Jan 01 2006
The Media Cannot Stop Itself From Helping Our Enemies
Updates at the end
Are we to expect every day for the foreseeable future political partisans (and let’s be honest here, that is what is motivating these ‘whistleblowers’ – they want democrats in power) will be slowly dismantling our protection mechanisms as they leak to the press?
These liberal zealots, and the liberal media comrades, have apparently decided they cannot wait to dictate a change in policy through our legal, democratic processes. They have determined their desperation makes them above the law, and the rest of us expendable in their war against America.
Why else would we continue to see more details on how we have been protecting ourselves against terrorist attacks, thus providing the terrorists a clear road map on how to avoid our defenses. The Washington Post (and many others) have further disrupted our ability to monitor terrorists in our country!
Information from intercepts — which typically includes records of telephone or e-mail communications — would be made available by request to agencies that are allowed to have it, including the FBI, DIA, CIA and Department of Homeland Security, one former official said.
At least one of those organizations, the DIA, has used NSA information as the basis for carrying out surveillance of people in the country suspected of posing a threat, according to two sources.
…
Agencies that get the information can use it to conduct “data mining,” or looking for patterns or matches with other databases that they maintain, which may or may not be specifically geared toward detecting terrorism threats, he said. “They are seeking to separate the known from the unknown, relationships or associations,” he added.The NSA would sometimes monitor telephones, e-mails or fax communications in cases where individuals in the United States — and sometimes people they contacted — were linked to an alleged foreign terrorist group, officials have said. The NSA, officials said, limited its decisions to follow-up with more electronic surveillance on an individual to those cases where there was some apparent link to terrorist sources.
…
DIA personnel stationed inside the United States went further on occasion, conducting physical surveillance of people or vehicles identified as a result of NSA intercepts, said two sources familiar with the operations, although the DIA said it does not conduct such activities.
First off, this report makes no claims any of this is illegal or unwarranted. It is simply a data dump to our enemies and their leftwing apologists who want to extend civil rights to terrorists, even it if means the terrorists’ plans succeed in killing lots of Americans.
The sources for Walter Pincus (name ring a bell?) are very similar to his Plame Game sources:
The NSA has turned such information over to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and to other government entities, said three current and former senior administration officials,…
Well, if one were to speculate the possible names for these leaks from former officials are
Dick Clark
Sany Berger
Rand Beers
Joe Wilson
Valerie Plame
Larry Johnson
The current official is a mystery – but hopefully not for long.
A while ago someone suggested a way for ‘We The People’ to fight back as these treasonous liberals expose us to attack. The idea was to bring a class action law suit against the media outlets who recklessly expose our defense mechanisms to our enemies.
We don’t need to win, as much as get millions and millions of people signing up against the New York Times, Washington Post, the reporters themselves. In my opinion these companies are impairing my civil rights by exposing me and my familiy to terrorist acts. I have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the partisan actions of these leakers is putting all of this at risk.
These are not whistleblowers, they never show a single instance of wrong doing – just theories and conjecture. Their motivations are purely partisan politics.
Time for us to remind everyone the power is in the people. So if anyone knows how to start a law suit against these people please let us all know.
UPDATE:
Well, the response has been strong enough for me to send out an email to a bunch of bloggers and see what they think about the idea. Some have questioned (Pierre my friend!) why I focus on the media and not the leakers. The answer is I expect the government to take care of them. But the government cannot take on the media corporations without a big constitutional crisis with the fourth estate. So while the Feds take care of their Benedict Arnolds, we the people should act on the media. And the best way to do that is remind them we have a say as well.
One thing I have not posted on is the seriousness of these leaks. I have hesitated to do the thinking for the terrorists on how to use this information. But I have decided to provide one simple example I think they will figure out on their own, partly to illustrate the damage done by these partisan idiots, but also to pre-empt some possible counter attacks by the foreign terrorists.
The one example of the damage I will explore is a how this ‘news’ allows terrorists to take cover in plain sight, and to roil our political process by making us fight amongst ourselves. The response is sadly simple, and relies on the desperation of the anti-Bush crowd to latch onto anything that could harm Bush for political payback. The problem with the liberals out of control is they are so damn easy to manipulate. They are not thinking, they are reacting.
