
NSA whistleblower Russ Tice goes on record with new revelations - rl3
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/19/podcast-show-112-nsa-whistleblower-goes-on-record-reveals-new-information-names-culprits/
======
pvnick
WOW, so surprised to see Sibel Edmond's stuff on this site. As a translator
for the FBI, she had a lot to say about the 9/11 attacks and how corruption
within the FBI's translation unit may have played a factor in failing to
prevent those attacks [1]. She went on record to claim that the subsequent
9/11 Commission was a farce and did nothing to gather the relevant facts [2].

As she went through the proper channels to report what she had seen, she was
eventually fired as a result of her allegations [3]. Her testimony was also
sealed by John Ashcroft under the states secrets privilege [4], which is
exactly what has happened with the recent Snowden allegations [5].

Personally I think Sibel Edmonds is one of the most reliable people in the
whistleblower community and that she has a _lot_ to say that's being hidden
from the public.

[1] [http://www.aclu.org/national-security/sibel-edmonds-
patriot-...](http://www.aclu.org/national-security/sibel-edmonds-patriot-
silenced-unjustly-fired-fighting-back-help-keep-america-safe)

[2]
[http://www.nswbc.org/Press%20Releases/NSWBC-911Comm.htm](http://www.nswbc.org/Press%20Releases/NSWBC-911Comm.htm)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds#cite_note-
oig_upd...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds#cite_note-
oig_update-12)

[4]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds#FBI_career](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds#FBI_career)

[5] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/us-government-
sp...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/us-government-special-
privilege-scrutiny-data)

~~~
specialist
IIRC, she was also gagged by the court during her wrongful termination
lawsuit, citing national security. Convenient.

~~~
perlpimp
Can gag order be unconstitutional or illegal?

------
rl3
Direct audio link is here (MP3):
[http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/podpress_trac/web/20927/0/BF...](http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/podpress_trac/web/20927/0/BF.0112.Tice_20130617.mp3)

\---

At 0:48:26 Tice mentions the intercept order for then-Senatorial candidate
Obama.

He also mentions that senior civilian, military and government leaders were
explicitly targeted.

Some of the notable intercept targets included Colin Powell, Hillary Clinton,
Samuel Alito, former FISA Court judges, U.S. Congressional intelligence
committees, law firms, financial firms, State Department personnel,
humanitarian NGOs.

Lawyers and civil rights groups were mentioned as well, I'm wondering if EFF
was included in that.

\---

Tice previously played off his unclassified resume's listing of space-based
systems expertise as a cover story for his activities at NSA. However, he has
now revealed that he specialized in space-based capabilities at NSA all along.
This is humorous when you consider the following:

[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/01/nsa-
whistlebl-2/](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/01/nsa-whistlebl-2/)

 _Do you have any connection to outer space stuff? I asked.

"I watch Buck Rogers."_

\---

Also of note: NSA's Bluffdale, Utah data storage facility is apparently
already online and operational.

~~~
brown9-2
_NSA 's Bluffdale, Utah data storage facility is apparently already online and
operational._

Does the interview mention how someone who left the NSA in 2005 would know
this?

~~~
rl3
Yes, he said an insider sent him a coded handwritten message on a basis
similar to a one-time pad.

He also said that he could not read most of said message due to misplacing the
key-code.

EDIT: My original reply likely butchered terminology, sorry. The relevant
audio can be heard verbatim at 1:03:11 in the interview recording.

~~~
richardwhiuk
If the OTP was used to encrypt the message, it's usefulness is already gone.

~~~
brown9-2
A source inside the NSA that re-uses a onetime pad would be pretty ironic.

------
tptacek
Any major media outlet in the country right now could 1.5-3x its pageviews or
audience share by going wall-to-wall on the revelation that NSA _spied on
Barack Obama before he was a candidate_. None of them have. Why is that?

~~~
pvnick
I would say 1) this revelation is too shocking to be parroted without smoking
gun evidence to support it (eg copies of the top secret documents themselves)
and 2) journalists these days are too much in bed with the establishment to
stir the waters that much and ask these kinds of hard questions posed by
"fringe elements".

What do you think?

~~~
tptacek
I don't believe (2) at all. Journalists are careerist and media outlets are
bottom-line focused. It would be one thing to argue that some specific venue,
like the NYT, is captured somehow (that would be an extraordinary claim but
let's stipulate it). But to say that _every major media outlet_ is somehow
blinded to its own incentives on a story like this? That's flatly implausible.

~~~
specialist
_I don 't believe (2) at all. Journalists are careerist and media outlets are
bottom-line focused._

Name three.

Seymour Hersh, Greg Palast, the crew at Democracy Now! (Amy Goodman, Juan
Gonzales). Who else? It's a pretty short list.

I can't think of any remaining "mainstream" (corporate) journalists. They've
all gotten the Dan Rather treatment.

Some bloggers have managed to swim upstream, eg Paul Krugman and Matthew
Yglesias. But most muckraking work (eg Fire Dog Lake) is not corporate funded.
Thom Hartmann is kinda unique. And lefties like Rachel Maddow are
commentators, not doing original reporting.

