by Jon Rappoport
Jon
Rappoport’s Blog
Recently
by Jon Rappoport: NSA,
the Secret AT&T Spy Room, 2 Israeli Companies, and Loss of American Privacy
The NSA is spying on everybody.
That includes
a major, major, prime target: Congress.
So imagine
this conversation taking place, in a car, on a lonely road outside
Washington, late at night. The speakers are Congressman X and a
private operative representing a covert unit inside the NSA:
“Well,
Congressman, do you remember January 6th? A Monday afternoon, a
men’s room in the park off—”
“What
the hell are you talking about!”
“A stall
in the men’s room. The kid. He was wearing white high-tops.
A Skins cap. T-shirt. Dark hair. Scar across his left cheek.”
“Jesus.”
“We have
very good audio and video. Anytime you want to watch it, let me
know.”
Dead silence.
“What
do you want?”
“Right
now, Congressman? We want you to come down hard on Snowden. Press
it. He’s a traitor. He should tried and convicted.”
The Congressmen
pulls himself together:
“Yeah,
well, there’s another side to this story. If Snowden gets enough
support, if the wave rises high enough, the NSA could take a hit.
I know a dozen Washington players who’d like that very much.
They’re pissed off. They don’t like to be spied on. It’s
possible Snowden was their guy from the beginning. I couldn’t
say…”
Let’s
make a deal. That ends up being the topic of this and other similar
conversations inside the Beltway.
“Senator,
we know about the underage cheerleader in Ohio. Your trip there
in 2012, just before the election.”
“Look,
you’ve brought this up before. But now I’ve got a trump
card to play. Ed Snowden. This whole scandal can escalate like a
tornado in Kansas, or it can die down…”
Let’s
make a deal.
If you want
to see this starkly played out in a fictional series, watch Netflix’s
House of Cards. For House Majority Whip, Frank Underwood,
substitute the NSA. Track what happens to Congressman Peter Russo,
and you have a rough approximation.
Here’s
another vector. A Congressman gets a visit from his favorite lobbyist,
who works for a private defense contractor in the Congressman’s
home state:
“Congressman,
here’s the thing. The NSA is an integral part of our nation’s
defense system. Right? This Snowden thing is messy. We want it to
go away.”
“It may
not go away. I’m not some kind of traffic cop who can put up
his hand and stop the tide.”
“We understand
that. I was just talking to XXX at NSA, and he’d really appreciate
your help on this. Slam this bastard Snowden. Make him into the
worst scumbag in the world.”
“And if
I do?”
“Your
offshore account in Panama will remain protected. That’s what
XXX wanted me to tell you.”
Calling in
markers. Putting on pressure. Let’s make a deal.
If you’re
a Congressman or a Senator, and you know NSA is spying on you, because
it’s spying on everyone in the Congress, who’s your potential
best friend?
Somebody who
can go up against the NSA.
And who might
that be?
The CIA.
It’s not
perfect, but it’s the best you can do. For years, the CIA has
been watching the transformation of intelligence-gathering. The
CIA been participating in that transformation: from humans using
sources to obtain crucial data, to computers doing blanket-spying.
That’s
the trend. It’s inescapable.
The big problem
for the CIA is: their specialty is human intell. And when they go
to computers, they’re second rate, behind the massive NSA machine.
Federal budget
money for spying has been flowing in greater amounts to NSA and
away from CIA.
This is one
of the key elements of the turf war between CIA and NSA.
So if you’re
a Congressman, you go to a friend in the CIA and you have a chat
about “the NSA problem.” How can you get NSA off your
back? Your CIA friend has his own concerns about NSA.
He tells you
in confidence: “Look, maybe we can help you. We know a lot
about the NSA. We have good people. You might say one of our jobs
is watching the watchers at NSA, to, uh, make sure they don’t
go too far in their spying.”
This sounds
interesting. If you have to sell your soul, you’d rather sell
it to the CIA than the NSA. It’s a judgment call.
