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NSA Whistleblower: Snowden Never Had Access to the JUICIEST Documents
NSA Spying On Congress, Admirals, Lawyers … Content As Well As Metadata … Cheney Was Running the Show
NSA whistleblower Russel Tice was a key source in the 2005 New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping.
Tice told PBS and other media that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top government officials and military officers, including Supreme Court Justices, highly-ranked generals, Colin Powell and other State Department personnel, and many other top officials:
He says the NSA started spying on President Obama when he was a candidate for Senate:
Many of Tice’s allegations have been confirmed by other government whistleblowers. And see this.
Washington’s Blog called Tice to find out more about what he saw when he was at NSA.
RUSSELL TICE: We now know that NSA was wiretapping [Senator] Frank Church and another Senator. [That has been confirmed.]
And that got out by accident. All the information the NSA had back then – and probably many other senators and important people too, back in the 70s – they shredded and they destroyed all of that evidence. As much as they could find, they destroyed it all. By accident, something popped up 40 years later.
And, in fact, they were asked 40 years ago whether NSA had bugged Congress. And, of course, they lied. They lied through their teeth.
NSA Has Hidden Its Most Radical Surveillance Operations … Even from People Like Snowden Who Had General “Code Word” Clearance
WASHINGTON’S BLOG: Glenn Greenwald – supposedly, in the next couple of days or weeks – is going to disclose, based on NSA documents leaked by Snowden, that the NSA is spying on all sorts of normal Americans … and that the spying is really to crush dissent. [Background here, here and here.]
Does Snowden even have documents which contain the information which you’ve seen?
RUSSELL TICE: The answer is no.
WASHINGTON’S BLOG: So you saw handwritten notes. And what Snowden was seeing were electronic files …?
RUSSELL TICE: Think of it this way. Remember I told you about the NSA doing everything they could to make sure that the information from 40 years ago – from spying on Frank Church and Lord knows how many other Congressman that they were spying on – was hidden?
Now do you think they’re going to put that information into Powerpoint slides that are easy to explain to everybody what they’re doing?
They would not even put their own NSA designators on the reports [so that no one would know that] it came from the NSA. They made the reports look like they were Humint (human intelligence) reports. They did it to hide the fact that they were NSA and they were doing the collection. That’s 40 years ago. [The NSA and other agencies are still doing "parallel construction", "laundering" information to hide the fact that the information is actually from mass NSA surveillance.]
Now, what NSA is doing right now is that they’re taking the information and they’re putting it in a much higher security level. It’s called “ECI” - Exceptionally Controlled Information – and it’s called the black program … which I was a specialist in, by the way.
I specialized in black world – DOD and IC (Intelligence Community) – programs, operations and missions … in “VRKs”, “ECIs”, and “SAPs”, “STOs”. SAP equals Special Access Program. It’s highly unlikely Mr. Snowden had any access to these. STO equals Special Technical Operations It’s highly unlikely Mr. Snowden had any access to these.
Now in that world – the ECI/VRK world – everything in that system is classified at a higher level and it has its own computer systems that house it. It’s totally separate than the system which Mr. Snowden was privy to, which was called the “JWICS”: Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. The JWICS system is what everybody at NSA has access to. Mr Snowden had Sys Admin [systems administrator] authority for the JWICS.
And you still have to have TS/SCI clearance [i.e. Top Secret/ Sensitive Compartmented Information - also known as “code word” - clearance] to get on the JWICS. But the ECI/VRK systems are much higher [levels of special compartmentalized clearance] than the JWICS. And you have to be in the black world to get that [clearance].
ECI = Exceptionally Controlled Information. I do not believe Mr. Snowden had any access to these ECI controlled networks). VRK = Very Restricted Knowledge. I do not believe Mr. Snowden had any access to these VRK controlled networks.
These programs typically have, at the least, a requirement of 100 year or until death, ’till the person first being “read in” [i.e. sworn to secrecy as part of access to the higher classification program] can talk about them. [As an interesting sidenote, the Washington Times reported in 2006 that – when Tice offered to testify to Congress about this illegal spying – he was informed by the NSA that the Senate and House intelligence committees were not cleared to hear such information.]
It’s very compartmentalized and – even with stuff that they had – you might have something at NSA, that there’s literally 40 people at NSA that know that it’s going on in the entire agency.
When the stuff came out in the New York Times [the first big spying story, which broke in 2005] – and I was a source of information for the New York Times – that’s when President Bush made up that nonsense about the “terrorist surveillance program.” By the way, that never existed. That was made up.
There was no such thing beforehand. It was made up … to try to placate the American people.
The NSA IG (Inspector General) – who was not cleared for this – all of a sudden is told he has to do an investigation on this; something he has no information or knowledge of.
