Hint—Don't Google Pressure Cookers!

She’s a writer with a 20-year old son and a husband. The son is a news junkie, and the husband is curious about things. So they’re all on the Internet a lot; she had looked up pressure cookers. Her husband had researched backpacks. And her son had followed a lot of links in the days surrounding the Boston bombing.

Wanna see what happened?

Yup, six armed guys from the Joint Terrorism Task Force had come to Michele Catalano’s house at nine in the morning. Her husband went out to greet them; they asked if they could enter the house. Here’s Catalano’s description of the event:

They asked if they could search the house, though it turned out to be just a cursory search. They walked around the living room, studied the books on the shelf (nope, no bomb making books, no Anarchist Cookbook), looked at all our pictures, glanced into our bedroom, pet our dogs. They asked if they could go in my son’s bedroom but when my husband said my son was sleeping in there, they let it be.

Meanwhile, they were peppering my husband with questions. Where is he from? Where are his parents from? They asked about me, where was I, where do I work, where do my parents live. Do you have any bombs, they asked. Do you own a pressure cooker? My husband said no, but we have a rice cooker. Can you make a bomb with that? My husband said no, my wife uses it to make quinoa. What the hell is quinoa, they asked.

Guys—do any of you feel significantly safer by having the federal government running around asking people if they have any bombs?

They got to equally tough questions—had he ever looked up how to make a pressure cooker bomb? Sure—said the husband, whom Catalano dubs, “ever the oppositional kind”—haven’t you? Two of the guys admitted they had.

The officers asked to do a cursory search—they missed two rooms (undoubtedly crammed with bombs, boys!) and never touched the computers. Oh, and they dropped the news that they do this a hundred times a week, and “99%” of the time, it turns out to be nothing. Catalano rightly wonders—what about the other 1%?

Well, the task force spent 45 minutes chatting with Catalano’s husband, and went pleasantly off to investigate the next terrorist. Here’s how Catalano concludes her piece:

This is where we are at. Where you have no expectation of privacy. Where trying to learn how to cook some lentils could possibly land you on a watch list. Where you have to watch every little thing you do because someone else is watching every little thing you do.

All I know is if I’m going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I’m not doing it online.

I’m scared. And not of the right things.

Well, the question is—since the government is not supposed to be reading anyone’s email, how did the Joint Terrorist Task Force know Catalano’s family had googled “suspicious” sites? Were they connected to suspected terrorists? If so, how?

The bad news is that almost all of us are connected to suspected terrorists; here’s Yahoo News on the subject….

It hinges on what's known as "hop" or "chain" analysis. When the NSA identifies a suspect, it can look not just at his phone records, but also the records of everyone he calls, everyone who calls those people and everyone who calls those people.

If the average person called 40 unique people, three-hop analysis would allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist.

Right—so we have the Joint Terrorist Task Force investigating people who google pressure cookers, but not following up on Tamerlan Tsarnaev when the Russians go out of their way to tip off the FBI?

In the meantime, the head of NSA held up a placard stating that they had foiled 54 terrorist plots by using telephone and Internet data. Predictably, nobody in Congress trusts them. Who could?

Look, if it hadn’t been for Edward Snowden, they’d still be lying on their stack of Bibles. They were asked direct questions; they lied.

Which, by the way, is contempt of Congress. Anybody remember Rita Lavelle, the EPA official who lied to Congress in 1983? Here’s what she got, according to Wikipedia:

Indicted for lying to Congress; convicted; sentenced to 6 months in prison, 5 years probation thereafter, and a fine of $10,000

Throw the book at ‘em!

Prostitution Day at the Beach

Well, I could tell you that our loopy Congress (gonna have to rethink those caps) has once again voted against the will of the American people, and decided that it’s perfectly OK for government to spy on us. Or how about Syria—over 100,000k have been killed in the civil war there. Or really to rain on your day, how about the fact that in the same day that we all hung by our screens to see British kid named George Alexander Louis, 440 women died in childbirth across sub-Saharan Africa?

“It’s Prostitution Day,” I told Gustavo, the sexy guy from the café, “you’re not going to the bank…”

Nor were we going to the bank, but rather to the beach, and a very good day it was for it. We snailed along at Mr. Fernández’s glacier-in-reverse pace, caught some rays, and sampled some local color, of which there was a very full palette.

