Senator Frank Church on NSA's Domestic Spying

[red dog 1]

Democracy Now
August 1, 2013

Amy Goodman interviews author James Bamford, who's latest article on the NSA's spying on Americans is called "They Know More Than You Think".
It's in the current issue of The New York Review of Books

AMY GOODMAN: James Bamford, I want to read a quote about the NSA and it's domestic surveillance apparatus that you use at the end of your piece in The New York Review of Books.
It's from the late Senator Frank Church, in 1975

He said
"That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything, telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter.
There would be no place to hide if this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, it is within the reach of the government to know.
Such is the capability of this technology...I don't want to see this country go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency, and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss.
That is the abyss from which there is no return."

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/1/nsa_confirms_dragnet_phone_records_collection/

[Octafish]

1. ''That is the abyss from which there is no return.''

Secret Government is un-democratic and un-American.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5027094

[rhett o rick]

2. I think we are at a turning point in history. The oligarchs are not going to want to give in on

this one. I think we've reached a point where the oligarch cabal that runs this country can tell us to sit down an shut up. I think they are not afraid of a revolution. Once the middle class is drained of all our money, we are useless to them.

[Octafish]

8. I believe you are spot-on, rhett o rick.

The world, on the whole, does not want war. So, these guys neglect to address climate change, Fukushima international radioactive hazard, all the carcinogenic and endorphine disrupting pollution they can stop from getting into the air, water, land and food because they want to get rid of us.

Have you seen what Frank "Lumumba n Carlyle" Carlucci has been selling lately? The guy's into survivor yacht cities:

The Really Creepy People Behind the Libertarian-Inspired Billionaire Sea Castles

By Mark Ames, AlterNet
Posted on June 2, 2010, Printed on June 2, 2010

What happens when Americans plunder America and leave it broken, destitute and seething mad? Where do these fabulously wealthy Americans go with their loot, if America isn't a safe, secure, or even desirable place to spend their riches? What if they lose faith in their gated communities, because those plush gated communities are surrounded by millions of pissed-off Americans stripped of their entitlements, and who now want in?

SNIP...

The floating castle is a longtime dream of libertarian oligarchs -- a place where they can live their lives in peace free from the teeming masses of starving losers and indebted parasites and their tax demands. Since they’ve grown so rich off of America, they have enough spare change to fund projects like the Seasteading Institute, run by Milton Friedman's grandson, Patri Friedman, and financed by the bizarre right-wing PayPal founder, Peter Thiel. It couldn't have come a moment sooner for Milton Friedman's grandson, who was best known until recently for running a grotesque advice blog for married swingers, PUA4LTR (Pick Up Advice For Long-Term Relationships). Actually, Patri Friedman ran that pick-up advice blog with his wife--the two of them are apparent big-time cyber-swingers, apparently--posting blog entries saying things like "Why Should Husbands Become PUAs? Because otherwise, your wife will talk like those wives on the blog My Husband Is Annoying."

Both Thiel and Milton Friedman's grandson see democracy as the enemy--last year, Thiel wrote "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" at about the same time that Milton Friedman's grandson proclaimed, "Democracy is not the answer." Both published their anti-democracy proclamations in the same billionaire-Koch-family-funded outlet, Cato Unbound, one of the oldest billionaire-fed libertarian welfare dispensaries. Friedman's answer for Thiel's democracy problem is to build offshore libertarian pod-fortresses where the libertarian way rules. It's probably better for everyone if Milton Friedman's grandson and Peter Thiel leave us forever for their libertarian ocean lair--Thiel believes that America went down the tubes ever since it gave women the right to vote, and he was outed as the sponsor of accused felon James O'Keefe's smear videos that brought ACORN to ruin.

While Thiel and Friedman are busy cooking up their libertarian dystopia, the Frontier Group investment firm -- an offshoot of the Carlyle Group -- has already entered the realization phase with the Utopia floating castle. Frontier Group, was founded by some of the same big names from the notorious Carlyle Group--the private equity firm that brought together right-wing oligarchs like George H. W. Bush and other top American officials with their billionaire pals in Saudi Arabia like the Bin Laden family, who together raked in enormous profits thanks to the War on Terror that their kids Dubya and Osama launched.

