"Covert Action" - Confrontation or Collaboration? - or Meme?

By Aki J. Peritz and Eric Rosenbach - Posting #211

A report or more cultural programming? Should the CIA have briefed Congress on secret intelligence programs? What is the legal basis for the President's electronic surveillance program? Is the DNI actually in charge of the Intelligence Community?

Debate about intelligence issues has dominated public discourse since the attacks on 9/11. Unfortunately, the size, complexity and closed nature of the U.S. Intelligence Community often stymie individuals from differentiating fact and fiction on intelligence issues. The vast majority of members of Congress face an even more daunting task: They must provide important oversight with only a very limited background on intelligence. As the 9/11 Commission noted, "Few members of Congress have the broad knowledge of intelligence activities or the know-how about technologies employed."

The former Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Bob Graham, believed that members of Congress needed a non-partisan, objective reference that would provide a foundation for improving basic knowledge of intelligence issues currently facing this country. Hence, Eric Rosenbach and Aki J. Peritz, drafted Confrontation or Collaboration? Congress and the Intelligence Community at the Harvard Kennedy School in order to meet that need.

The revised version of Confrontation or Collaboration provides the public with a similar reference. Each chapter is a succinct memo that highlights important information about the Intelligence Community or an issue critical to our national security. The book begins by presenting basic organizational and legal issues pertinent to the Intelligence Community. Next, it traces the history of controversial topics like electronic surveillance and interrogations. Finally, it closes by highlighting new and current challenges that will undoubtedly dominate policymakers' agendas in the next several years.

The goal of Confrontation or Collaboration is to provide a guide to the complexities of the Intelligence Community to policymakers, legislators, students and the public. We hope this book leads to more informed debates and decisions about critical national security issues facing our nation.

CONTENTS

Background Memos

Intelligence Basics
Organization of the Intelligence Community
Congressional Oversight of the Intelligence Community
The Congressional Authorization and Appropriation Processes
Informing Congress of Intelligence Activities
Covert Action
National Intelligence Estimates
Defense Intelligence
Domestic Intelligence
Intelligence and International Cooperation

Issue Memos

Intelligence Reform
Interrogations and Intelligence
Electronic Surveillance and FISA
Cyber Security and the Intelligence Community
Overhead Surveillance
The National Interest, Energy Security and the Intelligence Community
Terrorist Safehavens and the Intelligence Community
The Role of Private Corporations in the Intelligence Community
The USA-PATRIOT Act
State and Local Fusion Centers

WAKE UP AMERICA!!!....Its "OUR" country!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don 　

References:

The Ominous Parallels Report [Full Report]

Confrontation or Collaboration? Congress and the Intelligence Community [Full Report]

The Oklahoma City bombing: A step toward 9/11?

By Kevin Barrett - Posting #210

This Thursday, April 19th, 2012, is the 17th anniversary of the OKC bombing.

Let's give this some historical context:

In 1993, the FBI built the bomb that killed six people and injured more than a thousand in the World Trade Center. (The FBI informant who hatched and supervised the "radical Muslim plot" is on tape discussing this fact with his FBI handler, asking "why didn't the FBI build a dud, as promised?")

The first WTC bombing was a test designed to find out just how deeply the American people were hypnotized. Would Americans accept the official version of events, even if it required them to believe that a "terrorist" returned to the rental center to get his deposit back on the bomb truck?!

Sure they would: April showers brings "another" Terrorist Plots, Hatched by the F.B.I.

On April 19th, 1995, another FBI-assisted mass-hypnosis-test was conducted - this time in Oklahoma City. Would the American people buy the notion that a fertilizer bomb in a truck parked outside a building could blow up the whole building from the inside? Once again, Americans passed their hypnosis test with flying colors.

Then on 9/11/2001, it was time for the big event. Americans were permanently infantilized through trauma-assisted ultra-intensive mass hypnosis. If they believed this, they would, in the future, believe everything Big Brother told them.

And they would have…except for a little thing called the truth movement.

WAKE UP AMERICA!!!....Its "OUR" country!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don

References: From my "Master File" ;) ribit ribit ribit

Kevin here's a little more "historical" context to put things in perspective:

"A Noble Lie, Oklahoma City 1995", Part 1

"A Noble Lie, Oklahoma City 1995", Part 2

Terrorist For The FBI

FBI Spies and Suspects, in Their Own Words

MoJo's Investigation of Terrorism Informants

SAIC did the security assessment on the World Trade Center 1986.

In an interesting coincidence, while the Carlyle/BDM subsidiary Vinnell Corp was training the Saudi Arabian National Guard, SAIC was training the Saudi Navy and bringing Saudi military personnel to company headquarters in San Diego for further study. Simultaneously, Booz Allen Hamilton was managing the Saudi Marine Corps and running the Saudi Armed Forces Staff College. Vinnell now works with SAIC to train the Iraqi military.

