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New Snowden Revelation: Terrorists Attempting To Infiltrate CIA
cold fjord writes "The Washington Post reports, 'The CIA found that among a subset of job seekers whose backgrounds raised questions, roughly one out of every five had "significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections," according to the document, which was provided to The Washington Post by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The groups cited most often were Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda and its affiliates, but the nature of the connections was not described in the document. So sharp is the fear of threats from within that last year the NSA planned to launch at least 4,000 probes of potentially suspicious or abnormal staff activity .... The anomalous behavior that sent up red flags could include staffers downloading multiple documents or accessing classified databases they do not normally use for their work, said two people familiar with the software used to monitor employee activity.'"
If they can make Snowden out to be a terrorist, or a supporter of terrorism, or someone who knew a terrorist, or knew someone who knew a terrorist, they will try to justify assassinating him.
or actual infiltration?
The original Bin Laden al-Qaeda is practically non-existent, its Islamist affiliates are too busy trying to win over regimes in the mideast, Hamas is trying not to piss off the US considering that Obama has been much more pro-Palestinian. Hezbollah....maybe. We're talking about a few tens of thousands of eligible individuals here, most of them with Hezbollah and Hamas.
I have serious doubts that this is anything other than the Three Letter agencies trying to project a Cold War interpretation ("big centralized nation-state entity out to get us") onto a set of data that only shows small, disparate groups who are all actually too busy trying to avoid being smashed by the US, Israel, or the Arab League.
Bunch of bitchy little girls. Good news for you, I'm a drunk and a washout already, so I can talk to whoever I want, burned or no.
- Sam Axe
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
They won't hire you if you don't have job experience, and they won't hire you if you do.
No, they still need it. Just look at the nature of the story: "The official, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material."
Yet these people aren't being hunted across the globe for their classified leaks.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
I think it would be an obvious move to have the NSA monitor "our" Congress-critters. Add their staffers, all the top people in the political parties, consulting companies and lobbyists. This is a manageable target size, all composed of people who presume to control public resources.
As a group these people have caused more damage than all terrorists put together.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
Look at who signed this.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/experts-obama-here-what-do-syria_751267.html
The same old bunch of neocon bastards that lied us into Iraq as far back as the "Open Letter to Bill Clinton back in 1998.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
And really, read the rest of the PNAC site.
PNAC morphed into the Foreign Policy Initiative
http://www.foreignpolicyi.org/about/staff
http://www.foreignpolicyi.org/about
Even during Mitt Romney's candidacy Mittens had a fucking wb page *titled* "new american century* with much of the above philosophy basically cut-and-pasted. Which shouldn't be surprising since his foreign policy "brain trust" consisted of FPI bastards. Up to and including Dan Senor (FPI and PNAC alum) on Meet The Press saying that we should bomb Iran back then.
Read. It's not conspiracy theory when it's from their own mouths.
I wouldn't put it past these bastards to hire someone to detonate a sarin bomb in Damascus to gin up an excuse for an invasion. And now they're wondering what the fuck to do now that the President just said "Well, we should have Congress' input on this."
Fuck these guys for wanting to get us involved in another war where there is no winning, just more death.
--
BMO
No, they still need it. Just look at the nature of the story: "The official, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material."
Yet these people aren't being hunted across the globe for their classified leaks.
But this was probably an approved intentional Anonymous leak.
The anomalous behavior that sent up red flags could include staffers downloading multiple documents or accessing classified databases they do not normally use for their work, said two people familiar with the software used to monitor employee activity.
Except, apparently, one Edward Snowden. Which means for all of the paranoia, someone still got through.
What about the other Snowdens that aren't whistleblowers but real, actual spies?
This is another reason the NSA et al are foolish to dismiss Snowden as a threat, another reason why he should be embraced as a hero for shining light on a serious problem!
Peace,
Andy.
No. You misread it.
Its saying that of the subset of those with suspicious backgrounds one in five is "linked" to terrorism.
We don't know how big that 'subset' is. It could be (and probably is) quite small. Of 5000 applicants, there might be 20 with "suspicious backgrounds", and of that 20 there might be 4 who they linked to terrorism. The "1 in 5 with links" are of the 20 that were already flagged as suspicious, not the entire pool of applicants.
CIA, NSA, FBI etc will gradually lose interest in the general populace and, in the name of self-defense, gradually shift their investigative efforts onto themselves until they'll implode in a singularity of paranoia.
Q: What do you like doing during your off time? A: l enjoy long-distance bike rides and wishing death to Israel. I mean collecting stamps.
"Terrorist" is the new "Red/Commie". Every generation needs a convenient vague Boogyman Bucket to shove people into they don't like.
Table-ized A.I.
I think the problem is EVERYTHING is labeled Top Secret and everything is a terrorist group. Is this going to embarrass Senator X? Label it top secret. Twenty years in the future, this fact MIGHT be pertinent. Label it Super Top Secret. Annoyed with someone? Label him a terrorist. Annoyed with a situation. Must be terrorists. In the rush to cover their governmental asses, everything must be labeled top secret and everyone must be spied on, because, ya know, they might become a terrorist someday. Land of the Free, as long as you do not upset anyone in power: corporate, military or government.
