Ever since the Edward Snowden story first became popular, I’ve been thinking – this story looks like more bollocks…
Here is a good summary by Jon Rappoport
CIA denies request for info on Edward Snowden
Who is former CIA employee Edward Snowden?
As we go along, keep in mind that
intelligence-agency personnel live in order to tell low-level and
high-level lies. They tend to fall into a suicidal funk if they aren’t
lying on at least three or four levels at once.
Let’s look at Snowden’s brief history as reported by The Guardian (“Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations”, by Glen Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, and Laura Poitras in Hong Kong, 11 June 2013):
In 2003, at age 19, without a high school
diploma, Snowden enlists in the Army. He begins a training program to
join the Special Forces. At what point after enlistment can a new
soldier start this elite training program?
Snowden breaks both legs in an exercise.
He’s discharged from the Army. Is that automatic? How about healing and
then resuming service?
If he was accepted in the Special Forces
training program because he had special computer skills, then why
discharge him simply because he broke both legs? Just asking. Just a
thought.
“Sorry, Ed, but with two broken legs we
just don’t think you can hack into terrorist data anymore. You were
good, but not now. Try Walmart. They always have openings.”
Circa 2003, Snowden gets a job as a
security guard for an NSA facility at the University of Maryland. He
specifically wanted to work for NSA? Or was it just a generic job
opening near his home he found out about? Nothing worth discovering
here? Nothing to see?
Snowden shifts jobs. Boom. He’s now in the CIA, in IT. He apparently has no high school diploma.
In 2007, Snowden is sent to Geneva. He’s
only 23 years old. The CIA gives him a diplomat cover story. He’s put in
charge of maintaining computer-network security for the CIA and US
diplomats. Major job. Obviously, he has access to a wide range of
classified documents. Sound a little odd? He’s just a kid.
During this period, in Geneva, one of the
incidents that really sours Snowden on the CIA is the “turning of a
Swiss banker.” One night, CIA guys get a banker drunk, encourage him to
drive home, the banker gets busted, the CIA guys help him out, and then
with that bond formed, they eventually get the banker to reveal deep
financial secrets to the Agency.
This sours Snowden? He’s that naïve? He
doesn’t know by now that the CIA does this sort of thing all the time?
He’s shocked? He “didn’t sign up for this?” He doesn’t already know
about CIA assassinations and engineered regime changes? MKULTRA?
In 2009, Snowden leaves the CIA. Why?
Presumably because he’s disillusioned. It should noted here that Snowden
claimed he could do very heavy damage to the entire US intelligence
community in 2008, but decided to wait because he thought Obama, just
coming into the Presidency, might keep his “transparency” promise.
After two years with the CIA in Geneva,
Snowden really had the capability to take down the whole US inter-agency
intelligence network, or a major chunk of it?
If you buy that without further inquiry, I have condos for sale on the dark side of the moon.
In 2009, Snowden leaves the CIA and goes
to work in the private sector. Dell, Booze Allen Hamilton. In this
latter job, Snowden is assigned to work at the NSA.
He’s an outsider, but, again, he claims
to have so much access to so much sensitive NSA data that he can take
down the whole US intelligence network in a single day. The. Whole. US.
Intelligence. Network.
This is Ed Snowden’s sketchy legend. To
anyone familiar with intelligence legends and cover stories, it’s mostly
red flags, alarm bells, sirens, flashing lights.
Then we have the crowning piece: they
solved the riddle: Ed Snowden was able to steal thousands of highly
protected NSA documents because…he had a thumb drive.
It’s the weapon that breached the inner sanctum of the most sophisticated information agency in the world.
It’s the weapon to which the NSA, with all its resources, remains utterly vulnerable. Can’t defeat it.
Not only did Snowden stroll into NSA with
a thumb drive, he knew how to navigate all the security layers put in
place to stop people from stealing classified documents.
“Let’s see. We have a new guy coming to
work for us here at NSA today? Oh, whiz kid. Ed Snowden. Outside
contractor. Booz Allen. He’s not really an in-house employee of the NSA.
Twenty-nine years old. No high school diploma. Has a GED. He worked for
the CIA and quit. Hmm. Why did he quit? Oh, never mind, who cares? No
problem.
“Tell you what. Let’s give this kid
access to our most sensitive data. Sure. Why not? Everything. That stuff
we keep behind 986 walls? Where you have to pledge the life of your
first-born against the possibility you’ll go rogue? Let Snowden see it
all. Sure. What the hell. I’m feeling charitable. He seems like a nice
kid.”
