(1st segment goes to minute 17:15; second runs from 18:55 to 40:00.)
Someone should do some quick research on how high the stock in the manufacturer of Kool Aid has risen amid unprecedented drinker demand among the cognoscenti of New York and Washington, DC. Politicians and media alike seem to covet every ounce to support their evidence-impoverished campaign to stoke fear of Russia. In the second segment, Ray shares his experience with the 8-person group of Veteran For Peace activists who just spent two and a half weeks in Israel and occupied Palestine. (One key learning: Israel is scared to death of the BDS (Bombing, Divestment, & Sanctions) campaign. If the Veterans For Peace had departed just one month later, they would have run afoul of a brand-new Israeli law that denies entry to supporters of BDS!)
Syria was also discussed: So why is it, after all, that “Bashar al-Assad has to go?” Cui bono is the continuing chaos in Syria? Oddly, you can read the answer in the NY Times. Yes, a startlingly honest report slid by the NYT pro-Israel censors, apparently dropping their guard while drinking Labor Day martinis with the hoi aristoi in the Hamptons, as is their custom. Here is the link to that report; share it with your friends:
CNN’s having Hayden preach on “loyalty!” Tune in next week for Bill Clinton on chastity! Hayden’s successor at NSA, Keith Alexander, went out and bought a pair of broad-cut jeans in a comic attempt to identify with millennials – but, alas, to no avail. Younger folks can spot a phony a mile away, and many appear to be led by a quaint (almost obsolete) character trait called CONSCIENCE. Some will not violate their oath to the Constitution – as the martinet NSA chiefs beginning with Hayden have done.
RT also published the following transcript:
‘CIA dilemma: Must hire millennials, very group that respects the Constitution’
It is the younger generation that understands new technology. But it is hard to weed out the people who will work without any respect for the Constitution or without any respect for privacy, says former CIA officer Ray McGovern.
The former head of the CIA Michael Hayden came up with an explanation for how thousands of secret documents ended up in the hands of WikiLeaks. The files were released this week, showing how the agency hacks smartphones and TVs. Michael Hayden says they may have been leaked by insiders, most likely young CIA recruits, from the generation known as millennials.
RT: Michael Hayden doubts whether millennials understand loyalty and secrecy. Why would he say that, do you think?
Ray McGovern: It is very painful to hear General Hayden say those things, because these millennials, or whoever it is that is leaking information, are loyal in a way that he has not been, to their only oath, the only oath we all take, and that is to support and defend the Constitution of the US against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In an unprecedented situation, two of General Hayden’s predecessors as head of NSA said he did illegal things in wiretapping and monitoring Americans. That was Bobby Ray Inman, who was pretty much the creator of the NSA, and who worked on the laws that prohibit these things. He said, “I drafted the laws, I know what is in those laws, and it admits of no exceptions.” Bobby Ray Inman, after it was disclosed that General Hayden had done this at NSA said, “He clearly violated the law.” One more recent predecessor as NSA director was an Army General named William Odom, and Odom when he heard about Hayden, almost couldn’t control himself. He said, “Hayden should be court-martialed since he still on active duty, and he should be removed from office and so should George Bush who ordered him to do that.”
Here we have this same character… General Hayden accusing leakers of disloyalty. That is like the pot calling the kettle black because if anyone is guilty of not abiding by his oath to defend the Constitution, it is General Hayden himself. I have a little bit of difficulty refraining from being angry.
RT: If other people in the agency agree with him, what should they do now? Just recruit older people?
RM: The problem is they are caught between a rock and a hard place. They need the young people. The young people know how to do this stuff. That’s really important. It is really hard to weed out young people who will do this stuff without any respect for the Constitution or without any respect for privacy. To weed those out and only let old people like me, who don’t know anything about how to tap into these things. They cannot do this without the young people. And by hiring young people, it is really hard to say “this person will violate the Constitution, but this person won’t.”
