Catherina
Catherina's JournalFOIA 'terrorists' Jason Leopold and Ryan Shapiro suing FBI for records on Michael Hastings
We're Suing the FBI For Records on Journalist Michael Hastings
July 28, 2013
By Jason Leopold Follow @@JasonLeopold
Does the FBI have any records on the late investigative journalist Michael Hastings? I don't know. But fellow FOIA terrorist Ryan Shapiro and I just filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the agency to find out.
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"By suing the FBI for failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act, [we] hope to obtain records pertaining both to the unusual circumstances of Michael Hastings's death and to the broader issue of FBI surveillance of journalists and other critics of American national security policy," Shapiro said.
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I knew Hastings and had spoken to him on several occasions over the past year about my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) work. I told him I just filed a request with the Pentagon and Army after reading an investigative story he reported for BuzzFeed in July 2012 on the "Auchwitz-like" conditions at a hospital in Afghanistan operated by the U.S. I was hoping to obtain government documents that would shed further light on the alleged cover-up Hastings wrote about pertaining to the investigation into facility. My FOIA request is still open.
I called him again a week later to tell him I was writing a story about him that I thought he would get a kick out of. I had just received a batch of documents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) related to the agency's surveillance of Occupy Wall Street. Within those documents were dozens of emails written by top DHS officials who went ballistic over a story Hastings wrote for Rolling Stone about the agency's surveillance of OWS.
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I wanted Hastings to give me a quote for my story but he wanted to read the documents first. I sent it to him. And as I reported, there weren't any inaccuracies in Hastings's story. DHS thought it could resolve its public relations nightmare by intimidating Hastings. They failed. Hastings discussed DHS's interest in his work on The Young Turks and was generous enough to credit my reporting.
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https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2013/07/were-suing-fbi-records-journalist-michael-hastings
[hr]
"Congressional Probe: Cover-Up of "Auschwitz-like" Conditions at U.S.-Funded Afghan Hospital" (+ OWS/DHS/Stratfor at the end)
Published on Aug 1, 2012, DemocracyNow.org -
A Congressional investigation has revealed a top U.S. general in Afghanistan sought to stall an investigation into abuse at a U.S.-funded hospital in Kabul that kept patients in "Auschwitz-like" conditions. Army whistleblowers revealed photographs taken in 2010, which show severely neglected, starving patients at Daoud Hospital, considered the crown-jewel of the Afghan medical system where the country's military personnel are treated. The photos show severely emaciated patients, some suffering from gangrene and maggot-infested wounds. The general accused of the cover-up is Lt. General William Caldwell, one of the nation's highest-ranking commanders in Afghanistan, who served as the commander of the $11.2 billion-a-year Afghan training program. We speak to Michael Hastings, contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine and a reporter for BuzzFeed, which has been following the story closely.
"The United States must remove the shameful stain of Guantanamo"
The United States must remove the shameful stain of Guantanamo
July 29, 2013 12:16 AM
By Morris Davis
The Daily Star
People often ask me how a person appointed chief prosecutor of the Guantanamo military commissions by the administration of President George W. Bush ended up becoming an outspoken critic of the detention center and an advocate for closing it down. Looking back, I recall that when I took the job in the fall of 2005, I believed – as did many others – that all of those detained at Guantanamo were the “worst of the worst.” I also went into it with an idealistic notion that the Bush administration was actually committed to a fair and open process for prosecuting the really bad guys whom we could charge with war crimes.
By then, the most shameful abuses against detainees had ended. In the summer of 2004, the Supreme Court said that federal courts had jurisdiction to hear Guantanamo habeas corpus cases. That opened the door for lawyers to visit the Guantanamo prison to meet with their detainee clients, and that bit of sunlight inside the prison helped end the worst practices.
The epiphany for me came in the summer of 2007, with the official appointment of General Counsel of the Department of Defense William J. Haynes and Air Force Reserve Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann over me. Haynes was the chief attorney for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and was instrumental in helping formulate the infamous memorandum Rumsfeld signed authorizing harsh interrogation techniques. Hartmann challenged my policy of not using evidence obtained by undue coercion, arguing that Bush said we did not torture anyone. With two people now exercising command authority over me who seemed to lack any legal or moral objection to what most would call torture, it was time to quit.