We do some things very well, down here, but going to the beach we do either very badly (seen through gringo eyes) or superbly (don’t have to tell you….).

On this particular beach, there are signs posting the rules of the beach. To a gringo mind, one would get to a place, look for a sign, read it, absorb the rules, and follow them. To us?

What sign?

It’s almost a competition—which group of people can violate the most rules. There were the people picnicking outside of the picnic area (1), grabbing beers (2) out of the cooler (3), as their dog (4) chased after a tossed cigarette butt (5). But they were pikers. Most people were scoring at least eight.

There are no barbecues allowed except in the picnic area—of course everybody has a grill. There is no drinking allowed—hey, wanna beer? There is no music, but of course a guy had a boom box in a little red cart—remember them from childhood?—and was blasting reggaetón to half the beach.

“Free music,” I told Mr. Fernández. You gotta go with the flow….

Mind you, nobody is actually swimming. Most people are bobbing in the water, chugging back the beer or the gasolina—a rum drink that comes in a pouch. Men will have 15 extra pounds per decade over 20; women will have 20. Everybody will be shouting, children will be running between your legs, and the smell of charcoal and grilled food will be intoxicating. And yes, people will bring everything to the beach—chairs, the baby crib, the baby, Mamita, large umbrellas, tents, tables to hold the food.

It’s wonderful. We strolled home, bumping into homeless and now toothless Gale, who told us the horror stories of the community—Puerta de Tierra—just next to ours. We gave her some money, chatted for a bit, and moved on.

And now, do I want to read about Syria, contemplate death rates in the developing world, or allow the United States Congress to dampen my psyche?

Forget it—here’s a little known but wonderful cello sonata, by the curious French composer Charles Valentin Alkan….      

Our Man in Moscow

So who is the guy?

Edward Snowden has spent 32 days inside a Moscow airport; a Russian news agency reports that Snowden's request for asylum is in process, and that he may spend up to a year in temporary asylum in the country.

The question has been all along: what’s motivating this guy? What makes him tick? Why did he choose to do what he did, and how well planned was it?

One website has part of the answer—maybe. According to addictinginfo.org, Snowden is a gun-loving, pro-NRA, libertarian dickhead. Think I’m wrong? Catch this alleged exchange from a techie chat room, Ars Technica.

SNOWDEN: save money? cut this social security bullshit

User11: hahahayes

User18: Yeah! Fuck old people!

User11: social security is bullshit

User11: let’s just toss old people out in the street

User18: Old people could move in with [User11].

User11: NOOO

User11: they smell funny

SNOWDEN: Somehow, our society managed to make it hundreds of years without social security just fine

SNOWDEN: you fucking retards

SNOWDEN: Magically the world changed after the new deal, and old people became made of glass

SNOWDEN: yeah, that makes sense

User11: wow

User11: you are just so fucking stupid

SNOWDEN: yeah, [User11]. and you’re quite a gem

User19: and magically, life expectancy has doubled in the last 100 years.funny how that works.

SNOWDEN: [User19], you don’t think modern medicine has something to do with that? no? it’s social security? wow. I guess I missed that.

User11: hurr wait a second, life expectancy has shot up in recent times along with the dissolution of the communal family unit in exchange for the nuclear family

User11: gee i guess we might need to create a safety net for the sudden glut of helpless elderly????

SNOWDEN: they wouldn’t be fucking helpless if you weren’t sending them fucking checks to sit on their ass and lay in hospitals all day

User11: you are so goddamned stupd*pid

User11: PUT OLD PEOPLE TO WORK IN THE FIELDS

SNOWDEN: my grandmother is eighty fucking three this year, and you know what? she still supports herself working as a goddamned hairdresser

Right—and here he is on guns:

User: the restrictions were made to appease the conservatives to get another bill passed. fucking cons.

SNOWDEN: See, that’s why I’m goddamned glad for the second amendment. Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished.

From the website, it appears that Snowden had no problem spying on people during the Bush administration: he lambastes The New York Times for revealing the existence of the phone metadata collection in 2006, and thinks the whistleblower should be shot in the balls. But he changes his tune when Obama is elected.

