This text is excerpted from Big Lies: How Our Corporate Overlords, Politicians and Media Establishment Warp Reality and Undermine Democracy
Pre-9/11 Flashback
When NATO’s US and British troops in Macedonia began evacuating Albanian rebels in June 2001,
officials claimed that they were merely trying to help Europe avert a
devastating civil war. Most media dutifully repeated this spin as fact.
But the explanation only made sense if you ignored a troublesome
contradiction; namely, US support for both the Macedonian Armed Forces
and the Albanians fighting them. Beyond that, there was a decade of
confused and manipulative Western policies, climaxing with NATO bombing
and the imposition of “peace” through aggression in Kosovo. Together,
these moves effectively destabilized the region.
In Macedonia, the main “cut out” –
spook-speak for “intermediary” –was Military Professional Resources,
Inc. (MPRI), then a major private military company (PMC) whose
Macedonian field commander was a former US general with strong ties to
Kosovo Liberation Army Commander Agim Ceku and Macedonian General Jovan
Andrejevski.
MPRI and other PMCs that have succeeded
it receive much of their funding from the US State Department, Pentagon,
and CIA. For example, MPRI trained and equipped the Bosnian Croat
Muslim Federation Army with a large State Department contract. Over the
years, the company claimed to have “helped” Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and
Macedonia – in effect, arming and training all parties. In 2000, it
pulled in at least $70 million from its global operations.
Working closely with the Pentagon, MPRI
also arranged for the Kosovo Liberation Army’s (KLA) training and
weapons in the run up to the war on Yugoslavia. Later, the same firm
channeled token military aid to the Macedonian army, new US weapons to
the rebels, and military intelligence to both sides.
Actually, it was a standard procedure,
applied with great success in the Middle East for decades: Keep warring
parties from overwhelming one other and you strengthen the bargaining
power of the puppeteer behind the scenes. Better yet, combine this with
disinformation; that is, tell the public one thing while doing the
opposite.
It’s not a question of allies and
enemies. Those designations can change for any number of reasons. In
1999, ethnic Albanians were victims and freedom fighters. In 2001, they
were “officially” a threat. Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and Osama
bin Laden were just three of the friends-turned-pariahs who learned that
lesson.
And what was the real objective in
Macedonia? The country was in a financial straight jacket, its budget
basically controlled by the IMF and the World Bank on behalf of
international creditors. Since the IMF had placed a ceiling on military
expenditures, the only funding option left was privatization. According
to Jane’s Defense Weekly, the process started with the sale of the
government’s stake in Macedonian Telekom.
Even more was at stake – things like
strategic pipeline routes and transport corridors through the country.
But that wouldn’t become obvious for years, if ever. This is another
traditional tactic: Keep the true agenda under wraps for as long as
possible.
Pretexts for War
Despite 24-hour news and talk about
transparency, there’s much we don’t know about our past, much less
current events. What’s worse, some of what we think we know isn’t true.
The point is that it’s no accident.
Consider, for example, the proximate circumstances that led to open war
in Vietnam. According to official history, two US destroyers patrolling
in the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam were victims of unprovoked
attacks in August 1964, leading to a congressional resolution that gave
President Johnson the power “to take all necessary measures.”
In fact, the destroyers were spy ships,
part of a National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping program operating
near the coast as a way to provoke the North Vietnamese into turning on
their radar and other communications channels. The more provocative the
maneuvers, the more signals that could be captured. Meanwhile, US
raiding parties were shelling mainland targets. Documents revealed later
indicated that the August 4 attack on the USS Maddox – the pretext for
passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution – may not even have taken place.
But even if it did, the incident was
still stage managed to build up congressional and public support for the
war. Evidence suggests that the plan was based on Operation Northwoods,
a scheme developed in 1962 to justify an invasion of Cuba. Among the
tactics the Joint Chiefs of Staff considered then were blowing up a ship
in Guantanamo Bay, a phony “communist Cuba terror campaign” in Florida
and Washington, DC, and an elaborate plan to convince people that Cuba
had shot down a civilian airliner filled with students. That operation
wasn’t implemented, but two years later, desperate for a war, the
administration’s military brass found a way to create the necessary
conditions in Vietnam.
NSA and Echelon
For more than half a century, the eyes
and ears of US power to monitor and manipulate information (and with it,
mass perceptions) has been the NSA, initially designed to assist the
CIA. Its original task was to collect raw information about threats to
US security, cracking codes and using the latest technology to provide
accurate intelligence on the intentions and activities of enemies.
