General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsthe NSA's chief chronicler. {james bamford}
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/06/the-nsas-chief-chronicler.htmlIn 1982, long before most Americans ever had to think about warrantless eavesdropping, the journalist James Bamford published The Puzzle Palace: A Report on N.S.A., Americas Most Secret Agency, the first book to be written about the National Security Agency, which was started in 1952 by President Harry Truman to collect intelligence on foreign entities, and which we learned last week has been collecting the phone and Internet records of Americans and others. In the book, Bamford describes the agency as free of legal restrictions while wielding technological capabilities for eavesdropping beyond imagination. He concludes with an ominous warning: Like an ever-widening sinkhole, N.S.A.s surveillance technology will continue to expand, quietly pulling in more and more communications and gradually eliminating more and more privacy. Three decades later, this pronouncement feels uncomfortably prescient: we were warned.
Bamford, who served in the Navy and studied law before becoming a journalist, published three more books after The Puzzle Palace, composing a tetralogy about the N.S.A.: Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (2001); A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of Americas Intelligence Agencies (2004); and The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret N.S.A. from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America (2008). As the progression of subtitles indicates, Bamford has become disenchanted with the agency that he knows probably better than any other outsider. Fellow investigative journalists regard him with what can broadly be described as admiration, though, as the Times reporter Scott Shane wrote, in 2008, His relationship with the National Security Agency might be compared to a long and rocky romance, in which fascination with his quarrys size and capabilities has alternated with horror at its power to invade privacy.
The image of a troubled romance is one that Bamford readily summons. I have a love-hate relationship with the N.S.A., Bamford joked when I spoke to him last week, in the wake of the revelation that the N.S.A. is gathering metadata from telecommunications and Internet companies. I love them, and they hate me. They have good reason. Bamford, who divides his time between Washington, D.C., and London, is a slightly mischievous character whose obvious persistence and curiosity have served him well. He talks with the relish of a child who has entered a forbidden room and knows that he will do so again. He decided to write about the N.S.A., which is believed to receive ten billion dollars in annual government funding and employ some forty thousand people, because no one had done it beforeand because it was probably more fun than reading case law. While doing research at the Virginia Military Institute, he uncovered a load of N.S.A.-related documents from the files of the masterful Moldovan-born cryptographer William Friedman, as well as those of Marshall Carter, who headed the agency from 1965 to 1969. And, incredibly enough, the Department of Justice, under Jimmy Carter, complied with Bamfords Freedom of Information Act requests, supplying him with secret documents related to the Church Committee, the Senate group that, in 1975, investigated American intelligence agencies for potential transgression of their mandates.
That the government would hand over sensitive information to Bamford predictably infuriated the N.S.A.; Reagan Administration lawyers tried to bully Bamford into ceding his goods, threatening him with the Espionage Act, while the N.S.A. attempted to sequester the documents hed uncovered. But because he was a lawyer, Bamford knew that he had done nothing wrong. Unlike the secret court order on wiretapping that required Verizon to supply the N.S.A. with its customers phone records which was passed covertly to the Guardians Glenn Greenwald, Bamfords information was obtained through legal channels.
Zen Democrat
(5,901 posts)Bamford requested the top secret documents from the 1975 Church Committee and Jimmy Carter gave them up. Another great move by President Carter.
Cooley Hurd
(26,877 posts)Thanks for posting this, xchrom!
libodem
(19,288 posts)[img][/img]
okaawhatever
(9,478 posts)going off the reservation like Snowden.
usGovOwesUs3Trillion
(2,022 posts)that in no way assisted any terrorist, and that also would have otherwise been permitted to grow in perpetuity and in secret.
He was a brave man of conscience with everything to loose and nothing to gain by being a whistle blower for the American people, and I for one, among many, are very grateful.
Thank you Edward Snowden for putting your life and liberty at risk to inform the American people of wrong doing by our government against it's people.
okaawhatever
(9,478 posts)disclose that we're spying on China? It's always know, just not publicly discussed. One of the major things Obama hoped would be addressed during Xi's visit was China's hacking of US military and business interests. He had significant proof of it and finally said it publicly. That argument was neutralized. What about the people he put in danger by saying he had the location of all our agents and foreign assets? What about the thousands of other documents he brought with him?
usGovOwesUs3Trillion
(2,022 posts)And he did NOT put anyone in 'danger', he pointed out that had he wanted to do harm, that he could have revealed identities and/or locations of covert actors, but he did not do that.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)what he thinks of that very funny statement of yours, or Bimmey for that matter.
Chuckle
cali
(114,904 posts)The NSA has a pretty ugly history and spokesman for the agency have a history of lying and bullying. Given that, why would anyone take them, or any spokesperson of any national security agency, at their word?
premium
(3,731 posts)I don't believe a fucking word coming out of their mouths.
If their lips are moving, then they're lying, IMHO.