KC & Associates Investigations Research Associates

Quinault Valley Guns & Blades / Urban Escape & Evasion Course International Relations * Military * Terrorism * Business * Security www.kcandassociates.org orders@kcandassociates.org Kathleen Louise dePass Press Agent/Publicist .360.288.2652 Triste cosa es no tener amigos, pero ms triste ha de ser no tener enemigos porque quin no tenga enemigos seal es de que no tiene talento que haga sombra, ni carcter que impresione, ni valor temido, ni honra de la que se murmure, ni bienes que se le codicien, ni cosa alguna que se le envidie. A sad thing it is to not have friends, but even sadder must it be not having any enemies; that a man should have no enemies is a sign that he has no talent to outshine others, nor character that inspires, nor valor that is feared, nor honor to be rumored, nor goods to be coveted, nor anything to be envied. -Jose Marti

From the desk of Craig B Hulet? US Army Base Ft. Leonard Wood Confirms Internment Manual Is Legitimate Restricted U.S. Army Internment and Resettlement Operations Manual Nearly 1 in 3 state sheriff groups now oppose Obama gun controls As Spy Drones Come to the U.S., We Must Protect Our Privacy The Internet 'Narcissism Epidemic' The Drones Come Home The Day That TV News Died Mayors Gone Wild End of America

URGENT BREAKING NEWS: US Army Base Ft. Leonard Wood Confirms Internment Manual Is Legitimate This story first broke last week on the Alex Jones Radio show. Gaspee thought it would be prudent to independently verify the authenticity of the manual. The cover page lists the U.S. Army Military Police School at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO as the official contact. So I contacted the base personally and had several conversations with Tiffany Wood, Director of the Public Affairs Office at Fort Leonard Wood. When I first contacted her she was unaware of this document or the story of its release to the public. She said it would take some time to verify the document. Today, May 8th, Gaspee Gazette received this official e-mail response from Fort Leonard Wood on the authenticity AND essence of FM 3-39.40 INTERNMENT AND RESETTLEMENT OPERATIONS MANUAL. USArmy-Internment Resettlement Wood wrote, Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Caveats: NONE Mr. Thomas, Here is the response from Fort Leonard Wood regarding your questions. The document was not intended for public release. The document is intended for operations outside of the continental United States. Depending on the nature and magnitude of an event will determine the level of U.S. military involvement. Any other questions regarding the document, you will need to file a FOIA request. Please let me know if you have any other questions. Thank you, Tiffany Tiffany Wood, Director, Public Affairs Office Fort Leonard Wood, MO So now we know without question the manual itself is AUTHENTIC. The bad news is what is contained in it. Ms. Wood states in her email that the Manual is not intended for use within the continental US, however Paul Joseph Watson (click here to see) has done an excellent job scanning several parts of the document that make it VERY clear that deployment of this strategy in the US is at least being discussed within the Department of Defense.

Watson writes: The most alarming portion of the document appears on page 56 and makes it clear that detention camps will have PSYOP teams whose responsibility will be to use indoctrination programs to reduce or remove antagonistic attitudes, as well as targeting political activists with such indoctrination programs to provide understanding and appreciation of U.S. policies and actions.

In this section you can see just how treacherous this document is! It even acknowledges that to use the military against US citizens is strictly forbidden according to the Posse Comitatus Act. But the author states that the Secretary of Defense (who lately told the US Senate that he gets his authority from the UN), a Congressional Act, or an Executive Order could be used to bypass Posse Comitatus.

And IF this document is exclusively for use OUTSIDE of the US why does it mention procedures that include identifying internees by their Social Security Numbers?

