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Edward Scissorhands Snowden

PostPosted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 12:45 pm
by MinM
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Edward Snowden (CIA asset turned CIA cut-out?)
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"Did someone help Ed Snowden punch a hole in the NSA?" by Jon Rappoport:

"Snowden worked for the CIA. He was pushed up the ranks quickly, from an IT position in the US to a posting in Geneva, under diplomatic cover, to run security on the CIA’s computer systems there.

Then, Snowden quit the CIA and eventually ended up at Booz Allen, a private contractor. He was assigned to NSA, where he stole the secrets and exposed the NSA.

The CIA and NSA have a long contentious relationship. The major issue is, who is king of US intelligence? We’re talking about an internal war.

Snowden could have been the CIA’s man at NSA, where certain CIA players helped him access files he wouldn’t have been able to tap otherwise."


"NSA leaker: are there serious cracks in Ed Snowden’s story?" by Jon Rappoport

"Did the CIA give the NSA documents to Ed Snowden?" by Jon Rappoport

The two big oddities in the Snowden story are his remarkable employment history and his remarkable access to high-level secrets for somebody who was a relatively low-level employee of an outside contractor. Snowden was recruited as a CIA asset at an early age, probably is still a CIA asset today, and could very easily have been manipulated by the CIA into a position where he could plausibly pose as a whistleblower against the NSA. This does not impugn his personal credibility or the credibility of his information, but answers some big mysteries about how he came to be the face of all the secrets.

Barry just replaced the #2 at the CIA with an outsider: "President Obama's pick for the CIA's second-in-command once held erotica nights at her Baltimore bookstore" She replaces a career CIA guy who retired, in the words of John Brennan, "to spend more time with his family and to pursue other professional opportunities". Standard firing words. A thirty-three year CIA veteran replaced by Barry with an erotica expert.

Ever since 9/11, the CIA has been losing power and influence to the Pentagon. Most recently, Barry is moving the current jewel of American might, the drone program, from the CIA to the Pentagon. The NSA is part of the Pentagon (something that is seldom mentioned). The way things are going, erotica may be all the CIA has left.

http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/ ... d-snowden/

Re: Edward Scissorhands Snowden

PostPosted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 9:11 pm
by MinM
My Creeping Concern that the NSA Leaker Edward Snowden is not who he Purports to be…

I hate to do this but I feel obligated to share, as the story unfolds, my creeping concern that the NSA leaker is not who he purports to be, and that the motivations involved in the story may be more complex than they appear to be.

This is in no way to detract from the great courage of Glenn Greenwald in reporting the story, and the gutsiness of the Guardian in showcasing this kind of reporting, which is a service to America that US media is not performing at all.

It is just to raise some cautions as the story unfolds, and to raise some questions about how it is unfolding, based on my experience with high-level political messaging. Some of Snowden’s emphases seem to serve an intelligence/police state objective, rather than to challenge them.

a) He is super-organized, for a whistleblower, in terms of what candidates, the White House, the State Dept. et al call ‘message discipline.’ He insisted on publishing a power point in the newspapers that ran his initial revelations. I gather that he arranged for a talented filmmaker to shoot the Greenwald interview. These two steps – which are evidence of great media training, really ‘PR 101′ – are virtually never done (to my great distress) by other whistleblowers, or by progressive activists involved in breaking news, or by real courageous people who are under stress and getting the word out. They are always done, though, by high-level political surrogates.

b) In the Greenwald video interview, I was concerned about the way Snowden conveys his message. He is not struggling for words, or thinking hard, as even bright, articulate whistleblowers under stress will do. Rather he appears to be transmitting whole paragraphs smoothly, without stumbling. To me this reads as someone who has learned his talking points – again the way that political campaigns train surrogates to transmit talking points.

c) He keeps saying things like, “If you are a journalist and they think you are the transmission point of this info, they will certainly kill you.” Or: “I fully expect to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.” He also keeps stressing what he will lose: his $200,000 salary, his girlfriend, his house in Hawaii. These are the kinds of messages that the police state would LIKE journalists to take away; a real whistleblower also does not put out potential legal penalties as options, and almost always by this point has a lawyer by his/her side who would PROHIBIT him/her from saying, ‘come get me under the Espionage Act.” Finally in my experience, real whistleblowers are completely focused on their act of public service and trying to manage the jeopardy to themselves and their loved ones; they don’t tend ever to call attention to their own self-sacrifice. That is why they are heroes, among other reasons. But a police state would like us all to think about everything we would lose by standing up against it.

