La revista Spiegel pone los documentos secretos de Snowden a disposición de todos. The NSA in Germany: Snowden's Documents Available for Download

La revista alemana Spiegel ha puesto a disposición del público los documentos que recibió del ex empleado de la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional, Edward Snowden.

En total la revista ha subido a la Red 53 archivos que revelan la vigilancia de la NSA en Alemania, y que ahora los internautas pueden leer o descargarse.

Los documentos de Snowden ponen al descubierto la cooperación de los servicios secretos estadounidenses y alemanes.

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The NSA in Germany: Snowden's Documents Available for Download

In Edward Snowden's archive on NSA spying activities around the world, there are numerous documents pertaining to the agency's operations in Germany and its cooperation with German agencies. SPIEGEL is publishing 53 of them, available as PDF files.

America's National Security Agency has been active in Germany for decades. During the Cold War, much of its focus was on targets beyond West Germany's eastern border. But even then, the NSA continued to monitor communications within, and originating in, West Germany. Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the NSA has increased its ability to monitor global communications -- and documents from the archive of whistleblower Edward Snowden show that Germany is the agency's most important base of operations in continental Europe.

The documents show that the NSA, while focusing on counter-terrorism and other areas of importance to national security, has also established systems that allow it to monitor vast amounts of digital and other forms of communications in Germany and elsewhere. The agency can intercept huge amounts of emails, text messages and phone conversations. The NSA even monitored the mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

When revelations of NSA spying in Germany first broke last year, German officials indicated they were unaware of the breadth of US intelligence activity in the country. For this week's cover story, SPIEGEL once again examined all of the documents from Snowden's archive pertaining to NSA activity in Germany. The story can be read here.

But Snowden documents also indicate that Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, and its domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, work closely together with the NSA in sites around Germany. For SPIEGEL's story on that cooperation, click here.

Below are PDF files of the most important documents pertaining to that cooperation. SPIEGEL has redacted them to obscure the identification of BND and NSA agents, phone numbers, email addresses and other information that could put lives in danger. A glossary explaining many of the abbreviations found in the documents can be found here. SPIEGEL's editorial explaining why we have elected to publicize the documents can be read here.

Please note, in some of the documents, you may have to scroll down to get to the text.


Nostalgic recollections out of the NSA intranet from NSA workers formerly stationed in Bad Aibling

Document excerpt on the sharing of the NSA spy tool XKeyscore with the Federal Office for the 

Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency

Secret document on the cooperation between the NSA, BND and BfV in the fight against terrorism

Preliminary agenda of a meeting between high-ranking NSA and BND officials

Briefing on the visit to the NSA of a high-ranking BND official

Final agenda of a meeting between high-ranking NSA and BND officials

Internal NSA presentation on the BND's organization

Internal NSA discussion guidelines relating to cooperation with the BND and BfV

Internal NSA discussion guidelines in preparation for a meeting with high-ranking BND officials

Comprehensive internal summary of the history and current state of cooperation between the NSA 

and BND

FAQs on the Boundless Informant program

Boundless Informant statistics on Germany

Boundless Informant overview (global)

Boundless Informant statistics for so-called Third Parties, which includes Germany

Boundless Informant statistics on data from "Foreign Partners"

Overview of the use of Boundless Informant (world map)

World map from the Boundless Informant program

Zoom of a Boundless Informant document, with project names

Agenda for the visit of BSI Vice President Andreas Könen to the NSA

Report on the beginnings of the European Security Center (ESC) in the Dagger Complex

Report on the changing of the ESC’s name to European Security Operations Center (ESOC)

ESOC: Report on the experiences of one NSA worker

Report on the changing of the ESOC’s name to European Cryptologic Center (ECC) including 

details on missions launched from there

Report on an XKeyscore training session at the ECC / Dagger Complex

Presentation on the spying program PRISM and ECC's participation

NSA/CSS presentation on technical surveillance in Europe and Africa

Report on an unexploded ordnance alarm at the European Technical Center in the Mainz-Kastel neighborhood of Wiesbaden

Report on an NSA SIGDEV training course for allied countries

Report on the technical expansion of the European Technical Center in the Mainz-Kastel neighborhood of Wiesbaden

Report on the NSA-BND cooperation known as Joint SIGINT Activity (JSA)

Report on the surveillance of African countries by JSA

Restrictions on the technical surveillance performed by JSA

Report on data exchange between the NSA and BND within the JSA framework

Merkel in the database: Presentation from the Center for Content Extraction

Report on the NSA’s access to TEMPORA

Report on the work of NSA/CSS Europe, including the capture or killing of 40 terror suspects

Guidelines for the classification of NSA SIGINT details (1945-1967)

Slide: Worldwide locations of the Cryptologic Services Groups

Slide: Worldwide locations of NSA/CSS satellite surveillance

US sites with NSA personnel in Germany

Logo of NSA-BND cooperation

Explanation of Nymrod, a system for searching for people and places in databases and documents
NSA presentation on the work of Nymrod

Report on an NSA visit to the BND site in Schöningen and on data transfer from the BND to the NSA

Presentation on the NSA/CIA unit Special Collection Service (SCS), active in US embassies around the world

Report on the one-year anniversary of the NSA liaison unit SUSLAG at the new site in Mangfall Kaserne in Bad Aibling

Guidelines for the classification of SUSLAG details and the NSA-BND cooperation

GCHQ report on the technical abilities of the powerful spying program TEMPORA, which allows for a "full take"

Report on a WHARPDRIVE incident in an SSO presentation

Details on XKeyscore from an internal GCHQ website

Boundless Informant statistics on Great Britain

European Technical Center: Report on the experiences of one NSA

NSA/CSS Europe: Report on the experiences of one NSA worker

http://www.spiegel.de/international/the-germany-file-of-edward-snowden-documents-available-for-download-a-975917.html

“WE Track ‘Em, YOU Whack ‘Em”: NSA’s Secret Role in US Assassination Program

‘We Track ’Em, You Whack ’Em.’

Obama once reportedly told his aides that it “turns out I’m really good at killing people.”

The president added, “Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.”







The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.

According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.

The drone operator, who agreed to discuss the top-secret programs on the condition of anonymity, was a member of JSOC’s High Value Targeting task force, which is charged with identifying, capturing or killing terrorist suspects in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

His account is bolstered by top-secret NSA documents previously provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is also supported by a former drone sensor operator with the U.S. Air Force, Brandon Bryant, who has become an outspoken critic of the lethal operations in which he was directly involved in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

In one tactic, the NSA “geolocates” the SIM card or handset of a suspected terrorist’s mobile phone, enabling the CIA and U.S. military to conduct night raids and drone strikes to kill or capture the individual in possession of the device.

The former JSOC drone operator is adamant that the technology has been responsible for taking out terrorists and networks of people facilitating improvised explosive device attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But he also states that innocent people have “absolutely” been killed as a result of the NSA’s increasing reliance on the surveillance tactic.

One problem, he explains, is that targets are increasingly aware of the NSA’s reliance on geolocating, and have moved to thwart the tactic. Some have as many as 16 different SIM cards associated with their identity within the High Value Target system. Others, unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members.

Some top Taliban leaders, knowing of the NSA’s targeting method, have purposely and randomly distributed SIM cards among their units in order to elude their trackers. “They would do things like go to meetings, take all their SIM cards out, put them in a bag, mix them up, and everybody gets a different SIM card when they leave,” the former drone operator says. “That’s how they confuse us.”

As a result, even when the agency correctly identifies and targets a SIM card belonging to a terror suspect, the phone may actually be carried by someone else, who is then killed in a strike. According to the former drone operator, the geolocation cells at the NSA that run the tracking program – known as Geo Cell –sometimes facilitate strikes without knowing whether the individual in possession of a tracked cell phone or SIM card is in fact the intended target of the strike.

“Once the bomb lands or a night raid happens, you know that phone is there,” he says. “But we don’t know who’s behind it, who’s holding it. It’s of course assumed that the phone belongs to a human being who is nefarious and considered an ‘unlawful enemy combatant.’ This is where it gets very shady.”

The former drone operator also says that he personally participated in drone strikes where the identity of the target was known, but other unknown people nearby were also killed.

“They might have been terrorists,” he says. “Or they could have been family members who have nothing to do with the target’s activities.”

What’s more, he adds, the NSA often locates drone targets by analyzing the activity of a SIM card, rather than the actual content of the calls. Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata.

“People get hung up that there’s a targeted list of people,” he says. “It’s really like we’re targeting a cell phone. We’re not going after people – we’re going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy.”

The Obama administration has repeatedly insisted that its operations kill terrorists with the utmost precision.

In his speech at the National Defense University last May, President Obama declared that “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.” He added that, “by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.”

But the increased reliance on phone tracking and other fallible surveillance tactics suggests that the opposite is true. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which uses a conservative methodology to track drone strikes, estimates that at least 273 civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia have been killed by unmanned aerial assaults under the Obama administration. A recent study conducted by a U.S. military adviser found that, during a single year in Afghanistan – where the majority of drone strikes have taken place – unmanned vehicles were 10 times more likely than conventional aircraft to cause civilian casualties.

The NSA declined to respond to questions for this article. Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, also refused to discuss “the type of operational detail that, in our view, should not be published.”

In describing the administration’s policy on targeted killings, Hayden would not say whether strikes are ever ordered without the use of human intelligence. She emphasized that “our assessments are not based on a single piece of information. We gather and scrutinize information from a variety of sources and methods before we draw conclusions.”

Hayden felt free, however, to note the role that human intelligence plays after a deadly strike occurs. “After any use of targeted lethal force, when there are indications that civilian deaths may have occurred, intelligence analysts draw on a large body of information – including human intelligence, signals intelligence, media reports, and surveillance footage – to help us make informed determinations about whether civilians were in fact killed or injured.”

The government does not appear to apply the same standard of care in selecting whom to target for assassination. The former JSOC drone operator estimates that the overwhelming majority of high-value target operations he worked on in Afghanistan relied on signals intelligence, known as SIGINT, based on the NSA’s phone-tracking technology.

“Everything they turned into a kinetic strike or a night raid was almost 90 percent that,” he says. “You could tell, because you’d go back to the mission reports and it will say ‘this mission was triggered by SIGINT,’ which means it was triggered by a geolocation cell.”

In July, the Washington Post relied exclusively on former senior U.S. intelligence officials and anonymous sources to herald the NSA’s claims about its effectiveness at geolocating terror suspects.