NSA is the most awesome spying agency in
this world. If you cross the street in Podunk, Anywhere, USA, to buy an
ice cream soda, on a Tuesday afternoon in July, they know.
They know whether you sit at the counter and drink that soda or take it and move to the only table in the store.
But this agency, with all its vast power and its dollars…
Can’t track one of its own, as he steals
the whole store. Can’t keep the store locked. And they can’t track the
later movements of this man who made up a story about needing treatment
in Hong Kong for epilepsy and then skipped the country.
Just can’t find him.
Can’t find him in Hong Kong, where he
does a sit-down video interview with Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian.
Can’t find that “safe house” or that “hotel” where he’s staying.
No. Can’t find him or spy on his
communications while he’s in Hong Kong. Can’t figure out he’s booked a
flight to Russia. Can’t intercept him at the airport before he leaves
for Russia. Too difficult.
And this man, this employee, is walking
around with four laptops that contain the keys to all the secret spying
knowledge in the known cosmos.
Can’t locate those laptops. The most
brilliant technical minds of this or any other generation can find a
computer in Outer Mongolia in the middle of a blizzard, but these
walking-around computers in Hong Kong are somehow beyond reach.
And, again, before this man, Snowden,
this employee, skipped Hawaii, he was able to access a principal segment
of the layout of the entire US intelligence network. Yes.
Not only that, but anyone who worked at
this super-agency as an analyst, as a systems-analyst supervisor, could
have done the same thing. Could have stolen the keys to the kingdom.
This is why NSA geniuses with IQs over 180 decided, in the aftermath of the Snowden affair, that they needed to draft “tighter rules and procedures” for their employees. Right.
Pieces of internal of security they hadn’t realized they needed before would be put in place.
This is, let me remind you, the most
secretive spying agency in the world. The richest spying agency. The
smartest spying agency.
But somehow, over the years, they’d overlooked their own security. They’d left doors open, so that any one of their own analyst-supervisors could steal everything.
Could take it all. Could just snatch it away and copy it and store it on a few laptops.
But now, yes, having been made aware of this vulnerability, the agency will make corrections.
Sure.
And reporters for elite media don’t find any of this hard to swallow.
On the ever-solicitous Charley Rose,
a gaggle of pundits/newspeople warned that Ed Snowden, walking around
with those four laptops, could be an easy target for Chinese spies or
Russian spies, who could get access to the data on those computers.
But the NSA can’t. No.
The tightest and strongest and richest
and smartest spying agency in the world can’t find its own employee.
It’s in the business of tracking, and it can’t find him.
It’s in the business of security, and it can’t protect its own data from its employees.
If you instantly believe all that, with
no questions, I have timeshares to sell in the black hole in the center
of the Milky Way.
Here is a different possible scenario. Is it any less likely than the one we’ve been treated to?
Snowden was working an op, either as a dupe or knowingly. He was working for…well, let’s see, who would that be?
Who was he working for before he entered the private sector and wound up at NSA?
The CIA.
Would that be the same CIA who competes, on certain levels, with the NSA?
The same CIA who’s watched its own prestige and funding diminish, as human intelligence has given way to electronic snooping?
Yes, it would be. CIA just can’t match the NSA when it comes to gathering signals-intell.
Wired Magazine, June 2013 issue (“NSA Snooping Was Only the Beginning. Meet the Spy Chief Leading Us Into Cyberwar”, 06.12.13). James Bamford, author of three books on the NSA, states:
“In April, as part of its 2014 budget
request, the Pentagon [which rules the NSA] asked Congress for $4.7
billion for increased ‘cyberspace operations,’ nearly $1 billion more
than the 2013 allocation. At the same time, budgets for the CIA and
other intelligence agencies were cut by almost the same amount, $4.4
billion. A portion of the money going to…[NSA] will be used to create 13
cyberattack teams.”
That means spying money. Far more for NSA, far less for CIA.
Turf war.
Suppose people at the CIA, genuine experts, carefully, over time, were
able to access those NSA documents, and handed them to Snowden—or
patiently, and at length, or showed Snowden how to execute that quite
sophisticated piece of access-trickery? Because (more believably) NSA’s
internal security was very good. It wasn’t (far less believably) a
bumble-dumb of mismanaged amateur clockwork. It was quite tight, so
tight that a man like Snowden wouldn’t have been able to move through it
like a ghost.