So what they did, is they took a few documents and they downgraded [he classification level of the documents] – just a few – and gave them to them to placate this basic whitewash investigation.
Snowden’s Failure To Understand the Most Important Documents
RUSSELL TICE: Now, if Mr. Snowden were to find the crossover, it would be those documents that were downgraded to the NSA’s IG.
The stuff that I saw looked like a bunch of alphanumeric gobbledygook. Unless you have an analyst to know what to look for – and believe me, I think that what Snowden’s done is great – he’s not an intelligence analyst. So he would see something like that, and he wouldn’t know what he’s looking at.
But that would be “the jewels”. And the key is, you wouldn’t know it’s the jewels unless you were a diamond miner and you knew what to look for. Because otherwise, there’s a big lump of rock and you don’t know there’s a diamond in there.
I worked special programs. And the way I found out is that I was working on a special operation, and I needed information from NSA … from another unit. And when I went to that unit and I said “I need this information”, and I dealt with [satellite spy operations], and I did that in the black world. I was a special operations officer. I would literally go do special missions that were in the black world where I would travel overseas and do spooky stuff.
Cheney Was Running the Show
WASHINGTON’S BLOG: You said in one of your interviews that Dick Cheney ordered the intercepts that you found in the burn bags [the bags of documents which were slated to be destroyed because they were so sensitive].
Is that right … and if so, how do you know that?
RUSSELL TICE: I did not know one way or the other until I talked to a very senior person at NSA who – much later – wanted to have a meeting with me. And we had a covert, clandestine style meeting. And that’s when this individual told me that the whole thing was being directed and was coming from the vice president’s office … Cheney, through his lawyer David Addington.
WASHINGTON’S BLOG: It sounds like it wasn’t going through normal routes? It’s not like Cheney or Addington made formal requests to the NSA … through normal means?
RUSSELL TICE: No, not normal at all. All on the sly … all “sneaky pete” under the table, in the evening when most NSA employees are gone for the day. This is all being done in the evenings … between like 7 [at night] and midnight.
NSA Is Spying On CONTENT as Well as Metadata
WASHINGTON’S BLOG: And from what you and others have said, it’s content as well as metadata?
RUSSELL TICE: Of course it is. Of course. [Background. But see this.]
NSA Spying On Journalists, Congress, Admirals, Lawyers …
RUSSELL TICE: In 2009, I told [reporters] that they were going after journalists and news organizations and reporters and such.
I never read text of Congressman’s conversations. What I had was information – sometimes hand-written – of phone numbers of Congressmen, their wives, their children, their staffers, their home numbers, their cellphone numbers, their phone numbers of their residence back in Oregon or whatever state they’re from, and their little offices back in their state.
Or an Admiral and his wife, and his kids and his staffers …
The main thing I saw more than anything else were lawyers and law firms. I saw more lawyers or law firms being wiretapped than anything else.
These are the phone numbers I saw written. And then I would see those numbers incorporated into those lists with the columns of information about the phone number, and the serial number and the banks of recorders and digital converters and the data storage devices. I could see handwritten phone numbers and notes, sometimes with names, sometimes not.
Snowden and Greenwald’s Whistleblowing Was Done In the Right Way
RUSSELL TICE: If Mr. Snowden would have had access to VRK, ECI, SAP, STO (and a few others that I will not mention here), and he released them en masse to the press, I would volunteer to shoot him as a traitor myself.
But this is not what he did.
He gave up JWICS info that he insisted be vetted for sources and methods, and true damage to national security. Mr. Greenwald and company should be congratulated on the restraint that they have shown with the JWICS documentation that they have in hand via Mr. Snowden.
Postscript: When Tice started blowing the whistle on NSA mass surveillance in the early 2000s, the NSA all of a sudden decided that Tice was “crazy”. As Tice told us:
For many years, I was the only NSA whistleblower in public.
And what they did is call me in – 9 months after my routine psychological evaluation – which I passed with flying colors, like every other one I’ve had in my entire career, passed with flying colors.
They called me in for an “emergency” psychological evaluation, and they declared me nuts.
I am a fairly good judge of character, and I found Tice to be humorous, self-deprecating in a healthy and light-hearted way, and consistent on the facts. Tice talked about how he was a pretty darn good football player in junior college, but no star athlete. He talked about how one reporter tried to make him out to be James Bond with leading man looks, and he thought that was ridiculous. We shared some normal “guy talk” about women. Tice has a little anger at the way the NSA tried to whitewash the mass surveillance that he uncovered (wouldn’t you be?), but he wasn’t enraged or over-the-top. Tice is also a patriotic American, not a subversive. Specifically, we spent a long time talking about the importance of the Constitution and the rule of law. In other words, Tice seems “oriented to reality”, completely sane, normal, ethical and bright to me.