Within the NSA, the paper reported, “A motto quickly caught on at Geo Cell: ‘We Track ’Em, You Whack ’Em.’”

But the Post article included virtually no skepticism about the NSA’s claims, and no discussion at all about how the unreliability of the agency’s targeting methods results in the killing of innocents.

In fact, as the former JSOC drone operator recounts, tracking people by metadata and then killing them by SIM card is inherently flawed. The NSA “will develop a pattern,” he says, “where they understand that this is what this person’s voice sounds like, this is who his friends are, this is who his commander is, this is who his subordinates are. And they put them into a matrix. But it’s not always correct. There’s a lot of human error in that.”

The JSOC operator’s account is supported by another insider who was directly involved in the drone program. Brandon Bryant spent six years as a “stick monkey” – a drone sensor operator who controls the “eyes” of the U.S. military’s unmanned aerial vehicles. By the time he left the Air Force in 2011, Bryant’s squadron, which included a small crew of veteran drone operators, had been credited with killing 1,626 “enemies” in action.

Bryant says he has come forward because he is tormented by the loss of civilian life he believes that he and his squadron may have caused. Today he is committed to informing the public about lethal flaws in the U.S. drone program.

Bryant describes the program as highly compartmentalized: Drone operators taking shots at targets on the ground have little idea where the intelligence is coming from.

“I don’t know who we worked with,” Bryant says. “We were never privy to that sort of information. If the NSA did work with us, like, I have no clue.”

During the course of his career, Bryant says, many targets of U.S. drone strikes evolved their tactics, particularly in the handling of cell phones. “They’ve gotten really smart now and they don’t make the same mistakes as they used to,” he says. “They’d get rid of the SIM card and they’d get a new phone, or they’d put the SIM card in the new phone.”

As the former JSOC drone operator describes – and as classified documents obtained from Snowden confirm – the NSA doesn’t just locate the cell phones of terror suspects by intercepting communications from cell phone towers and Internet service providers. The agency also equips drones and other aircraft with devices known as “virtual base-tower transceivers” – creating, in effect, a fake cell phone tower that can force a targeted person’s device to lock onto the NSA’s receiver without their knowledge.

That, in turn, allows the military to track the cell phone to within 30 feet of its actual location, feeding the real-time data to teams of drone operators who conduct missile strikes or facilitate night raids.

The NSA geolocation system used by JSOC is known by the code name GILGAMESH. Under the program, a specially constructed device is attached to the drone. As the drone circles, the device locates the SIM card or handset that the military believes is used by the target.



Relying on this method, says the former JSOC drone operator, means that the “wrong people” could be killed due to metadata errors, particularly in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. “We don’t have people on the ground – we don’t have the same forces, informants, or information coming in from those areas – as we do where we have a strong foothold, like we do in Afghanistan. I would say that it’s even more likely that mistakes are made in places such as Yemen or Somalia, and especially Pakistan.”

As of May 2013, according to the former drone operator, President Obama had cleared 16 people in Yemen and five in Somalia for targeting in strikes. Before a strike is green-lit, he says, there must be at least two sources of intelligence. The problem is that both of those sources often involve NSA-supplied data, rather than human intelligence (HUMINT).

As the former drone operator explains, the process of tracking and ultimately killing a targeted person is known within the military as F3: Find, Fix, Finish. “Since there’s almost zero HUMINT operations in Yemen – at least involving JSOC – every one of their strikes relies on signals and imagery for confirmation: signals being the cell phone lock, which is the ‘find’ and imagery being the ‘unblinking eye’ which is the ‘fix.’” The “finish” is the strike itself.

“JSOC acknowledges that it would be completely helpless without the NSA conducting mass surveillance on an industrial level,” the former drone operator says. “That is what creates those baseball cards you hear about,” featuring potential targets for drone strikes or raids.

President Obama signs authorizations for “hits” that remain valid for 60 days. If a target cannot be located within that period, it must be reviewed and renewed. According to the former drone operator, it can take 18 months or longer to move from intelligence gathering to getting approval to actually carrying out a strike in Yemen. “What that tells me,” he says, “is that commanders, once given the authorization needed to strike, are more likely to strike when they see an opportunity – even if there’s a high chance of civilians being killed, too – because in their mind they might never get the chance to strike that target again.”

While drones are not the only method used to kill targets, they have become so prolific that they are now a standard part of U.S. military culture. Remotely piloted Reaper and Predator vehicles are often given nicknames. Among those used in Afghanistan, says the former JSOC drone operator, were “Lightning” and “Sky Raider.”

The latter drone, he adds, was also referred to as “Sky Raper,” for a simple reason – “because it killed a lot of people.” When operators were assigned to “Sky Raper,” he adds, it meant that “somebody was going to die. It was always set to the most high-priority missions.”

In addition to the GILGAMESH system used by JSOC, the CIA uses a similar NSA platform known as SHENANIGANS. The operation – previously undisclosed – utilizes a pod on aircraft that vacuums up massive amounts of data from any wireless routers, computers, smart phones or other electronic devices that are within range.

One top-secret NSA document provided by Snowden is written by a SHENANIGANS operator who documents his March 2012 deployment to Oman, where the CIA has established a drone base. The operator describes how, from almost four miles in the air, he searched for communications devices believed to be used by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in neighboring Yemen.The mission was code named VICTORYDANCE.

“The VICTORYDANCE mission was a great experience,” the operator writes. “It was truly a joint interagency effort between CIA and NSA. Flights and targets were coordinated with both CIAers and NSAers. The mission lasted 6 months, during which 43 flights were flown.”

VICTORYDANCE, he adds, “mapped the Wi-Fi fingerprint of nearly every major town in Yemen.”



The NSA has played an increasingly central role in drone killings over the past five years. In one top-secret NSA document from 2010, the head of the agency’s Strategic Planning and Policy Division of the Counterterrorism Mission Management Center recounts the history of the NSA’s involvement in Yemen. Shortly before President Obama took office, the document reveals, the agency began to “shift analytic resources to focus on Yemen.”

In 2008, the NSA had only three analysts dedicated to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen. By the fall of 2009, it had 45 analysts, and the agency was producing “high quality” signal intelligence for the CIA and JSOC.

In December 2009, utilizing the NSA’s metadata collection programs, the Obama administration dramatically escalated U.S. drone and cruise missile strikes in Yemen.

The first strike in the country known to be authorized by Obama targeted an alleged Al Qaeda camp in the southern village of al-Majala.

The strike, which included the use of cluster bombs, resulted in the deaths of 14 women and 21 children. It is not clear whether the strike was based on metadata collection; the White House has never publicly explained the strike or the source of the faulty intelligence that led to the civilian fatalities.

Another top-secret NSA document confirms that the agency “played a key supporting role” in the drone strike in September 2011 that killed U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, as well as another American, Samir Khan. According to the 2013 Congressional Budget Justification, “The CIA tracked [Awlaki] for three weeks before a joint operation with the U.S. military killed” the two Americans in Yemen, along with two other people.

When Brandon Bryant left his Air Force squadron in April 2011, the unit was aiding JSOC in its hunt for the American-born cleric. The CIA took the lead in the hunt for Awlaki after JSOC tried and failed to kill him in the spring of 2011.



According to Bryant, the NSA’s expanded role in Yemen has only added to what he sees as the risk of fatal errors already evident in CIA operations. “They’re very non-discriminate with how they do things, as far as you can see their actions over in Pakistan and the devastation that they’ve had there,” Bryant says about the CIA. “It feels like they tried to bring those same tactics they used over in Pakistan down to Yemen. It’s a repeat of tactical thinking, instead of intelligent thinking.”

Those within the system understand that the government’s targeting tactics are fundamentally flawed. According to the former JSOC drone operator, instructors who oversee GILGAMESH training emphasize: “‘This isn’t a science. This is an art.’ It’s kind of a way of saying that it’s not perfect.”

Yet the tracking “pods” mounted on the bottom of drones have facilitated thousands of “capture or kill” operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan since September 11. One top-secret NSA document provided by Snowden notes that by 2009, “for the first time in the history of the U.S. Air Force, more pilots were trained to fly drones … than conventional fighter aircraft,” leading to a “‘tipping point’ in U.S. military combat behavior in resorting to air strikes in areas of undeclared wars,” such as Yemen and Pakistan.

The document continues: “Did you ever think you would see the day when the U.S. would be conducting combat operations in a country equipped with nuclear weapons without a boot on the ground or a pilot in the air?”

Even NSA operatives seem to recognize how profoundly the agency’s tracking technology deviates from standard operating methods of war.

One NSA document from 2005 poses this question: “What resembles ‘LITTLE BOY’ (one of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II) and as LITTLE BOY did, represents the dawn of a new era (at least in SIGINT and precision geolocation)?”

Its reply: “If you answered a pod mounted on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that is currently flying in support of the Global War on Terrorism, you would be correct.”



Another document boasts that geolocation technology has “cued and compressed numerous ‘kill chains’ (i.e. all of the steps taken to find, track, target, and engage the enemy), resulting in untold numbers of enemy killed and captured in Afghanistan as well as the saving of U.S. and Coalition lives.”

The former JSOC drone operator, however, remains highly disturbed by the unreliability of such methods. Like other whistleblowers, including Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, he says that his efforts to alert his superiors to the problems were brushed off. “The system continues to work because, like most things in the military, the people who use it trust it unconditionally,” he says.

When he would raise objections about intelligence that was “rushed” or “inaccurate” or “outright wrong,” he adds, “the most common response I would get was ‘JSOC wouldn’t spend millions and millions of dollars, and man hours, to go after someone if they weren’t certain that they were the right person.’ There is a saying at the NSA: ‘SIGINT never lies.’ It may be true that SIGINT never lies, but it’s subject to human error.”

The government’s assassination program is actually constructed, he adds, to avoid self-correction. “They make rushed decisions and are often wrong in their assessments. They jump to conclusions and there is no going back to correct mistakes.” Because there is an ever-increasing demand for more targets to be added to the kill list, he says, the mentality is “just keep feeding the beast.”

For Bryant, the killing of Awlaki – followed two weeks later by the killing of his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al Awlaki, also an American citizen – motivated him to speak out. Last October, Bryant appeared before a panel of experts at the United Nations – including the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, Ben Emmerson, who is currently conducting an investigation into civilians killed by drone strikes.

