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Man with the Secrets is the Most Powerful Human in History.
Gen. Keith Alexander has more power than any one person has held in US history...
...my source is Dr. Alfred W. McCoy, an academic who has chronicled the high crimes of the secret state . He was on TUC Radio:
Alfred W. McCoy
The Making of the US Surveillance State
In July 2013 an article appeared on line in TomDispatch that gave an up to date and chilling analysis of the unprecedented powers of the US Surveillance state. It’s author, University of Wisconsin, Madison, professor of history Alfred McCoy, credits Edward Snowden for having revealed today’s reality. And McCoy adds his perspective of the intriguing history that led up to this point - and he makes a few predictions as to what to expect in the near future. That article in TomDispatch caught the attention of radio host, writer and Middle East expert Jeff Blankfort who allows me to broadcast the highlights of his interview with Professor McCoy.
CONTINUED...
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175724/
http://history.wisc.edu/people/faculty/mccoy.htm
The 35 minute version is here: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/69998
A387For a broadcast quality mp3 version click HERE
SOURCE with podcasts, links, etc: http://www.tucradio.org/new.html
Old stuff to many DUers. But, it's nice for those new to such things to learn. As for Gen. Alexander:
Gen. Alexander is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.
The Secret War
INFILTRATION. SABOTAGE. MAYHEM. FOR YEARS, FOUR-STAR GENERAL KEITH ALEXANDER HAS BEEN BUILDING A SECRET ARMY CAPABLE OF LAUNCHING DEVASTATING CYBERATTACKS. NOW IT’S READY TO UNLEASH HELL.
by James Bamford
Wired, June 12, 2013
EXCERPT...
This is the undisputed domain of General Keith Alexander, a man few even in Washington would likely recognize. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army.
SNIP...
What’s good for Alexander is good for the fortunes of the cyber-industrial complex, a burgeoning sector made up of many of the same defense contractors who grew rich supplying the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With those conflicts now mostly in the rearview mirror, they are looking to Alexander as a kind of savior. After all, the US spends about $30 billion annually on cybersecurity goods and services.
In the past few years, the contractors have embarked on their own cyber building binge parallel to the construction boom at Fort Meade: General Dynamics opened a 28,000-square-foot facility near the NSA; SAIC cut the ribbon on its new seven-story Cyber Innovation Center; the giant CSC unveiled its Virtual Cyber Security Center. And at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, where former NSA director Mike McConnell was hired to lead the cyber effort, the company announced a “cyber-solutions network” that linked together nine cyber-focused facilities. Not to be outdone, Boeing built a new Cyber Engagement Center. Leaving nothing to chance, it also hired retired Army major general Barbara Fast, an old friend of Alexander’s, to run the operation. (She has since moved on.)
Defense contractors have been eager to prove that they understand Alexander’s worldview. “Our Raytheon cyberwarriors play offense and defense,” says one help-wanted site. Consulting and engineering firms such as Invertix and Parsons are among dozens posting online want ads for “computer network exploitation specialists.” And many other companies, some unidentified, are seeking computer and network attackers. “Firm is seeking computer network attack specialists for long-term government contract in King George County, VA,” one recent ad read. Another, from Sunera, a Tampa, Florida, company, said it was hunting for “attack and penetration consultants.”
One of the most secretive of these contractors is Endgame Systems, a startup backed by VCs including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Paladin Capital Group. Established in Atlanta in 2008, Endgame is transparently antitransparent. “We’ve been very careful not to have a public face on our company,” former vice president John M. Farrell wrote to a business associate in an email that appeared in a WikiLeaks dump. “We don’t ever want to see our name in a press release,” added founder Christopher Rouland. True to form, the company declined Wired’s interview requests.
CONTINUED...
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/general-keith-alexander-cyberwar/all/
A WMD Info-Bomb of infiltration, sabotage and mayhem targeting democracy. Disgusting, when wielded to suppress rather than to enlighten. The fact it also is being used to make money off war even more so.
As for the guy who held Gen. Alexander's job before he did, his name is Gen. Michael Hayden, who's now top man at Booz Allen Hamilton of the Carlyle Group. The architect behind Total Information Awareness is Adm. John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame.