And the following facts are more important than my personal impression:
- Many of Tice’s allegations have been confirmed by Snowden and other government whistleblowers. And see this
- Soviet leaders were famous for throwing dissidents into psychiatric wards. Unfortunately, the same thing sometimes happens in modern America
Given the way that the NSA has been repeatedly caught in lies about its surveillance programs – and the way that it has attacked whisteblowers – I believe Tice over the NSA.
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i really don't have a problem with that. ok, if not cheney- the military. obama was probably clueless about the deserter side of the story, now it's stuck on him like super-shit. want him out? this'd do it if they are serious. then the'd have deep state biden at the helm.
I hope the fucking MYTH that the NSA doesn't collect or store content is now put to rest.
Come on guys, There has been fucking WIKIPEDIA pages about project echelon in every laguage for atleast 6-8 years.
andrewp111: If you don't like it, encrypt your communications.
Truecrypt.....aaaannnndddd..."poof" it's gone. Thanks Bill Gates
http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/
See how that works now? LOL
joebloinvestor: With all the monitoring they should have been able to declare how many financial crisis they averted, let alone terrorist activity.
Why would they do that? There are two sides to every upswing as well as trades on the back sode of a down swing. If you (or they) had foreknoledge....certainly they would not let it out. Think of the money involved.
yellowsub: So there are more things worse than what is already exposed...
Well, not to slam Snowden or Greenwald in any way but 99% of what was made public (so far) was COMMON KNOWLEDGE if you just picked up a few books on the subject of intelligence gathering and read them over the course of the last 15 years.
The value of Snowden is directly proportional to how many of the sheep he woke up. He didn't do this to sing to the choir. Those of us for which this is common knowledge is NOT so common for the average citizen dumbshit, and thats 95%+ of them. Yes, yes, we who frequent sites like this all know that whatever is within their technical capability to do, absolutely WILL be done AND used for the worst senerio you can dream up. Governments are run by sociopaths, and sociopaths will do what sociopaths do.
Unless you are a disinformation troll, you should know that to diminish the raising of these issues to the public level is absolutely important, and should done over and over and over and over again.
A prerequisite of "if [they] just picked up a few books", excludes what percentage of the American population? 90%?
The overwhelming majority of humanity did not know how universal the American spying was last year. A year of stories has now made it indelible.
Regular American: "You want me to...READ...??!!!"
(Best verbalized in the same manner as Sandra Bullock discussing "fluid transfer" in Demolition Man)
You're missing the point that while the "rumour" of this spying was certainly out there, Snowden provided the uncontrivertable PROOF. Conspiracy theory = Conspiracy FACT.
Do you mean the poorly-composed PowerPoint slides marked 'Secret'?
Sheesh... the standards for 'uncontrivertable proof' sure are slipping.
The only thing revealed was a smorgasboard of rehashed acronyms or dubious program names. It seemed more like an effort to snare potential terrorists, i.e., ordinary U.S. citizens, by giving them the proper code-words to Google, thus triggering future NSA monitoring.
I agree with DUC888. Nothing new here. I'm still waiting for
1) SOMETHING that wasn't all ready known (at least by the tin foil hat crowd) and
2) COMCAST and COX cable - the largest home internet providers - to be outed for willingly building-in the NSA borg and doing plenty of their own spying as well.
All this and not one bankster.
With all the monitoring they should have been able to declare how many financial crisis they averted, let alone terrorist activity.
Does make one wonder about the surprise support from people opposed to whatever was being floated at the time and even now.
The banksters used NSA data to get Spitzer.
Can't find a college transcript or birth certificate either, so you should not be surprised.
So there are more things worse than what is already exposed...
"No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine." - William Blum
.
We don't need a Snowden, real or fake, to tell us what is very apparent: The DC US is nothing more than a treasonous group of thieves and murderers, and the "spying is just to see who has figured it out.
"Fortunately my guillotine is off the grid."
Kchrisc, Perhaps all the information NSA has gathered is mainly used to control DC to do their bidding. So, who does NSA give everything to? Remember, they spy on all the other three letter agencies.
We have all the pieces of the puzzle, and have only to put them together. It stares us in the face it is so obvious.
Everyone wants to be King. It's a power thing, no different from the Caesars or the Pharaohs.
When you've got the goods on everyone else, absolute ruler of all is within your grasp.
Au contraire:
A whistle blower without documents is just another blabber-mouth. How can you know who's lying, the whistle blower or the government (or both) without supporting documentation?
It should be clear by now to everyone (but it isn't thanks to the PTB's propaganda effort) that the government lies all the time and there is no way to know what the truth is. But most Americans still believe what "their" government says until the lie is incontrovertibly shoved in their face. Many even believe them after the lies have been proven beyond all reasonable doubt (like the 9/11 bin Laden Myth, e.g.).