This Manual is over 300 pages and I have only read parts of it. But I have read enough to know this is the most serious and terrifying document I have ever personally read, and it was produced by the Government who supposedly works for me. Do you think the authors of this Manual believe that? Please send this post to every news agency, pastor, police officer, and sheriff you know, or Bill Ayers will get his wish. (NaturalNews) In physics, there is an axiom that goes something like this: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The same principle can be applied to virtually every other aspect of life, including issues dealing with freedom and liberty. As more and more Americans become concerned about the potential constitutional abuse that could be heaped on society by thousands of unmanned aerial vehicles the Federal Aviation Administration appears set on approving for use over American skies by police, federal agencies and even some universities, one company in Oregon is not waiting around for Congress to rediscover the Constitution's Fourth Amendment privacy protections. Rather, this firm is going to be proactive, and give Americans a chance to curb the potential for abuse before it even begins. The company, Domestic Drone Countermeasures, says it has developed, and will soon begin selling, technology that disables drones, U.S. News & World Report said. The tech firm was founded in February because some of its engineers view UAVs - which are already in use by police may soon be in wider use if the FAA approves commercial uses for drones by 2015, when the agency is set to unveil new rules governing drones - as little more than privacy violation devices. 'They will be unable to complete their mission' "I was personally concerned and I think there's a lot of other people worried about this," Timothy Faucett, a lead engineer on the project, told the magazine. "We've already had many inquiries, a lot of people saying, 'Hey, I don't want these drones looking at me.'" The company was formed as a spin-off from Aplus Mobile, which markets and sells tough computer processors to defense contractors; the company would not discuss its specific technology because it is currently applying for a number of patents. Faucett goes on to say that work has helped the company develop its anti-drone technology.

According to the report, Domestic Drone Countermeasures plans to sell land-based boxes that are "non-offensive, non-combative and not destructive." The company further states that "drones will not fall from the sky, but they will be unable to complete their missions." Without discussing specifics, Faucett said the boxes will not interfere with a drone's nav system, and that the technology doesn't involve "jamming of any kind." Rather, he says the company's technology is "an adaptation of something that could be used for military application" with the "combat element replaced with a nondestructive element." "We understand the nature of the equipment drone manufacturers are using and understand how to counter their sensors," he told the magazine. "We're not going to be countering Predator drones that are shooting cruise missiles, but we're talking about local law enforcement drones and commercial ones that people might be using for spying." Hat tip to Rand Paul At present, Faucett admits that the technology will be "expensive," but his company is ready to design custom anti-drone boxes for clients. "We envision it could be cheap enough for residential use very soon," he said. "It's quite possible to deploy it if you were shooting a movie and wanted to protect your set, or if you had a house in Malibu and wanted to protect that, we could deploy it there. If a huge company like Google wanted to protect its server farms, it can be scaled up for a larger, fixed installation." Drones are going to become more commonplace, as Natural News has reported. Faucett says as they do, Americans will want to find ways to maintain their privacy. "The thing that brought it home for me was Senator [Rand] Paul doing the filibuster, there's a lot of unanswered questions," he said. "We think there might be as much business for this counter drone stuff as there is for the drones themselves."

Restricted U.S. Army Internment and Resettlement Operations Manual May 2, 2012 in U.S. Army

FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations

326 pages Distribution authorized to the DOD and DOD contractors only to protect technical or operational information from automatic dissemination under the International Exchange Program or by other means. February 12, 2010 3.59 MB

I/R operations facilitate the ability to conduct rapid and decisive combat operations; deter, mitigate, and defeat threats to populations that may result in conflict; reverse conditions of human suffering; and build the capacity of a foreign government to effectively care for and govern its population. This includes capabilities to conduct shaping operations across the spectrum of military operations to mitigate and defeat the underlying conditions for conflict and counter the core motivations that result in support to criminal, terrorist, insurgent, and other destabilizing groups. I/R operations also include the daily incarceration of U.S. military prisoners at facilities throughout the world. This manual continues the evolution of the I/R function to support the changing nature of OEs. In light of persistent armed conflict and social turmoil throughout the world, the effects on