And now…you
read about Ed Snowden blowing a hole in the NSA. You take note of
the fact that Snowden worked for the CIA. He worked for them in
Geneva. Then he left for the private sector and got himself assigned
to the NSA.
Hmm. Maybe
you have some cause for optimism.
You, the Congressman,
don’t give a damn about the NSA spying on all Americans all
the time. You couldn’t care less about that. You just don’t
want NSA looking over your own shoulder.
You know the
incredibly naïve American public would never imagine what’s
going on behind the scenes, with CIA, NSA, and Congress. The yokels
and rubes in America actually believe their Congressional representatives
are, well, representing them in Washington.
This fact is
good. It means privacy for you: you can try to work out your problems
without public scrutiny. You can play all the necessary games to
hide your own secrets and crimes, and you can do it in back rooms.
Unless those
bastards at NSA decide to leak one of your embarrassing secrets.
That’s why you need your friend at CIA.
And now, again,
you look at the recent article and see that Ed Snowden worked for
the CIA. You hope he still is. You hope this a signal from the CIA
that they’re taking a battering ram to the NSA.
Some schmuck
reporter asks you about the current NSA scandal and you say, “Of
course we have to protect classified data, in order to prevent terrorist
attacks. But at the same time, we need to respect the Bill of Rights.
People can’t go around spying on anyone for no reason.”
You’re
sending your own signal.
You’re
tipping your CIA guy. You appreciate his help, if in fact he’s
helping you. You can’t ask him directly. If you did, he’d
never give you a straight answer. But just in case…
As for the
naïve rubes in your home state, the voters, you don’t
give them a second thought. They’re not on your radar. They’re
merely clusters of polling data, and you’ll look at the data
when election comes around again. They don’t have a clue about
how the game is played, and they never will.
You’re
representing two defense contractors, a pharmaceutical company,
a big AG corporation, and a bank. Those are your only true constituents.
You give them all the time they need.
To keep those
relationships on track, you only need to hide your peccadillos from
embarrassing exposure. The hooker in DC, the bank account in Panama,
the influence you used to move a sizable donation to a university
where you intend to teach when you retire.
There are only
two things you really need to think about in your job. First, what
happens when your Party leaders come down the hall and tell you
which way you’re going to vote on a bill—and you know
your vote is going to upset one of your key constituents back home.
That’s
a tricky situation. But you’ve been successful in keeping feathers
from being ruffled. That pharmaceutical company understands you
can’t side with their interests every single time.
You’ve
got to go with your Party. The Pharma boys don’t like it, but
they get it.
The Matrix
Revealed
The other thing
you’ve got to think about is darker. Nobody is going to give
you stats on it, because stats don’t exist. Here’s how
it shakes out:
How many people
in Congress are so controlled by the NSA that they’d never
try to break out? How many people, with how many secrets, are so
blackmailed, they’d never dare go up against NSA?
This is an
important calculation. The battle might already be lost. You might
not stand a chance. Maybe nobody can help you. Maybe you can’t
escape.
Maybe you shouldn’t
even hint that NSA has overstepped its legal boundaries by spying
on Americans.
That’s
the conundrum that keeps you up at night.
What if the
spies spying on their own government are running the government
beyond the ability of anyone to stop them?
You don’t
give a damn about what this would mean for America. You only care
about what it means for you and your secrets.
Maybe this
is the jail you’re in for the rest of your life.
When you’re
back in your home state showing your face and giving speeches, and
a voter comes up to you and voices a concern about his dwindling
paycheck, his house payment, his endangered pension…and when
you nod and gaze out at the horizon, as as if to pluck a magic answer
from the aether, you’re really thinking about the conundrum.
You’re
thinking about the life sentence you’re serving in the Surveillance
State.
And that night,
in your hotel room, you get down on your knees and pray that Ed
Snowden is still working for the CIA.
June
29, 2013
Jon
Rappoport runs No More
Fake News. The author of an explosive collection, The
Matrix Revealed, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional
seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer
Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years,
writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch,
LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other
newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe.
Copyright
© 2013 Jon
Rappoport
Republished with permission from:: Lew Rockwell