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Last edited Wed Mar 26, 2014, 04:56 PM - Edit history (1)
Technology that could be used to transform the world, instead enslaves it.
A few years back, Jacques Fresco described what could be. The 90 year old talked standing up for 60 minutes. From something I posted on DU (can't find the OP, for some reason):
On March 5, futurist Jacques Fresco addressed a group of people at U-M in Ann Arbor. The former NASA engineer described how his current company had been commissioned by the then-flush Saudis to design the city of the future.
Fresco showed us an animated film of their work. The projected communities were organized in a circular shape, with city services in the center, the next ring being housing, then parks and recreation, then the outermost rings were for farming. Robots could be built to do all the dangerous, dirty jobs and heavy lifting. Robots even could do the assembly of buildings and the city itself. People were freed to do the work they wanted, each contributing.
The guy's 91-plus and he stood and talked for an hour. He indicated that our current model is one where corporations hold sway. And that, at their core, corporations are fascistic. "Who votes? Nobody. The CEO decides." He said, governments, whether commie or fascistic, similarly, are all the same. At heart, these organizations are faulty and corrupt with land stolen from the original people and a society geared toward war -- a process that makes some rich and the rest conscripted in their service.
True democracy, he said, results when We the People can decide. The people hear one leader speak. Another gives her or his side of the issue. A neutral nation debates and opines and decides. That's what democracy is all about -- people deciding. And people never decide for war. And we must stand up to those who would move us to war -- except when, as in World War II -- evil forces wanted to dominate and enslave the world and destroy all who opposed them.
[font color="blue"]Fresco said he sees no hope for the nation and planet unless people decide to stop today's fascists. [/font color]He said, to end war and survive, we must share resources. We must sustain and treat each life with dignity: food, water, education, political rights, etc. We have the resources to do it. And the resources we have can create an abundance -- not the shortages that we see all around under the current system.
http://www.thevenusproject.com/about/resume
By Paul M. Barrett
Bloomberg Businessweek March 24, 2014
Justice Antonin Scalia signaled during a law school talk on March 21 that the Supreme Court is very much aware that legal challenges to the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance programs are headed toward the high court—and he, for one, thinks the cases will be intriguing.
The court’s most voluble member, an unabashed entertainer who jokes that he wants to do “nasty conservative things,” seemed fascinated by a question he got from an audience member at an unusual session sponsored by Brooklyn Law School. In the context of controversy over the constitutionality of various NSA domestic spying initiatives, the questioner wondered whether Scalia considered data stored on computer drives to be the sort of “effects” covered by the Fourth Amendment’s protection against “unreasonable” government searches.
“Ooh,” Scalia responded, obviously tickled. “Ooh,” he repeated. The justice declined to elaborate, implying he didn’t want to prejudge the issue. His cryptic response, though, indicated admiration for the acuity of the inquiry. The American Civil Liberties Union, Senator Rand Paul, and others have filed a series of suits challenging NSA activities revealed by former agency contractor Edward Snowden. The suits invoke the Fourth Amendment, which states:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Scalia addressed a wide range of topics during a 90-minute question-and-answer for Brooklyn Law School students and alumni. The symposium was orchestrated by Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey state court judge who serves as a legal analyst on the Fox News Channel, teaches at Brooklyn Law, and is a friend of Scalia’s. Among the justice’s other quips and observations:
+ He has “never discussed legal philosophy in any depth” with his colleagues on the Supreme Court. Scalia scorned the commonly held idea that the justices engage in heavy jurisprudential debates when they gather for their private weekly conferences. By the time they reach the high court, he added, justices are too set in their thinking to revisit basic questions of constitutional interpretation or philosophical outlook.
CONTINUED...
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-24/nsa-spying-case-at-the-supreme-court-ooh-says-scalia
PS: Tony the Fixer helped get a whole world of dead cat into the picture.
I was there when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called Scalia a fascist, said his father during the years before World War II, was the head of all the Italian-American fascists in service to Mussolini and Hitler.
"Man with the Secrets is the Most Powerful Human in History" made me think some megalomaniac had cornered the world market on deodorant. 
