Big Brother & The Two Edged Sword - 2

I got your number

Regular readers know that often times Dredd Blog is on the case before the case develops.

Today we review an NSA spying case that caught one of the queens of Stalingrad flat footed (The Queens of Stalingrad).

Why do they not understand that letting government evolve and morph to the right always comes back to bite?

And more often than not that bite takes the head off first, then nibbles on the left overs (A Tale of Coup Cities - 4, Deja Voodoo, ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1).

Anyway, here is some Dredd Blog information from this date in 2009 talking abut NSA spying:

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The head of the House Intelligence Committee who allowed Americans to be spied on got caught in the web she helped weave:

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.

Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”

(CQ Politics, link below). A corrupt banana republic regime never passes up on an opportunity to blackmail to get their way.

That practice comes directly from the J. Edgar Hoover "why we wire tap" textbook. A "good wire tap" is one that can be used for political hay. So the regime took it up a notch:

And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for “lack of evidence,” it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush’s top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.

Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House.

(CQ Politics). It is clear why the Bush II regime began to spy on Americans well before 9/11 came along, and why they were doing government by blackmail to the very end.

Is it fair to say we can extrapolate and figure out what Cheney had in his large file cabinet, which he took with him when he left Dodge, and therefore, why the Obama Administration is not at liberty to prosecute the Bush II regime even for blatant torture crimes?

John Byrne at Raw Story has some quotes from a NYT editor who denies some of the specifics of the CQ Politics article.

The fundamental reality is that spying on Americans for political blackmail was part and parcel of FBI tactics for decades during J. Edgar Hoover. That was in the days of low technology.

The admitted NSA spying on Americans with very, very, high powered technology these days supports the premise that political blackmail may be at the heart of Obama's not being at liberty to prosecute the most horrendous torture crimes.

I think Obama is squeaky clean, so who is Obama protecting other than the torture freaks?

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The previous post is here.