For the terrorists to use the leak of the NSA spy program against us they simply have to start contact innocent Americans at random. That way their communications with their agents here in the US will be one contact within numerous fake contactsl. But it doesn’t stop there. If these terrorists target liberals and well known leftists, then it will become clear the Feds will be detecting calls to these anti-war types. And if that news were to break, then the left would go more hysterical than they are now and we would have a real problem in the country trying to stay focused on protecting ourselves. And that would give Al Qaeda the distraction they need to get a WMD in place.
There it is. A simple counter exploitation scenario. I have posted this because I realized the only possible way to pre-empt this scenario is to predict it before the next round of news stories come out with Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi being identified as targets of the NSA because terrorists were contacting them to disrupt us politically.
That is one simple scenario. I could think of hundreds more to exploit the national security information these Benedict Arnolds leaked. And Al Qaeda can too. These people are not stupid. In most cases they come from the smartest, most successful familiies in the region (e.g., Osama Bin Laden). So they are more than capable of dreaming up a list of responses as well.
The news media needs to decide whether they are Americans or simply chasing Pulitzers. They cannot do both.
UPDATE II:
Many discussions on this article out there. I liked Ed Morrissey’s take. He points to a great round up by Joe Gandelman .
UPDATE III:
A lot of people are seeing the NY Times and Washington Post as having crossed the line in the partisan fever to get Bush:
America spends $40 billion per year on intelligence operations aimed at discovering our enemies’ secret activities. All our enemies have to do is subscribe to the New York Times and, for as little as $4.65 per week, they can discover most of our secret operations — at least as long as a Republican is President.
Granted, reading the Times won’t give them an accurate picture of the growth of the U.S. economy, the progress in the Iraq War, or the average American’s political opinions. But it will provide them a detailed description of almost any classified military, CIA, or NSA operation designed to catch or kill them.
Dr Sanity brings her voice to the cause, as does The Anchoress. If these two exceptional women agree, we may be on to something.
Happy New Year AJ
“current official”
I am convinced, Journalists lie about the current part
Also AJ…where do I sign up for the class action?
If we are attacked again due to NYT’s treasonous exposure of highly classified National Security methods and procedures, NYT and their advertisers are seriously exposed to hundreds, possible thousands, of lawsuits. I hope they are considering this as their stock continues to drop.
UH OH
Scarry Larry Johnson isn’t happy about this investigation…
LINK
‘What is truly shocking is that many in the media, both print and electronic, seem ignorant of the difference between official and whistle blower leaks. In fact, some seem eager to carry water for the White House and feed the myth that the whistle blower leaks are putting us in jeopardy. Not surprisingly these are the same “journalists” who sought to excuse the leak of Valerie Plame’s name as no big deal. Christmas is past and Hannukah is winding down. But I do have a gift request for 2006–can we have more journalists like Sy Hersh, Jim Risen, Jon Landay, Warren Strobel, and David Kaplan, who speak truth to power, and fewer Bob Woodwards, Chris Matthews, Tim Russerts, and Judy Millers, who value their invitations to the White House Christmas Party over challenging the status quo? That’s what I want.”
Count me in on a lawsuit. I know how to put together a petition, and I know how to write motions and to file a pro se legal action, but I’m not an attorney so could presumably file a suit only on my own behalf, not as a class action.
However — oh, just had an amusing thought: How about a signature-filled petition to the ACLU to represent us in the class action suit against the NY Times. WPost, et al? They’d decline, of course, but it could generate attention and coverage?
Actually, there is another, but conservative version of ACLU — is it Larry Clayman’s outfit? Worth looking into.
AJ, do you want me to check into this?
Merry Whitney
WaPo ran an article today by Michael Hirsh entitled “The NSA’s Overt Problem”. The gist of it is that NSA is outmoded, ineffective and obsolete. It cannot digest all of the data it collects; monitoring websites with recruited computer hackers is offered as a potentially superior means of catching the bad guys.
I’m not a computer expert, but let’s assume that this suggestion is true.
What will prevent some future Woodward, Risen, or Priest from disclosing this bold new method to bad guys in the future? After all, even the estimable Larry Johnson tells us most MSM denizens can’t distinguish the whistleblowers from the lackeys of power. If we allow the MSM and their crusading philospher- kings to publish every classified intelligence gathering program with which they don’t agree to place same smack-dab on the front page of America’s newspapers of record, what then? Interview your favorite intellience “consultants” for a plan “B”?
Will all this take place before or after a terrorist nuclear detonation?
