The Most Important Congressional Investigation in U.S. History

[Octafish]

An excellent resource for those wondering whatever happened to Free Speech, political progress and democracy.

The Most Important Congressional Investigation in U.S. History

by Valtin of DailyKos
MON MAR 12, 2007 AT 05:08 PM PDT

You may have your favorites, but I believe the most important Congressional investigation in modern times (excepting any future such work as will be done by this or Congresses on the crimes of the Bush Administration) was The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, known as the "Church Committee" after its chairman Democratic Senator Frank Church.

Sen. Church, who died in 1984 of pancreatic cancer, was the fifth youngest senator elected to the U.S. Senate, and was one of the prime movers in the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

This diary looks in some detail at 1975-76 Church Committee investigation of the intelligence agencies in the post-Watergate period, taking public and private testimony from hundreds of people, collecting thousands of files from the FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, and many other federal agencies.

SNIP...

You can find the complete report at this link. Quotes below will have links to the particular section of the report quoted. Bold fonts indicate emphases I have chosen to make, and are not included in the report.

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/03/12/311068/-The-Most-Important-Congressional-Investigation-in-U-S-History#

Here's why it matter to us today: The Church Committee was about the last time Congress held NSA, CIA, FBI and the rest to account -- 36 years ago.

Frank Church warned us about what it would mean for democracy if NSA turned its technology on the American people:

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. [font color="red"]If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.[/font color]

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” -- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho)

Imagine what they can do with the technology of today. The guy getting pilloried called it "Turnkey Tyranny."

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

1. Hopefully Snowden's revelations will provide for a way back

This needs to go before the SCOTUS, and determine once and for all if the harvesting and storing of all digital and phone communications is unconstitutional.

To me it seems pretty obviously unconstitutional, and why the courts do not want to touch it.

[Octafish]

3. Agree about the legal clarity. The visual acuity of the court, though, gives me pause.

Consider Associate Justice Kagan, who, as Solicitor General, argued to return former-Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman to federal prison.

I hope she has grown to appreciate Associate Justice Ginsburg more than Scalia and the NAZI gangster faction.

[usGovOwesUs3Trillion]

4. True. But then we would know definitely if we have truly crossed the rubicon and live in a

totalitarian state.

[snot]

2. K&R'd & bookmarked

[Octafish]

5. PATRIOT Act Being Used to Keep Super Duper Government Spy Operation Top Secret

Three cheers for Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado -- they've tried warning We the People and their fellow elected representatives about vitally important issues with the way the Government uses the USA PATRIOT Act. Unfortunately, the very law prevents them from disclosing what would cause us to be stunned, which may help explain the cross-spectral anguish re Snowden the Acrobat Abandoner.



The New York Times reported a year back:

Democratic Senators Issue Strong Warning About Use of the Patriot Act

By CHARLIE SAVAGE
The New York Times, March 16, 2012

WASHINGTON — For more than two years, a handful of Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee have warned that the government is secretly interpreting its surveillance powers under the Patriot Act in a way that would be alarming if the public — or even others in Congress — knew about it.

On Thursday, two of those senators — Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado — went further. They said a top-secret intelligence operation that is based on that secret legal theory is not as crucial to national security as executive branch officials have maintained.

SNIP...

“We would also note that in recent months we have grown increasingly skeptical about the actual value of the ‘intelligence collection operation,’ ” they added. “This has come as a surprise to us, as we were initially inclined to take the executive branch’s assertions about the importance of this ‘operation’ at face value.”

The dispute centers on what the government thinks it is allowed to do under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, under which agents may obtain a secret order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing them to get access to any “tangible things” — like business records — that are deemed “relevant” to a terrorism or espionage investigation.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us/politics/democratic-senators-warn-about-use-of-patriot-act.html?_r=2

[font color="blue"]Gee. I sure hope Sen. Wyden and Sen. Udall succeed in letting us know what the hell is going on with the USA PATRIOT Act spying on Americans thing is all about. After all, it is a sad time in America when Senators are afraid of being whistleblowers.[/font color]

Stratfor: executive boasted of 'trusted former CIA cronies'

By Alex Spillius, Diplomatic Correspondent
9:08PM GMT 28 Feb 2012
The Telegraph

A senior executive with the private intelligence firm Stratfor boasted to colleagues about his "trusted former CIA cronies" and promised to "see what I can uncover" about a classified FBI investigation, according to emails released by the WikiLeaks.

Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence at the Texas firm, also informed members of staff that he had a copy of the confidential indictment on Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

The second batch of five million internal Stratfor emails obtained by the Anonymous computer hacking group revealed that the company has high level sources within the United States and other governments, runs a network of paid informants that includes embassy staff and journalists and planned a hedge fund, Stratcap, based on its secret intelligence.

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Mr Assange labelled the company as a "private intelligence Enron", in reference to the energy giant that collapsed after a false accounting scandal.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9111784/Stratfor-executive-boasted-of-trusted-former-CIA-cronies.html

The two Senators were talking about this latest outrage way back when. DUers, of course, were aware. But the rest of the nation, not so much.

Now why would Capitalism's Invisible Army want to keep We the People in the dark? For one thing, besides keeping tabs on everyone's comings and goings, could be for personal gain, say via inside trading?

Stratfor & Goldman Sachs started hedge fund called Stratcap to trade on illegal inside gov't info

"Stratfor’s use of insiders for intelligence soon turned into a money-making scheme of questionable legality. The emails show that in 2009 then-Goldman Sachs Managing Director Shea Morenz and Stratfor CEO George Friedman hatched an idea to "utilise the intelligence" it was pulling in from its insider network to start up a captive strategic investment fund. CEO George Friedman explained in a confidential August 2011 document, marked DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS : "What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor’s intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like". The emails show that in 2011 Goldman Sach’s Morenz invested "substantially" more than $4million and joined Stratfor’s board of directors. Throughout 2011, a complex offshore share structure extending as far as South Africa was erected, designed to make StratCap appear to be legally independent. But, confidentially, Friedman told StratFor staff : "Do not think of StratCap as an outside organisation. It will be integral... It will be useful to you if, for the sake of convenience, you think of it as another aspect of Stratfor and Shea as another executive in Stratfor... we are already working on mock portfolios and trades". StratCap is due to launch in 2012. "

http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html

One thing is for certain: Secret government makes it really hard to follow the money. It does make obvious who's getting rich off it, though.

PS: Thanks, snot! I'm glad I did the decent thing and didn't mention cutting Social Security or some rat's head would've spun off and flown off into the galaxy, filling the black hole in the center of space, to paraphrase the great Tony Orlando of Dawn.

[Octafish]

6. Kick to bring back government oversight of computerized spy networkers.

Spies who use their power to feather their nests and enrich their cronies.

[Hydra]

7. Keep it up as usual Octafish

We may fail, but if we do it's not from lack of trying.

[Octafish]

8. Hiya, Hydra! Got a cunning plan that cannot fail from JackRiddler...

The CIA Invests in Robot Writers

by Alex Fitzpatrick
Mashable.com, June 5, 2013

The Obama administration may be shifting control of the country's drone program from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Pentagon, but robots can still find jobs at Langley — as writers, apparently.

The CIA's venture capital wing, In-Q-Tel, has invested an unknown amount in a company called Narrative Science, which codes software capable of turning massive data sets into easy-to-read written prose, according to All Things D.

Chicago-based Narrative Science got its start by turning baseball box scores into readable accounts of games — not unlike a piece you might see in your local newspaper's sports pages.

SNIP...

Despite its immediate impact in the journalism world, Narrative Science finds most of its clients in the financial services, marketing and research fields. The CIA fits into the latter category — the agency collects mounds of raw data, and its researchers would most likely appreciate an automated hand in turning all those figures into readable, actionable reports for agents and higher-ups.

"Narrative Science’s artificial intelligence platform analyzes data and communicates this information in a way that is easy to read and understand," said Steve Bowsher, Managing Partner at IQT, in a press release. "We believe these advanced analytic capabilities can be of great value to our customers in the Intelligence Community."

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http://mashable.com/2013/06/05/the-cia-is-investing-in-robot-writers/

As the music from Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" comes up, we realized, like the protagonist in a novel by Pierre Boulle, that we can never grow tired. So, we fight them until they quit, are beaten, or destroyed. No matter their choice, we will win.

What will they think of next?