Throughout it all, Snowden has seemed just this side of paranoid and delusional. There is the persistent story that the United States will find a way to off him; to avert that, he has given top secret, highly damaging documents to various people, who will reveal causing enormous damage after Snowden’s murder.

As well, Snowden seems to be winging it completely. He takes hard drives with all his information into China; one expert said that the best practice is to take nothing into China except a clean, empty hard drive. Why? Because anything can be copied—and likely will be—while you’re out for a Coke and a burger.

And speaking of China—OK, Hong Kong—Snowden arrived, stayed in a fancy hotel, and then was running out of money. Hunh? Couldn’t he have stayed somewhere else? And why Hong Kong, since China does have an extradition policy with the US?

Look, if I were Snowden, I might have done this: look for a country that has no extradition to the US, but does have a decent way of life, and a good record on civil liberties. Load up as much cash as I could, buy a ticket, fly to the country, immediately request amnesty, and sit tight while I did so. Once I’m in, I’d start talking.

Oh, and speaking of civil liberties—I went onto Amnesty International’s website, just to check out the Russian Federation’s track record on human rights; the site reminded me that the Federation had just passed, by something like 441 to 0, a draconian bill against gay people. In Russia, you can’t even talk gay issues without getting thrown in the jug.

So this guy—who apparently thinks he is John Galt—ends up in Russia, and is considering places like Cuba, Venezuela, or Bolivia? I read the Times today, reporting from Havana, and guess what? None of their sources would give their last name. These countries make the United States look like a bastion of liberty.

So now Snowden is in Russia, looking for a job. Guess what? He’s got one. He’ll be “working” for the Russian intelligence agency, who will expect him to deliver. And no—no programming but all the information he has about the NSA. And if he doesn’t?

Don’t think it’ll be a pink slip.

Somehow, this guy has ended up in deep shit. I applaud him for speaking out, but how could a bright guy botch it so badly?

Who's Crazy?

Well—so where is everybody? A guy comes out and says that he tapped Obama’s phone, as well as Senator Feinstein, Supreme Court justice Alito, General David Petraeus, and a host of others. He goes on to suggest that Obama may be being blackmailed, and that there is a sinister force at work. He calls it a “rogue agency that has J. Edgar Hoover capabilities at a monstrous scale on steroids."

And the guy—Russell Tice—has a track record: he worked for twenty years in the Air Force, Office of Naval Intelligence, Department of Intelligence Agency, and ended up in the National Security Agency. He turned to The New York Times in 2005, and was one of the principal sources for the wiretapping revelations published that year.

So he has the connections, and he has big news—shouldn’t be a problem to pick up the phone and get the news splashed over the country’s papers, computer screens, and cell phones. Instead, with the exception of the Huffington Post, the mainstream media have ignored Tice’s most recent allegations.

Instead, Tice had to go to another whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds, and make his revelations on her Boiling Frogs podcast. And Sibel, who worked as a translator for the FBI until 2002, makes a damning charge: the mainstream media are controlled by the corporations and the government. She tells the story of MSNBC who sent a town car to pick up Tice for an interview, and then cancelled the interview on the way to the studio. Huffington Post picked up the news, and then MSNBC called again, stating that they hadn’t canceled, rather they had only meant to reschedule. The town car arrives again, and all is well until minutes before the interview. Then, Tice is told that MSNBC’s New York lawyers have advised them—don’t talk about the recent allegations, just talk in general terms. He protests: he’s in the studio to do just that, but goes through with the interview, anyway.

Edmonds makes further charges in an interview on the James Corbett Report. She alleges that the whistleblowing process that is supposed to protect people who step forward is completely ineffective. And she should know: she was fired in 2002 and the FBI’s own internal process stated that it was likely true that “some” of her claims of retaliation were true.

She also maintains that the FBI keeps both digital and paper files in huge quantities. And if, in the process of investigating a person who FISA has issued an order on, the FBI gets information on another, non-FISA ordered person—the policy is to destroy that evidence. Does it? No way—it keeps everything, because guess what? It may come in handy.