One of the interesting things here is that when we gave Edward Snowden the award for Integrity in Intelligence that was in June of 2013. In July, we were at a hacker conference outside of Amsterdam, and we noted that we wanted to give this prize to Edward Snowden, but we had no way of getting there because he was at Sheremetyevo Airport and nobody knew how to get to him. Guess what? Those millennials, those hackers passed the hat around and collected enough money for the four of us – Colleen Rowley, Tom Drake, Jesselyn Raddack and myself – all whistleblowers to go to Moscow and back, pay for our fares and a fairly decent hotel as well. That is how strong these people who know how to do this technology feel about the need for privacy to protect our Constitution.
RT: WikiLeaks says the file dump is just a small fraction of what they have on the CIA. What else do you expect to come out?
RM: I suppose they’ve led with their most volatile, but it is hard to say because WikiLeaks is very meticulous in going through all this, ordering it in such a way that it is searchable. So, God knows what else they have. But what this indicates really is that even though these illegal hackers are really good about offensive things and interfering and hacking in such a way that other services can be blamed, they are really bad, they are a bunch of hacks when it comes to defensive measures. Witness the fact that WikiLeaks has all this treasure trove of very condemnatory information.
‘Wiretapping’s What Was Done Under Hoover. Now It’s Wiretapping on Steroids’
US Senator Rand Paul recently suggested that the NSA has carried out mass surveillance of Americans by obtaining FISA court approval on eavesdropping on foreigners and using this as a backdoor to listen to US citizens. In an interview with Sputnik, veteran CIA officer Ray McGovern described this practice as “wiretapping on steroids.”
McGovern pointed out that the US government has a long history of spying on Americans which goes back to the 1960s and 1970s when J. Edgar Hoover served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Although laws were passed to limit the ability of the US intelligence community to conduct domestic surveillance, they have been routinely violated in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the US.
“Let me make very clear that wiretapping was what was done under J. Edgar Hoover. What we have these days is wiretapping on steroids,” McGovern said. “When we are talking about wiretapping please understand that we are talking about the broad surveillance that gives the NSA the possibility of intercepting, storing and then recovering actual conversations. So it is what was happening under J. Edgar Hoover on steroids.”
McGovern further noted that Americans should be aware of this, but they have turned a blind eye to bulk surveillance since the government and the media convinced them that this method is essential to counterterrorism.
“The average American should know this, but those who do know it, dismiss it. It is ‘justified’ by the need to defend against terrorism. The supreme irony is that this bulk collection of telephone calls, emails and everything else is defeating any effort to identify a terrorist before [that person] commits a terrorist act,” he observed. “No terrorist attack has been prevented from this blanket surveillance partly because it is very difficult for analysts to take a needle out of an ever-growing haystack.”
McGovern suggested that this mass surveillance could be put to an end, but doubted that it is likely to happen.
“The only thing that would [force Washington to abandon this practice] would be for Americans to realize how much jeopardy they are in, how much the government can use this information against them. Unfortunately, as things now stand, the government is pretty much exempted from scrutiny because most Americans say, ‘Well, I am not a criminal; I have nothing to hide,'” he said.
This ambitious 90-minute film is now being shown around the country and abroad. What follows is Tremblay’s introduction:
I have done my best to state what few others dare to say. Humanity is on the brink of extinction! Nuclear power is not safe. 48 of America’s nuclear power plants are leaking and there is no way to get rid of nuclear waste. America’s reckless provocations of both Russia and China, two nuclear-armed countries, risk a nuclear holocaust from which no one survives. Climate change and global warming, if not mitigated immediately, will end the human experiment on earth sooner rather than later.
A shocking documentary that traces the origins of U.S. genocides, military interventions and wars from the 15th century when the white, colonial explorers first came to the Americas to the very present. American Exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, and the right to claim the earth and its resources as their own are the beliefs that are the foundation of American foreign policy in the 21st Century that has humanity on the brink of extinction.
Dr. Helen Caldicot, Ray McGovern, Chris Hedges, Ann Wright, Peter Kuznick, Bill McKibben,
David Vine, Bruce Gagnon, and other activists, scholars, and authors explain and clarify the crisis and threats to life on the planet.
