General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNSA Whistleblower Russell Tice Reveals that Obama, Many Top Officials Were Targets of NSA Surveilla
Some highlights from the interview: 48:55: When Barack Obama was running for the Senate in the summer of 2004, NSA checked him out. 58:08: Tice says, Do I know if theyre blackmailing our elected officials and our Supreme Court judges? . . . I dont know the answer. . . . But NSA is . . . out of control and they must be stopped. This nonsense that theres no abuse . . . is just plain foolish. 1:03:03: There are outrageous abuses that have happened and its all being kept hush-hush. 1:07:50: They literally have everything on everybody all the time. 1:10:40: There is no oversight. 1:15:47 I truly fear for our democratic republic, because this is far beyond anything that I think even George Orwell could conceive. - See more at: http://agonist.org/what-happened-to-barack-obama/#more-108446
Back in 2004, what did NSA do with whatever they got on Obama? What can a corrupt surveillance agency do with the info it gets? It can publicize or threaten to publicize indiscretions from the past to control behavior in the present. Even for someone so squeaky clean as to provide no tiny little indiscretion that can be blown up to look like something truly evil, a secret agency like NSA need not be at a loss: It could even make up what it needs to ruin a persons life. In short, NSA is in a good position to blackmail.
So theres one possible answer for what happened to Barack Obama: When he sides with the powerful again and again maybe its because hes been blackmailed. And consider Congress, and the way we continue to marvel at the lack of spine among Democrats there. Maybe this explains it; maybe they too been blackmailed into doing the bidding of the powers that be.
- See more at: http://agonist.org/what-happened-to-barack-obama/#more-108446
Trillo
(9,154 posts)Why is past tense always used in this and similar headlines?
"Many Top Officials Were Targets of NSA"
think
(11,641 posts)Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
there's not even the need to use the term "blackmail". If you control the communication flow, you control the people who are communicating. No eerie calls or dead rats in front of the door necessary.
Question: Clapper and Obama - who knows more about the other?
think
(11,641 posts)Clapper's final military post was as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. After this he briefly served as an executive in several private companies such as Booz Allen Hamilton and SRA International..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper#Military_career
WillyT
(72,631 posts)Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)It is textbook. It is a situation you can never allow. It's the reason why it was a scandal for a highly placed person to be cheating on the side -- the person might be a spy or connected to one, or to a blackmailer. It wasn't about morality, it was about security.
This is way, way, way beyond that. AND it is not some individual doing it, it is institutionalized within our government. That is the aspect that is "KGB-type stuff".
Tice called it "Hoover on steroids". That is no exaggeration.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)felix_numinous
(5,198 posts)Been saying this for years, but most thought it CT. Amazing.
think
(11,641 posts)or mostly ignored which is even scarier.
It is incredible that the whistle blower who exposed the Bush illegal wiretapping is completely ignored when making these huge accusations public.
Tice should be testifying before congress with the cameras rolling.....
leveymg
(36,418 posts)The_nation:
Agony
(2,605 posts)Expanding on the nature of that problem, a second administration official added that while "we're not going to end up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying 'we love America'", there needed to be a recognition that "we can't possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us".
The people running our national security state can not possibly be trusted to do the right thing in secret. They are living in a F'ing bubble. Tice, Snowden et al are doing more to represent my interests than a couple of Senators who could not bring themselves to do the right thing.
Agony
freedom fighter jh
(1,782 posts)Thanks for posting, Kpete.
autorank
(29,457 posts)Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)Since Bush was in charge of the CIA.
just kidding