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NSA Chief Admits "Only One Or Perhaps Two" Terror Plots Stopped By Spy Program
Submitted by Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
“One or perhaps two.” Or perhaps zero. The guy has the nerve to say “perhaps.” How do you not know? What a bunch of lying assholes. How the heck does 54 turn into “one or two,” and I’ll tell you something else, I don’t believe the one or two figure for a minute. I mean there’s no way he would say “zero” when he is fighting to keep his petty little Stasi state intact. Furthermore, how about some details here. What was the one plot the NSA foiled? Some teenager throwing firecrackers on the White House lawn? These guys need to get lost already. From the Washington Times:
The Obama administration’s credibility on intelligence suffered another blow Wednesday as the chief of the National Security Agency admitted that officials put out numbers that vastly overstated the counterterrorism successes of the government’s warrantless bulk collection of all Americans’ phone records.
Pressed by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing, Gen. Keith B. Alexander admitted that the number of terrorist plots foiled by the NSA’s huge database of every phone call made in or to America was only one or perhaps two — far smaller than the 54 originally claimed by the administration.
Mr. Leahy and Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican and author of the USA Patriot Act, which the government says allows bulk data collection, are working on a bill to roll back that authority.
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper denied that the number of plots foiled should be the sole metric by which the success of the program is measured. “I think there’s another metric here that’s very important. … I would call it the ‘peace of mind’ metric.”
The “peace of mind metric.” Are you fucking kidding me Clapper? That’s the best you could come up with? Yeah, I have an abundance of peace in my mind knowing perjuring sociopaths like you have access to my entire electronic history in real time. What a joke.
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If they are now saying one or two, it's actually zero.
The NSA is evil. No other way to say it.
"Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper "
I believe the R stands for Richard = Dick Clapper.
How fitting. You must have a name like this to get one of theses jobs.
The one or two plots they stopped were the dhs privacy officers from performing their job duties.
I certainly have peace of mind knowing those privacy officer terriss are gone. Only dick clappers can guarantee that kind of peace.
Gov't are all paid off shills, complicit in the ongoing lying crime against humanity because they will not speak up for fear of getting their gravy train halted. The entire gov't is all crooked.
This video proves it's all a show, and no hard decisions will be made until revolution. Two sets of rules exist today.
Gov't = SCUM.
http://news.yahoo.com/pentagon-ordering-most-furloughed-civilian-employe...
And how many billions have they spent to foil these "1 or 2" terror plots? Truly mind boggling how these self-serving neocons attempt to justify their existence.
They couldn't find two shitheads with pressure cookers in Boston, despite multiple hysterical warnings from the Russians. Jumping up and down, saying "it's them! it's them!" It's time to dismantle this entire show and send every American an apology and a check for $31,284.12
May I please have mine in gold sir?
So if the NSA program has found essentially ZERO plots, then what is it doing? That should keep people up at night.
That's easy, because there ARE NO PLOTS! It is all made up horses**t, the fictional boogieman meant to keep us nodding along.
Herman Goering said it best: "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice,the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
didn't realize obummer was a neocon.
Great comments, but I would rephrase the question: How many billions have been transferred to the Carlyle Group's Booz Allen, and SAIC, and Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman (Bush family & James Baker, majority owners) and Lockheed Martin and Academi or whatever Blackwater is now called, and Dyncorp and so many others?
Very good short film. Thanks!
Believe it or not, he still prefers to be called "General", so next time you hear him referred to as 'General Clapper', that's why (former head (director) of DIA as an Air Force three-star general in the 1990s).
Can they find Obummer's birth certificate?
Short and sweet. ..no BS....liked it
Hey, give Star Fleet Commander Alexander a little credit. There hasn't been a single conquest of Earth by Klingon, Romulan, or Dalek invasion fleets during his watch.
That's gotta be worth something, a buck-oh-five at the very least.
Glad to see someone else recognizes that a guy who makes his office into a fantasy movie set might not be ...um, quite right in the head.
Just a theory...
Thankfully, he didn't want to be Ben-Hur with chariots in the corridors.
I believe TheFourthStooge-ing perfectly nails the logic of this situation!
The eternal nature of the truthiness of his commentationalism is always very crusty, very mattering, very much something.
It matters much somehow for the tale on democracy to possessing valuable, one has to checked validitariness of it. That is indeed that, and somehow that is very something.
WHAT!!!!!!!! You mean this all wasn't really about foreign terrorism then??? I'm shocked, then what can it all be about?????
Ill wait for your reply........no answer.....that's what I thought!
It's a hunt for cash to keep the crooks in power as it all crumbles around them!
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Everybody knows that Americans are the biggest threat America has ever faced.
In US 'american' 'unamerican' citizenism, the spying class is the king class.