d) It is actually in the Police State’s interest to let everyone know that everything you write or say everywhere is being surveilled, and that awful things happen to people who challenge this. Which is why I am not surprised that now he is on UK no-fly lists – I assume the end of this story is that we will all have a lesson in terrible things that happen to whistleblowers. That could be because he is a real guy who gets in trouble; but it would be as useful to the police state if he is a fake guy who gets in ‘trouble.’

e) In stories that intelligence services are advancing (I would call the prostitutes-with-the-secret-service such a story), there are great sexy or sex-related mediagenic visuals that keep being dropped in, to keep media focus on the issue. That very pretty pole-dancing Facebooking girlfriend who appeared for, well, no reason in the media coverage…and who keeps leaking commentary, so her picture can be recycled in the press…really, she happens to pole-dance? Dan Ellsberg’s wife was and is very beautiful and doubtless a good dancer but somehow she took a statelier role as his news story unfolded…

f) Snowden is in Hong Kong, which has close ties to the UK, which has done the US’s bidding with other famous leakers such as Assange. So really there are MANY other countries that he would be less likely to be handed over from…

http://www.globalresearch.ca/my-creepin ... be/5339161

Re: Edward Scissorhands Snowden

PostPosted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 9:30 pm
by MinM
...n the past, I've mentioned an eccentric writer named Jon Rappoport. He impressed me in the Reagan era with some good reportage published in the L.A. Weekly, but in later times he...well, let's just say the dude got weird. Annoyingly weird.

His latest essays on the Snowden controversy are in this tradition of weirdness. Even so, I must confess that this stuff is dangerously intriguing. See here and here.

In short and in sum, Rappoport thinks that Ed Snowden has a suspicious bio. And let's face it: He does. Young Snowy segued into the heart of the American intelligence system with unnerving rapidity. No, he didn't go to the prom wearing a cloak and dagger -- but only because he was never formally graduated.

In 2003, at age 19, without a high school diploma, Snowden enlists in the Army. He begins a training program to join the Special Forces. The sequence here is fuzzy. At what point after enlistment can a new soldier start this training program? Does he need to demonstrate some exceptional ability before Special Forces puts him in that program?

Snowden breaks both legs in a training exercise. He’s discharged from the Army. Is that automatic? How about healing and then resuming Army service? Just asking.

If he was accepted in the Special Forces training program because he had special computer skills, then why discharge him simply because he broke both legs?

Circa 2003 (?), Snowden gets a job as a security guard for an NSA facility at the University of Maryland. He specifically wanted to work for NSA? It was just a generic job opening he found out about?

Also in 2003 (?), Snowden shifts jobs. He’s now in the CIA, in IT. He has no high school diploma. He’s a young computer genius?

In 2007, Snowden is sent to Geneva. He’s only 23 years old. The CIA gives him diplomatic cover there. He’s put in charge of maintaining computer-network security. Major job. Obviously, he has access to a very wide range of classified documents. Sound a little odd? Again, just asking. He’s just a kid. Maybe he has his GED by now. Otherwise, he still doesn’t have a high school diploma....

Sorry for such a lengthy quote, but Rappoport's right: Snowy is an oddity. He's a bit like David Lynch's Inland Empire: Admirable and inexplicable.

In a follow-up piece, Rappoport trots out his Big Theory that Snowden has always been a CIA employee, deep cover, and that he hopped on over to the NSA to ratfuck No Such Agency pursuant to an ongoing NSA-CIA turf war. ...

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2013/06/ ... -hide.html

Re: Edward Scissorhands Snowden

PostPosted: Sun Jun 16, 2013 11:00 am
by elfismiles
I'm still not sure what to make of Snowden but his connection to Booz Allen Hamilton reminded me of something...

Then, Snowden quit the CIA and eventually ended up at Booz Allen, a private contractor. He was assigned to NSA, where he stole the secrets and exposed the NSA.


...


Booze Allen Hamilton and FOIA Distraction Strategems

In February of 1998, Booze Allen Hamilton was under contract with the United States Government to help federal officials comply with Executive Order 12958. The order was intended to facilitate the declassification of federal information. It “set in motion a five year time limit (April 1995 – April 2000) within which all classified information more than 25 years old and judged to be of permanent historical value shall be reviewed for declassification and declassified unless it meets certain definitive exemption criteria. All material not meeting the exemption criteria will be automatically declassified-whether or not the records have been reviewed” (1).

