Binney: Sen. Feinstein "Hypocritical" For Blasting CIA For Spying

[Jefferson23]

NSA Whistleblower William Binney says Sen. Feinstein is hypocritical for supporting spying under the Obama administration but only speaking out after her committee is spied on -

March 12, 2014

Bio

William Binney was the former technical director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group and a senior NSA cryptomathematician at the NSA. He worked there for over three decades, and retired after 9/11 as the agency began to implement domestic spying programs that he says are unconstitutional. He is also a whistleblower, having disclosed information to the Defense Department in 2002 about corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse in the agency related to the use of data collection and analysis program called Trailblazer.

Transcript


Dianne Feinstein took to the Senate floor to denounce CIA spying into her committee's investigation of CIA interrogation methods during the Bush administration. Feinstein said the spying might have violated the Constitution and Fourth Amendment, and contested implications by the CIA that documents used in the panel's investigation were obtained improperly. She accused the agency of intimidation.

CIA Director John Brennan has denied the agency spied on the committee.

Now joining us to discuss this is William Binney. Binney is a former highly placed intelligence official with the U.S. National Security Agency. He turned whistleblower and retired on October 31, 2001, after more than 30 years of service.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11579

[jsr]

1. Recommend

[struggle4progress]

2. Binney's remarks are an idiotic diversion from the real issues here:

(1) How do we make the Senate torture report available to the public?
(2) What steps can be taken to prevent such CIA obstruction in the future?
(3) Exactly how are contractors being used here to provide the CIA with plausible cover for its continuing pattern of obstruction, and how can we reduce such uses of contractors in the future?

It's good Binney is concerned about the NSA, because there's enough to be concerned about there. But carelessly jumbling different things together won't help us win any of these fights. We need to think clearly and accurately about issues, based on detailed and particular facts. Jumbling things together doesn't produce clear accurate fact-based analysis: it just fucks up minds

[Cha]

3. Everyone's jumping on the "hypocritical" bandwagon..

[grasswire]

4. I believe the overriding issue is this:

Does the duly elected Congress of the United States of America have functional oversight of the intelligence services?

[struggle4progress]

5. That is, indeed, an important abstract principle, but it can only be resolved

in one particular fight after another

And the resolution must come from the political will of Congress itself, to whom I would offer the following reminder

[JoeyT]

6. There can be more than one issue going at a time.

The CIA needs to be reined in in a bad way. That's an important issue. So does the NSA. Another important issue. Feinstein also never met a spying program or war she and her husband's company didn't like...until one gets ideas above its station and forgets only the peasantry is to be spied on. So war profiteering and hypocrisy are also an issue.

[struggle4progress]

8. It's fine with me if you like to smush your peas and potatoes together when you eat them

but any rational attempt to understand political events, so that one can figure out how to take action, requires keeping separate matters separate in one's head, because they typically involve different supporting fact and different interests, hence require distinct analyses

[JoeyT]

9. People that smush peas and potatoes together

are degenerates of the second to worst kind. The worst kind of course being those that mix their runny eggs and grits together, then crumble bacon on it.

[struggle4progress]

10. Of course, had I known you felt that way, I might have chosen a different analogy

[Jefferson23]

12. Binney is expressing an opinion about Feinstein, whether one agrees with him

or not will have no impact on the movement to realizing the objectives you have stated.

Calling her out as a hypocrite is the least of our problems.

*NOOR: And, finally, this is all about CIA torture. What does this say about what actually happened at the end of the Bush administration? Will it ever be known? Will all the facts be known?

BINNEY: Well, I'm sure that they want to try to keep it as secret as possible for as long as possible. But, I mean, it's just--that's just a reflection of--when Vice President Cheney said, we have to go to the dark side, they really went to the dark side, not just in foreign issues or foreign acquisition of prisoners and torture and rendering, but also internally in terms of domestic spying.

[eridani]

7. At least she's speaking out

11 Jaw-Dropping Lines From Dianne Feinstein's CIA Torture Statement

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/22541-11-jaw-dropping-lines-from-dianne-feinsteins-cia-torture-statement

8. The CIA was so angered by the Senate having its hands on the Panetta Review that it spied on the work of its Senate overseers.

[O]n January 15, 2014, CIA Director [John] Brennan requested an emergency meeting to inform me and Vice Chairman Chambliss that without prior notification or approval, CIA personnel had conducted a "search" – that was John Brennan's word – of the committee computers at the offsite facility. This search involved not only a search of documents provided to the committee by the CIA, but also a search of the "stand alone" and "walled-off" committee network drive containing the committee's own internal work product and communications.

According to Brennan, the computer search was conducted in response to indications that some members of the committee staff might already have had access to the Internal Panetta Review. The CIA did not ask the committee or its staff if the committee had access to the Internal Review, or how we obtained it.

Instead, the CIA just went and searched the committee's computers.

[blkmusclmachine]

11. The old Blue Dog should retire.