyone willing to pay. Super intel is a hot commodity these days. And McConnell was positioned and inclined to cash in.

[Kolesar]

5. Intelligence suggesting a terrorist plot was broadcast on NPR for the several weeks before 9/11/01

It is not as if the NSA/whomever did not know something was developing.

[nashville_brook]

6. k and r