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The third category, consisting of about 60 detainees, is the most problematic. These are men the government believes should be detained indefinitely without trial. It uses as justification the law-of-war principle of keeping the enemy off the battlefield. But soon, the question is going to be, “What battlefield, and what war?” The war in Iraq is over and that in Afghanistan is winding down towards a 2014 conclusion. The dubious law-of-war legal justification is about to expire, which means the military will either create some new legal fiction as a basis for detention or review the cases again and assign them to one of the other two categories, as the evidence permits. The latter is the right choice.
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U.S. Air Force Col. Morris Davis was the chief prosecutor of the Guantanamo military commissions from September 2005 until October 2007. He retired from active duty in 2008. He is an assistant professor at the Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. This commentary originally appeared at The Mark News (www.themarknews.com).
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Commentary/2013/Jul-29/225393-the-united-states-must-remove-the-shameful-stain-of-guantanamo.ashx
House members to hear from critics of NSA spying program
House members to hear from critics of NSA spying program12:04 AM 07/29/2013
Critics of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program will appear before Congress on Wednesday in a hearing that should offer a sharp contrast with testimonies from the heads of the U.S. Intelligence community.
In a bipartisan hearing called by Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, journalist Glenn Greenwald will testify about his reporting on the NSA’s domestic spying — disclosed to him by former defense contractor Edward Snowden. Greenwald will appear via video remote from his home in Brazil.
Michelle Richardson, Legislative Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office, and Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, will also testify at the hearing. Sanchez, a prominent privacy theorist, specializes on the intersection of technology, privacy, civil liberties and new media.
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The Senate will hold a simultaneous hearing during which Alexander is expected to testify, along with other senior officials of the U.S. Intelligence community.
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http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/29/house-members-to-hear-from-critics-of-nsa-spying-program/
Rec'd for your work on this but a question
Edited for a really stupid mistake. Comey, not Gonzales.In 2007 Here's how
The hospital room showdown
Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey tells the tale of a remarkable attempt by the White House to bully John Ashcroft in his hospital bed.
By Salon Staff
Sen. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-N.Y.): There have been media reports describing a dramatic visit by Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card to the hospital bed of John Ashcroft in March 2004, after you, as acting attorney general, decided not to authorize a classified program.
First, can you confirm that a night-time hospital visit took place?
FORMER DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL JAMES B. COMEY: Yes, I can.
SCHUMER: OK. Can you remember the date and the day?
COMEY: Yes, sir, very well. It was Wednesday, March the 10th, 2004.
SCHUMER: And how do you remember that date so well?
COMEY: This was a very memorable period in my life; probably the most difficult time in my entire professional life. And that night was probably the most difficult night of my professional life. So it’s not something I’d forget.
SCHUMER: Were you present when Alberto Gonzales visited Attorney General Ashcroft’s bedside?
COMEY: Yes.
SCHUMER: And am I correct that the conduct of Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card on that evening troubled you greatly?
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COMEY: I’ve actually thought quite a bit over the last three years about how I would answer that question if it was ever asked, because I assumed that at some point I would have to testify about it.
The one thing I’m not going to do and be very, very careful about is, because this involved a classified program, I’m not going to get anywhere near classified information. I also am very leery of, and will not, reveal the content of advice I gave as a lawyer, the deliberations I engaged in. I think it’s very important for the Department of Justice that someone who held my position not do that.
SCHUMER: In terms of privilege.
COMEY: Yes, sir.
SCHUMER: Understood.
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COMEY: In the early part of 2004, the Department of Justice was engaged — the Office of Legal Counsel, under my supervision — in a reevaluation both factually and legally of a particular classified program. And it was a program that was renewed on a regular basis, and required signature by the attorney general certifying to its legality.
And the — and I remember the precise date. The program had to be renewed by March the 11th, which was a Thursday, of 2004. And we were engaged in a very intensive reevaluation of the matter.
And a week before that March 11th deadline, I had a private meeting with the attorney general for an hour, just the two of us, and I laid out for him what we had learned and what our analysis was in this particular matter.
And at the end of that hour-long private session, he and I agreed on a course of action. And within hours he was stricken and taken very, very ill…
SCHUMER: (inaudible) You thought something was wrong with how it was being operated or administered or overseen.
COMEY: We had — yes. We had concerns as to our ability to certify its legality, which was our obligation for the program to be renewed.
The attorney general was taken that very afternoon to George Washington Hospital, where he went into intensive care and remained there for over a week. And I became the acting attorney general.
And over the next week — particularly the following week, on Tuesday — we communicated to the relevant parties at the White House and elsewhere our decision that as acting attorney general I would not certify the program as to its legality and explained our reasoning in detail, which I will not go into here. Nor am I confirming it’s any particular program. That was Tuesday that we communicated that.
