There is a specific "three-letter agency" that is specifically designated to handle our nation's COMSEC (communications security) needs:Perhaps we can call this scandal Computergate. (If the name sticks, remember the contribution of your humble narrator.) And perhaps we can draw an analogy to the Plame affair. In one instance, the Bushies may have thumbed their noses at the folks whose job it is to keep communications secure. In the other instance, the Bushies thumbed their noses at a CIA covert op designed to uncover WMDs.
CSS, the Central Security Service.
This is a sister agency to NSA, and the two work very closely together.
In a nutshell, whreas NSA breaks codes, CSS makes codes.
CSS develops and promulgates cryptographic (code-making) standards and materiel. CSS is responsible for secure communications protocols. It would not surprise me if CSS is also responsible for building and maintaining a good bit of our secure communications infrastructure at the White House as well as at our various military bases and diplomatic outposts around the world.
It would also not surprise me if a good number of people at CSS were bloody pissed about the WH circumventing normal COMSEC for the sake of politics.
Thus, Congress should start talking with the folks at CSS. I'm quite sure they will have plenty to say, and will gladly say it as soon as they have received Congressional subpoenas to give them the necessary legal basis for coming forward.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Computergate
Those of you following the GWB43 scandal-within-a-scandal should note an important comment by G2Geek (who hints that he's in a position to know more than he can say), appended to this Daily Kos post:
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2 comments:
I would call it "emailgate" because essentially the Bushies are setting up their own gov, their email system on private computers, a private network, separate and apart from the military and intelligence agencies.
They have a completely different modus operandus: ruin, bankrupt and destroy the existing government, military of the US, so they can setup their own shop since these greedy rightwing racist sexist pedophile bullies hate hate hate the existing gov/military/intelligence agencies. they don't want to pay for anyone's welfare or social security or pensions or healthcare except for their own.
My guess is that PNAC is very much behind this outright takeover.
If folks don't wake up and smell the coffee as to what direction this country is going, they'll never get a chance to wake up until its too late and they can't do anything about it because they are all wusses and prefer the comfort of being couchpotatoes overweight unhealthy zombies than to have to do anything about losing their counntry, their constitution, their civil rights, their pensions, etc.
look for some sort of major disaster to happen that will be blamed on iran within the first 60 minutes of the disaster happening--don't be surprised if the news media already has the names and stories ready within the first 60 minutes preceding. by end of April our country may be in a full out war with Iran and then Bush-cheney can declare martial law and the USA as we know it is a memory of our recent past.
I hope this scenario doesn't play out.
This is not the first e-mail scandal.
Hold your fire:
Speaking of control and secrecy, how many here are aware that it was none other than Alberto R. (Geneva Convention) Gonzales among others who were central to the heated dispute of the private vs. public control of Whitehouse records. While the quaint Mr. Gonzales may have recused himself from CIA Leak Inquires, he was the consigliere/enforcer whom called US Archivist, John W. Carlin by telephone to fire him and replace him with a
very controversial Bush /Cheney appointee /stand-up guy, Allen Weinstein. Democrat, (DINO?) historian Allen Weinstein, was on Reagan's transition team in the eighties, and was rumored to be the compare/leaker whom gave the tip off to Nixons lawyer that the US National Archives & Records Administration (NARA) intended to release everything.Once installed Weinstein first major act in his new post, was to make a deal with John H. Taylor, the director of the Richard M. Nixon Library that made public most of Nixon's papers and tapes.
According to informed sources, the administration wanted to (and did) short-circuit the normal confirmation process to see Weinstein confirmed through an "expedited" process, even though he had no experince as a head archivist; a process that had never been done before. Their goal -- was to place Weinstein in the position prior to the then November election. NCH.
(National Coalition for History) reported that the hurried action was linked to forthcoming scheduled opening by NARA of records from the George H. W. Bush administration and the transfer of 9/11 commission records to the Archives. I found most of this stuff out while search gov docs on campus, but much of it can be confirmed online too. Finally,Gonzales never gave a reason as to why Carlin was to be replaced which was very much out of the norm. During the hearings when asked for the reason none was forth coming. Disclosure of the odd circumstances surrounding Carlin being asked to step down was never settled.Democrats on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee said it amounted to a forced removal, and Bush should be required to give his reasons for it. The White House had no immediate comment when asked why the president wanted to replace Carlin. White House spokeswoman Erin Healey said only that "Mr. Carlin has submitted a letter stating his intention to resign, and Mr. Bush has a responsibility to appoint someone to fill that position." He never got a reason.
I also ran across a most provocative book this week entitled: White House E-Mail at the National Security Archives:
President Reagan tried to shred them electronically...
President Bush tried to take them to Texas...
President Clinton tried to put them beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act...
White House e-mail survived, thanks to a six-year lawsuit brought by the National Security Archive and allied historians, librarians, and public interest lawyers.
The most revealing of the e-mail released to date appears in this book and disk set, edited and richly annotated by the Archive's director.
Here are the highest-level White House communications on the most secret national security affairs of the United States during the 1980s--shockingly candid electronic exchanges you were never meant to see, virtually none of which has ever before been available to the American public.
CHRONOLOGY
1982
- The National Security Council (NSC) staff at the White House acquires a prototype electronic mail system, from IBM, called the Professional Office System (PROFs).