~~~
brown9-2
Wasn't this entire thing started by "corporate funded" journalists at the
Guardian and Washington Post?

~~~
wpietri
The Guardian is, by their own admission, a center-left paper. That's in
Britain, which means they are somewhere between "radical" and "terrorist
mooslim communisocialifascist" here in the US. The person who broke the stuff
for them is very strongly political. [2]

US corporate media, on the other hand, subscribes to the "view from nowhere"
style [3], which they mistake for objectivity. It makes them easily
manipulated; when you create a controversy, they are obliged to move away from
it. That gets you the classic, "Opinions on Shape of Earth Differ: Round or
Flat?" journalism. [4]

This is compounded by the way newspaper journalism has been in decline for
years, and was even before the Internet drank their milkshake. [5] Now, major
newspapers feel very vulnerable, and one of their few remaining assets is that
people in power will talk to them. That makes them basically stenographers to
power. [6]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Political_stance_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Political_stance_and_editorial_opinion)
[2] [http://pressthink.org/2013/06/politics-some-politics-none-
tw...](http://pressthink.org/2013/06/politics-some-politics-none-two-ways-to-
excel-in-political-journalism-neither-dominates/) [3]
[http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-
question...](http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-questions-
and-answers/) [4]
[http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/08/opinions_on_sha.html](http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/08/opinions_on_sha.html)
[5] [http://davidsimon.com/do-you-know-who-i-
am/#comment-6754](http://davidsimon.com/do-you-know-who-i-am/#comment-6754)
[6] [http://billayers.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/our-media-
stenogra...](http://billayers.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/our-media-
stenographers-for-power-re-posted-from-fair-fair-org/)

~~~
brown9-2
So yes, US journalism's objectivity is often horrible, but the owners of The
Guardian are overseeing an enterprise with revenues of £254.4 million a year,
according to Wikipedia. That still seems like a corporate enterprise the
owners of whom would want to protect. I believe it is still be possible to be
a muckraker (or employ those who are like Greenwald) and have a sizable
"corporate"-ness.

~~~
makomk
The Guardian is entirely owned by the Scott Trust, which is a trust set up
specifically to safeguard their editorial independence. It doesn't have owners
in the usual corporate sense of the word.

~~~
tptacek
Doesn't Thompson Reuters have a similar thing in place?

------
btipling
Claims like this may be more convincing when they are supported by evidence.

~~~
akiselev
The people of the United States are innocent until proven guilt. Their
government does not deserve the same benefit of the doubt.

~~~
mithaler
So you automatically assume any allegation leveled against the government to
be true until someone in the government spends effort disproving it?

Is it really so much to ask that we criticize the government for things that
we know it actually did?

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Evidence is mounting that agencies within the US gov't are up to no good.
Given that the main one is the NSA, an agency with a fair amount of expertise
at keeping secrets; it shouldn't be a surprise that great smoking guns of
evidence aren't bursting from within the place.

------
rl3
Russell Tice on MSNBC this morning:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKyIil9OdF4#t=0m04s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKyIil9OdF4#t=0m04s)

------
salimmadjd
OT: What's stopping NSA staff from wiretapping CEOs and use that info for
insider trading making a bundle?

~~~
betterunix
What's to stop the NSA from wiretapping foreign companies, then handing their
trade secrets over to well-connected US companies?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON)

~~~
salimmadjd
All these are possible. They can use the profit from the stock market to get
the funds to hire mercenaries, i.e. defense contractors in Iraq to then
silence anyone who ties to expose them.

~~~
visarga
That's why any business outside US needs to move their stuff from the NSA
backyard.

------
lignuist
Isn't every potential US president scanned from tip to toe?

~~~
peterwwillis
To get security clearance, yes.

~~~
dak1
The President doesn't need a security clearance. His or her election gives
him/her the ultimate security clearance.

------
programminggeek
You know, I've always thought that the Barack "Hussein" Obama political
attacks that allege that he's not a citizen, he's a muslim, and he's part of
some conspiracy to bring down the USA are particularly crazy insomuch as we
have the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. whose job is to investigate people to keep our
country safe.

I've always thought that if the allegations were somehow true, that someone at
one of those groups would have leaked something that would keep Obama from
being president or from continuing as president. Yet, that never happened
despite the fact that he obviously would have been investigated by plenty of
people in those spy organizations.

So, the fact that Obama was spied on should not come as a surprise. It would
surprise me if people in power weren't spied on.

~~~
glesica
So if spying on people in power is good, who spies on the people in charge of
the NSA?

~~~
chubot
It kind of makes you rethink the whole Petraeus ordeal. Everyone commented on
how the director of the CIA couldn't keep his own communications secret. Maybe
he pissed off the NSA somehow? Not sure how closely the organizations work
together.

~~~
wamsachel
Not saying the NSA couldn't have been involved, but I thought it was the FBI
that got Petraeus's google account.

~~~
foobarqux
The NSA often passes information to the FBI

------
callenish
I think this calls for a meme.

[http://qkme.me/3uxsx0](http://qkme.me/3uxsx0)