On February 13, 1998, Booz Allen Hamilton completed a document titled “Operations Security Impact on Declassification Management Within the Department of Defense.” This report(2)can be read online at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod_opsec.html It made a number of declassification recommendations after its authors reviewed relevant archived materials, spoke with archival staff and interviewed three key individuals: Jean Schauble, the Director of the Records Declassification Division at the National Archives And Records Administration; LTC Gary Moore, the Operations Officer of the U.S. Army Declassification Activity; and “one interviewee from the Defense Intelligence Agency [name DELETED].”


Consider the following 1998 document when thinking about the release of information by our (and other) governments:

“The use of the Internet could reduce the unrestrained public appetite for “secrets” by providing good faith distraction material”

“A strategy could then be devised by DoD and the components, based upon this evaluation, to implement a coherent and complimentary plan to achieve the declassification goals. For example:

=> Diversion: List of interesting declassified material – i.e. Kennedy assassination data.”


“Operations Security Impact On Declassification Management Within The Department of Defense” http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod_opsec.html
“Internet Honeypot Info” via Rigorous Intuition forums
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/
http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board/v ... hp?t=11414
“Diversion” and “Good Faith Distraction”: On the Use Value of Conspiracy Data for the Power Elite http://www.zmag.org
http://www.zmag.org/blog/view/970


Re: Edward Scissorhands Snowden

PostPosted: Sun Jun 16, 2013 1:26 pm
by JackRiddler
Rapoport hinges on "could have been." Sure. I like the hole in the NSA, and the CIA isn't looking better for it. If this scenario is true, I look forward to the NSA ratting out the CIA's dirt.

Wolf's argument amounts to suspicion that a high school dropout is well educated, thinking strategically, planning, and as well prepared for his public statements as Naomi Wolf would be. With certain authoritarian morons on DU, it's descended to the class bias that if this guy says "architecture of surveillance," he could only be getting it put in his mouth by some hidden Harvard grad with a pedigree.

(Thread proliferation! Already did Wolf on the other one. This is not a complaint per se. The way of RI.)

Re: Edward Scissorhands Snowden

PostPosted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 11:05 am
by Wombaticus Rex
Interesting that Canon gives Rappaport his due, I would have phrased it almost exactly the same. Rappaport is really the American Icke, to me: a broad, open mind with no filtration system in sight.

Elfis, that is a heck of a catch. Seeing those sentences is an almost visceral shock, I've written them before myself, not verbatim, but dang.

“The use of the Internet could reduce the unrestrained public appetite for “secrets” by providing good faith distraction material”

Re: Edward Scissorhands Snowden

PostPosted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 6:44 pm
by Hammer of Los
...

I've spoken in favour of Rappaport before.

No, I don't think he's a scientologist.

Or an anti semite.

Icke's a complex case.

Israel Shamir clearly is very dodgy indeed.

Agreed, Wombat. Elfy's post is a good one.

...

Re: Edward Scissorhands Snowden

PostPosted: Sun Feb 14, 2016 9:41 am
by MinM

Re: Edward Scissorhands Snowden

PostPosted: Sun Aug 07, 2016 9:22 am
by MinM
"Pentagon Papers, CIA and the Lies of Daniel Ellsberg" Paralleling the theory that the Snowden revelations were just an inter-agency rivalry. It could be that this is the only reason we ever find out about anything.
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A ‘spy vs spy’ episode

Deep State Series, part eight


“Nobody on the left questions Ellsberg about these things” -Doug Valentine

There is a CIA liaised Ford Foundation funded, Nation Institute project ‘Tom Dispatch’ 7,800 word excuse for an article or example of how the Daniel Ellsberg propaganda myth of the left never seems to run out of traction. The lame premise of ‘the forgotten whistleblower’ is to prostitute the legacy of a dead man, Rand Corporation’s Anthony Russo, whilst in actuality reinforcing a lie of 40 plus years: Ellsberg’s disingenuous rationale for ‘leaking’ The Pentagon Papers. It is amazing to me that CIA cover story apologists are still working an Indochina information operations project forty plus years after the fact. But on second sight, this makes perfect sense. If the ‘Myth of Daniel Ellsberg’ were ever to unravel, so would the decades of CIA misinformation on a whole plethora of cover stories (official lies) perpetrated on the American public.

