Tag: CIA

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First Amendment rights too much government

Deep State in a Corner

deep state, censorship, mind control, PSYOP, CIA

Once upon a time, the CIA and allied agencies pushed free speech as a norm. 

Overseas.

The rationale? Without some free speech and press rights, it was too hard to organize a populace to overthrow their government. Our spooks exported freedom of speech abroad not because they were so gung-​ho American; it was all about seeding revolutions.

But not here! 

The CIA couldn’t let others take advantage of American free speech like its agents leveraged free speech abroad. A change in government might mean … loss of jobs. Mission. Money.

What to do? Disinform at home. By corrupting journalism.

The Operation Mockingbird efforts in the 1960s helped intel insiders control information and manage “the consent of the governed,” and these early efforts grew into the close ties between the Deep State and credentialed journalists today. 

The connections, I’m told are many: it’s not just Anderson Cooper’s internship at the CIA. 

During the Cold War, the disinformation element found a plausible justification. Then, the Soviets had us at a disadvantage: we had trouble extracting reliable information from within the Iron Curtain, but they could grab all sorts of useful information from our open, comparatively free speech realm.

Disinformation: a strategic necessity. But the consequences?

 “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete,” William Casey explained to President Ronald Reagan, “when everything the American public believes is false.”

In the early days of the Internet, the Deep State pushed online speech platforms, the better to allow for foreign coups. Is there a social media space that hasn’t received surreptitious government subsidy? It’s hard to be sure. We’re supposed to assume our government protects us rather than controls us. 

But, increasingly, Internet-​connected Americans see government officials chiefly as manipulators.

Which is why the Deep State’s most ardent partisans (neocons; Democrats; plutocrats) now routinely attack free speech here, and why allies overseas are so thoroughly cracking down on “de-​stabilizing” opinions. It’s why Rumble is no longer available in Brazil and why Musk is pulling out Twitter personnel … and why France has arrested the CEO of Telegram.

Us catching on to the psy-​op game places the Deep State in a corner. All the disinformation agents have left is censorship and repression.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability First Amendment rights government transparency

Overly Broad Stonewalling

United States, censorship, intelligence agency, FBI, CIA, free speech, First Amendment

How specific do requests for records of unconstitutional activity have to be?

In February, the Federal Bureau of Investigation pretended an inability to fulfill America First Legal Foundation’s freedom-​of-​information request for documents about the FBI’s pre-​election efforts to censor Twitter users. The agency declared the request to be “overly broad.”

What’s been “overly broad” is the policy of censorship, disinformation, and more by the Deep State using private partners. Meaning their real problem is doubtless that the requested documents are “overly incriminating,” too unmistakably what AFL wanted.

So the FBI stonewalled. 

And AFL has sued, in its complaint concluding that the agency’s “blanket denial of AFL’s FOIA request is contrary to law and should not stand.”

Thanks to evidence brought to light by other litigation and by Matt Taibbi’s reporting on Twitter’s internal records, none of us is just guessing that the FBI has acted to censor constitutionally protected discourse. We know that the FBI’s National Election Command Post flagged at least 25 Twitter accounts for “misinformation.”

But the only party to the censorship revealing relevant information voluntarily is Twitter itself, thanks to decisions by Twitter’s new management under Elon Musk.

With respect to everybody else colluding to censor social media — the FBI, the DOJ, the White House, Google, Facebook, etc. — looks like it’ll have to be lawsuits every step of the way.

The First Amendment’s stricture upon Congress to “make no law” abridging our “freedom of speech, or of the press,” does not allow the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and other agencies to simply subcontract. Nor are they free to mold public opinion. 

A government-​controlled “press” is not a free press.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment national politics & policies

Even Libertarians

John Brennan

Former CIA Director John Brennan raised eyebrows, last week, when he said on MSNBC that officials in the new administration “are now moving in laser-​like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas, where they germinate in different parts of the country and they gain strength and it brings together an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, Nativists, even libertarians.”

Tellingly, he doesn’t mention any specific groups by name. Like antifa (cough). But in America there have been a few violent groups engaged in what might be called “insurgencies.”

It is almost as if Brennan has forgotten the groups that this past year have gone so far as to set up political territory within major American cities, proclaiming independence from these United States. Such “autonomous zones” (hastily and violently constructed in Seattle and elsewhere) existed for days and weeks on end but failed to spark the Democrats’ “laser-​like” attention as did the capitol break-​in, which just so happened to be an assault upon them. 

Why ignore antifa but focus on … “even libertarians”? 

While libertarians defend freedom and peaceful change, the Democratic Party and the Deep State seem to find mass protest combined with violence in causes they like helpful (“Black Lives Matter,” etc.). For increasing their insider power, no doubt, and ramping it up to new, oppressive levels. But mass protest (say, against the lockdowns) they regard as dangerous — because corrosive to their power. 

Meanwhile, antifa in Portland have taken to the streets and attacked Democratic Party offices. 