The next day was Wednesday, March the 10th, the night of the hospital incident. And I was headed home at about 8 o’clock that evening, my security detail was driving me. And I remember exactly where I was — on Constitution Avenue — and got a call from Attorney General Ashcroft’s chief of staff telling me that he had gotten a call…
SCHUMER: What’s his name?
COMEY: David Ayers. That he had gotten a call from Mrs. Ashcroft from the hospital. She had banned all visitors and all phone calls. So I hadn’t seen him or talked to him because he was very ill. And Mrs. Ashcroft reported that a call had come through, and that as a result of that call Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales were on their way to the hospital to see Mr. Ashcroft.
SCHUMER: Do you have any idea who that call was from?
COMEY: I have some recollection that the call was from the president himself, but I don’t know that for sure. It came from the White House. And it came through and the call was taken in the hospital.
So I hung up the phone, immediately called my chief of staff, told him to get as many of my people as possible to the hospital immediately. I hung up, called Director Mueller and — with whom I’d been discussing this particular matter and had been a great help to me over that week — and told him what was happening. He said, “I’ll meet you at the hospital right now.”
Told my security detail that I needed to get to George Washington Hospital immediately. They turned on the emergency equipment and drove very quickly to the hospital. I got out of the car and ran up — literally ran up the stairs with my security detail.
SCHUMER: What was your concern? You were in obviously a huge hurry.
COMEY: I was concerned that, given how ill I knew the attorney general was, that there might be an effort to ask him to overrule me when he was in no condition to do that.
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SCHUMER: Right, OK.
COMEY: I was worried about him, frankly. And so I raced to the hospital room, entered. And Mrs. Ashcroft was standing by the hospital bed, Mr. Ashcroft was lying down in the bed, the room was darkened. And I immediately began speaking to him, trying to orient him as to time and place, and try to see if he could focus on what was happening, and it wasn’t clear to me that he could. He seemed pretty bad off.
SCHUMER: At that point it was you, Mrs. Ashcroft and the attorney general and maybe medical personnel in the room. No other Justice Department or government officials.
COMEY: Just the three of us at that point. I tried to see if I could help him get oriented. As I said, it wasn’t clear that I had succeeded.
I went out in the hallway. Spoke to Director Mueller by phone. He was on his way. I handed the phone to the head of the security detail and Director Mueller instructed the FBI agents present not to allow me to be removed from the room under any circumstances. And I went back in the room.
I was shortly joined by the head of the Office of Legal Counsel assistant attorney general, Jack Goldsmith, and a senior staffer of mine who had worked on this matter, an associate deputy attorney general. So the three of us Justice Department people went in the room. I sat down…
SCHUMER: Just give us the names of the two other people.
COMEY: Jack Goldsmith, who was the assistant attorney general, and Patrick Philbin, who was associate deputy attorney general.
I sat down in an armchair by the head of the attorney general’s bed. The two other Justice Department people stood behind me. And Mrs. Ashcroft stood by the bed holding her husband’s arm. And we waited.
And it was only a matter of minutes that the door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card. They came over and stood by the bed. They greeted the attorney general very briefly. And then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there — to seek his approval for a matter, and explained what the matter was — which I will not do.
And Attorney General Ashcroft then stunned me. He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me — drawn from the hour-long meeting we’d had a week earlier — and in very strong terms expressed himself, and then laid his head back down on the pillow, seemed spent, and said to them, “But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not the attorney general.”
SCHUMER: But he expressed his reluctance or he would not sign the statement that they — give the authorization that they had asked, is that right?
COMEY: Yes. And as he laid back down, he said, “But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not the attorney general. There is the attorney general,” and he pointed to me, and I was just to his left. The two men did not acknowledge me. They turned and walked from the room. And within just a few moments after that, Director Mueller arrived. I told him quickly what had happened. He had a brief — a memorable brief exchange with the attorney general and then we went outside in the hallway.
SCHUMER: OK. Now, just a few more points on that meeting. First, am I correct that it was Mr. Gonzales who did just about all of the talking, Mr. Card said very little?
COMEY: Yes, sir.
SCHUMER: OK. And they made it clear that there was in this envelope an authorization that they hoped Mr. Ashcroft — Attorney General Ashcroft would sign.
COMEY: In substance. I don’t know exactly the words, but it was clear that’s what the envelope was.
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SCHUMER: Right. OK. Let’s continue. What happened after Mr. Gonzales and Card left? Did you have any contact with them in the next little while?