Douglas Valentine, who for years investigated the CIA’s ‘Phoenix Program’ in Vietnam, and more, interviewing Indochina clandestine operations veterans who were on location, in that era, in 2003 penned an article; ‘Will The Real Daniel Ellsberg Please Stand Up?’

“The House of Representatives launched deeper probes into CIA drug smuggling and the CIA’s Phoenix Program in early 1971, and, naturally, the CIA at this critical time took extensive countermeasures in a concerted effort to conceal these facts. What is relevant … is that in June 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the aptly named Pentagon Papers, shifting blame for the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War from the CIA to the military, while distracting public attention from the investigations of the CIA’s Phoenix Program and the CIA’s involvement in drug smuggling”

The article is worth a read. I witnessed CIA delivery of heroin to the United States Army at Vung Tau, Vietnam, in 1971. There is no ‘conspiracy theory’ involved with CIA international narcotics trafficking, only the actual conspiracies that have been and continue to be carried out. Ellsberg’s denials concerning any knowledge of, or connections to this trade, even as he is established to have been moving among and interacting with its principal players, is a red flag that should have warned people off embracing anything this career CIA disinformation specialist has ever asserted.

Ten years after Valentine had published his Ellsberg article in 2003, James Corbett spent nearly an hour in discussion with Valentine on the very same, developing a larger body of information for radio you can listen to HERE.

If he [Ellsberg] would keep these incredibly important two years of his life secret, he would have no problem keeping other, more important secrets” -Douglas Valentine

The first question Valentine raises in his radio interview is, when Ellsberg wrote his autobiography aptly named “Secrets”, why did he keep major portions of his story ‘secret’? Ellsberg’s connections to the heroin trade’s principal players, the fact he’d been in liaison with the CIA covert war (separate to the regular military) bosses and was plugged into the highest levels of the Indochina covert operations scene, as his work assignment. Related to this, Ellsberg had been assigned to perform covert operations in Saigon by the CIA chief of station. One of Ellsberg’s colleagues of that era then drops the bombshell he was the one who’d passed along instruction for Ellsberg to release the Pentagon Papers. This person is a contact Valentine had been sent to by former CIA Director and one time CIA Vietnam ‘dirty war’ (Phoenix Program) boss William Colby, who incidently (1996) almost certainly was murdered for having been too free with giving up the agency’s dirty laundry. Moreover, it is credibly alleged William Colby himself had sent on the instruction for the Pentagon Papers release. Finally, the question is raised, why is Ellsberg still associating with those very CIA people he worked with in Vietnam (he avoids talking about in his autobiography), decades after the fact?

Valentine’s research matches the entirely independent (and highly suppressed) material in the exposé of a former Pentagon liaison to the CIA, ‘The Secret Team‘, by Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty. The reasons given for the Pentagon Papers release, by both Valentine and Prouty, is to shift any scrutiny and public attention away from the CIA and its activities in Vietnam; inclusive of narcotics trafficking & dirty war assassinations (Valentine’s focus) and how clandestine CIA policies were implemented to the detriment of the USA national interest (Prouty’s focus.)

It was Colonel L Fletcher Prouty first blew the whistle, over forty years ago, on Daniel Ellsberg as at the center of a CIA information operation (PSYOP) to shift responsibility for the immense policy failures of Vietnam from the CIA onto the Pentagon, the full chapter of what follows can be read online HERE

We have been saying that the release of the Pentagon Papers by the former CIA agent and long-time associate of Edward G. Lansdale, Daniel Ellsberg, may have been the opening attack by the CIA to cover its disengagement not only from the physical conflict in Indochina, but also from the historical record of that disastrous event. In this effort, the CIA appears to be trying to hide behind its own best cover story, that it is only an intelligence agency and that its fine intelligence work during the past twenty years on the subject of Southeast Asia is all that we should remember.