Dressed in hiking boots and brown cargo pants, Bryant called for “independent investigations” into the Obama administration’s drone program. “At the end of our pledge of allegiance, we say ‘with liberty and justice for all,’” he told the panel. “I believe that should be applied to not only American citizens, but everyone that we interact with as well, to put them on an equal level and to treat them with respect.”

Unlike those who oversee the drone program, Bryant also took personal responsibility for his actions in the killing of Awlaki. “I was a drone operator for six years, active duty for six years in the U.S. Air Force, and I was party to the violations of constitutional rights of an American citizen who should have been tried under a jury,” he said. “And because I violated that constitutional right, I became an enemy of the American people.”

Bryant later told The Intercept, “I had to get out because we were told that the president wanted Awlaki dead. And I wanted him dead. I was told that he was a traitor to our country…. I didn’t really understand that our Constitution covers people, American citizens, who have betrayed our country. They still deserve a trial.”

The killing of Awlaki and his son still haunt Bryant. The younger Awlaki, Abdulrahman, had run away from home to try to find his dad, whom he had not seen in three years. But his father was killed before Abdulrahman could locate him. Abdulrahman was then killed in a separate strike two weeks later as he ate dinner with his teenage cousin and some friends. The White House has never explained the strike.

“I don’t think there’s any day that goes by when I don’t think about those two, to be honest,” Bryant says. “The kid doesn’t seem like someone who would be a suicide bomber or want to die or something like that. He honestly seems like a kid who missed his dad and went there to go see his dad.”

Last May, President Obama acknowledged that “the necessary secrecy” involved in lethal strikes “can end up shielding our government from the public scrutiny that a troop deployment invites. It can also lead a president and his team to view drone strikes as a cure-all for terrorism.”

But that, says the former JSOC operator, is precisely what has happened. Given how much the government now relies on drone strikes – and given how many of those strikes are now dependent on metadata rather than human intelligence – the operator warns that political officials may view the geolocation program as more dependable than it really is.

“I don’t know whether or not President Obama would be comfortable approving the drone strikes if he knew the potential for mistakes that are there,” he says. “All he knows is what he’s told.”

Whether or not Obama is fully aware of the errors built into the program of targeted assassination, he and his top advisors have repeatedly made clear that the president himself directly oversees the drone operation and takes full responsibility for it. Obama once reportedly told his aides that it “turns out I’m really good at killing people.”

The president added, “Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.”

Jeremy Scahill is an investigative reporter, war correspondent and author of the international bestselling books Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield and Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill has served as the National Security Correspondent for The Nation Magazine and Democracy Now!.

Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, commentator, and author of three New York Times best-selling books on politics and law. His fifth book, No Place to Hide, about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world, will be released in April 2014. Prior to his collaboration with Pierre Omidyar, Glenn’s column was featured at Guardian US and Salon.

Ryan Devereaux contributed to this article.

© 2014 First Look Productions, Inc. All rights reserved

Note: – The image embedded in this article did not appear in the original item.

The Intercept

Tags: drone mine NSA Obama

http://www.4thmedia.org/2014/02/11/nsas-secret-role-in-us-assassination-program-with-drone-strikes/

TEN EXPLOSIVE U.S. Government SECRETS about ISRAEL

Absent greater transparency, Americans should assume the worst



In 1968 Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms wrote urgently to Attorney General Ramsey Clark and President Lyndon B. Johnson that some highly enriched uranium fueling Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor was stolen from America. LBJ reportedly uttered, “Don’t tell anyone else, even [Secretary of State] Dean Rusk and [Defense Secretary] Robert McNamara.”

The FBI immediately launched a deep investigation into the inexplicably heavy losses at the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation NUMEC in Pennsylvania and the highly suspicious activities and Israeli connections of the Americans running it.

The CIA was tasked to find out what was going on in Israel, and compiled thousands of documents about the incident. (PDF) Although CIA officials in a position to know unofficially went on record claiming a diversion had occurred, for decades the CIA has thwarted declassification and release of the LBJ memos.

On October 18, 2013 the only appeals panel with the power to overrule the CIA—the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel ISCAP—sent notification that Americans are not yet ready to know the contents of the memos (ISCAP decision PDF). This denial of public release of decades-old secrets concerning U.S.-Israel relations is far from unique.

Although the Obama administration promised unprecedented transparency, it has emasculated the public’s ability to give informed consent on a wide range of key foreign policy issues. A review of ten particularly toxic U.S. secrets about Israel suggests stakeholders should start assuming the worst but most logical explanation.

In 2006 former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously told reporters at an Iraq war briefing “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know.

But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” Bush administration secrecy and Rumsfeld’s pithy quotes failed to quell gradual public awareness that the ill-fated invasion was launched on purposely fabricated pretexts.

And yet the Iraq debacle could have been avoided if Americans had been better informed over time how government truly functions through greater access to the fourth category left unmentioned by Rumsfeld: “unknown knowns.”

“Unknown knowns” are the paradigm-shifting bits of information known only by a select few in government but kept from their fellow American citizens because they would reveal indefensible, secret policies and institution-level corruption that favor a special interest.

By locking “unknown knowns” under heavy guard in document archives, covering them in secrecy classification stamps and making an example out of whistleblowers who release them without authorization, busy bureaucratswith the highest security clearances maintain a vast and growing trove of “unknown knowns.”

Historians and watchdog organizations are continually thwarted in their mandate to contextualize and educate the public about relevant past events that could deeply inform the governed—and ultimately improve governance.

Senator Carl Schurz said, “My country right or wrong, if right, to be kept right, and if wrong, to be set right.” “Unknown knowns” obliterate the public’s ability to execute the latter two-thirds of that sage advice.

Even the passage of time does not guarantee “unknown knowns” ever become “known knowns.” Under current government records preservation guidelines—particularly for information that researchers are not actively seeking to declassify—some “unknown knowns” quietly become “unknown unknowns” as they decay, arephysically destroyed, erased or “lost.”

Many knowledgeable former officials take their secrets to the grave. As a product of the ill-gotten power and influence of the Israel lobby, the pile of ”unknown knowns” about U.S.-Israel policy is particularly large. Curious Americans who rightfully question official narratives about the U.S.-Israel “special relationship” have often requested ”unknown knowns” under the Freedom of Information Act.

Former government insiders who know firsthand aboutexplosive secrets often seek their public release to alert others using the Mandatory Declassification Review, even requesting documents by name, subject, location, author and date.

After such “unknown knowns” (like the LBJ memos) are unsuccessfully sought for decades by multiple researchers, well-warranted suspicions arise about the reasons behind the impermeable government wall of refusal. The following ten US-Israel policy “unknown knowns” suggest the Israel lobby’s ongoing corrupt power is the only possible explanation for why they are still secret.



1. Henry Morgenthau Jr’s Israel policy

Henry Morgenthau Jr’s Israel policy is the stuff of legend in accou

nts about the birth of Israel. Some researchers claim that FDR’s former Treasury Secretary was present at the original 1945 meeting of American Zionists with Jewish Agency executive director David Ben-Gurion to set up the massive Haganah smuggling network to steal, illegally buy and smuggle surplus WWII arms from the U.S. to Jewish fighters in Palestine. (report PDF)

This was the first major broadly organized Israel lobby challenge to U.S. sovereignty. It successfully overrode American policy enshrined in neutrality and arms export laws. Others claim Morgenthau was also instrumental in the illicit financing Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program in direct opposition topolicy set by American presidents.

The FBI’s dusty 10,000 page file on Morgenthau, numbered 105-HQ-188123 (the 105 code signifies “foreign counterintelligence”) including intercepts to Morgenthau from Israel, could finally clear up many of these allegations, especially when compared to current research.

Although the FBI—after a process that began in 2010—in September 2013 claims it has fully declassified the Morgenthau file, censors have blanked out nearly every page with a paint-roller of black ink (sample PDF). How do high officials with strong ties to Israel and its lobby who are politically appointed to the U.S. Treasury Department flout U.S. laws with their own foreign-coordinated foreign policy movements?

The FBI and Justice Department do not believe Americans are quite yet ready to know.



2. Eisenhower and the Lavon Affair.

In 1954, the Israeli government launched its “Operation Susannah” false flag terrorist attack on U.S. facilities in Egypt. Israel’s operatives were quickly arrested when bombs exploded prematurely. The operation’s utter failure resulted in a political crisis known as the Lavon Affair.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, periodically swarmed by American Zionist Council lobbyists urging him to send money and arms to Israel, must have learned some very hard lessons about U.S.-Israel relations from the incident.

Yet the Eisenhower presidential archive—which is not subject to FOIA—has never released anything revelatory about the administration’s reaction to the attempted false flag attack. A narrow request for such files yielded only a single non-specific declassified opinion that the commander-in-chief believed the Israelis were “fanatics.” (National Security Council PDF)

Yet the false flag operation’s objective, attacking to keep U.S. troops stationed in the Suez Canal Zone to respond to “Egyptian militants,” seemed entirely rational to Israel, and possibly to some of its U.S. supporters who struggled for years afterwards to minimize the importance of the affair.

Today Eisenhower library archivists claim that huge quantities of Eisenhower’s papers are still “unprocessed,” but may hold some private reflections or lessons learned.



3. Israeli theft of nuclear material from NUMEC.

In 2013, the CIA continues to resist release of thousands of files about the NUMEC diversion by referring to CIA Deputy Director for Operations John H. Stein’s secret decision in 1979 (2013 FOIA denial PDF).

Stein claimed that release of even a few of CIA’s closely-held files—especially if they were compared with Science Advisor of the Interior Commission Henry Meyer’s blunt allegations (PDF) to Congressman Morris Udall in 1979 that NUMEC was an Israeli smuggling front—was impossible “because of the need to have a coordinated Executive Branch position and our desire to protect a sensitive and valuable liaison equity.”

In plain English, that appears to mean Americans still cannot have official CIA confirmation of the uranium theft because the U.S. president would have to drop the ongoing nonsense of “strategic ambiguity” and forego intelligence Israel is funneling to America.



4. FBI files of Israeli (but not Russian) spies

Russia’s dashing red-headed spy, Anna Chapman, was arrested in 2010 and sent packing back Russia. Any interested American can now watch Chapman’s moves in surveillance videos and read the FBI counterintelligence files.

Not so with most of Israel’s top spies who targeted American economic, nuclear and national defense infrastructure. America is still crawling with Israeli spies (our “constant companion” according to intelligence expert Jeff Stein).