Emerging after World War II, its early focus was the Soviet Union. But
it never did crack a high-level Soviet cipher system. On the other hand,
it used every available means to eavesdrop on not only enemies but also
allies and US citizens.
In Body of Secrets, James Bamford
described a bureaucratic and secretive behemoth, based in an Orwellian
Maryland complex known as Crypto City. From there, supercomputers linked
it to spy satellites, subs, aircraft, and equally covert, strategically
placed listening posts worldwide. By 2000, it had a $7 billion annual
budget and directly employed at least 38,000 people, more than the CIA
and FBI. It was also the leader of an international intelligence club,
UKUSA, which includes Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Together, they monitored and recorded billions of encrypted
communications, telephone calls, radio messages, faxes, and e-mails
around the world.
Over the years, however, the line
between enemies and friends blurred, and the intelligence gatherers
often converted their control of information into unilateral power,
influencing the course of history in ways that may never be known. No
doubt the agency has had a hand in countless covert operations; yet,
attempts to pull away the veil of secrecy have been largely
unsuccessful.
In the mid-1970s, for example, just as
Congress was attempting to reign in the CIA, the NSA was quietly
creating a virtual state, a massive international computer network named
Platform. Doing away with formal borders, it developed a software
package that turned worldwide Sigint (short for “signal intelligence”:
communication intelligence, eavesdropping, and electronic intelligence)
into a unified whole. An early software package was code named Echelon, a
name later connected with eavesdropping on commercial communication.
Of course, the NSA and its British
sister, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), refused to
admit Echelon existed, even though declassified documents appeared on
the Internet and Congress conducted an investigation. A European
Parliament report also confirmed Echelon’s activities, and encouraged
Internet users and governments to adopt stronger privacy measures in
response.
In March 2001, several ranking British
politicians discussed Echelon’s potential impacts on civil liberties,
and a European Parliament committee considered its legal, human rights,
and privacy implications. The Dutch held similar hearings, and a French
National Assembly inquiry urged the European Union to embrace new
privacy enhancing technologies to protect against Echelon’s
eavesdropping. France launched a formal investigation into possible
abuses for industrial espionage.
When Allies Compete
A prime reason for Europe’s discontent
was the suspicion that the NSA had used intercepted conversations to
help US companies win contracts heading for European firms. The alleged
losers included Airbus, a consortium including interests in France,
Germany, Spain, and Britain, and Thomson CSF, a French electronics
company. The French claimed they had lost a $1.4 billion deal to supply
Brazil with a radar system because the NSA shared details of the
negotiations with Raytheon. Airbus may have lost a contract worth $2
billion to Boeing and McDonnell Douglas because of information
intercepted and passed on by the agency.
According to former NSA agent Wayne
Madsen, the US used information gathered from its bases in Australia to
win a half share in a significant Indonesian trade contract for
AT&T. Communication intercepts showed the contract was initially
going to a Japanese firm. A bit later a lawsuit against the US and
Britain was launched in France, judicial and parliamentary
investigations began in Italy, and German parliamentarians demanded an
inquiry.
The rationale for turning the NSA loose
on commercial activities, even those involving allies, was provided in
the mid-90s by Sen. Frank DeConcini, then chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee. “I don’t think we should have a policy where
we’re going to invade the Airbus inner sanctum and find out their
secrets for the purpose of turning it over to Boeing or McDonnell
Douglas,” he opined. “But if we find something, not to share it with our
people seems to me to be not smart.” President Bill Clinton and other
US officials buttressed this view by charging that European countries
were unfairly subsidizing Airbus. In other words, competition with
significant US interests can be a matter of national security, and
private capitalism must be protected from state-run enterprises.
The US-Europe row about Airbus subsidies
was also used as a “test case” for scientists developing new
intelligence tools. At US Defense Department conferences on “text
retrieval,” competitions were staged to find the best methods. A
standard test featured extracting protected data about “Airbus
subsidies.”
Manipulating Democracy
In the end, influencing the outcome of
huge commercial transactions is but the tip of this iceberg. The NSA’s
ability to listen to virtually any transmitted communication has
enhanced the power of unelected officials and private interests to set
covert foreign policy in motion. In some cases, the objective is clear
and arguably defensible: taking effective action against terrorism, for
example. But in others, the grand plans of the intelligence community
have led it to undermine democracies.