Now we find in Cooper another CIA apologist using the Foreign Affairs review to follow up and to praise Ellsberg. In fact, Cooper’s exhilaration in his task gets the better of him when he says, “Thanks to Daniel Ellsberg …” he means it! This near-endorsement of Ellsberg by a CIA writer in the publication of the Council on Foreign Relations is all the more significant when one learns that this Council is supported by foundations which are in turn directed by men from the Bechtel Corporation, Chase Manhattan Bank, Cummins Engine, Corning Glass, Kimberly-Clark, Monsanto Chemical, and dozens of others. Not long ago, the political scientist Lester Milbraith noted that “the Council on Foreign Relations, while not financed by government, works so closely with it that it is difficult to distinguish Council actions stimulated by government from autonomous actions.” And while we appreciate that Foreign Affairs states clearly that “It does not accept responsibility for the views expressed in any articles, signed or unsigned, which appear on [its] pages”, its record and especially its list of authors over the years, from John Foster Dulles in its first issue, speaks for itself.

This whole plot thickens to the point of near-hypocrisy when Cooper cites the August 3, 1954, National Intelligence Estimate. The same Pentagon Paper from which he quotes also contains a report on the year-long activity of the Saigon Military Mission. This report, written by Edward G. Lansdale of the CIA, began in that same month of August 1954. While the NIE was speaking disparagingly of Ngo Dunh Diem, the SMM was supporting the Diem regime during the days after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. This team and all of its efforts were CIA originated, CIA supported, CIA manned, and CIA directed. From 1954 through 1963, all American activity in Vietnam was dominated by the CIA. Although Lansdale and his key men, such as Charles Bohanon, Lucien Conein (the U.S. go between at the time of the Diem coup d’état, Bill Rosson, Arthur Arundel, Rufus Phillips, and others were listed in the Pentagon Papers with military rank, they were all in the employ of the CIA and were operating as CIA agents.

This is what the Pentagon Papers reveal as happening in 1954 and 1955. Now the CIA would have us believe that it was an objective and blameless intelligence agency all through those horrible years of the Vietnam build-up. However, it was the CIA that hid behind its own cover and that of State and Defense to fan the flames of a smoldering conflict. To add insult to injury, the CIA would have us believe that Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, the DOD, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon were all to blame because they would not read and heed their NIE. Where were the CIA officials of the clandestine sector when their own men were writing these National Intelligence Estimates?

The big question is, If the National Estimates produced by the intelligence side of the CIA were so good, then why didn’t the men in the clandestine operations office read and follow the advice of their own estimates? Yes, the CIA likes to write about itself, and the CIA likes to have others write about it, as long as what they write is laudatory and skillful propaganda.

How can the CIA rationalize the fact that at the very same time it was sending its most powerful and experienced team of agents into action in Indochina, after its successes with Magsaysay in the Philippines, it was writing NIE for the President saying exactly the opposite? It is alarming enough today to put the Ellsberg releases and the Cooper tales together, but what did the CIA have in mind in 1954 when it was doing such disparate things? What did the CIA expect President Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles to believe: The NIE that said we couldn’t win with the “frail Diem regime”, or the SMM clandestine operation that was designed to support the same Diem regime? Or could it have been that they either did not know about the secret operation or were improperly briefed? This is the very heart of the matter. This is what this book is all about.

To put this in another context, when Eisenhower was planning for the ultimate summit meeting in May 1960, did the NIE say that all was going well and nothing should be done to upset the chances of success of that most important mission; and did the DD/P come in with his briefing for the U-2 flight at the same time? Or perhaps was there an NIE and no briefing about the U-2? How did the ST handle that one?

Or to carry this same theme over to early 1961, did the NIE correctly foretell that the Cubans would not rise up and support an invasion of so few troops without United States troops and air cover; and how did the DD/P brief the secret operation to President Kennedy to perform an invasion operation that was patently diametrically opposed to the NIE?

To drive home the point of this duality farther, Cooper states: “In November 1961, shortly after General Taylor and Walt Rostow returned from their trip to Vietnam recommending, inter alia, that the U.S. ‘offer to introduce into South Vietnam a military task force’, an NlE warned that any escalation of American military activity in Vietnam would be matched by similar escalation by Hanoi … the North Vietnamese would respond to an increased U.S. commitment with an offsetting increase in infiltrated support for the Viet Cong.”