The 2010 revelations of nuclear equipment smuggling from Telogy (prohibited export smuggling PDF) in California and Stewart Nozette’s 1998-2008 Israel Aerospace Industries-funded penetrations of classified U.S. information storehouses around Washington reveal that while Israeli spying has never stopped, secret prosecution strategies now emphasize quietly rolling up Israeli operations via industry regulators, fines and penalties or isolating and entrapping American spies on lesser charges but steering around their Israeli handlers.

Unlike its treatment of information requests about Russian spies, the FBI and Justice Department have denied every individual FOIA request for the files of major Israeli spies. Access to Rafael Eitan’s many harmful exploits against U.S. targets are banned from release unless Eitan personally waives his privacy rights (FOIA denial).

The FBI claimed it can no longer find files about deceased nuclear espionage mastermind Avraham Hermoni, even though his name appears across many previously released NUMEC files (FOIA denial PDF). Flooding from Hurricane Sandy is the excuse the FBI gives for not being able to find files on spy-for-Israel Ben Ami-Kadish (Flood FOIA denial PDF).

One might argue it is merely a series of unfortunate events that keeps Israeli spy files out of public hands, except that the Justice Department has now issued a blanket ban on declassifying any files about the FBI’s decades-long counterintelligence tango with Israel’s Mossad. (Justice Department blanket denial PDF).

The results of the Justice Department’s kid-glove approach to Israel propagates into mandatory counterintelligence reports to Congress. Although Israel unambiguously ranked as a top economic and national defense intelligence threat in past assessments of agencies like the Office of National Counterintelligence Executive, because criminal prosecution strategies toward Israel (through not Iran, Russia or China) have been undermined from within, Israel has disappeared from the most current reports.



5. Jonathan J. Pollard’s most heinous crime

Israel’s only American spy ever to do serious time in jail—despite the best efforts of his many American and Israeli supporters to spring him—once confidently claimed before he was convictedthat “…it was the established policy of the Department of Justice not to prosecute U.S. citizens for espionage activities on behalf of Israel.”

Many believe it was only Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger’s classified briefing to sentencing Judge Aubry Robinson that made Pollard the near sole exception to that curious rule.

Some Pentagon insiders and national security reporters believe Pollard’s sentence was so harsh because Israel used stolen U.S. intelligence as “trade goods” with the Soviet Union to increase Russian émigrés to Israel.

As Pollard’s sentence draws to a close, few know exactly what Weinberger told Robinson that caused him to deliver a life sentence. The recent partial releases of a CIA damage assessment and a DIA video about Pollard shed little light.

In 2010, the Department of Defense disclaimed all ownership of the still-classified “Weinberger declaration” passing the FOIA ball to the Justice Department’s Criminal Division (FOIA transfer PDF).

In a novel approach, the Executive Office of US Attorneys now claims that it cannot find its own copy but that FOIA does not require EOUSA FOIA officers to travel two blocks to the DC District Court to retrieve a sealed copy of the memorandum for review (FOIA denial PDF) or even ask DOD for acopy.

The National Archives and Records Administration Office of Government Information Services OGIS agrees that there is no “duty for agencies to retrieve records that are not physically present in their own files.”

Although the 2008 case of Ben-Ami Kadish proves the Pollard espionage ring was much larger than was publicly disclosed in the late 1980s, the FBI has also not allowed release of its Jonathan Pollard investigation files (FOIA denial PDF) for overdue public review of how the investigation might have—like many others—been short-circuited by the Department of Justice because it involved Israel.



6. Wiretap of AIPAC pushing for a US war on Iran

When AIPAC executives Keith Weissman and Steven J. Rosen dialed up Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler in 2004, they were determined to leverage purloined classified U.S. national defense information into a story that Iran was engaged in “total war” against the US in Iraq.

FBI special agents played audio intercepts of their pitch to AIPAC’s legal counsel and AIPAC promptly fired the pair to distance itself from activities it had long supported. Rosen and Weisman were later indicted under the Espionage Act, although the case was later quashed under an intense Israel lobby pressure campaign shortly afterPresident Obama entered office.

What exactly did AIPAC’s two officials tell the Washington Post in its unrelenting drive to gin up a U.S. war with Iran?

A decade later, the U.S. Department of Justice doesn’t believe the American public is entitled to hear a tape long ago played to AIPAC’s lawyer Nathan Lewin, even as AIPAC continues to agitate for more wars. (MDR denial PDF)



7. Niger uranium forgery underwriters

Although Ike may or may not have worried much about the implications of Operation Susannah, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee certainly did. A secret memo touched off years of Senate and Justice Department investigations into Israel lobbying over fears that American operatives might engage in other overseas clandestine provocations aimed at duping the U.S. into ill-advised conflicts that would benefit Israel (the short memo references the Lavon affair twice). The Iraq war proves those fears were well-founded.

Many have long suspected that the Niger uranium forgeries, fake documents the Bush administration trumpeted to falsely accuse Iraq of buying uranium from Africa for nuclear weapons, were chartered by American neoconservatives in order to provide a pretext theydesperately needed for war.

Perhaps the FBI’s investigation into the matter definitively proves it. However, despite years of requests for the 1,000 pages of that investigation, the FBI after initially duly proceeding with a FOIA, has now suddenly clammed up. (Niger uranium denial PDF)



8. Israel lobbyists embedded in the Treasury and Justice Departments

Israel lobbying organizations have been very effective at embedding their operatives in key positions across the Federal government, such as Stuart Levey in the Treasury Department’s economic warfare unit, or former AIPAC director Tom Dine as a contractor at the floundering US government-funded Arabic-language broadcaster Alhurra. It used to be possible to get a phone directory or conduct a comprehensive audit of which key political appointees (and the people they brought in) were running critical divisions of federal agencies by obtaining detailed Office of Personnel Management and other public records. Not anymore. (FOIA response PDF)

Leveraging heightened post-911 sensitivities, the US Treasury Department now claims the same protections against disclosure formerly enjoyed only by intelligence agency employees.

Since the 1940s, the U.S. Department of Justice has earned a reputation as a place where Israel lobby criminal investigations go to die. Justice is also where an AIPAC official like Neil Sher can while away a few years on pet projects at taxpayer expense before moving on to more lucrative outside work.

DOJ also routinely denies files about its past official decisions not to pursue criminal cases on the basis that doing so could jeopardize privacy, ongoing investigations, or factors underlying its coveted “prosecutorial discretion” (e.g. charging the disenfranchised but not powerful insiders for wrongdoing).

Like Treasury, it is now almost impossible to survey and produce an organization chart of the Israel lobby’s political appointees embedded at high and mid-level Justice Department posts or the biographies of the staff and contractors they bring in with them.



9. Unclassified IDA report about US charities funding the Israeli nuclear weapons program

Sensitive reports need not be classified for the government to hang on to them indefinitely. In 1987 the Institute for Defense Analyses delivered an unclassified report to the Department of Defense titled “Critical Technology Issues in Israel.”

The study implicates the Israeli Weizmann Institute for Science and Technology in nuclear weapons research, raising deep questions about the group’s U.S. tax-exempt charitable fundraising and U.S. commitment to enforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Department of Defense withheld the IDA report from release on the basis of FOIA exemptions covering trade secrets and “intra-agency communications protected by the deliberative process privilege,” among others. (FOIA denial PDF)



10. Justification for NSA funneling raw intelligence on Americans to Israel

If former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has taught Americans anything, it is that”unknown knowns” are usually even worse than many might have first imagined. Some careful observers knew about massive NSA surveillance, while others alertedthe public about the danger of ”backdoor” U.S. intelligence flows to Israel.

But who ever suspected the NSA was shipping wholesale raw intercepts gathered on Americans to Israel under a secret deal struck in 2009? No government that wholly denies such relevant information can claim legitimacy via consent of the governed. There can be little doubt why these ten files are kept closed: it serves the Israel lobby.

The means by which this closure is sustained is also no secret. The millions of dollars that line politician’s pockets, promote media pundits and quietly spirit political appointees into key gatekeeper positions maintain closed files and prevent informed public debate.

Because of this, Americans should proceed assuming the worst conceivable, most logical explanation for any given U.S.-Israel “unknown known” is correct—until proven otherwise. Under this guideline, it is prudent to believe that LBJ—properly warned by his intelligence services and advisors that Israel was stealing the most precious military material on earth from America—was simply too marinated in Israel lobby campaign cash to faithfully uphold his oath of office.

It is similarly reasonable to believe the Justice Department and FBI won’t release Israeli spy files because Americans would finally understand that, despite massive ongoing harm to America, political appointees in the Justice Department thwart warranted prosecutions.

DOJ finds it much easier to stay “on message” through along line of lobby-approved but mostly bogus ”Islamic terrorism cases” (many made via sketchy undercover informants goading members of targeted minority communities into “terror” plots).

According to its own records, every time it tried to uphold the law in the 1940s the DOJ suddenly found itself internally and externally swarmed by Israel lobbyists with inexhaustible financial war chests and legal experts working to quash warranted prosecutions in secret coordination with Israel. The DOJ now likely believes it can never win against Israel lobby generated media and political agitation when it moves to prosecute, and has now simply given up.

It is logical to assume that Israel was found selling out America to the Soviets in Pollard’s case, since little else explains the unusually harsh impact of Weinberger’s secret memo.

It is similarly likely that the FBI’s AIPAC wiretaps would, if released today, accurately reveal Rosen and Weissman to be what they actually were—unregistered foreign agents operating on behalf of and in ongoing contact with the Israeli government rather than legitimate domestic lobbyists.

It is similarly more productive to assume that at least one neoconservative operative with strong ties to the involved entities in Italy—such as Michael Ledeen—served as barker to the Italian sideshow that disseminated forged documents.

According to documents released by Edward Snowden, the transfer of raw NSA intercepts on American citizens to Israel was authorized under a secret doctrine that “the survival of the state of Israel is a paramount goal of US Middle East policy.”

This ”prime directive” was probably a secret because it is a blank check obligating American blood and treasure to a cause American citizens never approved via advise and consent.

But why did the Obama administration—even as it dismissed espionage charges against AIPAC staff in 2009—so deeply betray American privacy?

Under “unknown known” doctrine, most would assume that like LBJ before him,Obama sold out America because his Israel lobby handlers secretly demanded and paid for it on behalf of a foreign country. What other goodies Obama doled out to Israel in exchange for help gaining the highest office remain to emerge.

