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Tag: corruption
State sanctioned secrecy: NSA’s criminality shield
Enacted at the height of the Cold War, the NSA Act gives the agency radically sweeping powers to withhold any information from public disclosure. Specifically, Section 6 of the Act states “…nothing in this Act or any other law…shall be construed to require the disclosure of the organization or any function of the National Security Agency, or any information with respect to the activities thereof, or of the names, titles, salaries, or number of the persons employed by such agency.”
NSA has used that blanket authority to try to keep secret details about its lethal 9/11 intelligence failure. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit I brought on behalf of the Cato Institute against the Defense Department (NSA’s parent organization) in January 2017 has, after over three-and-a-half years in federal court, partially punctured NSA’s veil of secrecy over the cancelled TRAILBLAZER and THINTHREAD digital network exploitation (DNE) programs.
In brief, during the five-year period leading up to the 9/11 attacks, a bureaucratic war raged inside of NSA over the best way to handle the exploding volume of digital communications the agency was trying to keep up with. On one side was a group of veteran NSA cryptographers, mathematicians and computer scientists who developed a cheap, extremely effective, and Constitutionally compliant in-house DNE system codenamed THINTHREAD. On the other side was then-NSA Director Michael Hayden, who favored an unproven, external, contractor developed DNE system called TRAILBLAZER. When then-GOP House Intelligence Committee staffer Diane Roark got the THINTHREAD team development money and language in the FY 2002 Intelligence Authorization bill directing wider deployment of the cheaper, off-the-shelf THINTHREAD system, Hayden refused to deploy it as directed — even though THINTHREAD, still in prototype development, was already producing intelligence NSA couldn’t get from any of its other existing systems.
House Democrats’ stimulus bill includes stimulus checks for illegal immigrants, protections from deportations
A stimulus package proposed by Democrats in the House of Representatives includes a number of items that will benefit illegal immigrants — including an expansion of stimulus checks and protections from deportations for illegal immigrants in certain “essential” jobs.
The $2.2 trillion bill includes language that allows some illegal immigrants — who are “engaged in essential critical infrastructure labor or services in the United States” — to be placed into “a period of deferred action” and authorized to work if they meet certain conditions.
It also grants protections to those employers who hire those undocumented immigrants, ordering that “the hiring, employment or continued employment” of the defined group is not in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act. That lasts until 90 days after the public health emergency is ended.
A Democratic description of that part of the bill says that “such workers are deemed to be in a period of deferred action and to be authorized for employment, and employers are shielded from certain immigration-related violations for employing such workers.”
Moderator For 2nd Trump-Biden Debate Worked As Intern For Biden, Staff Assistant For Ted Kennedy
The second presidential debate, scheduled for October 15, will be moderated by Steve Scully, the political editor at C-SPAN and host of Washington Journal, who once worked as an intern for Senator Joe Biden in college, later working as a staff assistant in Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s communication office.
“While attending college, he served as an intern in the office of Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden, and later a staff assistant in Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s media affairs office,” Utah Valley University noted.
Biden’s Texas Political Director, Other Democrats Accused In Illegal Ballot Harvesting Scheme
According to a lawsuit filed with the Texas Supreme Court Monday, Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden’s political director in Texas has been accused of ballot harvesting in Harris County. Harris County is Texas’ most populous county; Houston is its and the state’s largest city.
According to the lawsuit, which was filed by conservative activist Dr. Steven Hotze and several others, two investigators accuse Dallas Jones and several prominent Democrat officeholders of organizing a ballot harvesting scheme. Jones was named Joe Biden’s political director in Texas in late August with stories appearing in media in September.
The investigators have filed sworn affidavits attesting to evidence, including video, of the ballot harvesting scheme. The affidavits were filed in conjunction with the lawsuit which Dr. Hotze and several Republican officeholders filed contesting Gov. Greg Abbott’s extension of early voting in the state.
It Sure Looks Like Daniel Cameron Lied About Breonna Taylor’s Killing
It’s getting harder to deny the likelihood that Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron lied, and lied multiple times, when he explained why a grand jury decided not to charge any police officer with a crime for killing Breonna Taylor. Cameron’s office presented evidence to the jury, but the only criminal charges he announced last week were against Brett Hankison, the Louisville officer who fired blindly into Taylor’s apartment on March 13 and accidentally sprayed ammo into a neighboring unit. The “wanton endangerment” charge he’s facing means that the only officer who will suffer legal consequences for the events surrounding Taylor’s death, at least for now, is the only one who didn’t have a direct hand in killing her. The other officers involved, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove, shot Taylor six times out of more than 30 rounds fired between them.