I think it goes even deeper than partisan politics. Everything the unelected MSM has done for the last 40 years has been rooted in a socialist/marxist ideology. Virtually everything that comes out of MSM is intended to subliminally, covertly, overtly push the US towards some form of socialism. When Hillary says the words “for the greater good”, it should make any normal US citizen involuntarily convulse in disgust. The MSM and the libs are working towards that end, and any means is justified to get there.
This stupid, inconsequential (to libs and lib press) War on Terrorism has cost them years of progress. To the libs, the threat to achieving their goal of socialism is far greater than any threat by a bunch of Islamofascists who just need some socialist “understanding”. You know, “root causes”, etc. That should make you cringe too. Apparently even the threat of another attack on US citizens is insufficient to derail the cause of socialism. Get rid of Bush by any possible means and we can get back on track.
Attorney Clarice Feldman wrote at American Thinker that pressure should be put on the advertisers, but I love the class action idea.
Hope that there are some lawyers out there who didn’t vote for
Kedwards.
What you have written and assembled in this post only confirms
my thought that this all about pre empting
ABLE DANGER.
A timeline would show that the “civil liberties” meme against the
Patriot Act began shortly after the initial tries to testify about
ABLE DANGER to the 911 Omission.
Clitonistas stopped that testimony – but knew that with the Sandy
Berger incident – it would not stay “quieted”. All the damage to
the Clintons, all the Chinese sell outs, all the terrorism warnings
ignored (the Cole) will not be good for HILLARY 2008!
They must make all these related intelligence efforts ROGUE and
therefore
AGAINST THE LAW TO BELIEVE
HUH? The left is great at sloganing – if the information from these
ROGUE programs are the “fruit from a poisened tree” – then the
judge and the jury are not allowed to know/believe any of it.
In slogan terms:
AGAINST THE LAW TO BELIEVE!
ABLE DANGE IS WHAT THEY FEAR.
Merry,
Please feel free to look into it. I have little to no time – just passing on the idea. I can get it around the blogosphere if it picks up steam.
AJStrata
Odd aren’t we supposed to have counter intelligence agents? Exactly what the hell are they doing? Are we supposed to feel warm and fuzzy knowing they are in charge of preventing the exposure of our deepest secrets to the Islamofacists when they cannot even stop repeated exposure of said secrets to the NYT?
Who the hell is in charge in Washington DC the Three Stooges? Why are these crimes called leaks? They are not “Leaks” they are exposures of our tactics and strategies to the enemy…the President should start acting like it. And no being cute and saying he “presumes” an investigation is underway, is not doing something about it. Getting up on his bully pulpit each and every day and denouncing those traitors is what should be happening.
We can hope that the MSM won’t publish those stories but it is not their responsibility to do so. It is the responsibility of our government to be moderately capable of vetting those who have access to those secrets and severly punishing those who expose our top secret programs.
Counter Intelligence in the US or how the Three St
Odd aren’t we supposed to have counter intelligence agents? Exactly what the hell are they doing? Are we supposed to feel warm and fuzzy knowing they are in charge of preventing the exposure of our deepest secrets to the Islamofacists when they canno…
About the idea of a class action suit.
Wouldn’t you have to prove damages?
How could that be done except by revealing more classified information?
I would certainly support a class-action suit. Damage has already been done to me since I no longer feel safe in my own country.
count me in for the lawsuit — lockem all up in alexandria un til you find out whose doing this
The Press as the Center of All Evil…and other ab
The release of the information regarding our efforts in the war on terror are unforgivable. But when we, the blogsphere, fall into our old comfortable habits of blaming the media we do our country a disservice
Snapple,
You can show harm in this case because the leakers and their media mouthpieces are destroying our protections. Whether increased risk or actual damage has to be proved is an interesting question. But the suite is not to win, it is to show the media where it stands with the people.
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[…] It’s an idea I’ve read here and there in comments sections of blogs and forums, but now AJ Strata is wondering if a class-action law suit against the leaking press, by the American public which is left vulnerable through their folly, is not a doable idea. […]
PUTTING MY FAMILY IN DANGER
AJ Strata has an excellent idea:
A while ago someone suggested a way for ‘We The PeopleÂ’ to fight back as these treasonous liberals expose us to attack. The idea was to bring a class action law suit against the media outlets who recklessly expose …
[…] Read the rest […]
Comey don’t play that
Update: AJ Strata has apparently gone mad, and he’s taken The Anchoress with him…