The only real hope lies in the result of the epic battle for humanity’s survival between two contrasting worldviews. On one side is the unipolar, capitalist world-domination by the U.S. enforced by the most lethal military the world has ever seen.
On the other side is a view offered by Russia, China and the BRICS nations; why not a multi-
polar world based on respect, the sovereignty of all nations, international law, the equal value of all people, and cooperation.
The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face that represents a countdown to a possible global nuclear catastrophe. It has been maintained since 1947 by members of a group called Chicago Atomic Scientists, who had participated in the Manhattan Project. In 2015, they moved the hands to three minutes to midnight, reflecting Climate Change. In January 2017, they moved the hands 30 seconds closer to midnight. The clock is now at 2:30 to midnight.
Because of rising tensions between the U.S., Russia and China, the dangers of a nuclear catastrophe are worse now than during the Cold War. Compounding the situation is nuclear power, which is not safe. Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island are just the most recent nuclear disasters. Added to that, 48 of America’s 64 nuclear power plants are leaking radioactive material.
The third existential threat to life on the planet is climate change, which if left unmitigated will make life on Earth nearly impossible much sooner than anyone expected.
And so, I titled my new documentary Thirty Seconds to Midnight – The Final Wake Up Call to reflect the near-term extinction of all life on the planet. No one can predict just when extinction will happen, but the threat of a nuclear exchange and the expected consequences of climate change are pushing the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight.
So, here we are, humanity’s epic battle for survival. An old paradigm based on white, colonial domination and empire versus the shared vision of others who are working for a world based on justice, international law, cooperation and the prosperity of all people.
My goal for this film is to continue to educate and open the eyes of Americans and people around the world about the most pernicious and destructive global forces that are threatening life on the planet.
Larry has several reliable sources with excellent access. He was correct on the false-flag sarin gas attack outside Damascus on August 21, 2013 (aimed at mousetrapping Obama into doing “shock and awe” against Syria). He is correct here, as well. Small wonder the Fawning Corporate Media avoid him, and others of us VIPS, like the bubonic plague.
Yep, “they” really are keeping track of all of us and what we are doing, and have developed computer technology that can do things like take control of your automobile. On March 7, after the WikiLeaks release earlier that day, Bill and Ray discussed the release, and more, in a relaxed conversation moderated by WBAI’s Live on the Fly radio host Randy Credico.
WikiLeaks’s trove of information reflects an Orwellian obsession at CIA with cyber/snooping/warfare, but also shows that with respect to defensive measures, CIA’s cyber-warrior geeks are embarrassingly inept. Small wonder that senior spook managers, White House denizens, and sleepy members of Congress do not like Julian Assange. They do not like him – not one bit.
Did President Obama know of these activities? Was his pal John Brennan acting on his own, or perhaps with a presidential wink and smile? Were Congress’s Intelligence Oversight/Overlook Committees briefed? And what’s with these rubber-stamp judges of the FISA Court? Who the hell is running the country anyway?
Bill and Ray banter in a relaxed way on the latest news, adding anecdotes, from their own personal experience, about main players past and present (including those making big bucks serving servile media). One focus is on the current turmoil in Washington where someone seems to have put something in the water. It was probably the Russians!
What follows is an article written VIPS member Kirk Wiebe, a former senior NSA official and whistleblower and a true patriot embodying the character and integrity essential for a strong, free America.
We Warned the American People about Naked Surveillance, but No One Listened
BY KIRK WIEBE
I’m from a small town in Indiana, where we often passed on knowledge with this simple bit of farmland wisdom: “If you plant onions, you’ll pretty much get onions.” Another way of stating it, perhaps more eloquently, is “You reap what you sow.”
Still another fitting bit of wisdom in the context of what we are witnessing today would be found in “Live by the sword, die by the sword.”