The 1975 removal of Australian Prime
Minister Edward Whitlam is an instructive case. At the time of Whitlam’s
election in 1972, Australian intelligence was working with the CIA
against the Allende government in Chile. The new PM didn’t simply order a
halt to Australia’s involvement, explained William Blum in Killing
Hope, a masterful study of US interventions since World War II. Whitlam
seized intelligence information withheld from him by the Australian
Security and Intelligence Organization (ASIO), and disclosed the
existence of a joint CIA-ASIO directorate that monitored radio traffic
in Asia. He also openly disapproved of US plans to build up the Indian
Ocean Island of Diego Garcia as a military-intelligence-nuclear outpost.
Both the CIA and NSA became concerned
about the security and future of crucial intelligence facilities in and
near Australia. The country was already key member of UKUSA. After
launching its first space-based listening post-a microwave receiver with
an antenna pointed at earth-NSA had picked an isolated desert area in
central Australia as a ground station. Once completed, the base at Alice
Springs was named Pine Gap, the first of many listening posts to be
installed around the world. For the NSA and CIA, Whitlam posed a threat
to the secrecy and security of such operations.
An early step was covert funding for the
political opposition, in hopes of defeating Whitlam’s Labor Party in
1974. When that failed, meetings were held with the Governor-General,
Sir John Kerr, a figurehead representing the Queen of England who had
worked for CIA front organizations since the 50s. Defense officials
warned that intelligence links would be cut off unless someone stopped
Whitlam. On November 11, 1975, Kerr responded, dismissing the prime
minister, dissolving both houses of Parliament, and appointing an
interim government until new elections were held.
According to Christopher Boyce (subject
of The Falcon and the Snowman, a fictionalized account), who watched the
process while working for TRW in a CIA-linked cryptographic
communications center, the spooks also infiltrated Australian labor
unions and contrived to suppress transportation strikes that were
holding up deliveries to US intelligence installations. Not
coincidentally, some unions were leading the opposition to development
of those same facilities.
How often, and to what effect, such
covert ops have succeeded is another of the mysteries that comprise an
unwritten history of the last half century. Beyond that, systems like
Echelon violate the human right to individual privacy, and give those
who control the information the ability to act with impunity, sometimes
destroying lives and negating the popular will in the process.
Hiding the Agenda in Peru
In May 1960, when a U-2 spy plane was
shot down over Soviet territory, President Dwight Eisenhower took great
pains to deny direct knowledge or authorization of the provocative
mission. In reality, he personally oversaw every U-2 mission, and had
even riskier and more provocative bomber overflights in mind.
It’s a basic rule of thumb for covert
ops: When exposed, keep denying and deflect the blame. More important,
never, never let on that the mission itself may be a pretext, or a
diversion from some other, larger agenda.
Considering that, the April 20, 2001,
shoot down of a plane carrying missionaries across the Brazilian border
into Peru becomes highly suspicious. At first, the official story fed to
the press was that Peruvian authorities ordered the attack on their
own, over the pleas of the CIA “contract pilots” who initially spotted
the plane. But Peruvian pilots involved in that program, supposedly
designed to intercept drug flights, insist that nothing was shot down
without US approval.
Innocent planes were sometimes attacked,
but most were small, low flying aircraft that didn’t file flight plans
and had no radios. This plane maintained regular contact and did file a
plan. Still, even after it crash-landed, the Peruvians continued to
strafe it, perhaps in an attempt to ignite the plane’s fuel and
eliminate the evidence.
“I think it has to do with Plan Colombia
and the coming war,” said Celerino Castillo, who had previously worked
in Peru for Drug Enforcement Agency. “The CIA was sending a clear
message to all non-combatants to clear out of the area, and to get
favorable press.” The flight was heading to Iquitos, which “is at the
heart of everything the CIA is doing right now,” he added. “They don’t
want any witnesses.”
Timing also may have played a part. The
shoot down occurred on the opening day of the Summit of the Americas in
Quebec City. Uruguay’s President Jorge Ibanez, who had proposed the
worldwide legalization of drugs just weeks before, was expected to make a
high-profile speech on his proposal at the gathering. The downing of a
drug smuggling plane at this moment, near territory held by Colombia’s
FARC rebels, would help to defuse Uruguay’s message and reinforce the
image of the insurgents as drug smugglers.