Vinnell Corporation

The Vinnell Corporation SAIC Relationship

U.S. Military Expertise For Sale: Private Military Consultants 1998 (.pdf)

The New Mercenaries and the Privatization of Conflict 1999

Massive military contractor's media mess 08/16/03

David Kay and the CIA William Bowles 06/10/03

SAIC employee David Kay chaired the Iraq Survey Group

SAIC Global Information Grid-Bandwidth Expansion Contract

GIG-BE was awarded to SAIC in 2001 for $877 million. This contract was for the development, instantiation, and maintenance of the GIG-BE network. SAIC instantly divided the equipment and tasks into subcontracts. These subcontracts are as follows:

. Ciena Corporation- optical transport segment worth $200-$300 million over two years

. Sycamore Networks- optical cross-connect segment worth $100-$150 million

. Cisco Systems- multiservice provisioning platform segment worth $150-$200 million

. Juniper Networks- core IP router portion worth $150-$200 million

. By Light- installation and maintenance worth $100-$150 million

Bombshell: Saudi and U.S. Governments Protected Hijackers

Co-Chair of 9/11 Inquiry: American Government Covered Up State Assistance to Hijackers

FBI found direct ties between 9/11 hijackers and Saudis living in Florida; Congress Kept in Dark

The Deceased Crown Prince Sultan “Bush” Epitomize Highly Questionable Saudi 9/11 Connections

The FBI Allowed the 1993 WTC Bombing to Happen

Early July 1992: FBI Fires Informant Who Has Penetrated WTC Bombing Group

9/11 Questions Bubble Up in the Media ribit ribit ribit

Who is Ken, or Kenneth, Wainstein? ribit ribit ribit

Classified documents contradict FBI on post 9/11probe of Saudis, Graham says

(((3))) SAIC Banks Billions from Top Secret America (((3)))

By VVV Public Relations - Posting #208

The Terrorism Industrial Complex a.k.a. “Top Secret America” may sound like tin foil hat conspiracy to some, but many of you will remember it as the name of an extensive investigation by the Washington Post, whose editors’ intro says: “[This] is a project nearly two years in the making that describes the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks… When it comes to national security, all too often no expense is spared and few questions are asked – with the result an enterprise so massive that nobody in government has a full understanding of it. It is, as Dana Priest and William M. Arkin have found, ubiquitous, often inefficient and mostly invisible to the people it is meant to protect and who fund it.”

Top Secret America

Short of storming the Beltway, the American people may never learn just how much of their money has been pillaged, plundered and simply wasted in the name of “national security” since 9/11, but our research suggests it could easily be an amount that exceeds not only the billions in bailout bucks given to the Banksters since 2008 but the trillions paid to the War Profiteers since 2001. In fact, just as the money being squandered on militarily useless F-22 and F-35 fighter jets will probably exceed our $1.3 trillion federal deficit (see our previous reports), the often untraceable trillions poured into the post-9/11 “too big to fail”, “war on terrorism”, “homeland security” and “black ops” troughs by our corporate-owned politicians and well-lobbied bureaucrats might easily approximate our $15 trillion national debt.

U.S. Debt Clock

One of the hundreds of “security contractors” feeding at those troughs is SAIC – formerly Science Applications International Corporation. Headquartered in McLean VA, SAIC is “a Fortune 500 scientific, engineering, and technology applications company working in national security, energy and the environment, critical infrastructure, and health”. The company’s 46,000+ employees serve the Department of Defense (DoD), the intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal government agencies. SAIC had revenue of $11.1 billion for its fiscal year 2010.

Top Secret America SAIC

Since 1995 SAIC has contributed over $3.8 million to political campaigns, split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, with Barack Obama and John McCain being the top recipients. That amount is eclipsed by the more than $24 million they’ve invested in lobbying since 1997. And over that same period, SAIC’s penalties for federal contractor misconduct have far exceeded their pay-to-play payola: SAIC paid a $24.9 million settlement for rigging bids on General Services Administration (GSA) contracts, $5 million to the Air Force for false claims and defective pricing, and all told over $32 million for a dozen different instances of government fraud, ethics and other violations. Of course, all their penalties and payola combined is chump change compared to the more than $63 billion in defense, security and other federal contracts SAIC has bagged over the past ten years.

SAIC Campaign Finance Information

Federal Contractor Misconduct Database

Prime Award Spending Data

Apparently its all forgive and forget at the GSA, because just last week they awarded SAIC a $5 billion telecom systems contract – forgiving their history of bid-rigging, and forgetting that the City of New York recently demanded a $600 million refund on the botched and corruption-riddled “CityTime” system that SAIC installed for them.

SAIC Awarded $5 Billion Telecommunication Contract

Bloomberg to SAIC: New York City

Mike Bloomberg Letter to Walter P. Havenstien CEO of SAIC

SAIC will also be getting at least a $90 million bite out of the $4 billion or so that’s been budgeted to relocate the Department of Homeland Security to what was once St. Elizabeths Hospital, an insane asylum. Conceived in the Mad Hatter days of Bush-Cheney, the megabucks DHS relocation boondoggle is yet another fiscal insanity that has continued unaffected by any imagined wave of “Change” in 2008. SAIC’s piece is to implement a “secure and scalable” IT infrastructure.

Why SAIC would be trusted to provide DHS with a “secure” anything for their new 4.5 million square foot Ministry of Truth facility is a mystery to me. After all, it was only a few weeks ago that they acknowledged the theft of tapes containing the confidential personal information of 4.9 million Tricare military beneficiaries that were allegedly sitting in the car of one of their employees.

Tricare Military Beneficiaries Being Informed of Stolen Personal Data

Anyway… False flag op or not, there can be no debate that since 11 September 2001 trillions of taxpayer dollars have been spent to beat the boogeymen, real or contrived. Has it been worth it? Do you think Americans are “safer” today than we were ten years ago? If so, has any security gained been worth the cost, and the personal privacy and freedoms lost?

Related Videos:

White Collar Crime NYC Gov

Are We Safer? Top Secret America

Friends In High Places (We Got The Originals)

WAKE UP AMERICA!!!....Its "OUR" country!!!

Love "Light" and Energy

_Don 　

References:

U.S. Debt Clock

Top Secret America SAIC

SAIC Audit Report In Brief

Complete SAIC Audit Report (.pdf)

Comptroller Calls "TIME-OUT” On SAIC $286 Million Contract

Management Of 911 Call Center Project Was Ineffective