The official process for obtaining official public disclosure of ”uknown knowns”—the Freedom of Information Act—does not function when the stakes in disclosure are high and Israeli interests are involved.

Agencies (and ISCAP) correctly perceive government credibility is at stake when there is real openness, and that bona fide transparency would positively impact how government behaves.

Visibly corrupt federal government officials and institutions are counting on continued secrecy to accumulate illegitimate power by undermining public accountability.

By Grant F. Smith, IRmap

Tags: Israel NSA nuclear US

http://www.4thmedia.org/2013/10/25/ten-explosive-u-s-government-secrets-about-israel/

We can now report that the NSA-sponsored terrorist organization "Gary Best Inc" has resurfaced and is responsible for the FALSE FLAG terrorist attack at the Kenyan shopping mall.

Gary Best Inc is Back as the Fed Goes Broke

by Tom Heneghan, International Intelligence Expert



Private mercenaries source

UNITED STATES of America - It can now be reported that the U.S. Federal Reserve remains trapped in a toxic derivative box.

The derivative holdings of major worldwide banks are about to go binary. Derivative separation will lead to more asset deleveraging as a major 2008-style liquidity crisis beckons.

This pending financial crisis dovetails to the last FALSE FLAG BLAG OP terrorist attack in a shopping mall in Kenya. 

We can now report that the NSA-sponsored terrorist organization "Gary Best Inc" has resurfaced and is responsible for the FALSE FLAG terrorist attack at the Kenyan shopping mall.
Definition: Gary Best Inc is a Clinton Era created private mercenary army that had their origins tied to the war in Bosnia that engaged in political assassinations of Christian Serbian leaders.

Note: Gary Best Inc was assisted in this activity by alleged al Qaeda (U.S. CIA data base). Gary Best Inc worked directly with none other than lifelong U.S. government employee, 9/11 patsy Osama bin Laden aka Tim Osman.

Gary Best Inc also had links going as far back as Iran Contra and former George Herbert Walker Bush Administration official Richard Secord.

Gary Best Inc is responsible for the various FALSE FLAG terrorist attacks on U.S. shopping malls for the last fifteen (15) years.

My sources for this information are undisputed.

What we are talking about is an unpublished manuscript titled "True Colors" written by former Clinton White House aide and now ABC news journalist George Stephanopoulos.

This unpublished manuscript was originally going to be used by former Republican Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia in the impeachment proceedings against former U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton.

Stephanopoulos had originally agreed to be a witness.

P.S. Sources at ABC News expect another major Benghazi-like BLACK OP event (with the use of chemical weapons) to take place in the Middle East at any moment.

At this hour the U.S. Military remains determined to destroy the treasonous Nazi Paperclip NSA (National Security Agency) that has turned the United States of America into a gigantic animal farm.

Reference: It is interesting that former U.S. President Bill Clinton defended the Nazi Paperclip NSA during an interview he did today on CNN. When the former President said, and listen to this folks, ...that the NSA committed crimes by spying on the American People by accident.

Message to former President Clinton: In all due respect, Sir, it was no accident when you used the NSA to spy on Monica Lewinsky and former Congressman Bob Barr, Republican of Georgia, who was about to release the "True Colors" manuscript to the New York Times.

Other important events tied to the "True Colors" manuscript:

Lori Kaye Klausutis, aide to former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough, was found dead at her desk in his Fort Walton Beach, Florida congressional office after seeing the "True Colors' manuscript that connected Gary Best Inc to the treasonous Nazi Paperclip NSA.

Lori Klausutis also had information linking Gary Best Inc and the NSA to the assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr. whose George magazine was about to get a copy of the "True Colors" manuscript and publish it. JFK Jr., like his father, John F. Kennedy, was a vicious opponent of the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve system and planned to seek the Democratic nomination in New York state to run for the U.S. Senate and challenge then first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Gary Best Inc was responsible for the Omaha Westroads Mall shooting the very day George W. BushFRAUD was being questioned at the Offutt Air Force Base by the U.S. Military Joint Chiefs of Staff on his 9/11 treason.

Related

BUSH INTERROGATED BY U.S. MILITARY FOR 9/11 TREASON

http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data/government/fraud/911_attack/news.php?q=1197345973

http://www.tomheneghanbriefings.com/Gary-Best-Inc-is-Back-as-the-Fed-Goes-Broke__09-22-2013.html

NSA Totally Exposed as a Nazi Gestapo

by Tom Heneghan, International Intelligence Expert

UNITED STATES of America - It can now be reported that sources close to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, that lifelong U.S. CIA asset, alleged President Barack Hussein Obama-Soetoro has activated a NSA (National Security Agency) domestic assassination team on U.S. soil that targets patriotic American citizens, whistleblowers, journalists and lawful state militia groups.

Note: Treasonous U.S. Congressmen Peter King, Republican of New York (a disgrace to the University of Notre Dame), Israeli Mossad assets Nazi Jews Chuck Schumer (Democrat of New York) and Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, as well as Republican Congressman Mike Rogers of Michigan and Senator Lindsey Graham (extortion friendly), Republican of South Carolina, are in possession of the NSA Hit List.

Both Rogers and Graham take their orders directly from neo-Nazi Israeli Prime Minister and 9/11 co-conspirator Benjamin Netanyahu.




source source

The recent domestic drone attack in West Hollywood, California that assassinated Benghazi whistleblower and award winning American journalist Michael Hastings was directly ordered by former U.S. Secretary of State and sociopath Hillary Rodham Clinton and treasonous NSA Director James Clapper.

A week before his death Hastings had confronted Hillary Clinton aide Felippe Reines about his Hillary's Benghazi treason and was told to quote: "fuck off and have a good life".

Hastings life did not last much longer. Twenty four hours after Hastings execution former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left American soil to Canada.


source

At this hour, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and U.S. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, have issued criminal referrals to the U.S. Inspector General and the U.S. Provost Marshal accusing the U.S. Department of Justice and the treasonous Nazi Paperclip NSA of conspiring since 2011 with the private phone company Skype to download the PIN numbers and applications of all Skype customers worldwide. This is called NSA "Project Chess".

Accordingly, the PIN numbers of hundreds of thousands of American citizens are now in possession of the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, as well as British MI5 and MI6 and the Israeli Mossad.

Now it gets worse!

We can also divulge that U.S. cable networks CNN and FOX News share the phone numbers, emails and Twitter messages directed to them by their own viewers with, you guessed it, the treasonous Nazi Paperclip NSA.

The NSA has also been active in creating stooge internet websites that masquerade as truth tellers but in reality engage in disinformation and subterfuge.

Example: Rense.com and the Israeli Mossad funded Adamus Group and its website Veterans Today.

The treasonous NSA also employees cyber actors that engage in internet and Twitter trafficking, including masquerading as alleged Al Qaeda terrorists that create alleged terrorist plots and False Flags that are then used as a justification for the continuation of the NSA Nazi Gestapo activity.

Example: Alleged Boston bombing suspects aka the Tsarnaev brothers aka patsies and former FBI informants and DHS employees, who were also employed by the NSA to actively recruit Islamic Chechnyan terrorists who were then used by the U.S. State Department to assassinate Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens (Operation Whack-a-mole).

P.S. Absolute paranoia and fear is now overwhelming the corrupt U.S. intelligence agency infrastructure that has been exposed as a Nazi Paperclip Gestapo.

What is coming next is the revelations of the NSA crown jewels of HIGH treason that has been perpetrated against the U.S. Constitution, the American Republic and its citizens.


source

1. The absolute truth about the 9/11 black op Nazi Paperclip FALSE FLAG attack on the United States (Nazi German George W. BushFRAUD-Adolf Hitler like Reichstag Fire) that triggered this phony "war on terror" and dismantled the U.S. Constitution with the totally UN-Constitutional Bush Era Patriot Act (written prior to 9/11).

Note: U.S. Senator Wyden's office is now in possession of the NSA command and control code that was intercepted by French Intelligence three days before 9/11.

The command and control attack order, which originated from the old Soviet province of Georgia, stated "the time is now the match is hot".

Five U.S. Military Flag Officers, as well as the Military Games Division of CBS News, are also in possession of the NSA codes tied to 9/11.




source

2. The NSA-scripted overthrow and theft of the year 2000 presidential election in which five (5) states: Missouri, New Hampshire, West Virginia, Florida and Tennessee were stolen from then Vice President, now year 2000 duly elected President Albert Gore Jr. allowing German Nazi George W. BushFRAUD to take office as president illegally.

3. The Nazi Paperclip Bush Crime Family plot (Operation Elm Street) aka the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy.

P.P.S. As the United States descends into what is almost a certain American Revolution and Civil War, an imminent financial emergency beckons as JPMorgan's Global Bond Index Fund is now insolvent with the Bank of Israel and the U.S. Federal Reserve now becoming counter parties to the Bank of Japan.

This is why interest rates have been going up for no reason.

If that is not bad enough we can now divulge JPMorgan and Bank of America have exposed the entire U.S. banking system to financial decapitation by issuing leverage debt instruments (more derivatives) that represent insurance on a forthcoming Chinese debt crisis.

Reference: One of the reasons Hong Kong and the Peoples Republic of China allowed NSA leaker Edward Snowden to fly to Moscow, Russia was that U.S. officials, including the NSA and the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve, failed to respond to China on allegations that the NSA hacked into Chinese and Hong Kong banks reference the manipulation of the Japanese yen currency.



Now that a Chinese bank collapse is right around corner, both JPMorgan and Bank of America will have to pay off on the bets that they helped finance to the purchaser of these new derivatives leaving the bank deposits of every American citizen subject to a U.S. Federal Reserve TREASONOUS 'bail in'.

Reference: This current financial crisis is 100x worse than the 2008 Lehman Bros debacle that led to the BushFRAUD-Nancy Pelosi ponzi 'bail out' of the crooked banking casinos that, along with the corrupt politicians running this country, have looted the U.S. Treasury.

Yes, folks, "Cyprus" is coming to the United States sooner than you think.

In closing, at this hour the United States has NO "Rule of Law", it is under total Nazi Paperclip NSA occupation with the U.S. Attorney General, Bush-Clinton Crime Family Syndicate's Marc Rich stooge Eric Holder and Nazi Paperclip German bloodline NSA Director James Clapper totally fingered as serial perjurers.

Remember, Barack Obama is a lifelong CIA stooge who worked for CIA front company Business International Corporation in Kenya when the CIA was conducting anti Soviet operations in the 1980s.