If you doubt that the US would condone
such an operation or cover it up, consider this: In 1967, Israel
torpedoed the USS Liberty, a large floating listening post, as it was
eavesdropping on the Arab-Israeli war off the Sinai Peninsula. Hundreds
of US sailors were wounded and killed, probably because Israel feared
that its massacre of Egyptian prisoners at El Arish might be overheard.
How did the Pentagon respond? By imposing a total news ban, and covering
up the facts for decades.
Will we ever find out what really
happened in Peru, specifically why a missionary and her daughter were
killed? Not likely, since it involves a private military contractor that
is basically beyond the reach of congressional accountability.
In 2009, when the Peru shoot down became
one of five cases of intelligence operation cover up being investigated
by the US House Intelligence Committee, the CIA inspector general
concluded that the CIA had improperly concealed information about the
incident. Intelligence Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee
Chairwoman Jan Schakowsky, who led the investigation, didn’t rule out
referrals to the Justice Department for criminal prosecutions if
evidence surfaced that intelligence officials broke the law. But she
couldn’t guarantee that the facts would ever come to light, since the
Committee’s report of its investigation would be classified.
The most crucial wrinkle in the Peruvian
incident is the involvement of DynCorp, which was active in Colombia
and Bolivia under large contracts with various US agencies. The day
after the incident, ABC news reported that, according to “senior
administration officials,” the crew of the surveillance plane that first
identified the doomed aircraft “was hired by the CIA from DynCorp.”
Within two days, however, all references to DynCorp were scrubbed from
ABC’s Website. A week later, the New York Post claimed the crew actually
worked for Aviation Development Corp., allegedly a CIA proprietary
company.
Whatever the truth, State Department
officials refused to talk on the record about DynCorp’s activities in
South America. Yet, according to DynCorp’s State Department contract,
the firm had received at least $600 million over the previous few years
for training, drug interdiction, search and rescue (which included
combat), air transport of equipment and people, and reconnaissance in
the region. And that was only what they put on paper. It also operated
government aircraft and provided all manner of personnel, particularly
for Plan Colombia.
Outsourcing Defense
DynCorp began in 1946 as the
employee-owned air cargo business California Eastern Airways, flying in
supplies for the Korean War. This and later government work led to
charges that it was a CIA front company. Whatever the truth, it
ultimately became a leading PMC, hiring former soldiers and police
officers to implement US foreign policy without having to report to
Congress.
The push to privatize war gained
traction during the first Bush administration. After the first Gulf War,
the Pentagon, then headed by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid a
Halliburton subsidiary nearly $9 million to study how PMCs could support
US soldiers in combat zones, according to a Mother Jones investigation.
Cheney subsequently became CEO of Halliburton, and Brown & Root,
later known as Halliburton KBR, won billions to construct and run
military bases, some in secret locations.
One of DynCorp’s earliest “police”
contracts involved the protection of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, and, after he was ousted, providing the “technical advice”
that brought military officers involved in that coup into Haiti’s
National Police. Despite this dodgy record, in 2002 it won the contract
to protect another new president, Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai. By then,
it was a top IT federal contractor specializing in computer systems
development, and also providing the government with aviation services,
general military management, and security expertise.
Like other private military outfits, the
main danger it has faced is the risk of public exposure. Under one
contract, for example, DynCorp sprayed vast quantities of herbicides
over Colombia to kill the cocaine crop. In September 2001, Ecuadorian
Indians filed a class action lawsuit, charging that DynCorp recklessly
sprayed their homes and farms, causing illnesses and deaths and
destroying crops. In Bosnia, private police provided by DynCorp for the
UN were accused of buying and selling prostitutes, including a
12-year-old girl. Others were charged with videotaping a rape.
In the first years of the 21st
century, DynCorp’s day-to-day operations in South America were overseen
by State Department officials, including the Narcotic Affairs Section
and the Air Wing, the latter a clique of unreformed cold warriors and
leftovers from 80s operations in Central America. It was essentially the
State Department’s private air force in the Andes, with access to
satellite-based recording and mapping systems. In the 1960s, a similar
role was played by the Vinnell Corp., which the CIA called “our own
private mercenary army in Vietnam.” Vinnell later became a subsidiary of
TRW, a major NSA contractor, and employed US Special Forces vets to
train Saudi Arabia’s National Guard. In the late 1990s, TRW hired former
NSA director William Studeman to help with its intelligence program.