The CIA, of course, couldn’t be seen as
the NSA leaker. They needed a guy. They needed a guy who could appear to
be from the NSA, to make things look worse for the NSA and shield the
CIA.
They had Ed Snowden. He had worked for the CIA in Geneva, in a high-level position, overseeing computer-systems security.
Somewhere in his CIA past, Libertarian
and freedom-loving Ed meets a fellow CIA guy who sits down with him and
says, “You know, Ed, things have gone too damn far. The NSA is spying on
everybody all the time. I can show you proof. They’ve gone beyond the
point of trying to catch terrorists. They’re doing something else.
They’re expanding a Surveillance State, which can only lead to one
thing: the destruction of America, what America stands for, what you and
I know America is supposed to be. The NSA isn’t like us, Ed. We go
after terrorists for real. That’s it. Whereas NSA goes after everybody.
We have to stop it. We need a guy…and there are those of us who think
you might be that guy…”
This could be a straight con, or a few
CIA people could have actually wanted to torpedo the NSA for its
unlimited surveilling operations.
Ed says, “Tell me more. I’m intrigued.”
He eventually buys in.
And the CIA will eventually find a way to protect and shield him while he’s escaping the US and staying in Hong Kong.
Put two scenarios on the truth scale and
assess them. Which is more likely? The tale Snowden told to Glenn
Greenwald, with all its holes, with its super-naive implications about
the fumbling, bumbling NSA, or a scenario in which Snowden is the CIA’s
boy?
Let me enhance my alternative scenario
and branch it out. If Snowden is still working for the CIA, he and his
buds aren’t the only people who want to take the NSA down a notch. No.
Because, for example, NSA has been spying on everybody inside the
Beltway.
Spying on politicians with secrets.
That includes a major, major, prime NSA target: Congress.
Do you think members of Congress with heavy secrets enjoy knowing NSA is over their shoulders?
Imagine this conversation taking place,
in a car, on a lonely road outside Washington, late at night. The
speakers are Congressman X and a contractor representing a covert unit
inside the NSA:
“Well, Congressman, do you remember January 6th? A Monday afternoon, a men’s room in the park off—”
“What the hell are you talking about!”
“A stall in the men’s room. The kid. He
was wearing white high-tops. A Skins cap. T-shirt. Dark hair. Scar
across his left cheek. Blue tattoo on his right thigh.”
“Jesus.”
Dead silence.
“What do you want?” says the Congressman, now trapped.
Imagine this one: “Senator, we know about the underage cheerleader in Ohio. Your trip there in 2010, just before the election.”
Blackmail on the hoof.
If you’re a Congressman or a Senator with
nasty secrets, and you know NSA is spying on you, because it’s spying
on everyone in the Congress, who’s your potential best friend?
Somebody who can go up against the NSA, somebody who wants to go up against the NSA.
And who might that be?
The CIA?
It’s not perfect, but it’s the best you can do.
So if you’re a Congressman, you go to a
friend in the CIA and you have a chat about “the NSA problem.” How can
you get NSA off your back? Your CIA friend has his own concerns about
NSA.
He tells you in confidence: “Look, maybe
we can help you. We know a lot about the NSA. We have good people. You
might say one of our jobs is watching the watchers at NSA, to, uh, make
sure they don’t go too far in their spying.”
This sounds interesting. If you have to sell your soul, you’d rather sell it to the CIA than the NSA. It’s a judgment call.
And a few months later, a year later…you
read about Ed Snowden blowing a hole in the NSA. You take note of the
fact that Snowden worked for the CIA. He worked for them in Geneva. Then
he left for the private sector and got himself assigned to the NSA.
Hmm. Maybe you have some cause for optimism. Maybe your CIA friend is helping you out.
Some schmuck reporter asks you about the
current NSA scandal and you say, “Of course we have to protect
classified data, in order to prevent terrorist attacks. But at the same
time, we need to respect the Bill of Rights. People can’t go around
spying on anyone for no reason.”
You’re sending your own signal.
You’re tipping your CIA guy. You
appreciate his help, if in fact he’s helping you. You can’t ask him
directly. If you did, he’d never give you a straight answer. But just in
case…you’re tipping him off.
At the same time, you’re wondering how
many people in Congress are so controlled by the NSA that they’d never
try to break out? How many people, with how many secrets, are so deeply
blackmailed they’d never dare go up against NSA?
This is an important calculation. The
battle might already be lost. You might not stand a chance. Maybe nobody
can help you. Maybe you can’t escape.