April 1985
- The PROFs e-mail system becomes fully operational within the NSC, including not only the full staff, but also home terminals for the National Security Adviser, Robert "Bud" McFarlane, and his deputy, Admiral John M. Poindexter.
November 1986
- The remainder of the White House comes on line with electronic mail, at first with the PROFs system, and later (by the end of the 1980s) through a variety of systems including VAX A-1 ("All in One"), and ccmail.
November 22-25, 1986
- John Poindexter and Oliver North electronically shred more than 5000 e-mail notes in the memory banks of their computer systems, as the Iran-contra scandal breaks.
November 28, 1986
- Career staff at the White House Communications Agency order the November backup tapes of the e-mail system to be saved instead of recycled as usual. Subsequently, investigators from the FBI and the Tower Commission use the backup takes to reconstruct the Iran-contra scandal.
February 26, 1987
- The Tower Commission issues its report on Iran-contra, reprinting hundreds of PROFs notes exchanged by McFarlane, Poindexter and North.
January 19, 1989
- On the last day of the Reagan presidency, the National Security Archive files a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests together with a lawsuit against President Ronald Reagan, to prevent the imminent erasure of the White House electronic mail backup tapes. At 6:10 pm, on the eve of George Bush's inauguration, U.S. District Judge Barrington D. Parker issues a Temporary Restraining Order, prohibiting the destruction of the backup tapes to the PROFs system.
September 15, 1989
- U.S. District Judge Charles B. Richey rules that the National Security Archive and its co-plaintiffs, including the American Historical Association (AHA) and the American Library Association (ALA), have standing to sue President Bush, in order to force him to comply with the retention requirements of various records acts which potentially cover the White House e-mail.
January 25, 1991
- After a year-and-a-half of legal procedural wrangling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholds Judge Richey's ruling on standing, denying the Bush administration's attempts to have the case dismissed.
November 20, 1992
- On request from the plaintiffs, Judge Richey adds the White House e-mail from the lame-duck Bush administration to the case, issuing a restraining order preventing the Bush White House from destroying its own backup computer records.
January 6, 1993
- Judge Richey rules that computer tapes containing copies of e-mail messages by Reagan and Bush White House staff must be preserved like other government records, because the electronic versions are not simply duplicates of paper printouts, but contain additional information beyond the paper copies.
January 11 and 14, 1993
- Judge Richey issues specific court orders requiring that the Bush White House preserve its computer records. In press interviews, Judge Richey says that despite his orders, he believes that the Bush administration is planning to destroy its e-mail files.
January 15, 1993
- In an expedited emergency ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholds and modifies the rulings by Judge Richey, holding that government officials could erase White House and NSC computer files, as long as they preserved, on backup tapes, identical copies of what was being erased.
January 19, 1993
- President Bush signs a secret agreement with Don Wilson, head of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), purporting to grant Bush exclusive legal control over the e-mail tapes of his administration. Working through the night, a staff team from NARA takes custody of thousands of tapes and disk drives, hurriedly removing them from White House offices to prevent incoming Clinton appointees from gaining access to them.
February 16, 1993
- NARA career staff who managed the transfer describe in an internal memo how the so- called "midnight ride" had violated NARA's own rules for records transfers and how several sets of tapes ordered preserved by Judge Richey had been lost, erased or damaged.
May 22, 1993
- Judge Richey cites the Clinton White House and the acting Archivist of the United States for contempt of court for failing to carry out his order to issue new and appropriate guidelines for the preservation of the computer records of the Reagan, Bush and Clinton White House staff.
August 13, 1993
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacates Judge Richey's contempt orders but upholds his overall decision that the Federal Records Act (FRA) requires that complete electronic copies of e-mail messages be preserved by the White House, and by extension, government agencies in general. The appeals court remands the case to Judge Richey to decide the issue of the dividing line between "agency" records covered by the FRA and presidential records covered by the Presidential Records Act.
March 25, 1994
- In a brief filed in federal court, the Clinton administration declares that the National Security Council is not an agency, and should be accorded the protection from public scrutiny given to the President's personal advisers. This argument attempts to remove the Clinton administration's White House e- mail from the reach of FOIA requests and the FRA, arguing that all its documents are subject only to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and therefore not to court oversight.
December 13, 1994
- The e-mail plaintiffs file suit against the Acting Archivist of the United States to void the Bush-Wilson agreement, in American Historical Association et. al. v. Peterson.
February 15, 1995
- Judge Richey rejects the Clinton administration's arguments about the NSC's status as "arbitrary and capricious... contrary to history, past practice and the law," and declares that the National Security Council is an agency. The government subsequently appeals the decision, and the plaintiffs cross- appeal against a portion of Richey's ruling that opens a loophole for senior NSC staff giving advice to the President.
February 27, 1995
- In a separate opinion in the lawsuit over the Bush-Wilson agreement, Judge Richey declares the agreement "null and void," writing that "No one, not even a President, is above the law." The New York Times subsequently editorializes, under the headline "A Special Place in History for Mr. Bush," that "No President has the right to corner official records in an effort to control his place in history." (March 1, 1995, page A18)
September 8, 1995
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit hears oral arguments in the case on the issue of Judge Richey's decision and the agency versus Presidential status of the NSC.
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