I appreciate all your evident hard work in assembling all this confirming information. However, it's been this way for very long time. Ask yourself just one question:
[font size=3]HOW IS IT THAT THERE IS A SECRECY CLASSIFICATION HELD BY OTHERS THAT IS HIGHER THAN THAT OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?[/font]
- At least we're starting to openly ask the right questions. So there's that I guess.....
K&R
Bramford and McCay are someone else.
Bamford, FTR, has been spot on-regarding NSA, since his first book on the NSA, "The Puzzle Palace."
Here's a profile on him from "The New Yorker":
THE N.S.A.’S CHIEF CHRONICLER
POSTED BY ALEXANDER NAZARYAN
The New Yorker
In 1982, long before most Americans ever had to think about warrantless eavesdropping, the journalist James Bamford published “The Puzzle Palace: A Report on N.S.A., America’s Most Secret Agency,” the first book to be written about the National Security Agency, which was started in 1952 by President Harry Truman to collect intelligence on foreign entities, and which we learned last week has been collecting the phone and Internet records of Americans and others. In the book, Bamford describes the agency as “free of legal restrictions” while wielding “technological capabilities for eavesdropping beyond imagination.” He concludes with an ominous warning: “Like an ever-widening sinkhole, N.S.A.’s surveillance technology will continue to expand, quietly pulling in more and more communications and gradually eliminating more and more privacy.” Three decades later, this pronouncement feels uncomfortably prescient: we were warned.
Bamford, who served in the Navy and studied law before becoming a journalist, published three more books after “The Puzzle Palace,” composing a tetralogy about the N.S.A.: “Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency” (2001); “A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies” (2004); and “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret N.S.A. from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America” (2008). As the progression of subtitles indicates, Bamford has become disenchanted with the agency that he knows probably better than any other outsider. Fellow investigative journalists regard him with what can broadly be described as admiration, though, as the Times reporter Scott Shane wrote, in 2008, “His relationship with the National Security Agency might be compared to a long and rocky romance, in which fascination with his quarry’s size and capabilities has alternated with horror at its power to invade privacy.”
The image of a troubled romance is one that Bamford readily summons. “I have a love-hate relationship with the N.S.A.,” Bamford joked when I spoke to him last week, in the wake of the revelation that the N.S.A. is gathering metadata from telecommunications and Internet companies. “I love them, and they hate me.” They have good reason. Bamford, who divides his time between Washington, D.C., and London, is a slightly mischievous character whose obvious persistence and curiosity have served him well. He talks with the relish of a child who has entered a forbidden room and knows that he will do so again. He decided to write about the N.S.A., which is believed to receive ten billion dollars in annual government funding and employ some forty thousand people, because no one had done it before—and because it was probably more fun than reading case law. While doing research at the Virginia Military Institute, he uncovered a load of N.S.A.-related documents from the files of the masterful Moldovan-born cryptographer William Friedman, as well as those of Marshall Carter, who headed the agency from 1965 to 1969. And, incredibly enough, the Department of Justice, under Jimmy Carter, complied with Bamford’s Freedom of Information Act requests, supplying him with secret documents related to the Church Committee, the Senate group that, in 1975, investigated American intelligence agencies for potential transgression of their mandates.
SNIP...
Bamford’s 1982 book is a reminder to anyone who thinks that domestic eavesdropping is a necessary part of a post-9/11 world that the N.S.A. has tested the bounds of the Fourth Amendment before. Project Shamrock, carried out after the Second World War, compelled companies like Western Union to hand over, on a daily basis, all telegraphs entering and leaving the United States. A younger sibling, Project Minaret, born in 1969, collected information on “individuals or organizations, involved in civil disturbances, antiwar movements/demonstrations and Military deserters involved in the antiwar movement.”
SNIP...
Bamford is generally kind to Michael Hayden. Yet after 9/11, which came only months after the book’s publication in the spring of 2001, the N.S.A. became both a scapegoat and one of the organizations charged with preventing further attacks. Part of this mission involved bolstering, along with the Central Intelligence Agency, the White House’s claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction—claims later shown to be largely false, as “Pretext for War” amply demonstrates. In that book, he also reports that the N.S.A. was told by the Bush Administration “to spy on the United Nations weapons inspectors and pressure undecided members of the UN Security Council to vote in favor of its go-to-war.”