Again the Intelligence Directorate of the CIA plays the lily white role. At about the same time, July 1961, the Pentagon Papers show that a report, again by Edward C. Lansdale, at that time a brigadier general assigned to McNamara’s staff and still, as ever, a strong supporter of the CIA, lists the very considerable amount of unconventional warfare resources in Southeast Asia, which were supported by and operating under the CIA. These military and paramilitary forces added into the tens of thousands of armed men and were liberally supported by American men, American money, and American equipment, all put in place under the direction of the CIA. The Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, General Cabell, had just ordered the ClA-operated United States Marine Corps helicopter squadron from Laos, where things had turned from bad to worse, into South Vietnam, where things were going to turn from bad to worse. They were flown into the Camau Peninsula by Americans, and they were supported by Americans for the purpose of airlifting the Special Forces Elite troops of Ngo Dinh Nhu for action against the citizens of that terrorized area. This was another example of what was going on in the covert field at the same time that Intelligence was putting out an Estimate to the contrary. We have Cooper to thank for the “nice” story and Ellsberg to thank for the “not-so-nice” story. Who was President Kennedy to believe — the man who came in with the NIE, or the man who came in to brief him about the tremendous clandestine and paramilitary operations? Or did they tell the President about both?

Today, the CIA would like us to believe that it had challenged the validity of the hallowed Domino Theory by advising Lyndon B. Johnson that, with the possible exception of Cambodia, it is likely that no nation in the area would quickly succumb to Communism as a result of the fall of Laos and South Vietnam. Furthermore, a continuation of the spread of Communism in the area would not be irreparable.

In 1961, the same time as this quote, Maxwell Taylor, the White House spokesman of the clandestine side of the CIA, informed President Kennedy that “the fall of South Vietnam to Communism would lead to the fairly rapid extension of Communist control, or complete accommodation to Communism, in the rest of the mainland of South East Asia and in Indonesia. The strategic implications worldwide, particularly in the Orient, would be extremely serious.” In those days, Maxwell Taylor expressed more properly the views of the CIA (DD/P) than those of the DOD where he was held in awe and suspicion after his return from retirement to become a member of the Kennedy “inside” staff.

General Taylor continued to espouse this view even after he moved to the Pentagon as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On January 22, 1964, in a memo to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, he said, “A loss of South Vietnam to the Communists will presage an early erosion of the remainder of our position in that subcontinent.” Even though he had moved to the Pentagon, Taylor’s memoranda on South Vietnam were written by the Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activity, an office within the confines of the Pentagon, but an office that had been created to work with the CIA, and which by that date had become a regular conduit for CIA thought and action.

Then, McNamara picked up this same “party line” in his memo to President Johnson (at that time his memoranda on this subject were written either by Lansdale or Bill Bundy, both CIA men) of March 16, 1967 “… Southeast Asia will probably fall under Communist dominance, all of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia … Burma … Indonesia … Malaysia … Thailand … Philippines … India … Australia … New Zealand … Taiwan … Korea and Japan ….” By now, everyone was putting all pressure possible on Johnson, and as noted, they used all of the dominoes. Yet the CIA today would have us believe they were only the voice of the DD/I and not the DD/P speaking, through SACSA, to Maxwell Taylor, thence to McNamara, with input from Bundy and Lansdale, and on to Rusk and Johnson. No wonder the CIA wants men like Cooper and Ellsberg writing for them.

The final irony is discovered when the Cooper story begins to pit the National Estimates against other Ellsberg data in 1964-1965. He states that the NIE of late 1964 claimed that, ” . . . we do not believe that such actions [against the North] would have crucial effect in the daily lives of the overwhelming majority of the North Vietnamese population. We do not believe that attacks on industrial targets would so exacerbate current economic difficulties as to create unmanageable control problems [for the Hanoi regime] … would probably be willing to suffer some damage to the country in the course of a test of wills with the U.S. over the course of events in South Vietnam.” Then, as if to place the blame on the military, he adds, “As the Pentagon historians note, this view had little influence on the contingency papers which emerged.”

The most remarkable thing about this paragraph from Foreign Affairs is that it is directly the opposite of the views presented in the Pentagon Papers as the “William Bundy memo” on “Actions Available to the United States after Tonkin”, which is dated August 11, 1964. Bill Bundy was at that time no longer sitting in the Pentagon; he was working for the ST as Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. However, overriding that position, Bill Bundy was always the ready spokesman and puppet, in both the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, for the CIA. He had been with the CIA for ten years, was the son-in-law of Dean Acheson, and has been reported, as of this writing, to be in line for the position of editor of Foreign Affairs.

In this utterly fantastic memo, CIA spokesman Bill Bundy listed pages of “dirty tricks” and increasing pressures that were to be brought to bear against Hanoi, including the Rostow favorite, “tit for tat” actions. By late 1964, military escalation had begun, and the role of the CIA did not diminish — it was just overshadowed by the greater military magnitude. The flames that the CIA and the greater ST had ignited were faced by the military. However, even this huge force was never able to snuff them out; it just had to stand there and let them burn themselves out.