"By way of deception, thou shalt do war." -- Ha Mossad, le Modiyn ve le Tafkidim Mayuhadim
Cicero: "Mendaci neque quum vera dicit, creditur" (a liar is not to be believed even when he speaks the truth)
"Flag-wavers" will believe -anything- their government tells them...
Of course everything is under surveilence. The technical capability is there, is affordable, and so it will be done. If you don't like it, encrypt your communications. Especially, if you are a Congressman, Senator, or a Supreme Court Justice.
I doubt it's possible for someone to become "a Congressman, Senator, or a Supreme Court Justice" anymore unless the Nazgul already have a dossier on them.
Question, now that the Obama Administration has inherited the program and Cheney is "gone", who took his place "running things"? Gotta be someone smarter than Obama himself, would it be Holder? Valerie Jarrett? Eric seems to operate with total immunity, and Valerie is invisible.
rahm knows but he won't tell.
If you see a face, you know it's not anyone making the decisions.
hmm? But I thought major secrets about stuff with scores of people in the knowledge loop were totally impossible to be kept secret for a decade, let alone 100 years or until death?
You don't have to keep everything secret if you control the media, just make sure 'Joe Average' doesn't see through the lie.
I bet that some of the spook stuff that happened 100 years ago is still being kept under wraps.
some probably still think booth shot lincoln.
Yeah, but the number of people in any individual knowledge loop is very very small, and everyone in that loop is under heavy surveilence as well. Sort of like how General Petraeus was under surveilence as CIA director, and they used the info to make him resign when the time was right.
Daniel Ellsberg: “Secrets … Can Be Kept Reliably … For Decades … Even Though They Are Known to THOUSANDS of Insiders”
I find it humorous when people claim that secrets can't be kept... if that's true, then why does the NSA and other spook agencies go to all that trouble of keeping secrets?
also, it doesn't matter at all if a secret is
kept if a basic illusion can be maintained and
they can be maintained for thousands of
years to a significant degree in the face
of a multitude of revealed secrets that
might shatter the illusion.
.
the myth and its function can render
common sense and revealed secrets
insignificant for many.
etc...
information plus context results in
intelligence. information without
context is nothing or worse. it is
an integrated program to manage the
flow of information but more important
is to retain authority over the context,
that is the key and the art of the
control mechanism, the myth. culture
etc...
thinkers have the capacity to question
context so they are ultimately outsiders
or potential terrorist as defined by the
existing regime of context manufacture.
people rarely need their services, most of
the time they are unwanted and unneeded but
occasionally they are essential so reasonable
cultures suffer their thinkers through the
good times, knowing the service will one day
be valuable.
etc .....
Insightful
Hoover was doing this back at the FBI before WW2, so why would anyone who can think, think it would be any different today? I find it interesting that the CIA is never mentioned. The Snowman worked there before moving over to a contractor to the NSA, yet never a word about that employer, same with Tice... never a word. As usual, it's what isn't said that is most important.
yeah well. greenwald- still alive. hastings-dead.
GDPetti - I think all the "revelations" about spying do not surprise or concern the BIS or CFR. The USA has to cut budgets, I doubt it will be the CIA's.
Only a matter of time before Holder, Obama and NSA charge God with terrorism. After all it says 'In God we Trust' and apparently God allowed 9/11 to happen. Meanwhile how many are praying to the same God for the freedom and rights they used to have.
Cheney...war criminal. I will piss on his grave someday. There will be a line.
Burial at sea
it was a salty brine
It will be electrified for that reason.
Snowden failed the 9/11 Litmus Test. I.e. he implies that the 17 degenerate cave-dwellers managed the whole thing on their own. No mention of Cheney and the rest of the criminals who orgainized the whole charade.
bucket list
"I believe Tice over the NSA."
George, Your conclusive sentence is shocking.
Am beginnning to get doubts about you.
I didnt up or down arrow you, but I sure can see what you are saying. I mean who is crazy enough to beleive someone like Tice? Anyone who has a career in a spy agency doesn't just all of a sudden start telling big secrets. Fuck, they'd be dead within 24 hrs and probably their family first. Are any ZH'er's dumb enough to think otherwise, especially after seeing the violence and death these agencies bring to people world wide? What makes you think they play by any laws at all? Or by any morals whatever? I think a basic requirement to get a job with them, especially a black operations job, is to have a soul as dark as Satan's himself. And you think this Tice guy is some paragon of truth and virtue? Come on now George, really, wake up.
tice is 'old school'. he invented this shit and truely thought it would be used according to the law post 'church'. he was truely inscenced and spoke out.
Tavistock chess theater in play. Who is moving which piece, which revelation, according to what timing, and for what purpose?