US 'american' 'unamerican' citizenism is very much moebius strip living. Do not disengage safety latch until ride comes stopped with completeness.
You must remember in the new normal that supporting the constitution is considered subversive behavior.
They are not looking for brown terrorists, those are well under their control and are only used for their own bidding. They're looking for YOU FUCKERS who will start the next True American Revolution, they know its coming and want to nip it in the bud before it spreads across the entire country. LOW FI, keep it low fi and it'll happen without their knowledge
No, it'll only happen when a) a new party emerges that defunds them or b) a million civilians show up at their facilities and shove tennis balls and t-shirts in all the air intakes and force them out.
They will see it.
Matters not, even if their activity is the cause of attacks. They are there, growing and will stay. The constitution (Bill of Rights specifically) is no longer a living document, it is dying.
"The constitution (Bill of Rights specifically) is no longer a living document,"
The Constitution never was a "living Document". It is a set of standards that guarantee citizens certain protections from the gov. Obama calls it a "living document", that's a Liberal meme, an example of programming and groupthink. Which I'm sure you don't consciously believe you're being affect by, but that's where you got the term.
No, it's a debate as old as the hills, not an Obama creation. And no, i don't like the idea of it standing for something other than stated. However as Chief Justice Hughes stated " We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is...? They translate, not us. Just like a pastor/preacher that interprets for the masses. Buildings are full of corpus juris that we are not suppose to be ignorant of???
or corporations are people/individuals?
I read it like a stop sign, they don't.
Good. You should read it as a stop sign. But it's not a debate or an Obama creation, it's a progressive meme to discount restrictions in the constitution, regard it as outdated and changing with the times. I didn't say the Constitution stood for something, I said it's a standard to be governed by it you want liberty. The Judicial activism you decribe is not Constitutional, it's another way they've been circumventing the Constitution since the 60's . "corporations are people" btw is progressive tax law, a flat tax would eliminate the problem. But the meme stuck with you as another example of programmed groupthink you got from the Romney vs Obama election propaganda.
Nice try but I think for myself.
One branch of the gubments stopping one or two terror plots from another branch of the gubments
Strange how they missed Holders gun running exploits down in Mexico..........
Larry Summers? Clapper? Fuck the toose of yoose.
It's not zero it's a negative number.
-1 Michael Hastings http://deadlinelive.info/2013/06/20/car-bomb-used-on-investigative-repor...
-2 ?
-3 ?
Have we all forgotten our duty as citizens in this former Republic?
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
— Declaration of Independence, 1776
Why do we even consider letting these idiots run our lives?
Why pay tax to keep such services alive.
How can any normal person live with himself, and work for such organizations?
It is time to refuse paying tax to these bloody fascists.
If you find a way to stop them from taking it out of your pay (even before you get it) let me know.
Figure something out if you give a damn.
claim 99 dependents.........than u get all but fica..
Do your own thing. Don't work to make others rich.
"... find a way to stop them from taking it out of your pay ..."
Stop being an employee and become a consultant or contractor.
You must be prepared to die for what you believe in to make a conscious decision to pay no taxes.
They'll come after you in the courts, you'll lose. When you don't pay the judgement they'll lien your house. When you resist occupation of your house, a SWAT team will kill you, all filmed for the evening entertainment they call "news".
Pay your taxes until you are prepared to fight to the death. Then don't sit around waiting for the SWAT team, go after them. Hunters have a hard time being prey.
If every working American changed their W-4 and claimed 15 dependents so that no federal tax was withheld.
The government would be broke within 30 days.
Don't make anything. Join the Free Shit Army. White mutiny. Or as my one boss said one day - "Oh shit. You did exactly what I told you to."
Shut it down.
We don't need any of this shit. We didn't even have the CIA until a knock-down fight after WWII. OSS was supposed to be just an emergency measure.
Why not have a CIA?
BECAUSE IT'S UNAMERICAN
OT--I knew James Withrow, he ran OSS in SE Asia for Wild Bill Donovan and then the CIA there. Gave tea to Ho and recommended him for asylum. Holy fuck, how these assholes have fucked everything up since then. State couldn't even get that right. Would've stopped the war before it started. First US KIA in 'Nam was military intel captain, assasinated by the French or Brits.
Idiots. We need to get out of Eurasia. Entirely.
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A big factor in the ongoing collapse of the US economy is that the military was never demobilized at the end of WW2. The MIC has been on the welfare gravy train ever since.
Demobilized? it's been growing exponentially since 1913. The following year we get WWI.
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True, the MIC has been growing since 1913, although at the end of WW1, the American Expeditionary Force sent to Europe to fight for the banksters was demobilized.
