The transcript of the following interview was exclusively arranged for Asia Times Online. An audio file of the interview is published at the German financial web site "Die Metallwoche" here.Worse than you thought or even imagined.
Thomas Drake, born 1957, is a former senior executive at the US National Security Agency who blew the whistle on a multi-billion dollar program fraud and cover up as well as the NSA's secret unlawful surveillance program. The US Department of Justice prosecuted and indicted him under the World War I-era Espionage Act in April, 2010, under 10 felony counts including that he "mishandled documents". The case against him ultimately collapsed. He eventually pled to one misdemeanor count for exceeding authorized use of a computer. He is a former airborne crypto-linguist and electronic warfare mission crew supervisor. From 1991-1998 he worked at Booz Allen Hamilton as a management, strategy and technology consultant and software quality engineer. In 2011, Drake became the recipient of the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Award. He holds a Bachelor's and two Master's degrees as well as numerous graduate certificates.
Asia Times Online
Secret information: The currency of power
Lars Schall
See also Washington's Blog, Is the U.S. Government Changing the Amount In People’s Financial Accounts and Manipulating Financial Systems with Its Offensive Cyber Capabilities?
4 comments:
You know, this makes a complete mockery of the entire MMT-vs-Orthodox debate.
Security Agencies clearly know that information is dynamic currency. That means that lobbies which influence Congressional Committees ... which set policy for the security state ... ALSO understand fiat currency operations completely.
The US electorate is confused, distracted, divided and completely conquered ... which means that the USA in unstable, and guaranteed to fall at some point.
Now, only a more widely informed electorate can save us from ourselves.
As Darth Cheney said, going to "the dark side" — as it that were anything new.
Who'd he learn it from?
Stalin? Hitler? Rubin? ... or Bush senior?
where did the current neo-cons learn the age old con?
This is why we have democracy, the rule of law, legal rights, constitutions, judiciaries, and so forth, because it is an established principle that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Of course, it also always wraps itself in rationales justifying the abuse of power as "divine right of kings," "patriotism," and so forth.
There have always been intelligence services of one sort or another, but ordinarily they are clandstine. The US really went to the dark side when it legalized all this subsequent to 9/11, e.g., with the Patriot Act.
But we can see it through the lens of Iran Contra in the Reagan administration with Ollie North and John Poindexter. That morphed into Total Information Awareness, which Congress squashed but it only went underground to emerge after 9/11 as the national security state supported by laws that suspend constitutional rights, international treaty, and human rights that are widely recognized in international law.
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