Lopez reports: "Contradicting a statement by ex-vice president Dick Cheney on Sunday that warrantless domestic surveillance might have prevented 9/11, 2007 court records indicate that the Bush-Cheney administration began such surveillance at least 7 months prior to 9/11."
Bush and Cheney (photo: AP)
Bush-Cheney Began Illegal NSA Spying Before 9/11
15 July 13
ontradicting a statement by ex-vice president Dick Cheney on Sunday that warrantless domestic surveillance might have prevented 9/11, 2007 court records indicate that the Bush-Cheney administration began such surveillance at least 7 months prior to 9/11.
The Bush administration bypassed the law requiring such actions to be authorized by FISA court warrants, the body set up in the Seventies to oversee Executive Branch spying powers after abuses by Richard Nixon. Former QWest CEO John Nacchios said that at a meeting with the NSA on February 27, 2001, he and other QWest officials declined to participate. AT&T, Verizon and Bellsouth all agreed to shunt customer communications records to an NSA database.
In 2007 the Denver Post reported:
"Nacchio suggested that the NSA sought phone, Internet and other customer records from Qwest in early 2001. When he refused to hand over the information, the agency retaliated by not granting lucrative contracts to the Denver-based company, he claimed."
Other sources corroborate the former CEO's allegations, which were made in the course of his legal defense against insider trading charges. Both Slate.com and National Journal have published reports in which sources are quoted which support the former CEO's claims.
Speaking on "FOX News Sunday" this weekend in defense of the Obama administration's NSA PRISM program, which has caused a national uproar over the sweeping intrusion by the government into American citizens' emails, live chats, and other electronic communications, Cheney said:
"Now, as everybody has been associated with the program said if we had this before 9/11, when there were two terrorists in San Diego, two hijackers, able to use that program, that capability against the target, we might have been able to prevent 9/11,"
However, the presence of such powers in the hands of the present administration did not succeed in preventing the Boston Marathon attacks, even though the suspects were already well-known to the FBI, and one allegedly told law enforcement, while in the hospital, that they were able to "download plans for pressure cooker bombs from the Internet.
In the same interview on "Fox news Sunday" Cheney called NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden a "traitor."
In 2004, an AT&T technician filed a class action lawsuit against AT&T for engaging in an illegal domestic-surveillance program at the behest of the government. The Bush administration accessed major routers owned by telecommunications companies, in cities such as San Francisco, to divert traffic onto NSA mirror sites in order to capture vast volumes of data.
The Bush-Cheney administration fought fiercely to pass legislation which granted telecommunications companies immunity from prosecution for violating Americans' Fourth Amendment rights under the Constitution. The legislation was passed in 2008. UK Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald argued that the unprecedented "retroactive" immunity would also give the Bush administration immunity as well, by preventing lawsuits from moving forward into the discovery phase, where wrongdoing was likely to be uncovered.
Nevertheless, political accountability activists continue to press for action against the Bush, and now the Obama, administrations for violations of the Constitution and settled law. On April 19th of this year a California attorney, Inder Comar, filed two lawsuits in the Northern District of California against George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz for planning and waging a "war of aggression" against Iraq, in violation of laws set down at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. A radio interview of Comar can be heard on peace activist Cindy Sheehan's radio show HERE.
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Your love for the Constitution-ha ting NSA is duly noted.
Walter? Did you write this?
The Canadian equivalent is the Toronto Globe&Mail which likes to fancy itself as Canada's "newspaper of record". I parted company with them when they recommended electing a Conservative majority govt (Stephen Harper as PM) in the last federal election campaign. They got their wish - I often wonder if they regret it. Common sense would suggest that they should. Anyway, for that and other reasons I gave up on them and shifted to the Toronto Star - which is also partisan but unlike the G&M doesn't pretend it isn't - and is partisan in a more civilized way. Also, the Star has much better columnists: Haroon Siddiqi, Heather Mallick, Linda Mcuaig, Thomas Walkom, Tim Harper, Rick Salutin, Chantal Hebert, ...