DynCorp avoided the kind of public
scandal that surrounded the activities of Blackwater. In Ecuador, where
it developed military logistics centers and coordinated “anti-terror”
police training, the exposure of a secret covenant signed with the
Aeronautics Industries Directorate of the Ecuadorian Air Force briefly
threatened to make waves. According to a November 2003 exposé in Quito’s
El Comercio, the arrangement, hidden from the National Defense Council,
made DynCorp’s people part of the US diplomatic mission.
In Colombia, DynCorp’s coca eradication
and search-and-rescue missions led to controversial pitched battles with
rebels. US contract pilots flew Black Hawk helicopters carrying
Colombian police officers who raked the countryside with machine gun
fire to protect the missions against attacks. According to investigative
reporter Jason Vest, DynCorp employees were also implicated in
narcotics trafficking. But such stories didn’t get far, and, in any
case, DynCorp’s “trainers” simply ignored congressional rules, including
those that restrict the US from aiding military units linked to human
rights abuses.
In 2003, DynCorp won a
multimillion-dollar contract to build a private police force in
post-Saddam Iraq, with some of the funding diverted from an anti-drug
program for Afghanistan. In 2004, the State Department further expanded
DynCorp’s role as a global US surrogate with a $1.75 billion, five year
contract to provide law enforcement personnel for civilian policing
operations in “post-conflict areas” around the world. That March, the
company also got an Army contract to support helicopters sold to foreign
countries. The work, described as “turnkey” services, includes program
management, logistics support, maintenance and aircrew training,
aircraft maintenance and refurbishment, repair and overhaul of aircraft
components and engines, airframe and engine upgrades, and the production
of technical publications.
In short, DynCorp was a trusted partner
in the military-intelligence-industrial complex. “Are we outsourcing
order to avoid public scrutiny, controversy or embarrassment?” asked
Rep. Schakowsky upon submitting legislation to prohibit US funding for
private military firms in the Andean region. “If there is a potential
for a privatized Gulf of Tonkin incident, then the American people
deserve to have a full and open debate before this policy goes any
further.”
If and when that ever happens, the
discussion will have to cover a lot of ground. Private firms, working in
concert with various intelligence agencies, constitute a vast foreign
policy apparatus that is largely invisible, rarely covered by the
corporate press, and not currently subject to congressional oversight.
The Freedom of Information Act simply doesn’t apply. Any information on
whom they arm or how they operate is private, proprietary information.
The US government downplays its use of
mercenaries, a state of affairs that could undermine any efforts to find
out about CIA activities that are concealed from Congress. Yet private
contractors perform almost every function essential to military
operations, a situation that has been called the “creeping privatization
of the business of war.” By 2004, the Pentagon was employing more than
700,000 private contractors.
The companies are staffed by former
generals, admirals, and highly trained officers. Name a hot spot and
some PMC has people there. DynCorp has worked on the Defense Message
System Transition Hub and done long-range planning for the Air Force.
MPRI had a similar contract with the Army, and for a time coordinated
the Pentagon’s military and leadership training in at least seven
African nations.
How did this outsourcing of defense
evolve? In 1969, the US Army had about 1.5 million active duty soldiers.
By 1992, the figure had been cut by half. Since the mid-1990s, however,
the US has mobilized militarily to intervene in several significant
conflicts, and a corporate “foreign legion” has filled the gap between
foreign policy imperatives and what a downsized, increasingly
over-stretched military can provide.
Use of high technology equipment feeds
the process. Private companies have technical capabilities that the
military needs, but doesn’t always possess. Contractors have maintained
stealth bombers and Predator unmanned drones used in Afghanistan and
Iraq. Some military equipment is specifically designed to be operated
and maintained by private companies.
In Britain, the debate over military
privatization has been public, since the activities of the UK company
Sandline in Sierra Leone and Papua New Guinea embarrassed the government
in the late 1990s. But no country has clear policies to regulate PMCs,
and the limited oversight that does exist rarely works. In the US, they
have largely escaped notice, except when US contract workers in conflict
zones are killed or go way over the line, as in the case of Blackwater.
According to Guy Copeland, who began
developing public-private IT policy in the Reagan years, “The private
sector must play an integral role in improving our national
cybersecurity.” After all, he has noted, private interests own and
operate 85 percent of the nation’s critical IT infrastructure. He should
know. After all, Copeland drafted much of the language in the Bush
Administration’s 2002 National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace as co-chair
of the Information Security Committee of the Information Technology
Association of America.