While neither Bush nor the Bin Ladens are principals in the Frontier Group, its founding director, Frank Carlucci, is a name they know well, and you should too. Carlucci ran the Carlyle Group as its chairman from 1989 through 2005, right around the time that the wars started going undeniably bad, and floating castles started to look like a viable plan. But Carlucci's past is much weirder and scarier than most of us care to know: whether it's his strangely timed appearances in some of the ugliest assassinations and coups in modern history, or serving as Carter's number two man in the CIA, and Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense, if Frank Carlucci (nicknamed "Creepy Carlucci" and "Spooky Frank&quot is the founding director of a firm that's building floating castles, it's a bad sign for those of us left behind.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/147058 /

One of the nice people to help Mr. Lumumba die while Nixon was still veep, Frank truly believes the business of America is Big Business. In addition to helping keep the Pentagon chubby after the Cold War, Carlucci is/was a big wig in the Carlyle Group.

[rhett o rick]

9. I think many agree that there is a cabal that runs our country. And it looks

to me like the Carlyle Group may be a big part of the cabal. So are the Koch Bro. a competing group?

[red dog 1]

5. Thanks, Octafish, for that link

I've known about Theodore Shackley and the so-called "Terpel-Wilson (secret) Team" since before the Iran-Contra scandall.

During the 1980s, I lived in San Jose, Ca. and listened weekly to a unique radio show called "One Step Beyond", which was hosted by Dave Emory and a co-host named Nip Tuck, and which was aired on a public radio station at Foothill Junior College, KFJC-FM.

The show consisted of the hosts reading from articles and books on various political subjects including Iran-Contra, the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations, and much more.

Before "One Step Beyond", Dave Emory co-hosted a similar radio program which aired on the public radio station at San Jose State University
One night, they were talking about the JFK assassination and Jim Garrison's unsuccessful attempts to extradite witnesses from Ohio and California, because the Republican governors of those states refused to cooperate with Garrison.
One of the names that came up was a guy named Gordon Novel, a private investigator and electronics expert who worked for Clay Shaw in New Orleans. and who CA Governor Ronald Reagan refused to extradite to New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison, who wanted to question him about the JFK assassination.
A few minutes later, a guy identifying himself as Gordon Novel called into the show and said he was driving through San Jose on his way to San Francisco and heard his name mentioned.
Dave Emory, a self-described skeptic, asked the guy a few questions, and decided that the guy was, indeed, Gordon Novel.
Emory asked Novel if he was the one who erased the 18 minutes from Nixon's infamous Watergate tape, and Novelle answered " Hey, only because they didn't pay me."

You can Google Gordon Novel, as well as Dave Emory,and the "One Step Beyond" radio show if you're interested.

In my opinion, Dave Emory is not merely a "conspiracy nut", despite the facts surrounding his friendship with the late Mae Brussel, and his falling-out with those who are now in charge of Mae Brussel's taped radio broadcasts
Mae was the first person to ever completely annotize the entire Warren Commission Report, all 26 volumes

[Octafish]

7. You are welcome, red dog 1! Dave Emory is a great truth teller...

...I first heard about him, thanks to a DUer. The guy works 24/7 to fight the fascist internationale and the BFEE "milieu." Here's the Spitfire List and For The Record archives for those interested in news from a non-brainwashed, non-Corporate McPravda perspective:

http://spitfirelist.com/

BTW: That program with Gorden Novel is a knock-out.

http://spitfirelist.com/news/18-12-minute-gap-in-watergate-tape-to-remain-mystery/

Here's why I keep on fighting:

Poppy Bush brought up JFK Assassination and ''Conspiracy Theorists'' at Ford Funeral

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3029417#3079835

[Catherina]

3. We were warned then and we're being warned now by young activists sacrificing their lives

There's no excuse for apathy or compliance.

[Pholus]

4. Exactly this. Not personalities, not retroactive "legality" but this...

By the time the abuses come out, it's set up to be too late.

[WillyT]

6. HUGE K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

[red dog 1]

10. You're welcome Willy T

I'm a huge fan of yours.

[Dragonfli]

11. This frank Church guy sounds like a Paulbot doing a little rat fucking! Typical racist out to get

my

daddy !



A known liar that claims he set up a "Committee" of some sort back in the day.

I agree with Randome, show me the proof there ever was a "Church Committee". I have seen the paranoid claims of conspiracy theorists in history books, but no proof has ever been shown of any such Committee!