His white mother Ann Dunham conducted espionage for the CIA in Indonesia in the 1960s with Obama's mother reporting to her then 'handler' George Herbert Walker Bush.

Related

Email Sent by Michael Hastings House Before His Death Mentions 'Big Story' and a Need to 'Go Off the Radar'

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/21/email-sent-by-michael-hastings-hours-before-his-death-mentions-a-big-story-and-a-need-to-go-off-the-radar/

http://www.tomheneghanbriefings.com/NSA-Totally-Exposed-as-a-Nazi-Gestapo.htm

http://www.tomheneghanbriefings.com/

NSA leak fallout: LIVE UPDATES....Former CIA contractor Edward Snowden has carried out one of the biggest leaks in US history, exposing a top-secret NSA

Edited time: June 24, 2013 17:58



The logo of the National Security Agency (NSA) (AFP Photo)

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Former CIA contractor Edward Snowden has carried out one of the biggest leaks in US history, exposing a top-secret NSA surveillance program to the media. Leading tech companies were revealed to be involved in intelligence gathering through PRISM spy tool.

16:55 GMT: The US says that it is “deeply disappointed” over China’s decision to let Snowden leave Hong Kong for Russia.


“We are deeply disappointed by the decision of the authorities in Hong Kong to permit Snowden to flee despite a legally valid US request to arrest him for purposes of his extradition,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told reporters, cites Reuters. Such a decision is “detrimental” for US-China and US-Hong-Kong relations, he added.


16:50 GMT: The US is in touch with countries through which NSA leaker Snowden may travel or where he may decide to stay, the White House spokesman said. Senior officials regularly brief president Obama on the matter, Jay Carney added.

Commenting on the countries that Snowden appealed to for help, Carney noted that “If his passion here is for press freedom and freedom of the Internet and the like, he has chosen unlikely protectors.”

16:40 GMT: The White House spokesperson Jay Carney says they assume that Snowden is still in Russia. Washington expects Moscow to look at all the options available to them to expel the NSA leaker to the US where he faces charges for revealing secret surveillance programs.


15:14 GMT: Ecuador is going to thoroughly analyze the Snowden’s asylum bid and “absolutely independently” make a decision on the matter, that they believe to be “the most appropriate,” President Rafael Correa wrote on twitter.


15:05 GMT: Assange says Snowden received refugee papers from Ecuador to secure him safe passage as he fled Hong Kong on Sunday.


“In relation to Hong Kong, Snowden was supplied with a refugee document of passage by the Ecuadorean government,” the WikiLeaks founder told reporters. Although these documents would not necessarily guarantee the NSA leaker would be granted asylum in Ecuador.


14:44 GMT: WikiLeaks approached Iceland and other countries with a formal request for asylum for Snowden, says the organization’s spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson.


“It is already public that I, as an Icelandic journalist, approached the Icelandic government with a formal request from Mr Snowden for asylum in Iceland. Similar processes were carried out elsewhere,” he told the media.

14:12 GMT: Edward Snowden and Wikileaks' Sarah Harrison who is accompanying him are “safe and healthy,” Julian Assange said during a conference call broadcast by RT.

“The current status of Mr Snowden and Harrison is that both are healthy and safe and they are in contact with their legal teams,” the WikiLeaks founder said. “I cannot give further information as to their whereabouts,” Assange added.

“Snowden is not a traitor, he is not a spy he is a whistleblower who told the public the important truth,” he pointed out.

13: 55 GMT: According to aviation expert Chris Yates, it is unlikely that Snowden is on the plane en route from Moscow to Cuba. Even if the NSA leaker did get onboard the aircraft, the expert said the US “possibly could instruct it to land somewhere” on American soil though highly unlikely.


“Of course the pilot himself has the possibility to divert so he does not actually need to enter US airspace to fly down to Havana. And that will be another possibility as well,” Yates added.


13:40 GMT: Ecuador has been in contact with the Russian government over Edward Snowden, and says it is considering his asylum appeal, according to the country's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino speaking during a visit to Vietnam.

Patino stressed the Ecuadorian government puts human rights above any other party’s interests, andquestioned the correctness of calling Snowden a “traitor.”

“The word 'treason' is used, but who has betrayed whom? Is it people who've been betrayed, or certain elites?” Patino asked.

Ecuador is also considering a US request related to Snowden, Patino said, adding that the decision would come “in due time.”


10:56 GMT: Flight to Havana Edward Snowden was booked on has departed, but he is not seen either boarding or on plane, according to RT's correspondent Egor Piskunov, who was onboard.




People look the passenger plane, flight SU 150 to Havana, docking to a boarding bridge at the Moscow Sheremetyevo airport on June 24, 2013. (AFP Photo / Kirill Kudryavtsev)

10:40 GMT: US Secretary of State John Kerry says the US would be deeply troubled if China or Russia had prior notice of Edward Snowden’s travel plans.

10:10 GMT: A lawyer for Edward Snowden pointed out that the former spy agency contractor had been told to flee Hong Kong by a middleman claiming to represent the China-controlled territory – which evidently could mean the advice was Beijing-backed. Albert Ho, who is also a lawmaker critical of Chinese involvement in Hong Kong’s affairs, stressed that in his opinion the case was clearly monitored and controlled by China.



Albert Ho (AFP Photo)

5:04 GMT: Washington has said it expects Moscow to look at every available option to expelSnowden back to the US on charges of espionage. 

4:57 GMT: The Ecuadorian government is analyzing NSA leaker Snowden’s asylum bid as he attempts to elude extradition to the US, said Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino.

"We are analyzing it with a lot of responsibility," Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino told reporters in Hanoi, Vietnam, where he is currently on an official visit. He added that the decision has to do “with freedom of expression and with the security of citizens around the world."

“We always act in the name of principles not in our own interests. There are governments who make decisions more according to their own interests, we don’t do that. Our main focus is human rights,” said Patino, when asked how granting Snowden asylum could affect Ecuador’s relations with the US.
Monday, June 24

23:02 GMT: Despite America frequently welcoming dissidents from other countries it adopts a harsh stance against those who highlight abuses of power at home, attorney and historian Gerald Horne told RT.

“If you listen to the congress person appearing on Sunday’s chat shows, they are breathing fire threatening measures just short of a nuclear war if Mr Snowden is not speedily dispatched back to New York or Washington,” he said.

“The United States for example routinely accepts on its territory citizens fleeing Cuba without passports. I would also say that the United States routinely receives on its soil those it deems to be political dissidents, who do not have passports. So I do not feel that Moscow’s hands are tied in regard to Mr Snowden not having a passport.”

22:13 GMT: The US is "disappointed and disagrees with the determination by Hong Kong authorities not to honor the US request for the arrest of the fugitive," a US official told Reuters. Meanwhile, the US State Department has warned countries in the Western Hemisphere to not allow Edward Snowden to“proceed in any further international travel,” according to a written statement cited by Reuters.

18:20 GMT: Edward Snowden’s passport was annulled before he left Hong Kong for Russia, a US official said on condition of anonymity. Although the loss of his passport could complicate Snowden’s travel plans, a country could overlook the withdrawn passport if a senior government or airline official ordered it.


15:42 GMT: Edward Snowden has asked Ecuador for political asylum, the country’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patino Aroca, wrote on Twitter. Ecuador’s ambassador to Russia, Patricio Chavez, arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport to meet Edward Snowden after his plane touched down in Moscow.


15:30 GMT: The Icelandic government has received no information on whether former CIA officer Edward Snowden intends to fly to the country’s capital Reykjavik via Moscow, Russia’s ITAR-TASS news agency reports.

The arrival of Snowden in Iceland is “highly unlikely”, the head of the Icelandic prime minister’s press-service, Johannes Skulason, told Interfax news agency, adding that the country’s government has no information on the whistleblowers whereabouts.

In accordance with Icelandic law, an individual has to be on the country’s territory in order to apply for political asylum, and such applications cannot be processed from even from the premises of Iceland’s diplomatic missions.


15:10 GMT:

15:00 GMT: Edward Snowden is in a terminal at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport and is waiting for a transfer flight to Cuba, a source at the airport told Interfax News Agency.

A source from the airline Aeroflot said Snowden, who is accompanied by WikiLeaks representative, Sarah Harrison, has rented a suit at the airport’s «V-Express» Capsule Hotel.

Two cars with diplomatic license plates from Ecuador were also spotted at the airport. A source told RT that a doctor from the Ecuadorian embassy in Moscow has examined Snowden on his arrival in the Russian capital.

11:50 GMT: Diplomats and legal advisors from WikiLeaks are escorting Edward Snowden from Hong Kong to an unnamed “democratic Nation” via Moscow, the group said in a statement.

The group said Snowden had asked for its "legal expertise and experience to secure his safety” and had chosen a safe route for the whistleblower "for the purposes of asylum".


"The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden's rights and protecting him as a person," Reuters cites former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, legal director of WikiLeaks and lawyer for the group's founder Julian Assange, as saying.


"What is being done to Mr Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange - for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest - is an assault against the people."

8:45 GMT:

7:47 GMT: Edward Snowden has left Hong Kong of his own volition for a “third country”, authorities from the city state said.

The whistleblower’s decision to leave the country comes one day after a senior US official told the Washington Post: "If Hong Kong doesn't act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong's commitment to the rule of law."


Authorities from the Hong Kong special administrative region [HKSAR] issued a statement saying Snowden had been allowed to leave the country as they had yet to receive sufficient information necessary to process a provisional warrant or arrest and thus had no legal basis to keep him from leaving the country.


"The HKSAR government has already informed the US government of Mr Snowden's departure,” the statement continued.
Sunday, June 23


20:23 GMT: The US says bilateral relations will suffer if Hong Kong won’t act soon on its request to extradite NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, Reuters reports quoting anonymous officials.


18:14 GMT: The South China Morning Post said whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has been charged with espionage by the US, was not in police custody in Hong Kong, as had been reported elsewhere.

"Contrary to some reports, the former CIA analyst has not been detained, is not under police protection, but is in a 'safe place' in Hong Kong," the paper said.

16:30 GMT: A White House petition demanding that Snowden be issued a full pardon has reached over 100,000 signatures in less than two weeks, meaning the US government is obliged to review and respond to its requests.

16:27 GMT: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said that the Obama administration charging NSA leaker Edward Snowden and requesting his arrest is a move to “intimidate any country” that may wish to protect the whistleblower.

