From
his August 9 statement alone it appeared that Obama would either redundantly
recreate such a group or just pretend that he is newly creating such a
"Board," to use his May 23d term. His revised August 9th terminology,
"group," is used to disguise the fact that the May 23d term "board"
was already taken, twice. For purposes of his propaganda attack against Snowden
he had to pretend on August 9th using imprecise language that he had
already on May 23d proposed something new, a high-level "group." He also
had to pretend that his May 23d reference was not to an existing Board he had
virtually named and that also constituted the only operative institutional
reform of his retroactively constructed call for "thorough review."
The
May 23d statement neither announced nor suggested the creation of a new board
or group, but rather mentioned "having" an existing board continue
carrying out the tasks it is required by law to carry out. Nor did Obama assign
any new tasks for the existing board.
This
board carries a lot of weight. On August 9 Obama opines that everything might
have worked out better, without all the excitement over Snowden, "if I had
simply appointed this review board" prior to Snowden's revelations. He reverts
here for maximum ambiguity to the May 23d term "board" to describe
his August 9 proposal for a "group." This statement reinforces the
appearance of deliberate deception by Obama. By suggesting that his appointment
of such a board was the essential missing policy component, Obama intends to
disguise the fact that he had already appointed two such "high level"
boards, one official and one independent, to do the very "review"
task he is suggesting. By this statement Obama also fraudulently attempts to convert
his May 23d mention of one of these two existing Boards to be a statement of
intent--as he later re-characterized it--to redundantly create a third similar
board, or group, in the future.
Obama
is concocting out of nothing but verbal confusion a non-existent May 23d
proposal for what he called, on August 9, "additional reforms. That's
exactly what I called for."
His
purpose is to claim "we would have gotten to the same place" in the
reform agenda--which itself is comprised at most of a third redundant new group--even
in the absence of Snowden's revelations. By claiming that Snowden's revelations
accomplished nothing, Obama could undermine any defense of Snowden based on the
actual success of his revelations in achieving exactly what he intended them to
achieve: public knowledge leading to democratic outrage and action against
Obama's constitutional violations.
Another
problem with Obama's deceptive claim that he was already on the case
pre-Snowden, concocted to undermine the significance of Snowden's act of
citizenship, is that it ignores that "Snowden's documents and statements
add greatly to an understanding of just how...deceptive the NSA and the Obama
administration have been in describing the agency's activities to the American
public." According
to James
Bamford , the leading historian of the surveillance state created by the
secret and illegal conduct of the NSA and its predecessors, under "the
Obama administration, the NSA's powers continued to expand at the same time
that administration officials and the NSA continued to deceive the American
public on the extent of the spying." How could Obama empower a "thorough
review" premised upon the exposure of his own lies about the subject being
reviewed?
In
the wake of Snowden's revelations, people are less likely to trust the
government officials who are spying on them, and have--like James Clapper--been
lying about it, or, in Clapper's words, helpfully fashioning the "least
untruthful" statements for public consumption. People may not trust
government officials who now tell them to just never mind about their erstwhile
rights. This is when the "independent expert" ploy, trotting out the
bi-partisan non-government propagandists, is needed to put lipstick on the pig.
Obama
is not speaking of a reform for greater transparency. He is deploying an age-old propaganda technique,
used famously in the Warren
Commission , the
9/11 Commission and other such highly manipulated "independent
groups" designed to "maintain the trust of the people" in
government lies, half truths and cover-ups. In this case, Obama's application
of this false remedy is not even new. He deceptively refers to a propaganda
mechanism already put in place in his predecessor's term for the same purpose,
as if it were a new initiative of his own four-point program. He depends upon a
cooperative mass media to keep the public uninformed about such transparent
chicanery as this pretense of initiating a new reform that already exists in
two flavors.
Obama
said "I'm tasking this independent group to "consider how we can
maintain the trust of the people." Instead of assigning the existing
independent or government Boards such propaganda responsibilities not expressly
included in their governing statutes, Obama in an August 12, 2013
"Memo," delegated to the CIA the task of forming his third new
"group," labeled "Review
Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies." This new group
was necessary primarily to retroactively change Obama's May 23d reference to
the existing PCLO Board as if it were a pre-Snowden "call" for this
new and redundant "review" mechanism.
If
Obama is looking for independence and trust, why on earth put the CIA, the
government's clandestine experts in spying, propaganda and subterfuge, in
charge of forming this new group? A CIA-selected group could not possibly be
either more independent or more solicitous of constitutional values of openness
and privacy than the other two existing groups would be. Obama does not explain
how he thinks such a third new group would enhance the existing capacity for
"thorough review" already possessed by the other two operating
groups.
As
experts in psy-ops the CIA is suitable for the propaganda assignment to
"maintain the trust." The agency would be well positioned to recruit
clandestine service assets whose job descriptions include the skill set of
maintaining a false appearance of independence from government. The precise
provenance of those members Obama does not need to know. This explains why,
strangely, for a reform he supposedly initiated personally back in May, and is
an essential component of his varnish over a possibly impeachable high crime,
Obama would remain uninvolved in the appointment of those who will carry the
weight of his "thorough review." The propaganda offensive conducted
by this group will fashion Obama's public defense against allegations of high
crime against him. Selecting this group is similar to selecting his legal
defense team, which he undoubtedly hopes not to need until after the final
report of this group just before Christmas.
This
"Group" is to be established but not
"led" by the most famous public perjurer of the
day, who is also a consummate government insider, the long-term military
intelligence operative and now Director of National Intelligence, James
Clapper. This makes a complete joke of the idea of an "independent"
or "outside" commission.
This
ad hoc group's duties
? Predictably, yet another joke: enhanced focus of surveillance on
"insider" threats," national security and foreign policy
concerns, "while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations,
such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public
trust." In other words, the new group will be looking for new ways and
excuses for casting an even broader surveillance net, conducting an escalated
war on whistle-blowers, and purveying improved propaganda to elicit
"trust" in this unconstitutional program. That might help explain why
a new "group" was required--since the two existing Boards are charged
by law to actually address the "need to protect privacy and civil
liberties," terms which Obama left entirely out of his CIA memo. Something
more covert, not tied to the rule of law so much as the rule of lies is
required to suit his needs.
Assessing
Obama's one
page "memo" to the CIA, which Obama did not even elevate to
the status of the executive order that Bush issued for his
"board-washing" exercise, is like watching an illusionist do the color
change trick in slow motion. It was the laziest way to do nothing, or
worse take a step backward from what Bush had already done, pitched so that
Obama could pretend he is taking a step toward a "thorough review" by
a new, but redundant, "group"--or was that a "board"?--that
was already supposedly announced pre-Snowden, but clearly was not.
Obama's
treatment of this new board/group issue is all deception, no reality. As a
federal judge
said of similar obfuscation by Obama's DJ: "So many words. So
little meaning." Any notion that this "reform" is intended to do
anything but continue the mission of building Obama's Panopticon while delaying
any day of reckoning with the American people is delusional.
2.
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance "Court." In a similar vein
of announcing new doubled-down propaganda initiatives as if they are reforms, a
second of Obama's four proposals was that "we should consider some
additional changes to the FISC," which would dress up, to look more like a
court, this unelected group of judges that has been secretly exercising
legislative powers and implementing secret
interpretations amounting to law.
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