COMEY: While I was talking to Director Mueller, an agent came up to us and said that I had an urgent call in the command center, which was right next door. They had Attorney General Ashcroft in a hallway by himself and there was an empty room next door that was the command center. And he said it was Mr. Card wanting to speak to me.
I took the call. And Mr. Card was very upset and demanded that I come to the White House immediately. I responded that, after the conduct I had just witnessed, I would not meet with him without a witness present.
He replied, “What conduct? We were just there to wish him well.”
And I said again, “After what I just witnessed, I will not meet with you without a witness. And I intend that witness to be the solicitor general of the United States.”
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SCHUMER: Can you tell us a little bit about the discussion at the Justice Department when all of you convened? I guess it was that night.
COMEY: I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to go into the substance of it. We discussed what to do. I recall the associate attorney general being there, the solicitor general, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, senior staff from the attorney general, senior staff of mine. And we just — I don’t want to reveal the substances of those…
SCHUMER: I don’t want you to reveal the substance. They all thought what you did — what you were doing was the right thing, I presume.
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SCHUMER: Right. OK. Was there any discussion of resignations with Mr. Card?
COMEY: Mr. Card was concerned that he had heard reports that there were to be a large number of resignations at the Department of Justice.
SCHUMER: OK. OK. And the conversations, the issue, whatever it was, was not resolved.
COMEY: Correct. We communicated about it. I communicated again the Department of Justice’s view on the matter. And that was it.
SCHUMER: Right. And you stated that the next day, Thursday, was the deadline for reauthorization of the program, is that right?
COMEY: Yes, sir.
SCHUMER: OK. Can you tell us what happened the next day?
COMEY: The program was reauthorized without us and without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality. And I prepared a letter of resignation, intending to resign the next day, Friday, March the 12th.
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COMEY: I believed that I couldn’t — I couldn’t stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis. I just simply couldn’t stay.
SCHUMER: Right. OK. Now, let me just ask you this. And this obviously is all troubling. As I understand it, you believed that others were also prepared to resign, not just you, is that correct?
COMEY: Yes.
SCHUMER: OK. Was one of those Director Mueller?
COMEY: I believe so. You’d have to ask him, but I believe so.
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COMEY: Yes. I ended up agreeing — Mr. Ashcroft’s chief of staff asked me something that meant a great deal to him, and that is that I not resign until Mr. Ashcroft was well enough to resign with me. He was very concerned that Mr. Ashcroft was not well enough to understand fully what was going on. And he begged me to wait until — this was Thursday that I was making this decision — to wait til Monday to give him the weekend to get oriented enough so that I wouldn’t leave him behind, was his concern.
SCHUMER: And it was his view that Mr. Ashcroft was likely to resign as well?
COMEY: Yes.
SCHUMER: So what did you do when you heard that?
COMEY: I agreed to wait. I said that what I would do is — that Friday would be last day. And Monday morning I would resign.
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SCHUMER: Thank you. Now, let’s go to the next day, which was March 12. Can you tell us what happened then?
COMEY: I went to the Oval Office — as I did every morning as acting attorney general — with Director Mueller to brief the president and the vice president on what was going on on Justice Department’s counterterrorism work.
We had the briefing. And as I was leaving, the president asked to speak to me, took me in his study and we had a one-on-one meeting for about 15 minutes — again, which I will not go into the substance of. It was a very full exchange. And at the end of that meeting, at my urging, he met with Director Mueller, who was waiting for me downstairs.
He met with Director Mueller again privately, just the two of them. And then after those two sessions, we had his direction to do the right thing, to do what we…
SCHUMER: Had the president’s direction to do the right thing?
COMEY: Right. We had the president’s direction to do what we believed, what the Justice Department believed was necessary to put this matter on a footing where we could certify to its legality. And so we then set out to do that. And we did that.
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SCHUMER: Let me ask you this: So in sum, it was your belief that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card were trying to take advantage of an ill and maybe disoriented man to try and get him to do something that many, at least in the Justice Department, thought was against the law? Was that a correct summation?
COMEY: I was concerned that this was an effort to do an end-run around the acting attorney general and to get a very sick man to approve something that the Department of Justice had already concluded — the department as a whole — was unable to be certified as to its legality. And that was my concern.