Edmonds makes the point that Congress has never taken on the FBI in any meaningful way—removing a director, taking it to the justice department, etc.

Edmonds goes places I wouldn’t go. She’s convinced that the Boston bombings were a government sponsored set up; she has appeared on The Alex Jones Show. It’s hard to know—who’s telling the truth?

But check out the two clips below—and you decide.   

The Rest of the Story?

It’s an invitation into the shadowy world of conspiracy theory.

As you can see in the video below, the first NSA whistle blower, Russell Tice, is making some heavy charges. No, he says, NSA is listening in on calls, not just collecting metadata. The NSA listened in on Barack Obama, when he was running for Senate; they spied on Supreme Court justice Alito, as well as General Petraeus. They’ve spied on any general above a three star level, and also Hillary Clinton, Senators John McCain and Diane Feinstein, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell.

The activity seemed to take place in the evenings, and seemed to be directed by someone connected to the vice president at the time, Dick Cheney. And Tice, though a Republican, decided to vote for Obama just on the hope that Obama would follow through and stop the abuse.

Tice is asked—why is this going on, is it blackmail? He fumbles for a bit, and then says the obvious. What else can it be?

It’s an old trick. When I was growing up, the local police chief had secret files on people, and knew that an alderman had a daughter working as a prostitute in a west coast city. That kind of information comes in handy when the police need a little boost in budget, of the chief himself needs a little help in a corruption scandal.

What’s new is the capacity to snoop, and the sheer power that we—or is it they?—have to spy. Here’s Tice on the subject:

Although an anonymous senior Obama administration official said that "on its face" the court order revealed by the Guardian did not authorise the government to listen in on people's phone calls, Tice now believes the NSA has constructed such a capability.

"I figured it would probably be about 2015" before the NSA had "the computer capacity … to collect all digital communications word for word," Tice said. "But I think I'm wrong. I think they have it right now." 

I came on Tice through the usual circuitous path—investigating a report that Gilberto Valle, a NYPD cop, had been found guilty of accessing an FBI database, the National Crime Information Center, obtaining information, plotting to abduct women, all for the purpose of…

…eating them.

OK—my day has not been improved by realizing that there is a fetish—for some—for cannibalism. Valle, who was turned in by his wife, maintains that it was an innocent, though kinky, fetish. The prosecution maintained that he was on a street corner where he had said he’d be in one of his communications—and the block of the street where one of his “victims” lived. Was he there to abduct? Had he moved out of fantasy and into the street?

However interesting the question, the point is that he tapped into a system that 90,000 law enforcement agencies can access. Here’s Business Insider on the subject:

• Tom Hays of The Associated Press reports there are "a batch of corruption cases in recent years against NYPD officers accused of abusing the FBI-operated National Crime Information Center database to cyber snoop on co-workers, tip off drug dealers, stage robberies and — most notoriously — scheme to abduct and eat women."

Speaking of which, the same article goes on to say this:

In 2008 two former NSA analysts who worked at the NSA center in Fort Gordon, Georgia told ABC they and their coworkers had listened in on the personal phone calls of soldiers stationed overseas.

"Hey, check this out," one said he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy.'"

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-nsa-can-abuse-data-on-americans-2013-7#ixzz2YesFhNIz

No, it wasn’t crazy. It’s scary, and much more.

Tice was the original whistle blower, leaking the phone monitoring scandal in 2005. And at the end of the interview, he’s asked, “are we living in a police state?”

His answer is nuanced: it a light police state. No, we don’t have all the oppression of the old communist regimes. We’ve learned subtlety; the iron fist wears a velvet glove but is—after all…

A fist.

Trust Us

Well, Greta Van Susteren says she knows the guy, so it must be all right.

Granted, I didn’t know Greta Van Susteren, so I had to do a little checking around to see if I could trust Greta enough for her to tell me that Reggie B. Walton is OK.

Don’t know Reggie B. Walton?

Join the club, but I can now tell you that he is the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And he came out in a rare statement bristling at the idea that the court—which had 1856 petitions last year and approved all 1856 of them—is a rubber stamp. Here, with the impartiality for which this family of wordsmiths is famous, is what the guy said:

“The perception that the court is a rubberstamp is absolutely false. There is a rigorous review process of applications submitted by the Executive Branch, spearheaded initially by five judicial branch lawyers who are national security experts, and then by the judges to ensure that the court’s authorizations comport with what the applicable statutes authorize.”