Then the Cooper account presents Dr. Sherman Kent, the long-time chief of the Board of National Estimates saying: “The nature of our calling requires that we pretend as hard as we are able that the wish is indeed the fact and that the policy-maker will invariably defer to our findings …” He feels that his associates’ concern about their influence is misplaced: “… no matter what we tell the policymaker, and no matter how right we are and how convincing, he will upon occasion disregard the thrust of our findings for reasons beyond our ken. If influence cannot be our goal, what should it be? … It should be to be relevant within the area of your competence, and above all it should be to be credible.”

Sherman Kent is an old pro. He knows his business and is one of the very best in his field; but how strange the context of this Foreign Affairs essay must seem to him. While he did prepare these NIE, his own associates in clandestine operations and his own boss, the DCI, were fanning out all over Southeast Asia under the cover of his professional expertise, not only oblivious and unheeding of his work, but making mockery of it. Such are the ways of the ST.

When a National Estimate is presented by the same house that presents the collateral and usually opposite view of Special Operations, the Agency pulls the rug from under the feet of its own best achievements and the men responsible for them. Allen Dulles was wrong when he wrote in 1948, along with Jackson and Correa, that the two broad functions of Intelligence and Special Operations should be under the same man and in the same agency. There is nothing wrong with the NIE system and with men like Sherman Kent, Ray Cline, and Bob Amory. The evil is on the other side; and in spite of the vigorous efforts of Agency zealots, who have attempted to rewrite the history of the past quarter-century, we cannot but take some faith in those words of Saint John, that Allen Dulles chose for the entrance way of the new CIA building: “The truth shall make you free.” This attempt to warp the truth will not.

It might also have been well if the Agency and its disciples had reconsidered their own “more appropriate choice” for a motto: “Look before you leap.” The American public and the world for which Arnold Toynbee speaks, prefer Truth.

*
https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2016/08/05 ... -ellsberg/

Novem5er » Sat Aug 06, 2016 9:29 am wrote:
Grizzly » Fri Aug 05, 2016 9:02 pm wrote:Is something cooking?

Huge Edward Snowden leak incoming. He just posted this code and then deleted within minutes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/com ... st_posted/

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ffdae96f8dd292374a966ec8b57d9cc680ce1d23cb7072c522efe32a1a7e34b0




All this mystery and it's probably just that his cat walked across his keyboard.

Edward Snowden is not dead: 'He's fine' says insider after cryptic code tweet - 'Dead Man's Switch' scare

Re: Edward Scissorhands Snowden

PostPosted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 1:23 pm
by guruilla
Thanks for that link elf. Here's the full paragraph for those who didn't follow it:

DoD needs to study and assess the use of the Internet in the overall departmental declassification strategy. As noted earlier, the Internet has become an integral part of the entire secrecy/declassification issue. The question becomes how to effectively utilize this tool to advance DoD declassification goals. First and foremost DoD must identify a clear set of specific goals; assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Internet and then devise a strategy to reach those goals. For the sake of a hypothetical model assume that the DoD goals are:

* Conduct a declassification review of all 25 year old material

=> Identify and segregate that material which should remain classified=> Declassify and make available to the general public that material which no longer needs protection.=> Manage FOIA reviews in the most cost effective manner

Based on these goals one would then assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Internet.

Strengths: The use of the Internet provides a rapid and cost effective method for the dissemination of unclassified information.=> The use of the Internet could reduce the unrestrained public appetite for “secrets” by providing good faith distraction material=> The use of the Internet could channel public interest towards already appropriately declassified material and possibly lessen FOIA requests. Weaknesses: The use of the Internet could have rebound effect and fuel a more voracious public demand for ever more material. May facilitate more FOIA requests by providing a shopping list of available materials.=> The use of the Internet could overwhelm the administrative system that processes inquiries. By providing documents that have been recently reviewed and declassified, it can magnify imperfections in the declassification system by making available declassified material out of historical context.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod_opsec.html


Regarding Snowden, I just aired a conversation with Gabriella Coleman in which I expressed to her my doubts about him. Unfortunately, I hadn't seen this thread & my suspicion wasn't based on anything substantial (unless you count a lifetime being lied to and given false heroes substantial... Conversation here).