1) Participatory Media who's shares are owned by all Founder, Worker, Supplier & Consumer stakeholders who are represented in systems of Progressive Ownership in distinct associations & on the corporate board of directors. Time-based accounting in participatory companies accords credits for each stakeholder's exceptional natural contributions. When each of these 4 stakeholders exceptionally contribute expertise, time, resources, money, property, good, services or patronage, there are ways to measure the market value & accord shares.
https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/7-participatory-companies
2) The news presented covers all perspectives, reporting from all sides with often conflicting vantages given. If media is not presenting all sides, they have a particular agenda, are lazy & usually are deliberately lying. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/structure/both-sides-now-equal-time-recorded-dialogues
In 1975, the WP's unionized printers went out on strike. The post's response was to fire them and replace them with non-union labor. One can I think make a reasonable case that this became the precedent for Ronald Reagan doing the same thing to the unionized air traffic controllers in 1981 (hard to imagine Reagan's staff was unaware of this move on the part of the "liberal" WP and figured hey if the "liberal" WP can do it it's a no brainer for us to do the same).
We cannot.
And All Scoundrels Rejoice.
What goes around comes around. What do we expect for the invasions & destruction of humanity's sustainable vastly abundant worldwide 'indigenous' (Latin 'self-generatin g') cultures? Do we expect to just continue on in the destructive colonial patterns we worship? If we want to move forward as a sustainable people, then we will have to address our foundations. www.indigenecommunity.info
Major General Albert Stubblebine, a member of U.S. Military Intelligence Hall of Fame,
tried to get the truth out that no plane hit the Pentagon and the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition. No mainstream media including The Guardian would cover his statements.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daNr_TrBw6E
Ted Gunderson, former head of FBI for Los Angeles, Houston and Memphis, gave his opinions on why 9/11 was an inside job. No mainstream media would cover that either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRaezLTU2a0
So why is the media covering Snowdon?
9/11 is the key to ending war forever, in my opinion.
If the majority knew the truth, it would certainly end the fake war on terror. But would that cause our illusion of democracy to be replaced with the very apparent police state that is lurking in the background, stockpiling millions of rounds of hollow-point bullets?
They have the wealth. They own the media.
They have the police state in place.
And most of the people I talk to have bought their lies.
So why is he cheap if you didn't know?
The answers are 1) Nothing, and 2)Because the rightwing (and extreme left) saw this as an opportunity to vilify Obama.
The uninformed majority in this country would most likely buy the false premise that if it is criminal to reveal the spying, the spying must be legal.
Are Snowden's actions worse than Berger's who only had to pay a fine?
Yes, of course they are! Snowden stole and SHARED classified US intelligence with foreign powers who do not necessarily have our best interests at heart. That's textboook espionage and probably legally treasonous.
Just keep tracking !
Anyone read today's Paul Craig Roberts article about Putin's remarks at the G8?
So thankful for anyone (like Greenwald) who believes that facts are good things, and competency should be a requirement in journalism. Or call the reports and paper, "opinion", not news.
God protect and preserve you, and the nothing but True Liberty and Freedom, and True Journalism, that you represent and uphold, Glenn Greenwald. God speed, True Patriot; and may you live long and prosper in those continued pursuits!
The case of Gary Webb is monumental. When he published his stories in the San Jose Mercury about CIA and cocaine traffic to gangs in LA, the WaPo lead the attack on Webb for his reporting. I recall Pincus was a leader in that attack.
We must remember that Walter Pincus was one reporter exposed in the 70s as having taken payments from the CIA. The Church Committee exposed 300 US journalists who took bribes from the CIA -- regular payroll they called it.
The WaPo story on Greenwald is not new. This is what Pincus and the Post have done over and over. They are the gatekeepers of news. They break the stories that they think americans should know and they cover up what they think americans should not know. Katherine Graham, long time owner of the Post, said exactly this in an interview, "there are some things the people should not know." Hardly, the right attitude for an owner of a major newspaper.