Here’s the deal with the FISA courts—they only hear one side of the story. In every other court in the United States, the opposition gets a chance to come forward, state his defense, and have a judge or jury weigh in. But FISA listens to the government’s case, and then decides.

So that means, that you and I never had a say in the question of whether Verizon turned over your call history to the government. Oh, and not just your call history but your Internet history and also your snail mail, which is photographed—every single last piece of it. All of which can be accessed by the government by petitioning the “rigorous” FISA court, so famously not a rubber stamp.

OK—here’s the dope on Walton: he grew up in Donora, Pennsylvania, a steel town, and was dabbling in gangs when he saw a friend nearly get killed. So that sobered him up, and he went to West Virginia State College on a football scholarship and then to The American University, Washington College of Law for his law degree. Here’s Wikipedia on Walton:

Walton served as an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia from 1981 to 1989 and from 1991 to 2001. He also served as associate director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. In 2001, he was nominated to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, and subsequently confirmed by the U.S. Senate. In 2004, Bush appointed him to chair the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, investigating ways to curb prison rape. In May 2007, Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr. appointed him to a seat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.[3]

The Washington Post reported, "fellow judges and lawyers who appear before him say Walton's decisions do not appear to be guided by politics but by a tough-on-crime mentality." Walton is known by local defense attorneys as a "long ball hitter" - a judge willing to impose long sentences in order to deter future crimes.[3] In fall 2005, the judge was driving his wife and daughter to the airport for a vacation when he came across an assailant attacking a cab driver on the side of the road. Walton tackled the assailant and subdued him until police arrived. The D.C. police spokesperson noted in response, "God bless Judge Walton. I surely wouldn't want to mess with him."[3]

OK—that’s a good story. Sounds like the kind of guy you could trust to make the right decision, right? And I like it that Walton was the guy who sent Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, to jail.

Now then, what about Roger Vinson.

Having another “who he” moment?

He’s the Florida judge who authorized the government to demand that Verizon turn over your telephone history (assuming you’re a Verizon customer—but don’t worry, because all of the wireless providers have done so).

OK—Walton may be OK, this guy is questionable. Good news—he’s moderate on drug sentencing. Bad news, he’s a Tea Party conservative who even he acknowledges gives out draconian sentences. He also is the author of the famous broccoli quote:  “If they decided that everybody needs to eat broccoli because broccoli is healthy they could mandate that everybody has to buy a certain amount of broccoli each week.”

One piece of good news, via Huffington Post: “Vinson is known for his love of the flowering camellia tree. He is a longtime member of the Pensacola Camellia Club and is a former president of the American Camellia Society.”

Well, it’s a thing to know….

Here’s something else to know—Vinson’s order to Verizon expires on 19 July—in twelve days. Presumably, someone will walk into the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse and ask Vinson or another judge to approve the petition for another three months.

Will we know? Will anyone be around to argue the case for NOT collecting the data?

Don’t think so.

Earlier this week, I was watching Rachel Maddow explain—as only she could—how the FBI has killed 70 people and shot another 80. Here’s the New York Times quoting the FBI:

“The F.B.I. takes very seriously any shooting incidents involving our agents, and as such we have an effective, time-tested process for addressing them internally,” a bureau spokesman said.

It may be that the FBI takes shooting incidents seriously, but guess how many of 150 shootings have been found to be justified? That’s right—all 150 of them. And, like the FISA courts, this is wholly internal—no district attorney can declare that the death of, for example, a young Chechen was a homicide committed by agents of the Federal government. A young Chechen whose family retrieved the body, and discovered it with six bullet holes, including one fired point blank to the temple.

More than ever, I am mistrusting my government. We have got to find a way of putting advocates for civil liberties to argue the case for privacy in every FISA petition.

And we gotta do it quick.