Maybe you shouldn’t even hint that NSA has overstepped its legal boundaries by spying on Americans.
That’s the conundrum that keeps you up at night.
What if the spies spying on their own government are running the government beyond the ability of anyone to stop them?
You don’t give a damn about what this would mean for America. You only care about what it means for you and your secrets.
Maybe this is the jail you’re in for the rest of your life.
When you’re back in your home state
showing your face and giving speeches, and a voter comes up to you and
voices a concern about his dwindling paycheck, his house payment, his
endangered pension…and when you nod and gaze out at the horizon, as if
to pluck a magic answer from the ether, you’re really thinking about the
conundrum.
You’re thinking about the life sentence you’re serving in the Surveillance State.
And that night, in your hotel room, you get down on your knees and pray that Ed Snowden is still working for the CIA.
Who else, besides the CIA and numerous
politicians inside the Beltway, would be aching to take the NSA down a
notch? Who else would be rooting hard for this former (?) CIA employee,
Snowden, to succeed?
How about Wall Street?
Still waiting to be uncovered? NSA spying
to collect elite financial data, spying on the people who have that
data: the major investment banks. NSA scooping up that data to predict,
manipulate, and profit from trading markets all over the world.
A trillion-dollar operation.
Snowden worked for Booz Allen, which is
owned by the Carlyle Group ($170 billion in assets). Carlyle, the
infamous. Their money is making money in 160 investment funds.
A few of Carlyle’s famous front men in
its history: George HW Bush, James Baker (US Secretary of State), Frank
Carlucci (US Secretary of Defense and CIA Deputy Director), John Major
(British Prime Minister), Arthur Levitt (Chairman of the SEC).
Suppose you’re one of the princes in the
NSA castle, and Ed Snowden has just gone public with your documents.
You’re saying, “Let’s see, this kid worked for Booz Allen, which is
owned by the Carlyle Group. We (NSA) have been spying over Carlyle’s
shoulder, stealing their proprietary financial data. What are the
chances they’re getting a little revenge on us now?”
Yes, you’re thinking about that. You’re looking into it.
The Surveillance State has created an
apparatus whose implications are staggering. It’s a different world now.
And sometimes it takes a writer of fiction to flesh out the larger
landscape.
Brad Thor’s novel, Black List,
posits the existence of a monster corporation, ATS, that stands
alongside the NSA in collecting information on every move we make. ATS’
intelligence-gathering capability is unmatched anywhere in the world.
On pages 117-118 of Black List, Thor makes a stunning inference that, on reflection, is as obvious as the fingers on your hand:
“For years ATS [substitute “NSA”] had
been using its technological superiority to conduct massive insider
trading. Since the early 1980s, the company had spied on anyone and
everyone in the financial world. They listened in on phone calls,
intercepted faxes, and evolved right along with the technology, hacking
internal computer networks and e-mail accounts. They created mountains
of ‘black dollars’ for themselves, which they washed through various
programs they were running under secret contract, far from the prying
eyes of financial regulators.
“Those black dollars were invested into
hard assets around the world, as well as in the stock market, through
sham, offshore corporations. They also funneled the money into reams of
promising R&D projects, which eventually would be turned around and
sold to the Pentagon or the CIA.
“In short, ATS had created its own license to print money and had assured itself a place beyond examination or reproach.”
In real life, whether the prime criminal source is one monster corporation or the NSA itself, the outcome would be the same.
Total surveillance has unlimited payoffs when it targets financial markets and the people who have intimate knowledge of them.
“Total security awareness” programs of
surveillance are ideal spying ops in the financial arena, designed to
grab millions of bits of inside information, and then utilize them to
make investments and suck up billions (trillions?) of dollars.
It gives new meaning to “the rich get richer.”
Think about Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.
Think about the NSA men who already know everything about GS and Morgan,
and are using this knowledge to steal sums that might make GS and
Morgan blush with envy.
Goldman Sachs, Chase, and Morgan consider
trillion-dollar trading markets their own private golden-egg farm. They
run it, they own it, they manipulate it for their own ends.
If NSA has been looking over their
shoulders for the past 30 years, discovering all their knowledge, and
operating a meta- invasion, siphoning off enormous profits, NSA would
rate as their Enemy Number One.
And would need to be torpedoed.
Enter Ed Snowden.
CIA denies request for info on Edward Snowden
This content was previously posted on FROT, June 12 2016
