George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have their own secret slush fund, one filled with billions of dollars of taxpayer money, contained within the yearly-allocated “black budget” for U.S. intelligence activities.

Who really knows exactly what Bush and Cheney have been doing with taxpayer money contained within this huge intelligence “piggy bank”?

Paying for the secret rendition of al Qaeda suspects to secret, overseas CIA-run prisons, where they were tortured…secretly?

Paying for privately-owned crony-Republican data-mining companies to sweep up massive amounts of private information on U.S. taxpayers?

And who knows what else. It’s all being done in secret. Even our representatives in Congress don’t have a clue what Bush and Cheney have really been doing with money Congress appropriated for this huge U.S. intelligence “black budget” slush fund. Ssssh. It’s a secret. Classified. No one has a “need to know” except Bush and Cheney. And they aren’t talking.

Scarecrow: Your question #2, “then who did?”

Apparently the intelligence was outsourced to private companies, which did the data mining. This is what is being covered up. (Illegal activity which has been classified, but is being done overseas by private data companies.)

An anonymous poster at TPM yesterday laid it out, including how to “audit” for the missing emails.

See this thread at The Muck. It is very, very long. Look for the anonymous posts. And particularly look near the end of the thread for a post shortly before midnight.

See: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003805.php

Do the hard work. Follow up on all the leads. And BINGO! The light will dawn.

Whoever anonymous is, he or she really seems to be onto something.

My premise is that Powerpoint is the required means of communication, even though reducing arguments to bullet points in many cases is ridiculous. But in the case of the Bush Administration, our current stenography press corps actually needs to have the lies and deceptions of BushCo bulleted out for them in very simple terms.

So that’s what I’ve tried to do. The slides are downloadable on SlideShare and I’m open to any suggestions to change them. If folks like ‘em (they seem to on Kos) I may do more for other basic issues that the stenography corps can’t seem to grasp.

Scarecrow: Your question #2, “then who did?”

Apparently the intelligence was outsourced to private companies, which did the data mining. This is what is being covered up. (Illegal activity which has been classified, but is being done overseas by private data companies.)

An anonymous poster at TPM yesterday laid it out, including how to “audit” for the missing emails.

See this thread at The Muck. It is very, very long. Look for the anonymous posts. And particularly look near the end of the thread for a post shortly before midnight.

See: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003805.php

Do the hard work. Follow up on all the leads. And BINGO! The light will dawn.

So should both Philbin and Addington be sent subpoena’s ?

I want to go back and read everyone’s comments thoroughly, but I did get a whiff of Sunday TH memes and shake my head vigorously.

Even if (big if) one can take Gonzo at his word (cough, cough) he is AT BEST an incompetent worthless AG. And looking at the state of the DOJ is enough evidence to get rid of him.

Good grief, when did top US Govt. appointments get reduced to simple perks for rich boys and their friends?

If anyone is reading this, thank you!

we need to start saying things like “I don’t want some criminal appointee to be able to steal our information, nor steal our trade sectets nor do I want them looking up my wifes dress and following my kids around “

this is much more effective then “illegal spying”

I ask the question about American citizens being tortured/illegally mistreated because I know of two American citizens who disappeared.

Because they had lived in our area for many years and were well known by the religious community, a coalition of religious and socially active people protested in many ways until these people were set free.

These Arab Americans were not allowed counsel, not allowed to call their families, not allowed to see their families. Fortunately for them, people objected and they are free.

If you go to the link given by TheraP at 46 and read an anonymous source in the comments, you will see this:

SUMMARY
Mueller appears to be referring to a sub-contracted effort which indirectly supports the NSC with a special domestic security unit. These units engage in direct engagement with state-side personnel and civilians. Contractors, law enforcement, and intelligence personnel are assigned under non-direct-NSC-NSA units, but are hidden inside commercial entities. The groups appear capable of moving quickly, with no direct supervision, but act as internal security forces, completely outside FISA oversight. They appear to be entities unrelated to FISA, but are front line units which verify information, gather intelligence domestically, and help NSC pinpoint targets which NSC contractors are assigned.

RECOMMENDATIONS
A. Congress examine the Operation Falcon; determine which NSA/NSC personnel were assigned to oversee.
B. Examine the budget lines inside the DOD foreign entities support accounts; and determine which banks are used to challenge those funds. Determine how the DOD funds are funnelled overseas through the NSC entities, then back to the US to these individual groups.
C. Review the “investigative leads” and ground rules JTTF and local law enforcement use to dissuade detection of the domestic intelligence gathering efforts.
D. Review the destruction logs of the CIFA; and determine who was supposed to keep the logs related to these classified documents.
Determine which signalling systems, monitoring, and other intelligence gathering the JTTF are using; and where this information is sent. Ultimately, it winds up somewhere: Which contractors, NSC staffers have access to these reports.
E. Examine with Congressional Counsel whether it is the intent that these domestic security services operate this way; and whether, as FISA is written, this type of activity would fall outside what the FISA Court can engage.
F. Review the DHS domestic interrogation facilities. Look at the gas mileage for the DHS pick up teams. Review the files they’ve had access to; and the basis for detaining someone. Review the complaints of citizens being forcibly removed from their cars, engines running, or being taken from their homes while school children are present in the early morning. Evidence includes car impound fees.
G. Discuss with POST and local LE efforts used to dissuade public awareness of intelligence gathering: Excuses given to hide pre-textual stops; and examine whether local officials do or do not keep adequate records related to officer complaints and requests for civilian oversight to examine officer misconduct.
H. Examine problems during audits: To what extent officers in LE, FBI, and DHS are concerned when reports of officer misconduct arise; and what methods auditors are aware to segregate complaints about officer misconduct from auditors:

1. Have they been asked to leave the room; were concerns explained away; were officers complaining they were “short manned” an unable to supervise; and how do these explanations square with the officer conduct.
2. How often are these units employed to provoke innocent civilians to respond to abuse?
3. To what extent are these domestic units used to harass civilians based on a “hunch”?
4. Would these units put the children of minors at risk to entrap a suspected target?
5. Is there no report of any of these personnel ever exposing a minor to a potentially unsafe situation to engage a target?
6. Has the FISA court, Congress, and Judiciary been fully apprised of how these units operate; their procedures; and oversight requirement to ensure 42 USC 1983 claims are minimized?
7. What insurance do these units have if they are engaged in liable action?
Posted by:
Date: July 27, 2007 5:37 PM

Don’t want to get toooo tin-foil hatty…but Zelikow (remember him) was the one that shut down the testimony of the Able Danger group from the 9/11 Commission. The Pentagon destroyed the career of Col. Shaeffer to shut him up.

I have posted frequently about Dr. Evil Zelikow. He is probably still working behind the scenes. He covered up the actual events of 9-11. Also Condi Rice sent him over to Iraq several times, presumably to continue the genocide. He specializes in Government deception. Zelikow was PNAC before PNAC was cool.
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November-December 1998 issue of Foreign Affairs, he co-authored an article entitled “Catastrophic Terrorism,” in which he speculated that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded, “the resulting horror and chaos would have exceeded our ability to describe it….The United States might respond with draconian measures scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either future terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks.