ZGram - 2/16/2002 - "Ultra-Spooks within the NSA?

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2002 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

=46ebruary 16, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Revisionists, building on a number of carefully researched expos=E9s of
deliberately created incidents of violence which unleashed the public's
fury - such as the explosion of the Maine, the torpedoing of the Lusitania,
the attack on Pearl Harbor and, many say, Kristallnacht, have much to
contribute to the speculations of who or what caused 9/11.

After all, 9/11 kicked loose an avalanche of public upset, and a
willingness to investigate what government has been up to in decades past,
that is only superficially deflected by "symbol patriotism."  America
traditionally closes ranks, during or after a crisis.  So in this case -
but perhaps in ways not quite foreseen by the conspirators.

To be sure, the flags, decals and pins are still in evidence all over the
place, but behind this visible front projecting unity to the unseen enemy,
an aroused, frightened and angry citizenry is asking questions.

Thousands of individuals and groups are trolling the fetid, murky waters
where political corruption, moral sloth, graft and deception slosh around.
The global Internet is abuzz with ever new details, questions and answers
about that incredible crime which, pre-Internet, would never have had a
public airing, much less an international audience.

The (partial) report on a presentation given in Berkeley which follows is a
typical case in point.  Read it with care and caution.

Without 9/11, and the spectacular failure of American intelligence it so
shockingly revealed, the dozens of organizations of clandestine spooks -
some 32 officially admitted - would never have been scrutinized publicly.
Their utter failure has prompted a new mood in many quarters to hold these
people more accountable in the future, at least in the citizenry.  The
politicians, on whose watch this horror happened, want to shift the blame
to shadowy figures abroad - naturally enough!  An aroused citizenry,
however, applying common sense and dismissing spin-doctoring to please
lobbies or advance political agendas which are detrimental to America's
interests, want answers.  Above all, they demand accountability.

The frightened masses might believe that trading their freedoms for still
more control by the government, which has just failed them so dismally, is
the road to security - thinking Americans do not.  They distrust their
government and its many agencies, especially in the intelligence gathering
sector, even more than before 9/11.

James Bamford used to be a lone voice in the wilderness.  9/11 and its
revealed incompetence or criminal negligence by the 30 Billion-plus
intelligence apparatus has overnight made him a star and sought-after
speaker.  What Bamford reveals, if true, is extraordinary:  an almost
suicidal invitation by the world's most powerful state and oldest
continuously existing constitutional republic, to be taken over from within
by stealth - unchecked by the legislative forces which are  outside their
control and oversight entirely!

The all-powerful behemoth of spooks, called the National Security Agency -
NSA for short - employing 38,000 people occupying 50 buildings alone
outside of Washington, armed with a secret budget and using the world's
most powerful computers, is just such a monster - a monster spawned in
another era.

By whom?

If you believe Baumford, it was not created by an Act of Congress, but by a
memorandum.

Whose memorandum?

Such a situation seems almost inconceivable in a country where checks and
balances wisely limit the power of various branches of government by
constitutional definition.  America's Founding Fathers feared precisely
these kinds of bodies which are open invitations for abuse by flawed,
amoral men.

Working arrangements implied by such an outfit allow the development of
cliques ultimately accountable to no one, which can - and in many states
have - putsched silently or publicly, taking over the state from within!
Such outfits become powerful instruments in the hands of people who more
often than not fulfill the agendas of those who shun the public's scrutiny
for good reasons.

Imagine the temptation it would be for a small group of people to command
the loyalty, in total secrecy, of 38,000 highly skilled, well-equipped
people - to nudge or force the government of the day in their direction, to
execute their policies!  If such forces existed in the intelligence
apparatus, they alone would also have the knowledge where the trip-wires
were located which, once tripped, would make the entire intelligence
apparatus become alerted - if those early warning systems were not
deliberately disarmed, bypassed or ignored.

Since none were tripped in 9-11, what conclusions would one have to draw?
That Bin Laden, from a cave in Afghanistan, knew and avoided those
trip-wires in planning and executing 9/11 - a flawlessly pulled-off act of
terror, the most devastating on America, ever?  Or what?  What other
scenario offers itself as a possible answer?


With all that in mind, beware of false flags - or false Pied Pipers!

[START]

Report on a James Bamford Talk at Berkeley - (here excerpted)

 James Bamford is the author of The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets,
books about the National Security Agency. He is visiting Berkeley in the
School of Public Policy, and gave a talk entitled "Intelligence Failures
that Led to the September 11th Attacks."

 He was introduced by the Dean of the School, who explained that the school
has a new emphasis on information technology and public policy. The Dean
explained that while it is generally true that "Those who know don't speak,
and those who speak don't know," James Bamford is the exception. The Dean
said that Bamford was working on a new book A Killing Sleep: Anatomy of
America's Greatest Intelligence Failure, a description of what happened
prior to Sept. 11.

 Bamford started by providing lots of background. He was fresh out of law
school and didn't want to practice law, so he had the idea of writing about
the most secret agency in the US Government, the National Security Agency
(NSA). This led to the now twenty year-old book, The Puzzle Palace. NSA
eventually found out that he was writing, and tried very hard to stop him.
NSA twice arranged to have him criminally prosecuted for revealing secrets,
but he was able to show that he had used material in the public domain.
Bamford explained that he had become an expert in using the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) to get a lot of information. It's not so easy,
because the FOIA doesn't apply to the NSA since the NSA almost doesn't
exist. It was not created by Congress, but by a memorandum. When he wrote
his first book, the rule was that once a document was declassified, it
could not subsequently be reclassified (sort of a no ex post facto idea).
According to Bamford, Reagan changed those rules, allowing and in fact
doing a lot of reclassification, Clinton didn't change the Reagan rule but
didn't do reclassification, and the current Bush administration has adopted
the Reagan rules.

 NSA was created after WWII from the code breaking activity that had
proceeded during the war. At the time it was created, no one but a couple
of people even knew it had been created. NSA stands for no such agency, or
never say anything, or after Puzzle Palace, not secret anymore. To
illustrate how secret NSA is, after Puzzle Palace was published, Bamford
went on a book tour. At one point he was scheduled onto a PBS show where
the other guest was Sen. Bill Bradley. Prior to the show, the Senator asked
Bamford why he was on the show, and he explained that he had written a book
on the NSA. Bradley asked him what that was, and Bamford explained. Then
Bradley went on the show to explain his ideas for the economy, or whatever,
and then the interview switched to Bamford. Bamford explained that the NSA
was a secret agency. The interviewer said "How secret?" And, naturally,
Bamford did not pass on the opportunity to say that it was so secret that
not even Sen. Bradley knew about it. Bradley was not pleased.

 Years later, having worked on television news shows, Bamford did a second
NSA book. It also took three years. His first idea was to go to NSA and ask
for a tour, interviews, and documents. They were not accommodating, to say
the least. "Enemy of the state." "Not in your interest to proceed."
However, eventually NSA turned around, and eventually provided him with
access to lots of information, although they never provided documents.
Again, FOIA came through.

 Bamford explained that he was amazed by some of the material he was able
to get. For example, he found a detailed 1962 plan to invade Cuba. In the
wake of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the US was embarrassed and wanted
to dump Castro some other way. The idea was to have the US Armed Forces
invade Cuba, deposed and kill the leadership, and establish a new
government. Basically do to Cuba what we just did to Afghanistan, Bamford
explained. However, there was a problem. The US needed a pretext to invade.
Unfortunately for the invasion plan, we didn't know of anything that Castro
was doing to the US besides sitting there being decidedly Communist. So, a
pretext had to be created. The plan Bamford found, through FOIA, sent a
chill down his back. The US would arranged to have Americans shot on the
streets of US cities, we would set off bombs in crowded areas of US cities,
and there was a detailed plan to blow up a commercial airliner over Cuba.
This plan was approved, in 1962, by every member of the Joint Chiefs,
including the chairman. [If this is true, the plan was never executed.]

 About NSA: it is 38,000 people, 50 buildings, on a campus in Maryland, in
suburban Washington DC. The have the most powerful computers in the world,
1.6 million tapes in their tape library [tapes?]. Basically they do signals
intelligence, listening to phone calls, faxes, email, and any sort of
communication. To do this they have extensive facilities all around the
world. One technique that Bamford mentioned was how they capture microwave
signals. Microwave, unlike high frequency signals [HF are actually lower
frequency than microwave, in case you care], do not bounce off the
ionosphere and travel in a straight line. Towers must be line of sight from
each other. So how's the NSA going to listen to this? Answer is that some
of the radiation goes past the receiving station, and continues in its
straight line out into space. The NSA has satellites out there to grab the
signals. [Bamford described the satellites as geosynchronous, but that
wouldn't work.] NSA also makes and breaks codes. The big nasty secret
within NSA is that in the forty years or more that NSA spent billions of
dollars on breaking the Soviet codes, they made no progress. No important
Soviet code was ever broken by the NSA, or by anyone.

 NSA has a whole bunch of listening posts around the world. There's one in
England. Each post captures about two million messages per hour. They cull
out the interesting ones in many ways - limiting prefixes, etc. The Soviets
had a listening post in Cuba for forty years (they are only just now
dismantling it) and they knew how to filter out the interesting stuff. For
example, any phone call to prefix 456 in the DC area code was a call to the
White House, any call to 688 is a call to NSA.

 So what about NSA's involvement in Sept. 11. Some have compared the
failure to the "failure" at Pearl Harbor. Actually, Pearl Harbor was quite
a success for the predecessor agencies to NSA. The US had managed to
completely break the key Japanese codes (Purple), and the German codes
(Enigma) were also broken. In the case of Pearl Harbor, the US signals
people picked up the key message to the Japanese embassy in Washington,
decoded it (it said something like break off relations and destroy all your
crypto equipment) well in advance of the attack. The message did not say
where an attack would come, so the US sent the message to everyone saying
"Japanese attack expected." The weather was wrong over the Pacific so the
usual HF path did not work. Instead the message was sent to Honolulu via
Western Union, where it arrived a few hours after the attack.

 In contrast, NSA did nothing to help prior to Sept. 11. No monitoring of
Osama Bin Laden (OBL) was done. The hijackers of the plane that would up
hitting the Pentagon lived in Laurel, MD, the same town that NSA was in.
When the hijackers drove from Laurel down US 1 toward Dulles, the traffic
in the other direction was mostly NSA employees on their way to work.
Rather embarrassing to the NSA, in fact a disaster of major proportions.
Realize that the primary goal of NSA, the justification for the billions of
dollars per year of our citizens money spent by the NSA, is simply to
prevent a surprise attack. Yet the US and NSA was caught totally
unprepared. Bush was reading to first graders in Sarasota, the head of NSA
was having breakfast in downtown Washington.

[END]

(Source:  http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/bamfordreport.html )

One final Zundelsite comment:

To read the assertions above makes one's blood run cold, for if true, it
would suggest a reckless negligence or callousness - no, a criminality - in
the highest echelons of branches of the US government, a willingness to
kill American civilians  by the score to topple a dictator in a banana
republic.

An unbelievable scenario to decent, normal people!

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D


Thought for the Day:

"The people never give up their liberty but under some delusion."

(Edmund Burke)