Nevertheless, when the federal
government becomes dependent on unaccountable, private companies like
DynCorp and Blackwater (later renamed Xe Services) for so many key
security services, as well as for military logistics, management,
strategy, expertise and “training,” fundamental elements of US defense
have been outsourced. And the details of that relationship are matters
that the intelligence community will fight long and hard to keep out of
public view.
Corporate Connections and “Soft Landings”
Although the various departments and
private contractors within the military-intelligence-industrial complex
occasionally have turf battles and don’t always share information or
coordinate strategy as effectively as they might, close and ongoing
contact has long been considered essential. And it has expanded as a
result of the information revolution. The entire intelligence community
has its own secret Intranet, which pulls together FBI reports, NSA
intercepts, analysis from the DIA and CIA, and other deeply covert
sources.
Private firms are connected to this
information web through staff, location, shared technology, and assorted
contracts. Working primarily for the Pentagon, for example, L-3
Communications, a spinoff from major defense contractor Lockheed Martin,
has manufactured hardware like control systems for satellites and
flight recorders. MPRI, which was bought by L-3, provided services like
its operations in Macedonia. L-3 also built the NSA’s Secure Terminal
Equipment, which instantly encrypts phone conversations.
Another private contractor active in the
Balkans was Science Applications, staffed by former NSA and CIA
personnel, and specializing in police training. When Janice Stromsem, a
Justice Department employee, complained that its program gave the CIA
unfettered access to recruiting agents in foreign police forces, she was
relieved of her duties. Her concern was that the sovereignty of nations
receiving aid from the US was being compromised.
In 1999, faced with personnel cuts, the
NSA offered over 4000 employees “soft landing” buy outs to help them
secure jobs with defense firms that have major NSA contracts. NSA
offered to pay the first year’s salary, in hopes the contractor would
then pick up the tab. Sometimes the employee didn’t even have to move
away from Crypto City. Companies taking part in the program included TRW
and MPRI’s parent company, Lockheed Martin.
Lockheed was also a winner in the
long-term effort to privatize government services. In 2000, it won a
$43.8 million contract to run the Defense Civilian Personnel Data
System, one of the largest human resources systems in the world. As a
result, a major defense contractor took charge of consolidating all
Department of Defense personnel systems, covering hiring and firing for
about 750,000 civilian employees. This put the contractor at the cutting
edge of Defense Department planning, and made it a key gatekeeper at
the revolving door between the US military and private interests.
Invisible Threats
Shortly after his appointment as NSA
director in 1999, Michael Hayden went to see the film Enemy of the
State, in which Will Smith is pursued by an all-seeing, all hearing NSA
and former operative Gene Hackman decries the agency’s dangerous power.
In Body of Secrets, author Bamford says Hayden found the film
entertaining, yet offensive and highly inaccurate. Still, the NSA chief
was comforted by “a society that makes its bogeymen secrecy and power.
That’s really what the movie’s about.”
Unlike Hayden, most people don’t know where the fiction ends and NSA
reality begins. Supposedly, the agency rarely spies on US citizens at
home. On the other hand, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
allows a secret federal court to waive that limitation. The rest of the
world doesn’t have that protection. Designating thousands of keywords,
names, phrases, and phone numbers, NSA computers can pick them out of
millions of messages, passing anything of interest on to analysts. One
can only speculate about what happens next.
After 9/11 the plan was to go further with a project code named
Tempest. The goal was to capture computer signals such as keystrokes or
monitor images through walls or from other buildings, even if the
computers weren’t linked to a network. An NSA document, “Compromising
Emanations Laboratory Test Requirements, Electromagnetics,” described
procedures for capturing the radiation emitted from a computer-through
radio waves and the telephone, serial, network, or power cables attached
to it.
Other NSA programs have included Oasis, designed to reduce
audiovisual images into machine-readable text for easier filtering, and
Fluent, which expanded Echelon’s multilingual capabilities. And let’s
not forget the government’s Carnivore Internet surveillance program,
capable of collecting all communications over any segment of the network
being watched.
Put such elements together, combine them with business imperatives
and covert foreign policy objectives, then throw PMCS into the mix, and
you get a glimpse of the extent to which information can be translated
into raw power and secretly used to shape events. Although most pieces
of the puzzle remain obscure, enough is visible to justify suspicion,
outrage, and a campaign to pull away the curtain on this Wizard of Oz.
But fighting a force that is largely invisible and unaccountable – and
able to eavesdrop on the most private exchanges, that is a daunting
task, perhaps even more difficult than confronting the mechanisms of
corporate globalization that it protects and promotes.
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