Nor did Bamford know the worst of it. Once again, his book had come on the cusp of a cataclysm. On December 16, 2005, the Times published an article titled “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts,” alleging that the President “secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials”—a predecessor to the Prism program being unravelled today. Bamford felt betrayed. Though he had reported on the excesses of Shamrock and Minaret, he thought that the N.S.A., under Hayden’s leadership, was a more scrupulous outfit than it had been in the past. Bamford now considers the book much too generous toward Hayden.
CONTINUED...
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/06/the-nsas-chief-chronicler.html
The professor also pegged the gangsters a long while ago:
McCoy kicked CIA in the nuts with his book on the Company's role in the international drug trade.
Drug Fallout
by Alfred McCoy
Progressive magazine, August 1997
Throughout the forty years of the Cold War, the CIA joined with urban gangsters and rural warlords, many of them major drug dealers, to mount covert operations against communists around the globe. In one of history's accidents, the Iron Curtain fell along the border of the Asian opium zone, which stretches across 5,000 miles of mountains from Turkey to Thailand. In Burma during the 1950s, in Laos during the 1970s, and in Afghanistan during the 1980s, the CIA allied with highland warlords to mobilize tribal armies against the Soviet Union and China.
In each of these covert wars, Agency assets-local informants-used their alliance with the CIA to become major drug lords, expanding local opium production and shipping heroin to international markets, the United States included. Instead of stopping this drug dealing, the Agency tolerated it and, when necessary, blocked investigations. Since ruthless drug lords made effective anti-communist allies and opium amplified their power, CIA agents mounting delicate operations on their own, half a world from home, had no reason to complain. For the drug lords, it was an ideal arrangement. The CIA's major covert operations-often lasting a decade-provided them with de facto immunity within enforcement-free zones.
In Laos in the 1960s, the CIA battled local communists with a secret army of 30,000 Hmong-a tough highland tribe whose only cash crop was opium. A handful of CIA agents relied on tribal leaders to provide troops and Lao generals to protect their cover. When Hmong officers loaded opium on the ClA's proprietary carrier Air America, the Agency did nothing. And when the Lao army's commander, General Ouane Rattikone, opened what was probably the world's largest heroin laboratory, the Agency again failed to act.
"The past involvement of many of these officers in drugs is well known," the ClA's Inspector General said in a still-classified 1972 report, "yet their goodwill . . . considerably facilitates the military activities of Agency-supported irregulars."
Indeed, the CIA had a detailed know ledge of drug trafficking in the Golden Triangle-that remote, rugged corner of Southeast Asia where Burma, Thailand, and Laos converge. In June 1971, The New York Times published extracts from an other CIA report identifying twenty-one opium refineries in the Golden Triangle and stating that the "most important are located in the areas around Tachilek, Burma; Ban Houei Sai and Nam Keung in Laos; and Mae Salong in Thailand." Three of these areas were controlled by CIA allies: Nam Keung by the chief of CIA mercenaries for northwestern Laos; Ban Houei Sai by the commander of the Royal Lao Army; and Mae Salong by the Nationalist Chinese forces who had fought for the Agency in Burma. The CIA stated that the Ban Houei Sai laboratory, which was owned by General Ouane, was ' believed capable of processing 100 kilos of raw opium per day," or 3.6 tons of heroin a year-a vast output considering the total yearly U.S. consumption of heroin was then less than ten tons.
By 1971, 34 percent of all U.S. soldiers in South Vietnam were heroin addicts, according to a White House survey. There were more American heroin addicts in South Vietnam than in the entire United States-largely supplied from heroin laboratories operated by CIA allies, though the White House failed to acknowledge that unpleasant fact. Since there was no indigenous local market, Asian drug lords started shipping Golden Triangle heroin not consumed by the GIs to the United States, where it soon won a significant share of the illicit market.
CONTINUED...
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/CIAdrug_fallout.html
The guard towers and triple rows of barbed wire surrounding We the People are invisible. They're made of secret information and analysis, gathered by technology intended to be turned on America's enemies instead of upon the politicians and citizens they are supposed to serve.
the people nor "political leadership".
