by Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
July 7, 2009
from
OnLineJournal Website
WMR has
learned that the National Security “Q” Group, responsible for
security, has grown to an immense security and counter-intelligence force,
with an estimated one thousand government employees, contractors, and paid
informants.
NSA’s Security force is reportedly primarily
tasked with plugging any leaks of classified or other information that
points to U.S. government’s involvement with the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001.
NSA Security has doggedly pursued a number of NSA employees, some in “sting”
operations, others in frequent polygraphs and repeated security interviews
where threats are made by thuggish NSA security agents with and without the
presence of FBI agents, and others in constant surveillance operations at
their homes, churches, and other locations away from the Fort Meade,
Maryland, headquarters of the agency.
The most egregious NSA Security operation against an NSA employee was the
2004 arrest of NSA analyst Ken Ford, Jr.
Ford became a target of opportunity for NSA
Security and the FBI after Vice President Dick Cheney noted his name
on an NSA signals intelligence report on Saddam Hussein’s government that
stated that there was no proof from interceptions of Iraqi communications
that Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction.”
Cheney and other neocons in the Bush White House arranged for a
“sting” operation to be mounted as retribution against Ford. Ford was
charged with taking classified papers home from NSA headquarters, something
that is quite impossible considering the stringent security in place at one
of the most-secured complexes in the world.
Ford was convicted by a tainted jury and sentenced to seven years in federal
prison. Ford, who is African-American, originally had an African-American
federal trial judge. However, the judge was replaced,
-
by a
pro-Iraq war Jewish U.S. judge,
Peter Messitte, who set out to ensure a guilty conviction of
Ford in cahoots with
-
Jewish U.S. Attorney for Maryland
Rod Rosenstein, and
-
Jewish Assistant U.S. Attorney for
Southern Maryland David Salem, both Bush appointees.
Nothing was done by the judge or prosecutors to
dismiss from the jury a contractor whose company had major contracts with
NSA.
The trio of Messitte, Rosenstein, and Salem
have also “rocket-docketed” a number of cases, resulting in slam-dunk
convictions, against Arab- and Iranian-Americans in the southern district of
Maryland.
NSA’s Security chief is Kemp Ensor III.
Ensor has built up what amounts to a massive law
enforcement and intelligence agency in Maryland that operates as a virtual
independent operation that answers to no one. Maryland’s congressional
delegation has shown little interest in oversight over the security
operation.
In fact, WMR has learned that many NSA employees, aware of the political and
other misuse of their agency by the Bush-Cheney administration,
avidly backed
Barack Obama for president hoping that
the past era when NSA complied with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA) and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution would be
restored.
However, many NSA employees are bitterly
disappointed that Obama has done nothing to curtail not only the
widespread surveillance of the communications of law-abiding Americans but
the constant “Stasi-like” harassment and surveillance conducted by Ensor’s
team of agents and confidential informants.
WMR has also learned that NSA Security has been authorized to work directly
with Washington area local police department intelligence divisions to carry
out its surveillance of not only NSA employees and contractors, but
journalists who report on the activities of NSA. Two police departments
mentioned in this respect are the Alexandria, Virginia, and Anne Arundel
County, Maryland, sheriff departments.
One senior level NSA official recently found himself sitting in front of NSA
Security questioners asking why he gave his NSA business cards to some
students at a university. It turns out the official was trying to recruit
students for NSA employment. When the official asked why there was a problem
in his handing out his business cards, the answer by NSA Security was that
some of them, all American citizens, had “Russian last names.”
Even former NSA employees and contractors are being subjected to continual
NSA Security surveillance and harassment at their work places and other
locations, according to WMR’s sources. Some have lost their jobs as a result
of pressure from NSA Security.
WMR has in the past reported on NSA surveillance of journalists.
On December 28, 2005, we reported:
“WMR has learned that the National
Security Agency (NSA), on the orders of the Bush
administration, eavesdropped on the private conversations and e-mail of
its own employees, employees of other U.S. intelligence agencies -
including the CIA and DIA - and their contacts in the
media, Congress, and oversight agencies and offices.
The journalist surveillance program, code
named ‘FIRSTFRUITS,’ was part of a Director of Central Intelligence
(DCI) program that was maintained at least until October 2004 and was
authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss. FIRSTFRUITS was
authorized as part of a DCI ‘Countering Denial and Deception’ program
responsible to an entity known as the Foreign Denial and Deception
Committee (FDDC).
Since the intelligence community’s
reorganization, the DCI has been replaced by the Director of National
Intelligence headed by John Negroponte and his deputy, former NSA
director Gen. Michael Hayden.”
Since the revelation of the NSA journalist
monitoring database, which later added communications intercepts of
journalists’ phone calls, emails, and faxes to its database, NSA Security
has, according to information received by WMR, conducted physical
surveillance of journalists it deems to be threats to the operations of the
agency.
The top targeted journalists, who make up a
virtual “rogues’ gallery” at NSA Security, complete with photographs and
other personal information, are:
-
former Baltimore Sun and current Wall
Street Journal reporter Siobhan Gorman
-
Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz
-
former Baltimore Sun and current New
York Times reporter Scott Shane
-
Baltimore Sun reporter Phil McGowan
-
author James Bamford
-
New York Times reporters James Risen and
Eric Lichtblau, and this editor,
Wayne Madsen
In addition to the aforementioned,
FIRSTFRUITS also contained the names of:
Ironically, NSA Security allegedly has its own
connections in the news media.
A Washington Times source revealed that
the paper’s writer of the “Inside the Beltway” column, John McCaslin,
has a relative inside NSA Security - Robert McCaslin, the chief of NSA
Security counter-intelligence and the chief “sting” agent against Ford.
Robert McCaslin, according to the Times source,
is the brother of the paper’s columnist.
NSA Security is also able to utilize the agency’s most sophisticated
electronic surveillance systems to monitor the activities of journalists.
The cell phones of journalists are routinely used as listening devices,
even when turned off. And what was considered a sure-fire method of
avoiding having a cell phone used as a transmitter, removing the batteries
in what has become known as “batteries out” conversations, is no longer
safe.
Even when the batteries are removed, the
global positioning system (GPS) chip in cell phones continues to have
enough residual power that two to three pings from satellites can give away
a person’s location and what other uniquely identifiable cell phones are at
the same location.
The bottom line is that a number of NSA personnel who were on duty in the
months leading up to 9/11, the day of the attacks, and subsequent weeks and
months, are aware of undeniable facts that point to a massive cover-up by
the Bush-Cheney administration of the circumstances surrounding 9/11,
including what actually befell United Airlines flight 93 and who was issuing
direct military orders from the White House.
The Obama administration, rather than lessen the pressure on the NSA
personnel, has turned up the heat and is resorting to even more draconian
methods to ensure silence.
The word from inside NSA is that a state of fear
exists and the mission of the agency, to conduct surveillance of foreign
communications to provide threat indications and warnings to U.S. troops and
policy makers and protect sensitive U.S. government communications from
unauthorized eavesdropping is suffering as a result.
Video
NSA Security Running Amok to Plug Leaks About 9/11
by
YouDeserveToKnow
July 10, 2009
from
YouTube Website
The US government has allegedly
set up a special security wing
with the sole task of distancing
Washington from any involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.