How Evil Can the CIA and NSA Get? How to Restrain US Intelligence Agencies
By Rob Kall
Just how evil have the CIA, NSA, the FBI, military intelligence and other agencies become? Let's start with the fact that their heads, Clapper and Alexander, have lied to congress, with the protection of the President and the heads of the intelligence committees.
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Just how evil have the CIA, NSA, the FBI, military
intelligence and other agencies become? Let's start with the fact
that their heads, Clapper and Alexander, have lied to congress,
with the protection of the President and the heads of the
intelligence committees.
As the anniversary of the JFK assassination approaches, more
information is coming out. We have two great articles in
Opednews.com today.
I've gotten to know a number of JFK assassination
researchers and experts. The gist of the message is that the CIA
was involved in the killing. That shouldn't be surprising. The CIA
has been involved in killing other presidents and other governments
in other lands. It's not that big a stretch to imagine the CIA
killing a president. .
We know that the CIA collaborated with war criminal Dick
Cheney to persuade Colin Powell to give his famous WMD speech to
the United Nations in 2003. We know they have repeatedly helped
dictators to take power by undermining democratically elected
regimes throughout the world. Maybe we should call the CIA the
Corporate Intelligence Agency.
We've learned from disclosures by whistleblowers-- American
Hero whistleblowers-- that the intelligence community is out of
control, violating our constitutional rights. Let me be clear.
Violating our constitutional rights means they are breaking the
law. The CIA, NSA and the rest of the intelligence orgs have their
backs covered by people like senator Dianne Feinstein and president
Obama-- people who have basically made these agencies unaccountable
to the American people.
The criminality and the abuses of the CIA and NSA should be
investigated, as they were by the Church committee, decades ago. This should be a bi-partisan
issue. It won't be surprising to see the Democrats who enable
Obama's abuses, his maintenance and expansion of Executive
Powers expanded by Bush and Cheney, covering Obama's butt.
But there will be enough legislators, soon, so we should
start seeing legislation.
What kinds of legislation can we expect to see
soon?
-restraining the NSA, putting tighter limits on their spying
on the American public and the world, and on widely used websites
like facebook, google and twitter. This should be a bi-partisan
issue.
-Legislation further expanding the rights associated with FOIA
requests-- rights by the people asking the questions. This should
be a bi-partisan issue.
-Open Government and transparency expansion-- this should be a
bi-partisan issue.
What Kinds of Government Responses can we expect to see
soon?
-Obama is expanding the classification of government workers
involved in security work-- so they are not allowed to engage in
whistleblowing. Pretty soon, postal delivery workers will be given
security classifications.
-protection of the spy agencies by heads of congressional
intelligence committees. These elected officials are profoundly,
pathologically misguided in their defending NSA, CIA, etcetera, and
literally misleading the public, telling us that they really know
what these agencies are up to. They should be charging Clapper and
Alexander with lying to congress, and prosecuting them.
What can WE do?
I'm not a big believer in the potential for electoral politics
to make a difference. But this is one issue that I think
legislators could get on board with. So, let your congressperson
and senator know you want them to
-demand that the heads of the committees, who have allowed
their committees to be lied to, be removed as committee heads and
replaced with people committed to getting to the truth, and to
charging and prosecuting people who lie to congress.
-pass legislation restricting spying on Americans, restricting
collecting massive amounts of data with a "collect it all"
attitude.
-pass legislation requiring government agencies to post all
their data and numbers and interactions with individuals and
corporations on-line in uniformly accessible ways, to increase
government openness and transparency
-pass legislation making it easier to get faster, less
redacted, more complete Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests,
so agencies MUST respond and provide requested materials, and lower
the number of years when classified materials have their
secrecy expire.
-pass legislation restricting use of secrecy classification,
because abuse of classification is being abused and out of
control
-Support for development of digital technologies that make
access to open government better, easier, deeper.
-pass legislation honoring Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning
as heroes who have served America nobly
There's no question that every nation needs intelligence
agencies. But the USA's agencies have gone out of control. We need
intel, but we need to be able to trust the agencies that dig it up.
We don't have that now. Serious changes must be made.
Authors Bio:
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.
To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.