Chris Hayes

OK, here—direct from Wikipedia—is the timeline of the Edward Snowden revelations:

•    On June 5, The Guardian released a top secret order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that ordered a business division of Verizon Communications to provide "on an ongoing daily basis" metadata for all telephone calls "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls" and all calls made "between the United States and abroad."[23]

•    On June 6, The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed the existence of PRISM, a clandestine electronic surveillance program that allegedly allows the NSA to access e-mail, web searches, and other Internet traffic in realtime.[24][25]

•    On June 9, The Guardian revealed Boundless Informant, a system that "details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information [the NSA] collects from computer and telephone networks."

•    On June 12, the South China Morning Post disclosed that the NSA has been hacking into computers in China and Hong Kong since 2009.[26]

•    On June 17, The Guardian reported that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British intelligence agency, had intercepted foreign politicians' communications at the 2009 G-20 London Summit.[27]

•    On June 20, The Guardian revealed two secret documents, signed by Attorney General Eric Holder, describing the rules by which the NSA determines whether targets of investigations are foreign or domestic.[28]

•    On June 21, The Guardian made further disclosures about 'Tempora,' an 18-month-old British operation by GCHQ to intercept and store mass quantities of fiber-optic traffic.[29]

•    On June 23, the South China Morning Post reported that Snowden had said the NSA had hacked Chinese mobile-phone companies to collect millions of text messages and had also hacked Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Asian fiber-optic network operator Pacnet. The newspaper said Snowden provided documents that listed details of specific episodes during a four-year period.[30][31] According to Glenn Greenwald, "What motivated that leak though was a need to ingratiate himself to the people of Hong Kong and China."[32]

•    On June 25, Greenwald reported Snowden claims that he had sent files with NSA secrets to associates for his personal insurance, and that their contents would be revealed should something untoward happen to him.[32]

•    On June 29, Der Spiegel reported that the NSA had planted bugs in EU offices in Washington, New York, and Brussels, and had infiltrated their computer networks, according to documents provided by Snowden.[33][34]

Damaging stuff, right?

Or is it? As Chris Hayes points out in the video below, Osama bin Laden knew perfectly well that the US was tracking him—that’s why he never used cell phones and communicated through couriers. True, some of his associates used them, and also true, that helped us catch bin Laden. But let’s face it, any serious terrorist would have to be pretty stupid not to assume that cell phones, emails and internet use are being monitored.

I ask all this for a simple reason: I’m trying to figure out what damage, if any, Edward Snowden has caused. What has he said that terrorists didn’t know? Has he really put lives in jeopardy? Did the Chinese really not know, or suspect or assume, that the US hacked their systems? Does any diplomat of any country think that a hotel room is un-bugged?

And Hayes makes an interesting point. Barbara Starr, the veteran CNN reporter on the Pentagon, came out with leaked information that indicated that the government is able to observe the terrorist organizations frantically trying to change providers. And Hayes wonders—isn’t that information just as dangerous as anything Snowden revealed? Oh, and he points out that nobody is slamming Starr, but Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who is revealing information from Snowden, got tarred a couple days ago by the news that he had been involved in the porn industry (as a lawyer, not a participant…).

Hayes’s point? A leak in favor of surveillance is OK; a leak against surveillance is not.

Snowden has stripped the United States of its ability to be a hypocrite. We can no longer pretend that we are not snooping on everyone: friends, foes, and our own people. But is there really, as Hayes says at the end of the clip, a secret government?

Well, in 1987, Bill Moyers said there was, pissing the conservatives off so much that they threatened to cut off PBS funding for years. Moyers makes the point: the National Security Act of 1947 created something that we had never had in this country before. Never before had we worried full time about our security. Never before had we had the concept of enemies at work against us.

Enemies for very good reasons—an Iranian points out in the documentary that there is no Iranian family without at least one member tortured or killed by the Shah’s secret police. The police the CIA trained after they had overthrown an elected leader and installed the Shah. And how many other nations has the CIA messed with? How much blood is on their hands?

Correction…

…our hands.

Of course the world is pissed at us, of course they’re laughing at us. Guess what?

They’re right, we’re wrong.

A Cry to Stamps!

For half a century (OK, really only 48 years) J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI, as well as threatening the hell out of everyone. He did it illegally.