Violence is not something we should be cavalier about. Or partisan about. Oppose it all. Period.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Lying to Liars

Peter Strzok,Licensed to Lie, CIA, deep state,

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out its awards, the presenters say, “And the Oscar goes to …”

We should hand out an award for lying in government — and name it after President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. On March 12, 2013, Clapper lied to Congress about NSA collection of data on U.S. citizens.

Clapper roams free, while Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn ran afoul of lying to the FBI, in his bizarre case. Flynn seemed merely to misremember, yet being caught in a flub was enough to leverage a plea deal.

Now The Epoch Times adds a wrinkle to the story. “The prosecutors handling the case of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said they mixed up notes from the FBI interview that served as a basis for making Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI,” we read in the November 7 – 13 paper edition. The jumbled notes in question were those of the infamous Peter Strzok and his assistant. 

“It’s now impossible to take [the DOJ’s and FBI’s] word for anything,” says Sidney Powell, Flynn’s lawyer. 

A former prosecutor herself, Ms. Powell has written a relevant book, Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice. 

In her motion for Flynn, she argues that a formal FBI summary of the Flynn interview contains information not in the notes, yet it formed the basis for the prosecution.*

On November 5, prosecutors apologized for their error, which they admit “caused some confusion.”

In a just world, their flub would be called a lie and they’d face major consequences.

As it is, the Clapper goes to them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* It gets worse, if murkier, with apparent editing of the notes to implicate Flynn and the allegation that Clapper himself directed a reporter to “take the kill shot.”

Peter Strzok,Licensed to Lie, CIA, deep state,

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national politics & policies

Are You a Conspiracy Theorist?

Representative Rashida Tlaib, screams, Trump, rally

Politicians are all over the vaping issue, like packrats on pet food.

The House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, C‑SPAN explains, held a hearing on the relationship between e‑cigarettes and an outbreak in lung disease. Government experts spoke. There was only one empaneled pro-​vaping witness, Vicki Porter, who said that vaping was “a health miracle to me,” since it got her off of smoking tobacco.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-​Shultz (D – Fla.) insisted that the record show that she was not to be trusted, since she merely expressed her own opinion as to the superiority of vaping over smoking, noting that Ms. Porter “is not a public health expert.”

But it was Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D – Mich.) who really came out swinging for the interventionist government. Her main concern, writes Robby Soave at Reason, appeared to be Porter’s direct challenging of “the tortured logic of the Oversight and Reform Subcommittee hearing.”

Rep. Tlaib said she “wanted to know more about you,” to Ms. Porter. “You call yourself a ‘converted conservative,’” Tlaib stuttered, “and a reformed Marxist.

“Are you a conspiracy theorist?”

Wh-​what?

Ms. Porter answered reasonably. Then Tlaib questioned her regarding why she had winked at one of her colleagues. Porter said they knew each other.

In the 1960s, the CIA pushed the phrase “conspiracy theorist” as a way to publicly marginalize anyone who questioned official pronouncements on the JFK assassinations and even trickier subjects, like UFOs. Rep. Tlaib is either one of those who bought into the CIA line, or is part of some less-​than-​transparent agenda.

So, are you a conspiracy theorist?

My answer might have been, not until right about now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Representative Rashida Tlaib, screams, Trump, rally

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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Not Even with a Straight Face

CIA, foreign policy, elections, influence, interference, puppets

Is American foreign policy so foreign to our values that even those who have served at the very pinnacle of national intelligence agencies have trouble telling the truth?

“Have we ever tried to meddle in other countries’ elections?” Laura Ingraham, host of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, asked James Woolsey, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1993 to 1995.

“Oh, probably,” Mr. Woolsey replied. “But, uh, it was for the good of the system, in order to avoid communists from taking over. For example, in Europe in ’47-’48-’49, the Greeks and the Italians, we, the CIA — ”

“We don’t do that now, though?” Ingraham interjected. “We don’t mess around in other people’s elections, Jim?”

“Well … urrrrr, yum, yum, yum, um, um,” the old spymaster offered to laughter from both Ingraham and her studio cameramen. “Only for a very good cause,” he added with a sly grin, “and the interests of democracy.”

Interests. Of. Democracy. 

Ha. Ha ha. Laughing yet?

Foreign Policy tells us that documents declassified in 2017 “shed light on the Central Intelligence Agency’s central role in the 1953 coup that brought down [elected] Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh … poisoning U.S.-Iran relations into the 21st century.” 

Need more? There’s a handy database that lists undemocratic and illegal* shenanigans going on and on through the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, up through President Obama to today. 

“This broader history of election meddling has largely been missing from the flood of reporting on the Russian intervention …” noted the New York Times last December. 

Of course, our government’s interference doesn’t justify Russian government interference. But, we can only (possibly) control our politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “Meddling in other’s elections is a violation of international law,” Steve Baldwin writes in The American Spectator. “More importantly, U.S. law prohibits the use of tax dollars to influence foreign elections.”

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