google.com, pub-4599738212880558, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0 google.com, pub-4599738212880558, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0
Showing posts with label James Bamford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Bamford. Show all posts

Oct 14, 2008

The Shadow Factory by James Bamford

At the moment I'm listening to Terry Gross interviewing James Bamford about his new book, The Shadow Factory which chronicles the NSA and the Bush-Cheney administration's circumventing the lawful FISA to spy on American citizens without warrants, so I searched this blog for previous Michael Hayden posts.

One entry on Hayden is from Dec 11, 2007 - the day of the Great Conjunction of Jupiter (the Republican) and Pluto (the spy) when Hayden took a meeting on Capitol Hill. Plus, the post contains a link to Hayden's natal chart (sunrise - birth time unknown) and was written within echo of the mysterious gunshots in the Rayburn Building where William Jefferson's FBI freezer raid was conducted a few nights prior.

You'll find that Hayden's natal planets are placed around the chart of his confirmation to the directorship of the NSA in 2006.

Journalist James Bamford has been writing about the NSA for 30 years (his first book about the agency was published in 1982) and he has some interesting new info about the subject.

And you've heard recently of two whistleblowers who worked at the NSA center in Augusta, GA spying on Americans' pillowtalk conversations and more.

The Shadow Factory covers these whistleblowers' accusations as well as giving us pre-9/11 facts about FISA, al-Qaeda, and the invasions of privacy we've all become accustomed to thanks to the cooperation of telecoms everywhere and their complicity in political spying on journalists, members of our military, and others. That there does not exist a 'political enemies' list a la J. Edgar Hoover, Nixon, and others is impossible for me to believe considering this White House.

In today's interview, however, Bamford gives props again to Quest who refused from the start to spy on its customers.

The upshot is that collecting everything makes finding real intell more difficult due to the sheer volume of communications....makes it more expensive and a waste of time. And US analysts don't even speak al-Qaeda's language!

Bamford says that the government has software that can ignore your Aunt Granny Fanny's calls to her bookie - but Cheney doesn't want to. (I'm the one saying 'Cheney' but why he's so interested in your Aunt Granny Fanny, I do not know.)

So if you missed Fresh Air today, you can read an excerpt from The Shadow Factory and download a podcast of Terry's interview with author Bamford.

The interview's audio version will be available on the site at approximately 3:00 pm et today.