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http://www.salon.com/2007/05/15/comey_testimony/
The Kidnapper & Torturer vs. the Whistleblower: The Gov’t's different Treatment
The Kidnapper & Torturer vs. the Whistleblower: The Gov’t's different Treatment of Lady and Snowden (Engelhardt)
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Recently, Lady proved a one-day wonder. After years in absentia — poof! — he reappeared out of nowhere on the border between Panama and Costa Rica, and made the news when Panamanian officials took him into custody on an Interpol warrant. The CIA’s station chief in Milan back in 2003, he had achieved brief notoriety for overseeing a la dolce vita version of extraordinary rendition as part of Washington’s Global War on Terror. His colleagues kidnapped Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, a radical Muslim cleric and terror suspect, off the streets of Milan, and rendered him via U.S. airbases in Italy and Germany to the torture chambers of Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt. Lady evidently rode shotgun on that transfer.
His Agency associates proved to be the crew that couldn’t spook straight. They left behind such a traceable trail of five-star-hotel and restaurant bills, charges on false credit cards, and unencrypted cell phone calls that the Italian government tracked them down, identified them, and charged 23 of them, Lady included, with kidnapping.
Lady fled Italy, leaving behind a multimillion-dollar villa near Turin meant for his retirement. (It was later confiscated and sold to make restitution payments to Nasr.) Convicted in absentia in 2009, Lady received a nine-year sentence (later reduced to six). He had by then essentially vanished after admitting to an Italian newspaper, “Of course it was an illegal operation. But that’s our job. We’re at war against terrorism.”
Last week, the Panamanians picked him up. It was the real world equivalent of a magician’s trick. He was nowhere, then suddenly in custody and in the news, and then — poof again! — he wasn’t. Just 24 hours after the retired CIA official found himself under lock and key, he was flown out of Panama, evidently under the protection of Washington, and in mid-air, heading back to the United States, vanished a second time.
State Department spokesperson Marie Harf told reporters on July 19th, “It’s my understanding that he is in fact either en route or back in the United States.” So there he was, possibly in mid-air heading for the homeland and, as far as we know, as far as reporting goes, nothing more. Consider it the CIA version of a miracle. Instead of landing, he just evaporated.
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The Lady Vanishes
It’s no less a self-evident truth in Washington that Robert Seldon Lady must be protected from the long (Italian) arm of the law, that he is a patriot who did his duty, that it is the job of the U.S. government to keep him safe and never allow him to be prosecuted, just as it is the job of that government to protect, not prosecute, CIA torturers who took part in George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror.
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http://www.juancole.com/2013/07/whistleblower-treatment-engelhardt.html
You're right. This is chilling.
You're right. This is chilling.
As one commenter posted:
"Puttin’ the Pressure on Putin" by Ray McGovern
It's a brilliant article. I recommend people read the whole thing. Ray McGovern rightfully points out how our death penalty earns us "the dubious distinction of joining a list with China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia as the leaders in executing people"Puttin’ the Pressure on Putin
July 28, 2013
Exclusive: The Obama administration continues to compound the diplomatic mess around former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The latest blunder was announcing that the U.S. wouldn’t torture or execute Snowden, a reminder to the world how far Official Washington has strayed from civilized behavior, notes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
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It is no secret that Putin is chuckling as Attorney General Eric Holder and other empty-shirts-cum-corporate-law-office-silk-ties – assisted ably by White House spokesperson Jay Carney – proceed willy-nilly to transform the Snowden case from a red-faced diplomatic embarrassment for the United States into a huge geopolitical black eye before the rest of the world.
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Holder’s strange promise may have been designed to undercut Snowden’s bid for asylum, but it also reminded the world of America’s abysmal behavior on human rights. And, even if the United States promises not to torture someone, government lawyers have shown how they can play games with the definition of the term or just outright lie. Holder’s reputation for veracity is just a thin notch above that of National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who admits he has chosen to testify under oath to the “least untruthful” things.
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Holder’s high-profile push to get the Russians to hand over Snowden damages the United States in other ways, too, such as reminding the world how the U.S. government has violated the privacy rights of people everywhere, including in allied countries. There is a reasonable argument to be made that the smartest U.S. move would be to simply leave Snowden alone.
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Vladimir Volokh, head of the Russian Migration Service, seemed to welcome a chance to retaliate in kind. Rubbing in the awkwardness of Snowden’s present status because of actions by Washington, Volokh told the Interfax news agency Friday: “We know that he is Edward Snowden only from his words. The passport he has has been canceled. … He is under protection in the transit area for his safety. He is an individual being pursued and his life is in danger.”