Here's hoping that a significant portion of those intelligence employees are whistleblowers like Snowden and Manning. Whatever their personal failings, what they are doing is absolutely positive.
The US intelligence apparatus has gone way beyond the bounds of what is acceptable for a free society. We've already lost a lot of what allows us to differentiate ourselves from countries like North Korea or Iran, and every time new revelations come out, it's another opportunity for the citizens of the US to be outraged and take a stand.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'd be surprised if terrorists were not trying to infiltrate the CIA.
Frankly.... i'd be surprised if they have not already succeeded.
THAT is what makes me as nervous as hell about the NSA spying on Americans through service providers.
Leaks like Snowden are proof that whatever they gather might eventually get in the wrong hands one way or another.
One person's interest in monitoring the public looking for possible terrorists links, Is another person's blackmail material, once the bad guy infiltrators get ahold of Americans' private data
All depends on your perspective. To people outside the US, the CIA is the most well funded and brutal terrorist organization in the world!
I'd be surprised if terrorists were not trying to infiltrate the CIA.
I doubt it, unless you're including agents of assorted national governments as "terrorists". Private groups aren't going to have the resources to long-term plant members who may never find anything relevant. If your thing is fomenting revolution in Chechnya, having somebody end up being second attache to the embassy in the Philippines or monitoring the cocaine trade in Colombia is a waste you can't afford.
Now, I'd be surprised if the governments of Russia, China, Israel, Cuba, India, Pakistan, et al. were not trying to infiltrate the CIA. They've got long time horizons and resources that the poor schmuck who's humping a cannister of poison gas from Saudi Arabia to Damascus can only dream of.
Don't ANY of us know how to read a news story and think for ourselves, anymore?
There's a methodology used to substantiate this kind of BULLSHIT claim. It can be described as shooting an arrow towards a wall, then drawing a bulls-eye around it, after the fact.
For another metaphor? Here's the word you get to drive your Mack truck through:
"Affiliated"
When you have the NYPD secretly assign all Mosques the "Terrorist Organization" label, and you have the CIA recruiting for record numbers of native Arabic speakers, for translation?
Call it "Psyop Ju-Jitsu". This is an all-star set up, to make a positive scare-tactic out of the negative public relations resulting from Snowden's revelations.
By-the-fucking-way, what else do you expect, when you let this kind of shit go down? Objective and agenda-less reporting of fact?
USA. It's like a police-state with Tesla Model S and overnight shipping, instead of Bread and Circuses.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I'm British, and I'm old enough to have had arguments in my youth when foreigners - including Americans - castigated my country for its imperialism.
Now, that was obviously a long time ago. (Although not as long as you're probably thinking.) But there's a part of me that's never stopped thinking - this is what it's like, guys, hope you're enjoying it as much as we did.
The current - stagnation, I think is the best word - over Syria is a potent illustration of how empires fail. You do everything, and I mean everything, you can, in crisis after crisis. You send in diplomats, engineers, doctors, lawyers, soldiers, whatever you think will help - time after time after time. There's always another crisis. And no matter what happens, it seems you get no gratitude, nothing but blame. And sooner or later, you're just plain exhausted. Then your congress starts saying "No more, we're not paying for this adventure, we'll sit this one out". And pretty soon after that, their electors start saying "we don't have to intervene every time, who knew? Let's stop spending so much on the military."
And before you know it, you're just another country, sitting around watching the news and bitching about how the Chinese won't stand up against atrocities.
I understand your viewpoint. If it makes you feel any better, the US has been accused of imperialism as well for a very long time regardless if it made sense or not. Vietnam was claimed to be imperialism, and probably Korea, as well as various actions in the Caribbean in the years before WW2.
Part of what has undermined the British military is the growing burden of social spending. The same is starting to happen in the US. Many people in the US and around the world will cheer now, but eventually I think it is likely they might start to understand the drawbacks when a crisis comes and the US is truly impotent. Then it is likely to be a lot less fun.
Cheers
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
"From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli"
Yes the label does make sense, especially in taking over a French colonial war in South East Asia. Also for some reason you seem to have missed that the Korean border was drawn by two guys in the pentagon. A very long list of things went wrong since then, mostly due to every competent potential leader of the north being in the south trying to get Korea united and getting caught off guard by a power hungry idiot, but that war would not have happened without an empire reaching out a hand over the water and drawing an arbitrary line.
There's some interesting stuff Mark Twain wrote about the Austrian-Hungarian empire when he was a journalist in Europe if you want to get some insight into why the definition fits and why the word empire is not an insult but just a label.
By depriving them of food and medical care, something a capitalistic society would never do, right?
Table-ized A.I.
The NSA is now doing a purge to eliminate any potential whistle-blowers from their ranks. The "Terrorist" part is just the public excuse.
The USA has a black budget of $52 billion for 2013.
There are 50 countries in the world with total national budgets of at least $52 billion, so only those could possibly compete (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_budgets_by_country)
Considering the UK spends just $4 billion on MI5 + MI6 https://www.mi5.gov.uk/home/about-us/who-we-are/funding.html ... I'd say the CIA is pretty 'well funded' in comparison.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)