When Cameron announced this decision to the public, he characterized it as a just resolution to a universally accepted set of facts. “The warrant [that the police used to enter the apartment] was not served as a ‘no-knock’ warrant,” he claimed, rebuking witness accounts that officers had failed to announce their presence before bursting into Taylor’s home, causing her boyfriend Kenneth Walker to think they were being burglarized and shoot one of them in the leg. Walker’s bullet was the police’s justification for opening fire, which killed Taylor, who was unarmed. But failing to announce themselves as police would undermine that defense: Under Kentucky’s “castle doctrine,” law-enforcement officers are the only home invaders that residents aren’t allowed to use deadly force against, but only if they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement.
This wasn’t the only dubious claim that Cameron expected the public to take at face value. He also said that the grand jury agreed that Taylor’s death was justified. “While there are six possible homicide charges under Kentucky law,” he explained, “these charges are not applicable to the facts before us because our investigation showed — and the grand jury agreed — that Mattingly and Cosgrove were justified in the return of deadly fire after having been fired upon.” But the grand jury may not have actually agreed.
On Monday, one of the jurors took the extraordinary step of filing a court motion to make transcripts of the grand jury deliberations public and allow its members to speak publicly about how they unfolded, according to the New York Times. Grand jury deliberations are subject to strict secrecy, and the evidence they consider usually only becomes public in court if there’s prosecution. The unnamed juror claimed that Cameron had misrepresented the jury’s case to the public, and that the jurors were never given the option to indict officers Mattingly and Cosgrove. If true, this would appear to undermine Cameron’s claim that the jury was unanimous that Taylor’s death was legally justified.
For Mark Kelly, Attending Forum Hosted by CCP Was the Beginning of Lucrative Relationship with China
The Chinese government invited then-astronaut Mark Kelly, now an Arizona Democratic Senate candidate, to an all-expenses-paid retreat at a countryside resort in 2003. He left China five days later not only with a future spouse, former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D., Ariz.), but also with lucrative regime business contacts.
Kelly attended the annual Young Leaders Forum, a five-day junket cohosted by the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, which is “under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.” The conference allowed Kelly an opportunity to mingle with high-profile Communist Party officials and rising stars in Chinese society. Attendees included Cui Tiankai, now Chinese ambassador to the United States; Fang Xinghai, former director of the CCP’s top committee on the economy; and Zhou Mingwei, the party’s former top foreign propaganda honcho.
China analyst Gordon G. Chang said that party connections—such as those Kelly fostered—are “absolutely essential” for securing Chinese business deals.
“The Communist Party tries to control everything, whether it’s a state enterprise or a private company,” he said. “And so it’s extremely important to have Communist Party contacts [to do business].”
Kelly has also had extensive ties with China since becoming a civilian. World View Enterprise, an aerospace company he cofounded and in which he still holds investments, received funding from Chinese tech giant Tencent, which censors the internet for Beijing. As the Washington Free Beacon reported, he also held a financial stake in a Colorado company that courted investments from a Chinese state-funded tech enterprise.
He now has assets worth up to $27 million, according to his financial disclosure.
Don’t be an accomplice…
MSM Promotes Yet Another CIA Press Release As News
The Washington Post, whose sole owner is a CIA contractor, has published yet another anonymously sourced CIA press release disguised as a news report which just so happens to facilitate longstanding CIA foreign policy
In an article titled “Secret CIA assessment: Putin ‘probably directing’ influence operation to denigrate Biden”, WaPo’s virulent neoconservative war pig Josh Rogin describes what was told to him by unnamed sources about the contents of a “secret” CIA document which alleges that Vladimir Putin is “probably” overseeing an interference operation in America’s presidential election.
True to form, at no point does WaPo follow standard journalistic protocol and disclose its blatant financial conflict of interest with the CIA when promoting an unproven CIA narrative which happens to serve the consent-manufacturing agendas of the CIA for its new cold war with Russia.
And somehow in our crazy, propaganda-addled society, this is accepted as “news”.
We need a cure…
Hellbound and Down 
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