“The charging of Edward Snowden is intended to intimidate any country that might be considering standing up for his rights,” reads a post on Wikileaks webpage on behalf of Assange after his addressfrom the Ecuadorian embassy in London was canceled due to security concerns.

Commenting on Assange’s speech, geopolitical analyst and founder of stopimperialism.com Eric Draitser has told RT that neither the US nor the UK will “change their policies” and “stop spying on the world”.


“As we know the United States, the UK and the other powers in the West have “spent billions of dollars creating the infrastructure of surveillance states,” he said.

13:07 GMT: Hong Kong Police Commissioner Andy Tsang has said that the normal legal process will be observed following the US filing criminal charges and requesting the arrest of Snowden.

“All foreign citizens must comply with Hong Kong law,” he said, adding that the police would act on the request once it is received.

He declined to comment on whether Snowden was in a police safe house, a rumor mentioned by one Hong Kong newspaper

Saturday, June 22


23:50 GMT: The United States government has released the indictment of Edward Snowden, charging him with espionage, among other crimes. Read RT's full coverage here.

Nick Pickles of the UK's Big Brother Watch has released a statement condemning GCHQ's collection of information. "We need a wholesale review of surveillance law, including the fact that there is absolutely no judicial process within the current system and the people making these decisions are able to hide in the shadows rather than face public scrutiny," he said.


16:40 GMT: The British spy agency GCHQ has access to the global network of communications, storing calls, Facebook posts and internet histories – and shares this data with the NSA, Edward Snowden has revealed to the Guardian in a new leak.

Friday, June 21


19:50 GMT: USIS, the company that conducted the background check on Snowden in 2011 is now under investigation for "systematically" failing to do its job, Senator Claire McCaskill has said.


19:45 GMT: Documents handed to the Guardian newspaper show that NSA was allowed to use informational "inadvertently" collected from US citizens to be scrutinized without a specific court warrant.

Thursday, June 20

11:33 GMT: President Obama has said that surveillance of phone records and Internet activity helped avert at least 50 terror attacks, and was justified because "Lives have been saved." He added that those threats did not just target the US, but also other countries, including Germany. Obama’s statement was in response to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s argument that government monitoring of Internet communications needed to remain within proper limits.




U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel hold a joint news conference at the Chancellery in Berlin June 19, 2013 (Reuters / Kevin Lamarque)


"I made clear that although we do see the need for gathering information, the topic of proportionality is always an important one and the free democratic order is based on people feeling safe," Merkel said.


Speaking at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama maintained that he was confident the US has struck an appropriate balance between intelligence-gathering and civil liberties. Earlier the head of the National Security Agency also said that more than 50 potential terrorist plots across the globe were thwarted thanks to the controversial surveillance programs.

Wednesday, June 19


15:30 GMT: Alexander was asked to weigh in on Edward Snowden’s remark from earlier this week in which he said the NSA provides Congress with special immunity in regards to the surveillance programs. Alexander responded that he has “no idea” of what the leaker was referring to.

“I’m not sure I understand the context of the special immunity. We treat you with special respect,” said Alexander.

15:10 GMT: Gen. Alexander says the NSA does not have the authority nor the technology to eavesdrop on the emails and phone calls of Americans under the Section 512 and Section 702 programs.

15:07 GMT: Bob Litt, a general counsel for the Director of National Intelligence, testified that "The leaks from this investigation are not damaging" and suggested it could be months before the US finds out if the documents released by Edward Snowden will have a detrimental effect on the country.



General Keith Alexander (Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)


15:00 GMT: Gen. Alexander dismisses allegations that the NSA has unfettered access to all communications and said, "US companies are compelled to provide these records by US law using methods that are in strict compliance with that law."


14:54 GMT: Of the more than 50 potential terrorist attacks thwarted by the NSA, over 50 involved overseas targets. Only 10 were plotted to occur within the US, and one involved a plan to bomb the New York Stock Exchange.


14:43 GMT: Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, is testifying on Capitol Hill this morning. He said that his agency will soon shed more light on the terrorist attacks it thwarted using the controversial surveillance programs, and that the number of events exceeds 50. Mirroring what FBI Director Robert Mueller said days earlier, Alexander suggested that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 could have likely been prevented if these systems were in place.
Tuesday, June 18

17:15 GMT: Answering the question about previous whistleblowers and whether their choices influenced Snowden, he replied that “Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures."


He notes that the “draconian responses” instead help to “build better whistleblowers.”

“If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response.”


16:55 GMT: “I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school,” said the whistleblower to the Guardian newspaper.




A woman walks past a banner displayed in support of former US spy Edward Snowden in Hong Kong on June 18, 2013 (AFP Photo / Philippe Lopez)

16:41 GMT: An Associated Press journalist reminded in her question that US officials claim terrorists are already altering TTPs because of Snowden’s leaks, calling him a traitor.

Snowden answers that journalists should ask themselves certain questions like “since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicion less surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to achieve that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.”

16:25 GMT: When the whistleblower was asked about providing classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum, Snowden answered that this allegation was just a ‘predictable’ reaction of the US media.

“This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now”.

16:15 GMT: Snowden was asked to express his opinion on the conduct of companies like Google and Facebook, that provided information which the NSA used in its surveillance program. He answered that he thought that the companies are “legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?”

15:50 GMT: The whistleblower answers a question as to how in general direct NSA's access works and promises to give more details later on.

“...if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user ID, cell phone handset ID (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time."

He adds that “audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5 percent of those performed.”


15:25 GMT: Concerning the question why Snowden waited to release the documents as he wanted to tell the world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president, he answered that Obama gave him hope for change.

“Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.”

15:05 GMT: The first two questions in the live Q&A with Snowden were asked by the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald about Snowden’s asylum choice and his NSA leaks.

Snowden answered that he chose to leave the US as the government “immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime.”

He added that it cannot be called ‘justice’ as he “did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous.”

14:00 GMT:

13:00 GMT: Starting from 15:00 GMT Snowden will be answering internet users’ questions at The Guardian website. The live chat is subject to his security concerns, as well as his access to a secure web connection, the paper notes. It also asked users to be patient waiting for Snowden to answer their questions. The full transcript of the Q&A will be later published on The Guardian’s site.

00:00 GMT: The documents uncovered by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed that back in 2009 US spies intercepted top-secret communications of then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, when he attended the G20 summit in London, The Guardian reports.

The paper has also revealed that a UK intelligence agency, GCHQ, monitored foreign politicians and intercepted their emails during the London summit. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by UK intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.
Sunday, June 16

13:04 GMT: Swiss President Ueli Maurer said on Sunday that he doubted Snowden’s claims about his activities in Geneva, when he worked there as a CIA employee in 2007-2009. The NSA leaker told the Guardian newspaper that CIA agents intentionally got a Swiss banker drunk and then encouraged him to drive so he could intervene when he was arrested. Later, they recruited the banker, Snowden stated.

“It does not seem to me that it is likely that this incident played out as it has been described by Snowden and by the media,” Maurer said, reports Reuters, citing a local newspaper. “This would mean that the CIA successfully bribed the Geneva police and judiciary. With all due respect, I just can't imagine it.” SonntagsBlick quoted him as saying.

Maurer added that he would back a criminal probe against Snowden, if prosecutors called for it.

06:38 GMT: An unclassified government document obtained by Reuters claims that only a small proportion of the troves of data collated by the NSA monitoring program used specific phone numbers. The report says the “metadata” does not identify telephone subscribers or email accounts and as such seeks to argue that the practice is legal. Moreover, it stipulates that the information is subject to strict guidelines that ensure personal privacy is not violated.

The paper appears to echo President Barack Obama’s argument that such practices are necessary and justified to conserve the safety of the American people, arguing "dozens of potential terrorist plots [exist] here in the homeland and in more than 20 countries around the world."

Saturday, June 15

02:25 GMT: Facebook announced Friday that “only a tiny fraction of one per cent” of the company’s users were subjected to requests by the National Security Agency. Citing inaccurate reporting and unnecessary levels of government secrecy as his reason to disclose the true number, Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general Counsel, wrote online that the social networking giant “frequently rejects such requests outright.”

“Since this story was first reported, we’ve been in discussions with US national security authorities urging them to allow more transparency and flexibility around national security-related orders we are required to comply with,” Ullyot wrote. "We’re please that as a result of our discussions, we can now include in a transparency report all US national security-related requests (including FISA as well as National Security Letters) – which until now no company has been permitted to do.”

He wrote that government data requests, which in the six months ending on December 31, 2012, totaled between 9,000 and 10,000, while being careful to note that many inquiries come from local police agencies investigating runaways, assault, and other low-level crimes.

“With more than 1.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, this means that a tiny fraction of one percent of our user accounts were the subject of any kind of U.S. state, local, or federal U.S. government request (including criminal and national security-related requests) in the past six months. We hope this helps put into perspective the numbers involved, and lays to rest some of the hyperbolic and false assertions in some recent press accounts about the frequency and scope of the data requests that we receive.”

19:52 GMT: The 'Stand with Edward Snowden' petition has collected 847,222 digital signatures. The aim is to collect 1 million voices, within 48hrs, calling on Obama to “crack down on PRISM, not Snowden”. “It will send a powerful statement that he should be treated like the brave whistleblower that he is,” reads the petition.


09:21 GMT: The UK has released an alert to all airlines around the world, asking them not to board ex-CIA staffer whistleblower Edward Snowden on UK flights, AP reported. The alert was issued on Home Office letterhead, which specified that "the individual is highly likely to be refused entry to the UK."



Protesters shout slogans as they hold up a picture of former US spy Edward Snowden in front of the US consulate in Hong Kong on June 13, 2013. (AFP Photo / Philippe Lopez)

Friday, June 14

23:00 GMT: Intelligence officials hot on the trail of Edward Snowden are handling the case as a potential foreign espionage matter, apparently rattled after the leaker’s comments to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post regarding US hacking of computers in China.

According to ABC News, asked whether Snowden was considered at risk of defecting to China a senior official familiar with the ongoing case responded "I think there is a real concern about that."

Intelligence officials evidently considered Snowden’s allegations of spying on China as much of a betrayal as his alleged leaking of highly classified files on the NSA's vast surveillance program.

Jeremy Bash, former CIA and Pentagon Chief of Staff, told ABC News defection or cooperation with a foreign nation such as China is now a top concern.