populations remain a compelling issue. The world population will increase from 6 billion to 9 billion in the next two decades, with 95 percent of the growth occurring in the developing world. By 2030, 60 percent of the worlds population will live in urban areas. Coexisting demographically and ethnically, diverse societies will aggressively compete for limited resources. Typically, overpopulated third world societies suffer from a lack of legitimate and effective enforcement mechanisms, which is generally accepted as one of the cornerstones of a stable society. Stability within a population may eliminate the need for direct military intervention. The goal of military police conducting detainee operations is to provide stability within the population, its institutions, and its infrastructure. In this rapidly changing and dynamic strategic environment, U.S. forces will compete with local populations for the same space, routes, and resources. The modular forces ability to positively influence and shape the opinions, attitudes, and behaviors of select populations is critical to tactical, operational, and strategic success. An adaptive enemy will manipulate populations that are hostile to U.S. intent by instigating mass civil disobedience, directing criminal activity, masking their operations in urban and other complex terrain, maintaining an indistinguishable presence through cultural anonymity, and actively seeking the traditional sanctuary of protected areas as defined by the rules of land warfare. Such actions will facilitate the dispersal of threat forces, negate technological overmatches, and degrade targeting opportunities. Commanders will use technology and conduct police intelligence operations to influence and control populations, evacuate detainees and, conclusively, transition rehabilitative and reconciliation operations to other functional agencies. The combat identification of friend, foe, or neutral is used to differentiate combatants from noncombatants and friendly forces from threat forces. Civilian Internees 1-10. A CI is a civilian who is interned during armed conflict, occupation, or other military operation for security reasons, for protection, or because he or she committed an offense against the detaining power. (JP 3-63) CIs, unless they have committed acts for which they are considered unlawful combatants, generally qualify for protected status according to the GC, which also establishes procedures that must be observedwhen depriving such civilians of their liberty. CIs are to be accommodated separately from EPWs and persons deprived of liberty for any other reason. 1-11. Protected persons are persons protected by the Geneva Convention who find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a party to the conflict or occupying power of which they are not nationals. (AR 190-8). Protected persons who are interned for imperative reasons of security are also known as CIs. Protected persons under the Geneva Conventions include

Hors de combat (refers to the prohibition of attacking enemy personnel who are out of combat). Detainees (combatants and CIs).

Wounded and sick in the field and at sea. Civilians.

Note. If protected persons are detained as spies or saboteurs or are suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the state or occupying power, they may be interned or imprisoned. In such cases, they retain their status as a protected person and are granted the full rights and privileges of protected persons. DISLOCATED CIVILIANS 1-19. The term dislocated civilian is a broad term that includes a displaced person, an evacuee, an expellee, an internally displaced person, a migrant, a refugee, or a stateless person. (JP 3-57) DCs are individuals who leave their homes for various reasons, such as an armed conflict or a natural disaster, and whose movement and physical presence can hinder military operations. They most likely require some degree of aid, such as medicine, food, shelter, or clothing. DCs may not be native to the area or to the country in which they reside. (See chapter 10.) The following DC subcategories are also defined in JP 3-57:

Displaced person. A displaced person is a civilian who is involuntarily outside the national boundaries of his or her country. (JP 1-02) Displaced persons may have been dislocated because of a political, geographical, environmental, or threat situation. Evacuee. An evacuee is a civilian removed from a place of residence by military direction for reasons of personal security or the requirements of the military situation. (JP 3-57) Internally displaced person. An internally displaced person is any person who has left their residence by reason of real or imagined danger but has not left the territory of their own country.Internally displaced persons may have been forced to flee their homes for the same reasons as refugees, but have not crossed an internationally recognized border. Expellee. An expellee is a civilian outside the boundaries of the country of his or her nationality or ethnic origin who is being forcibly repatriated to that country or to a third country for political or other purposes. (JP 3-57) Migrant. A migrant is a person who (1) belongs to a normally migratory culture who may cross national boundaries, or (2) has fled his or her native country for economic reasons rather than fear of political or ethnic persecution. (JP 3-57) Refugee. A refugee is a person, who by reason of real or imagined danger, has left their home country or country of their nationality and is unwilling or unable to return. Stateless person. A stateless person is a civilian who has been denationalized or whose country of origin cannot be determined or who cannot establish a right to the nationality claimed.

AGENCIES CONCERNED WITH INTERNMENT AND RESETTLEMENT 1-40. External involvement in I/R missions is a fact of life for military police organizations. Some government and government-sponsored entities that may be involved in I/R missions include

International agencies. UN. International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). International Organization of Migration. U.S. agencies. Local U.S. embassy. Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Federal Emergency Management Agency.

