It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Originally posted by Pyros
What many people are overlooking is that there ARE systems in place to balance these activities. There ARE reporting channels that cleared employees can use to report fraud, waste, abuse, and illegal activities within government agencies. There ARE honorable and decent men and women who work within these agencies who would never assume to act unilaterally - without congressional oversight and judicial review. Members of congress were briefed on these activites, and the budgets for these activites (where congress can exercise its power over the executive branch) were approved.
What remains to be seen is if this joker actually tried to USE any of these reporting/failsafe systems before he went a ran his mouth to the most anti-administration newspaper in this land. I smell book deals, TV interviews, and the lecture circuit.
The man is a confessed felon, IMHO. Send him to Ft. Leavenworth.
When you work for the government, you work for the people
Originally posted by QuietSoul
When you work for the government, you work for the people
This is what everyone is forgetting. In my opinion, what this guy disclosed does not hinder or endanger the country in the least bit.
What it does hinder or endanger, is the government thats gone wayyyy past working for the people and into working for its own motives.
Should the people he's putting out in the public eye deserve to go to jail should be a better question.
Originally posted by djohnsto77
I'm sure many here will lionize this guy, but he's a traitor pure and simple and should be treated as such.
Lethal injection would be too kind.
Originally posted by thermopolis
Originally posted by djohnsto77
I'm sure many here will lionize this guy, but he's a traitor pure and simple and should be treated as such.
Lethal injection would be too kind.
Perhaps the best statement ever placed on this website.
Originally posted by Pyros
I cannot see how "Electronic warfare" programs could ever be used against US infrastruture. That is a tactical mititary application.
However, I would interpret "non-communication signals" as probably offensive and defensive "Information Assurance" activies...i.e. hacking.
Originally posted by marg6043
I though that any media playing with the minds of the American consumers as subliminal messages is illegal.
Originally posted by soficrow
No, no marg. What's illegal is Internet users who annoy people.
Originally posted by soficrow
Interesting article.
I am especially interested in the "non-communications signals (and) electronic warfare" programs - particularly the ones directed against American Internet users.
Do you think that information might be declassified?
RUSSELL TICE: Well, as far as an intelligence officer, especially a SIGINT officer at N.S.A., we're taught from very early on in our careers that you just do not do this. This is probably the number one commandment of the SIGINT Ten Commandments as a SIGINT officer. You will not spy on Americans. It is drilled into our head over and over and over again in security briefings, at least twice a year, where you ultimately have to sign a paper that says you have gotten the briefing. Everyone at N.S.A. who’s a SIGINT officer knows that you do not do this. Ultimately, so do the leaders of N.S.A., and apparently the leaders of N.S.A. have decided that they were just going to go against the tenets of something that’s a gospel to a SIGINT officer.
RUSSELL TICE: Well, basically I was given my walking papers and told I was no longer a federal employee. So --
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
RUSSELL TICE: Some time ago I had some concerns about a co-worker at D.I.A. who exhibited the classic signs of being involved in espionage, and I reported that and basically got blown off by the counterintelligence office at D.I.A. and kind of pushed the issue, because I continued to see a pattern of there being a problem. And once I got back to N.S.A., I pretty much dropped the issue, but there was a report that came across my desk in April of 2003 about two F.B.I. agents that were possibly passing secret counterintelligence information to a Chinese double agent, Katrina Leung, and I sent a secure message back to the D.I.A. counterintelligence officer, and I said I think the F.B.I. is incompetent, and the retaliation came down on me like a ton of bricks.
RUSSELL TICE: But nonetheless, we're all taught that you don't do something like this. And I’m certainly hoping that the President has been misled in what’s going on here and that the true crux of this problem is in the leadership of the intelligence community.
AMY GOODMAN: You're saying in the leadership of your own agency, the National Security Agency?
RUSSELL TICE: That's correct, yeah, because certainly General Alexander and General Hayden and Bill Black knew that this was illegal.
AMY GOODMAN: But they clearly had to have authorization from above, and Bush is not contending that he did not know.
RUSSELL TICE: Well, that's true. But the question has to be asked: What did the President know? What was the President told about this? It's just -- there's just too many variables out there that we don't know yet. And, ultimately, I think Congress needs to find out those answers. If the President was fed a bill of goods in this matter, then that's something that has to be addressed. Or if the President himself knew every aspect of what’s going on, if this was some sort of vacuum cleaner deal, then it is ultimately, I would think, the President himself that needs to be held responsible for what’s going on here.