This eventually led Herbert Hoover, in 1932, to send in an infantry regiment, led by Douglas MacArthur, and a cavalry regiment, supported by six tanks and commanded by George Patton, to drive out of the capitol 17,000 WW1 veterans and their families known as the Bonus Army. (Because everyone knows that veterans are unpatriotic anti-American scum, right?)
Funny how recruiters never mention such things to prospective enlistees.
were these "one or two" foiled terror plots the same ones that were thought up, funded, and supplied by the FBI where the FBI tried to train then arrested a group of men with obvious low IQs?
I thought they claimed they saved the NYSE?
54 give or take 52.
Why all the fuss?
57 is a more famous number (states/varieties/whatever!)
Hey, that's good enough reason to take a shit on the US Constitution, right?
" ...only one or perhaps two — far smaller than the 54 originally claimed by the administration."
They claimed waterboarding prevented terrorist attacks. What is the actual truth about that?
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper denied that the number of plots foiled should be the sole metric by which the success of the program is measured. “I think there’s another metric here that’s very important. … I would call it the ‘peace of mind’ metric.”
With the Boston Marathon bombing, that peace of mind metric seems to have been shattered. All this mass surveillance of innocent people, violating their rights and the system still failed anyway.
I'd sure like to give Claptrap a piece of my mind...
Just post your coments to Clapper here on ZH. I am sure they will get to the NSA quite quickly!
Whose "peace of mind" is he referring to?
Is it because he got to monitor his wife and mistress and found they don't know of each other yet?
"Piece of mind" for the criminals to continue collecting intel on their adversaries in order to blackmail them so they stay in power. I thought it was obvious. :)
If we really knew what they were doing behind the scenes we would all shit a chicken and then get really, really, mad...
I wonder what the Cost-to-Threat Ratio is....
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It's a bit difficult to find the limit of a function which grows without bounds.
Even better lets make a list of the "attacks" that it didn't stop. Definitely more than one or two.
Why do you let you imagination hamper your outlook!
What about the attacks they actually financed, supervised and facilitated!
Definitely much more than two!!
Peace of mind for who?
In case anyone is interest in the flipside of "Stasi state"...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/04/german-intelligency-service-nsa-internet-laws
Michael Krieger. Thank you!
Clapper must live in a converted missile silo. That POS is #1 on humanities "Most Wanted" list!
as in they are piecing our minds apart, and preventing us from knowing peace.
He means that the program wants a piece of everybody's mind
Come on, this is an onion with many layers. Ridiculous "we can control everything" hubris is just the outer layer.
They spent billions on connecting everything - WHY?
Because of the commercial implications... even at the APEC conference that Clinton went to as President in the 1990s, the NSA was passing along commercial espionage info to others - "oops, just an accident". http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/ECHELON/apec1.html
So another layer - insider trading, M&A inside info (imagine being able to read what your target acquisition's CEO is emailing back and forth as they deal with offer/counter-offer).
Another layer - manipulation of public psychology, Bernays-style - an immense ability to measure in near real-time, every wiggle and tic of the American psyche, and immediately calibrate to it.
It is no secret that for instance, homosexuality went from "personality disorder requiring treatment in 1973" to "we must allow gays to marry each other in 2013". With this kind of data, what else can you mold people to?
Another layer - "parallel investigation" as a justification for spending. "If it saves just one child".
Another layer - blackmail of everyone.
Imagine the jobs this program provides! Imagine the little empires for all the project managers in the system. Coming to work every day knowing the pay will be high, their job secure, their family fully covered for medical, dental and eye care. The kids secure in nice private acadamies instead of faltering public schools. The colleges of choice including many private and expensive. AND, when you get to work knowing you job is both easy and leaves plenty of time for hustling the women on staff, for planing staff parties and get togethers at the pubs after work. Jesus what a life! Would you give that up? They are living the American dream, and all the while they can call themselves patriots, as they leech their living off of the very tax payers they spy on. Creating lists of people with alternative views to the military industrial prison spy complex! Making their enemies lists with smug confidence in their powers to destroy any American they choose.
And these folks are at the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the military intellignce, the NEW York Police spy network the DEA and other organs of state repression. All paid big money by their very victims, the American Tax Payer.
Oh yes, they are keeping us safe. NO, they are keeping corporate bribe givers safe, the ones who fund the congress with millions in free money bribes. They keep AIPAC safe, while they plot to use America as a tool of their State of Choice. The Military industrial comlex is kept safe. The neocon think tanks are kept safe.
Face it, the fix is in, the spoils are being handed out and YOU are NOT in the line for freebie government handouts to tens of thousand of leeches working as spies and repressors of America. This congress is doing nothing to defend the constitution, they are defending their campaign contributors, and the army of AIPAC lobbiests, push for war on Syria, war on Iran, war on Russia, and all of it at the US taxpayer's expense.