Over a decade and a half ago, the NSA Four (Bill Binney, Ed Loomis, Tom Drake, and myself), together with House Intelligence Committee Senior Staffer Diane Roark pleaded for a surveillance system that protected the innocent, in order to prevent the destruction of individual privacy guaranteed us all by the U.S. Constitution.
Nobody listened. No one cared. No one took corrective action.
Today, we see unfolding before our very eyes a Constitutional crisis of monumental proportions, one that threatens the very foundations of our nation’s system of governance.
People hidden in the bowels of the United States Intelligence Community are leaking classified information taken from the private phone calls of innocent people – people who have not been accused of committing any crime – to the press for purely political reasons, reasons that include an attempt to take down our duly elected administration.
Had the approach we advocated over 16 years ago been used – one that featured a built-in capability that prevented the kind of access to, and disclosure of, private information we are seeing in the news – we would not be witnessing the abject abuse of authority that is unfolding before us. President Obama’s order just before departing the White House that spread access to NSA’s intercepts to hundreds of additional people across all 17 agencies of the Intelligence Community would not have mattered. Innocent people’s private information would have been protected.
The questions remain – is anyone listening? Does anyone care? Indeed, Albert Einstein once said, “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
Is anyone taking corrective action to prevent such leaks, even in the absence of identifying the individuals who are continuing to break the law?
It might take a week, maybe two, maybe even three, depending on the IT architecture involved, to put the data protections in place.
There is no more knowledgeable a specialist on issues like this obscenely over-hyped one. Even Michael McFaul, U.S. ambassador to Russia (Dec. 2011 to Feb. 2014), who made it a practice to cultivate and encourage everyone and his brother (and sister) who were strongly opposed to Kremlin leaders, and has been a Daily Beast favorite, has ridiculed the media witch-hunt pursuit of those who dare talk to Russians. (Ray remembers reading, while in Palestine, of McFaul’s comments; strangely, Google seems unable to find them.)
It can happen/is now beginning to happen in the U.S:
“First they came for the Mexicans, then for the Muslims, then for those standing at Standing Rock, then …”
This brave man was convicted of leaking secrets because he blew the whistle on Israel’s nuclear bombmaking capabilities. He spend 18 years in prison, and he is not allowed to leave Israel. He’s also not allowed to meet with foreigners, unless it’s by chance, which this was.
Last night Ray got back from two and a half weeks in Palestine/Israel, with eight other Veterans For Peace, standing for justice for Palestinians. Some of them were fresh back from icicled beards, standing with our Native American brothers and sisters at Standing Rock – and before that, standing with native Koreans against the U.S. Navy’s carving out a nuclear submarine base at Jeju Island, South Korea, and standing with the Mayor of Okinawa against the further U.S. militarization of Japan aimed at China.
A powerful witness to Ray – not only to be part of this non-flinching, but also nonviolent, group (our Palestinian friends and we were tear-gassed three times) – but also to be STANDING in the same human (even sacred) tradition as three “Dans,” to whom Ray owes so much:
Dan Maguire, fearless professor of moral theology at Marquette;
Dan Ellsberg, whose close friend/whistleblower-follower, Mordecai Vanunu, happened to spot a few of the VFP delegation in East Jerusalem and shared supper; and
Dan Berrigan, SJ, who pondered poignantly about “standing” in an unpublished poem Ray copied from the wall of the Catholic Worker Mary House, where Dorothy Day lived and died:
++++++++++++++++++++++++
SOME
Some stood up once and sat down.
Some walked a mile and walked away.
Some stood up twice then sat down.
I’ve had it, they said.
Some walked two miles then walked away.
It’s too much, they cried.
Some stood and stood and stood.
They were taken for fools
They were taken for being taken in.
Some walked and walked and walked
They walked the earth
They walked the waters
They walked the air.
Why do you stand they were asked and
Why do you walk?
Because of the children, they said, and
Because of the heart, and
Because of the bread,
Because
The cause
Is the heart’s beat
And the children born
And the risen Bread.
Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
“A tribute to my dear and honored friend, Eqbal Ahmed” Daniel Berrigan