1-41. The U.S. Army National Detainee Reporting Center (NDRC), supported by theater detainee reporting centers (TDRCs), detainee accountability, including reporting to the ICRC central tracing agency. 1-42. There are also numerous private relief organizations, foreign and domestic, that will likely be involved in the humanitarian aspects of I/R operations. Likewise, the news media normally provides extensive coverage of I/R operations. Adding to the complexity of these operations is the fact that DOD is often not the lead agency. For instance, the DOD could be tasked in a supporting role, with the Department of State or some other agency in the lead. (See appendix E.) SUPPORT TO CIVIL SUPPORT OPERATIONS 2-39. Civil support is the DOD support to U.S. civil authorities for domestic emergencies, and for designated law enforcement and other activities. (JP 3-28) Civil support includes operations that address the consequences of natural or man-made disasters, accidents, terrorist attacks and incidents in the U.S. and its territories. 2-40. The I/R tasks performed in support of civil support operations are similar to those during combat operations, but the techniques and procedures are modified based on the special OE associated with operating within U.S. territory and according to the categories of individuals (primarily DCs) to be housed in I/R facilities. During long-term I/R operations, state and federal agencies will operate within and around I/R facilities within the scope of their capabilities and identified role. Military police commanders must closely coordinate and synchronize their efforts with them especially in cases where civil authority and capabilities have broken down or been destroyed. PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS OFFICER 3-55. The PSYOP officer in charge of supporting I/R operations serves as the special staff officer responsible for PSYOP. The PSYOP officer advises the military police commander on the psychological impact of military police or MI actions to prevent misunderstandings and disturbances by detainees and DCs. The supporting I/R PSYOP team has two missions that reduce the need to divert military police assets to maintain security in the I/R facility. (See appendix J.) The team

Assists the military police force in controlling detainees and DCs. Introduces detainees or DCs to U.S. and multinational policy.

3-56. The PSYOP team also supports the military police custodial mission in the I/R facility. The team

Develops PSYOP products that are designed to pacify and acclimate detainees or DCs to accept U.S. I/R facility authority and regulations. Gains the cooperation of detainees or DCs to reduce the number of guards needed. Identifies malcontents, trained agitators, and political leaders within the facility who may try to organize resistance or create disturbances. Develops and executes indoctrination programs to reduce or remove antagonistic attitudes. Identifies political activists. Provides loudspeaker support (such as administrative announcements and facility instructions when necessary). Helps the military police commander control detainee and DC populations during emergencies. Plans and executes a PSYOP program that produces an understanding and appreciation of U.S. policies and actions. DETAINEE PROCESSING TECHNIQUE

4-33. Upon capture, Soldiers must process detainees using the search, silence, segregate, speed, safeguard, and tag (5 Ss and T) technique. This technique provides a structure to guide Soldiers in conducting detainee operations until they transfer custody of detainees to another authority or location. Complete the 5 Ss and T technique as follows:

Search. Neutralize a detainee and confiscate weapons, personal items, and items of potential intelligence and/or evidentiary value. Silence. Prevent detainees from communicating with one another or making audible clamor such as chanting, singing, or praying. Silence uncooperative detainees by muffling them with a soft, clean cloth tied around their mouths and fastened at the backs of their heads. Do not use duct tape or other adhesives, place a cloth or either objects inside the mouth, or apply physical force to silence detainees. Segregate. Segregate detainees according to policy and SOPs (segregation requirements differ from operation to operation). The ability to segregate detainees may be limited by the availability of manpower and resources at the POC. At a minimum, try to segregate detainees by grade, gender, age (keeping adults from juveniles and small children with mothers), and security risk. MI and military police personnel can provide additional guidance and support in determining the appropriate segregation criteria. Speed. Quickly move detainees from the continuing risks associated with other combatants or sympathizers who may still be in the area of capture. If there are more detainees than the Soldiers can control, call for additional support, search the detainees, and hold them in place until reinforcements arrive. Safeguard. Protect detainees and ensure the custody and integrity of all confiscated items. Soldiers must safeguard detainees from combat risk, harm caused by other detainees, and

improper treatment or care. Report all injuries. Correct and report violations of U.S. military policy that occur while safeguarding detainees. Acts and/or omissions that constitute inhumane treatment are violations of the law of war and, as such, must be corrected immediately. Simply reporting violations is insufficient. If a violation is ongoing, a Soldier has an obligation to stop the violation and report it. Tag. Ensure that each detainee is tagged using DD Form 2745. Confiscated equipment, personal items, and evidence will be linked to the detainee using the DD Form 2745 number. When a DA Form 4137 is used to document confiscated items, it will be linked to the detainee by annotating the DD Form 2745 control number on the form.