The Russians, and pretty much everyone else, are smart enough to realize that, given Washington’s transparent motives, there is nothing to be gained by serving Snowden up to American “justice,” such as it has become. Russia is no banana republic, so it beggars belief that President Putin will follow the supine example of Panama. Nor is the fawning example of Italy, France, Spain and Portugal something Putin would wish to emulate.
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http://consortiumnews.com/2013/07/28/puttin-the-pressure-on-putin/
The government figured out sockpuppet managment but not "persona management".
Thank you for bringing this to everyone's attention Yurbud!...
As I also mentioned yesterday, in some of the emails, HBGary people are talking about creating "personas", what we would call sockpuppets. This is not new. PR firms have been using fake "people" to promote products and other things for a while now, both online and even in bars and coffee houses.
But for a defense contractor with ties to the federal government, Hunton & Williams, DOD, NSA, and the CIA - whose enemies are labor unions, progressive organizations, journalists, and progressive bloggers, a persona apparently goes far beyond creating a mere sockpuppet.
According to an embedded MS Word document found in one of the HBGary emails, it involves creating an army of sockpuppets, with sophisticated "persona management" software that allows a small team of only a few people to appear to be many, while keeping the personas from accidentally cross-contaminating each other. Then, to top it off, the team can actually automate some functions so one persona can appear to be an entire Brooks Brothers riot online.
Persona management entails not just the deconfliction of persona artifacts such as names, email addresses, landing pages, and associated content. It also requires providing the human actors technology that takes the decision process out of the loop when using a specific persona. For this purpose we custom developed either virtual machines or thumb drives for each persona. This allowed the human actor to open a virtual machine or thumb drive with an associated persona and have all the appropriate email accounts, associations, web pages, social media accounts, etc. pre-established and configured with visual cues to remind the actor which persona he/she is using so as not to accidentally cross-contaminate personas during use.
And all of this is for the purposes of infiltration, data mining, and (here's the one that really worries me) ganging up on bloggers, commenters and otherwise "real" people to smear enemies and distort the truth.
This is an excerpt from one of the Word Documents, which was sent as an attachment by Aaron Barr, CEO of HBGary's Federal subsidiary, to several of his colleagues to present to clients:
To build this capability we will create a set of personas on twitter, blogs, forums, buzz, and myspace under created names that fit the profile (satellitejockey, hack3rman, etc ). These accounts are maintained and updated automatically through RSS feeds, retweets, and linking together social media commenting between platforms. With a pool of these accounts to choose from, once you have a real name persona you create a Facebook and LinkedIn account using the given name, lock those accounts down and link these accounts to a selected # of previously created social media accounts, automatically pre-aging the real accounts.
Yes!!! That's how democracy and the first amendment are supposed to work.
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... And ... this is just one little company of assholes.
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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-The-HB-Gary-Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All
Starving for Justice
NSA obstructed 3 Congress'l investigations into the security failures that left the US open to 9-11
NSA Whistleblowers Praise Snowden at GAP Whistleblower Conference
by Government Accountability Project on July 26, 2013 ( The Whistleblogger / 2013 )
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In defense of whistleblowers Snowden and Bradley Manning, ex-NSA Senior Executive Thomas Drake stated: "I stand with them without equivocation." Citing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which gives the government broad authority to detain Americans deemed hostile without trial, Drake defended Snowden's actions seeking refuge abroad.
Similarly, former NSA Technical Director William Binney said: "I don't see what other choice he had ... He felt his only option was to leave the country and I don't blame him."
When confronted with the argument that Snowden was not revealing illegality and was therefore not a whistleblower, Binney responded: "If all this was legal, why did (telecom companies) need retroactive immunity?"
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"We've become the enemies we're trying to thwart," concluded former NSA official J. Kirk Wiebe. The former Senior Analyst further condemned the NSA by stating that 9/11 was the result of the organization's "self-interest, ego, and arrogance."
Thomas Drake, the most public NSA whistleblower until Snowden made his disclosures, also commented on 9/11, revealing that the NSA actively obstructed three Congressional investigations into the security failures that left the United States exposed to the attacks. Drake further revealed the agency set up a "War Room" to manage its communications with Congress.
Since 1977, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) has championed government and corporate accountability and transparency by advancing occupational free speech, defending whistleblowers, and empowering citizen activists. The mission of GAP is to make large bureaucratic institutions accountable through the effective exercise of conscience.
http://www.whistleblower.org/blog/44-2013/2851-nsa-whistleblowers-praise-snowden-at-gap-whistleblower-conference
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