For the last ten years (OK, really 12 years) two presidents have signed off on a program that allows the NSA to collect information on our telephone calls, emails, and text messages. They’re doing it legally.

We had all been saying it for years, all of us “radical” people who couldn’t quite get why we had to sit in Vietnamese rice paddies, watch little kids approach, and wonder if they had bombs under their dirty shirts. We spoke out against the infiltrators, the bugged telephones, the informers, all of the people spying on us as we protested an unjust war.

I miss it, those innocent years before we paid others to fight our wars, and before we gave away our privacy to the government, instead of protesting it. And I may as well confess, I’m mostly of the opinion that Edward Snowden acted correctly when he exposed the secret programs that are spying on us all.

Why?

Because we wouldn’t have known, otherwise. And because everything—OK, much of what—we know about J. Edgar Hoover came from a similar action. Somebody—nobody knows who but you can bet it wasn’t for lack of trying—stole secret files from an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania.

It was a night in 1971, and most of the United States was watching Joe Frazier fight Muhammad Ali. But a guy or guys from the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI grabbed a crowbar, wrenched the 2-man FBI office, and filched the files. All in all, over a thousand documents were taken.

Two weeks later, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times got manila envelopes with copies of documents. There was the report on sending a tape to Martin Luther King; the tape showed King in his hotel room with women, not his wife. That came accompanied by a note: “King, there is one thing left for you to do. You know what it is.”

That presumably meant suicide, which was the option actress Jean Seberg opted for, after a (false) rumor was published saying that the father of her unborn child was a Black Panther, not her French husband.

Want more? Here’s one writer on the subject:

The sheer reach of a completely politicized FBI was one of the most frightening revelations of the Media documents. Underground newspapers were targeted. Students (and their professors) were targeted. Celebrities were targeted. The Communist Party of the U.S.A., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Non-Violent Organizing Committee, the Black Panther Party, the Women's Strike for Peace -- all were targeted. "Neutralize them in the same manner they are trying to destroy and neutralize the U.S.," one memo said.

 Attorney General John N. Mitchell asked Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post, saying that doing so could “endanger people’s lives”—those people out there spyi…err, collecting information vital for our national security.

It was only through that one act—forcing a window, raiding two file cabinets—that we understood or rather we knew what we had always known. As well, we got a new term—COINTELPRO, or counter-intelligence program.

A few months after the break-in, Daniel Ellsberg came forth with the Pentagon Papers, which revealed that the government knew early on that the Vietnam War was unwinnable, and that the Johnson administration had lied to the people, and to the Congress. All of that lead to the Church Committee, which has been described as the most—well, here’s Wikipedia….

Together, the Church Committee's reports have been said to constitute the most extensive review of intelligence activities ever made available to the public. Much of the contents were classified, but more than 50,000 pages have since been declassified under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

The report revealed that it wasn’t just at home that our intelligence system had gone seriously off whack. Here’s more Wikipedia, from the same source:

Among the matters investigated were attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile and Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles's plan, approved by the President Dwight D. Eisenhower, to use the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba.

So now we have a president who is telling us that we should trust these secret programs because there is a mechanism to oversee them and so all is OK. But, in fact, a meeting that was called before the Snowden affair of the heads of the intelligence agencies and Congress had only 48 senators and representatives show up. The meeting was on a Friday afternoon—the boys skipped out early that day.

Oh, and the FISA judges approved every request from the NSA—all 1856 of them. Odd, why am I thinking just now of rubber stamps?

Hmmm, you know, it’s not a bad idea I have. Readers of this blog know that, for seven years, I worked for a small company named Wal-Mart. My efforts in that enterprise consisted largely of sitting a room, pounding on tables, and throwing pencils at small groups of people. That all ended one Friday morning, after the company had done an extensive re-alignment. I was outta line.

So what to do now?

Readers, be the first on your block to buy in. Give yourself a double shot of self congratulations by helping a deserving blogger and your government. For ten bucks (plus handling and shipping, as well as taxes where applicabl… oh, and you ladies down there in Tobago—I know you’re there—I gotta charge more) I’ll send you this valuable item, which you in turn (and in protest) can send to the federal government. The one crucial thing they obviously don’t have….