How long do the passive American people allow a police state to lord it over them?
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Hmmmm..... if I didn't know that USA.gov was The Good Guys®, I'd think you were describing the behavior of an occupational government.
At this point, they probably maintain a 'currently not an enemy' list since it is smaller and easier to work with.
Then they admit to completing 50 percent of them.
Russian security services specifically warned US security services about the Tsarnev brothers well before the Boston bombing. Even with a direct finger point, which was right on the money, US security agencies couldn't get a handle on he situation.
THey very successfully infiltrated and destroyd OWS movement, and that's the sort of peace of mind the the ruling 1% demands
Someone remind me of the cost of this again?
I get a lot of piece of mind when I can conduct my personal and business affairs unmolested by the overreaching arm of the increasingly corrupt, totalitarian government. I do not view surrendering my personhood to the stewardship of the State to be conducive to my ability to do so. Before there was a government there was the solitary individual, and so it shall be again........
Well a facist state would be probably most safe one. Until some stupid stupid drunk post and wake up in Guantanamo for re-education.
Homeland, Homeland, uber alles ...
Land of the home, free of the brave.
What does terrorists has to do with anything? Just asking.
What does terrorists has to do with anything? Just asking.
In case you want change - there's only one possible reply:
Like Jesse Ventura recently said - neither vote for Republicans nor for Democrats. Choose whatever you want - just not one of these two gangs.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Though nothing will change - as the majority of the sheeple will continue to prefer chips, burgers, coke, porn, sports and tv.
Only one or - perhaps - two! And how much does that come to in dollars, generously assuming 'two". It might be far cheaper to de-fund the NSA and fund every terrorist group in the world on their promise ( or no more annual funding) that they will stop attacking the US and find some other target - like maybe the French?
Just a little reminder;
"Thanks to intercepted communications, "we know that his regime gave orders to prepare for a chemical attack," he said. "We know by tracing it physically where the rockets came from and where they landed. And it is no accident that they all came from regime-controlled territory and all landed in opposition-controlled, or contested, territory."
Mr Kerry said this was evidence which "I could take into a courtroom and get admitted". He added: "I personally tried people who've gone away for long prison sentences, or for life, for less evidence than we have for this."
So, where is the evidence? And who were those poor fellows that he personally tried?
One or Two. Oh for-fucks-sake. Both of those were terra-ists who got their bombs from the FBI.
must see, a great interview by Greenwald and a BBC hack
Glenn Greenwald Destroys BBC Media Propagandist (Full Interview)
http://libertycrier.com/glenn-greenwald-destroys-bbc-media-propagandist-...
Thanks. Apparently some people still haven't learned to avoid getting into a battle of wits with Glenn, especially those typical mainstream media talking head dimwits.
BTW, I've read that it was found through investigation that Snowden got away with as many as 22,000 documents.
I'm uneasy with Snowden and the rest. It seems the country that spies on us the most is never mentioned. Freudian slip?
I gotta say (and no offense intended) I'm uneasy with idiots like Clapper who say the Muslim Brotherhood is a "secular" movement when it has never been any such thing at all and he is in a position to know better...because of his "massive intelligence network"...lol.
Thats not a Freudian slip...its an outright lie that took a day to readdress, for some reason.
So for me, its not hard to imagine any circumstance under which he would not lie about anything else. Including lying to "keep me safe" as his goddamned salary, benefits, bureaucratic fiefdom & pension absolutely depend on the lie he tells...which is all I think it really was.
But this-is-the-mark-of-a-traitor to the People isn't it?
Snowden is the real deal IMO...an enemy of the state is not the same as an enemy of the people. Compare Clapper with Snowden, who has the most to lose, here? Just because Russia or China (or whoever) want to shelter him & rub the US governments nose in it for their own geo-politcal purposes, does not mean he didn't do it for the right reasons as he has stated.
If we're all to be treated as terrorists and/or "criminals" why not be one? ;-)
Well OK so they didn't stop any terrorist but how many useful blackmail items have they harvested?
Someone needs to clap Clapper off.
"Are you fucking kidding me Clapper?"
Krieger's balls get bigger with each piece. I'd like to see him take a second look at freefall speed and collapsing buildings, Securacom, Kroll, Bertha Champagne, a few of those things.
If you share THomas Hobbes view that most people abide by the law only becuause we fear being punished by the Leviathan then you might cunclude that constant surveillance is good
Yes, we only stopped a couple of terror threats, but we have ALL the names of the 30 million Americans we are going to murder.
Well, despite listening to all the world, they missed the guys in Kenya. And several of those were American.
So much for the 'peace of mind' factor suggested by Claptrap to justify his existence despite his uselessness.