"He could do tremendous damage. I think if a foreign government learned everything that was in Edward Snowden's brain, they would have a good window into the way we collect signals intelligence… He had access to highly classified information," said Bash.

20:24 GMT: Reuters is reporting that NSA Director Keith Alexander will release on Monday the list of attacks that the US has thwarted through the use of surveillance.



General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, June 12, 2013. (AFP Photo / Saul Loeb)

17:46 GMT: According to the Los Angeles Times, Edward Snowden smuggled highly classified documents out of a NSA facility in Hawaii using a portable thumb drive.

Investigators “know how many documents he downloaded and what server he took them from,” an official told the Times on condition of anonymity.

Thumb drives and similar portable storage devices have been banned by the Department of Defense and NSA since 2008.

15:56 GMT: Mueller continues to field questions from Congress, defending the NSA surveillance programs and dismissing allegations of illegality. “These programs have been conducted in accordance with the Constitution and the laws of the United States,” Mueller said.

14:37 GMT: Robert Mueller, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is testifying this morning on Capitol Hill. In regards to the NSA leaks, Mueller said, “These disclosures have caused significant harm to our nation and to our safety,” and that the FBI and Department of Justice are taking “all necessary steps to hold the person responsible.”




Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller testifies during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee June 13, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (AFP Photo / Alex Wong)



02:32 GMT: A series of posts to online forums under the name 'TheTrueHOOHA' have been attributed to Snowden. The forum posts, which were retrieved from the technology and news website ArsTechnica, span a period of ten years, and provide some clues into the NSA leaker’s mindset.

Though many of the comments are on casual subjects, such as a leaked beta for a game or advice on work-related programming tasks, they also point to a preoccupation with covering his own online tracks. In 2003, for example, Snowden asked the forum for advice on fairly sophisticated strengthening of his online anonymity, and in 2009 he sought help in creating a virtual, secure machine using a single CD.

In all, the posts seem to illustrate fairly typical interests for an IT employee and an online gamer, though there are some indications of skepticism of state surveillance.

“It really concerns me how little this sort of corporate behavior bothers those outside of technology circles. Society really seems to have developed an unquestioning obedience towards spooky types,” writes Snowden in one post.
Thursday, June 13

23:30 GMT: About one in three Americans believe that Snowden is a “patriot” and should not be prosecuted, according to results compiled by a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Wednesday.

Twenty three per cent of poll respondents believe the former NSA contractor is a traitor to the US, while 31 per cent think that his leaking classified information makes him a patriot. The remaining 46 per cent of those surveyed were undecided. Meanwhile, 25 per cent of respondents thought that Snowden should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

19:37 GMT: Alexander was asked if NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s claims that he could hack into any phone call within the US, to which he responded, “False. I know of no way to do that.”

18:53 GMT: Gen. Alexander defended the NSA’s surveillance programs by saying there are “dozens of terrorist events” on US soil and abroad that have been prevented by his agency’s tactics. He also said the NSA will release more solid figures to the public likely within a week.

18:23 GMT: Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA and the US Cyber Command, testified before the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee but declined to discuss the surveillance scandal during his opening remarks. Instead, Alexander concentrated on the United States’ cyber capabilities and said the emerging threats of espionage and hacking continue to pose problems to America’s computer infrastructure. “We have to create a defensible architecture,” Alexander said, adding that while he could not be more proud of his departments’ work, current shortcoming prevent the US from being fully prepared to fight off cyberattacks. “We need to be able to see what’s going on in cyberspace so that we can work with the industry and amongst ourselves,” said Alexander, “because getting information after an attack only allows us to police it up. We have to have some way of stopping it before it goes on, so we need to be able to see it.”

Wednesday, June 12

22:50 GMT: The FBI’s use of a secret and controversial part of the Patriot Act has increased by more than 1,000 per cent under since President Obama assumed office from his predecessor, George W. Bush. NBC News learned that in 2012 alone the bureau filed 212 requests under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the federal government to obtain nearly all domestic communication records from a business and log them for future analysis. The blockbuster revelation that the National Security Agency requested millions of records from Verizon Wireless reflects just a single Section 215 request.




AFP Photo / Getty Images / Spencer Platt

18:43 GMT: Google has asked the Department of Justice for permission to go public with the total number of national security information requests it has received from the federal government.

“Assertions in the press that our compliance with these requests gives the US government unfettered access to our users’ data are simply untrue,” Google’s chief legal officer wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller published Tuesday. “However, government nondisclosure obligations regarding the number of FISA national security requests that Google receives, as well as the number of accounts covered by those requests, fuel that speculation.”

Earlier this year, Google noted in a transparency report that the government filed between 0 and 999 requests for user data annually since 2009 by using so-called National Security Letters, but declined to publish solid numbers. Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Federal Bureau of Information can seek “the name, address, length of service and local and long distance toll billing records” of a subscriber to an Internet or phone company, such as Google.

17:40 GMT: 86 civil liberties organizations and Internet companies – including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reddit, Mozilla, FreedomWorks, and the American Civil Liberties Union demanded from Congress to stop unchecked domestic surveillance. In an open letter to lawmakers, the groups call for a congressional investigatory committee, legal reforms and demand holding accountable public officials responsible for the illegal surveillance.


16:00 GMT: Putin commented on the the NSA surveillance program during a visit to the RT studios.“Such methods are in demand. But you can’t just listen to the phone call in Russia; you need a special order from court. This is how this should be done in civilized society while tackling terrorism with the use of any technical means. If it is in the framework of the law, then it’s okay. If not it is unacceptable,”he said.



Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, during his talk with Russia Today television channel's journalists and correspondents, June 11, 2013. (RT photo / Semyon Khorunzhy)


14:36 GMT: The defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton has confirmed in a statement that Edward Snowden was an employee in their Hawaii team. Snowden worked in the firm “for less than three months,” and was “terminated June 10, 2013 for violations of the firm’s code of ethics and firm policy,” the statement added.

Booz Allen has not confirmed or denied if Snowden was behind the leak of the classified information, saying an investigation is now in progress.

The contractor described the new on the leak as “shocking,” and said that, if true, it is “a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values” of the firm.


07:49 GMT: Watch Julian Assange LIVE on RT at 15:00 GMT, as the founder of WikiLeaks discusses one of history’s biggest whistleblowers Edward Snowden, who has revealed the US NSA’s PRISM program.



Julian Assange (AFP Photo / Geoff Caddick)

06:38 GMT: US President Barack Obama is facing a backlash against US surveillance operations. On Monday Congress was divided, with some members calling for the immediate extradition of Edward Snowden from Hong Kong, while others questioned if US tactics have gone too far.

06:13 GMT: There will be more ‘significant information’ exposed in the near future, AP cites The Guardian’s journalist Glenn Greenwald, who revealed classified US surveillance programs leaked by an American defense contractor.

05:57 GMT: Whistleblower Edward Snowden was last seen getting checking out of his hotel in Hong Kong on Monday around noon, Reuters cites witnesses as saying. His current whereabouts remain unknown.

05:20 GMT: A majority of Americans support the US government’s programs that keep track of telephone records to fight terrorism, according to a Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll. A total of 56 per cent of Americans said it was "acceptable" for the National Security Agency to access the telephone records of millions of Americans through secret court orders, while 41 per cent said it was not.

04:57 GMT: Sales of George Orwell’s ’1984′ novel are up by 177 per cent on Amazon, according to the website. The book celebrated its 60th anniversary on June 6 in the midst of real-world NSA leak and government surveillance stories.



Supporters gather at a small rally in support of National Security Administration (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden in Manhattan's Union Square on June 10, 2013 in New York City (Mario Tama / Getty Images / AFP)

03:50 GMT US officials maintain that the surveillance program details leaked by Snowden all fall within the legal framework of the Patriot Act and counterterrorism activities. Michael Ratner, a lawyer representing Wikileaks and Julian Assange in the US, disagree.

“The legal part is no point at all, the legal part has to do with laws passed in the US after 9/11, in particular courts that are essentially hand-picked, and a president who is apparently willing to approve this massive surveillance scheme. You can have unjust laws, that’s what we have under surveillance,” Ratner tells RT.

"On the broader issue, does it really prevent anything? Well, I think they’re going to use that as an excuse. In fact terrorism is not the biggest problem in the United States. The uncontrolled use of guns in the United States, many more people -- ten times, a hundred times the number of people are killed by that. I think that terrorism is used as an excuse to be able to surveil and keep tabs on every single American to prevent … progressive government. This is not about our safety, not at all,” he adds.

03:20 GMT: Denver Nicks, an investigative journalist, admitted during an interview with RT that it is a small wonder, considering the number of people granted access to the documents Snowden leaked, that similar disclosures have never been published before. The importance of his leak could potentially influence other NSA employees to publish equally damning documents.

“One wonders if more leaks are coming amid this tremendous crackdown on leaks, where the Obama administration is prosecuting more people for leaking state secrets than all of the previous administrations combined,” he said.

The leak also coincides with the Bradley Manning court-martial, a timing not lost on Nicks or other journalists hoping for increased transparency from the US government.

“I haven’t spoken to Glenn Greenwald or Laura Poitras about this but I would suspect they worked it out to break this story in The Guardian concurrent with Bradley Manning’s court-martial, because it certainly makes a powerful statement,” Nicks said. “I wonder if, in the court of public opinion, people will start to see past this curtain of secrecy and wonder just how much more there is they don’t know.”

01:12 GMT: Russian authorities have promised to join the ranks of those willing to consider giving Snowden political asylum, if he files a formal request – according to the Russian business paper ‘Kommersant’ citing a Kremlin spokesman on Tuesday. “If we receive such a request, we will consider it,”Dmitry Peskov was quoted.



Dmitry Peskov (RIA Novosti / Ilya Pitalev)

00:15 GMT: 68 per cent of respondents to a poll by American firm Rasmussen Reports this week said they believed the government is currently eavesdropping on their communications. The poll, conducted on the heels of President Obama’s claims that PRISM does not target ordinary Americans, shows that a majority think they are in fact being spied on.

“If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here,” said Obama.

Meanwhile, a separate poll conducted by Pew indicates that a slight majority of the American public believes that the NSA’s telephone surveillance is an “acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism.” A large plurality disagreed.

Of 1,004 adults polled between June 6 and 9, 56 per cent stated that government monitoring of telephone records is acceptable, while 41 per cent believe it is not. Interestingly, approval of government monitoring of email and online activities is lower, with 45 per cent approving and 52 per cent finding it unacceptable.

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