6-8. When constructing a facility, planning considerations may include, but are not limited to

Clear zones. As appropriate, mission variables determine the clear zone surrounding each facility that houses detainees. Construct at least two fences (interior and exterior) around the detainee facility and ensure that the clear zone between the interior and exterior fences is free of vegetation and shrubbery. Guard towers. Locate guard towers on the perimeter of each facility. Place them immediately outside the wall or, in case of double fencing, where they permit an unobstructed view of the lane between the fences. The space between towers must allow overlapping observation and fields of fire. During adverse weather, it may be necessary to augment security by placing fixed guard posts between towers on the outside of the fence. Towers must be high enough to allow an unobstructed view of the compound and low enough to permit an adequate field of fire. The tower platform should have retractable ladders and should be wide enough to mount crew-served weapons. Another consideration involves using nonlethal capabilities from guard towers. Lights. Provide adequate lighting, especially around compound perimeters. Illuminating walls and fences discourages escapes, and illuminating inner strategic points expedites the handling of problems caused by detainees. Lights should be protected from breakage with an unbreakable glass shield or a wire mesh screen. Ensure that lights on the walls and fences do not interfere with the guards vision. Provide secondary emergency lighting. Patrol roads. Construct patrol roads for vehicle and foot patrols. They should be adjacent to outside perimeter fences or walls. Sally ports. A sally port is required to search vehicles and personnel entering and leaving the main compound. It is recommended that a sally port be placed at the back entrance to the facility. Communications. Ensure that communication between the towers and the operation headquarters is reliable. Telephones are the preferred method; however, ensure that alternate forms of communication (radio and visual or sound signals) are available if telephones are inoperable.

6-9. The facility layout depends on the nature of the operation, terrain, building materials, and HN support. Each facility should contain

Barracks (may be general-purpose medium tents in the early stages of an operation). Kitchen and dining facilities. Bath houses.

Latrines. Recreation areas. Chapel facilities. Administrative areas with a command post, an administrative building, an interrogation facility, a dispensary, an infirmary, a mortuary, and a supply building. Receiving and processing centers. Maximum security areas with individual cells. Parking areas. Trash collection points. Potable water points. Storage areas. Hazardous materials storage areas. Generator and fuel areas.

Related Material From the Archive: 1. U.S. Military Police Internment/Resettlement Operations Manual 2. National Guard Looking for Internment/Resettlement Specialists 3. Restricted U.S. Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) Religious Factors Analysis Manual 4. Internment/Resettlement Specialist (31E) 5. U.S. Army Counterguerrilla Operations Manual 6. (U//FOUO) U.S. Army Intelligence Support to Urban Operations Field Manual 7. Restricted U.S. Military Multi-Service Civil Support Operations Manual 8. U.S. Army FM 3-19.15 Civil Disturbance Operations Nearly 1 in 3 state sheriff groups now oppose Obama gun controls March 5, 2013 | 6:51 am Paul BedardWashington Secrets The Washington Examiner Three more state-wide sheriff associations have joined those opposed to President Obama's kitchen sink approach to gun control, raising the number to 14, or nearly one-third of the nation's statewide police organizations. Sheriff associations in South Carolina, California and most recently Nevada joined the other states in demanding Obama to stop his gun grab and instead focus on expanding the national background check system to include far more information on the mental health status of gun buyers than it does now. Nevada joined the growing group opposed to gun control just Monday. In their letter, provided Tuesday morning to Secrets, they also appealed to legislators to turn the focus on the mental health of those buying guns. Please enter your email address below to begin receiving the Paul Bedard newsletter. Thank you for signing up for the Paul Bedard newsletter! You should receive your first newsletter very soon. "We have all seen what persons who have mental illness, who are uses of illegal controlled substances, or are members of criminal gangs can do with weapons in their hands; any weapons, not just firearms. As it currently stands, many of these individuals are not entered into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System for a whole variety of reasons. This must be addressed at the national, state and local levels," said the Nevada sheriffs. But they also vowed to fight any effort to take guns from Nevadans. They wrote: "The sheriffs of the state of Nevada do not believe that the answer to this issue includes making criminals out of otherwise law-abiding individuals. As the old saying goes, 'As guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. The answer lies within a myriad of approaches including education, addressing

violence, keeping firearms out of the hands of the mentally ill, criminal gang members, and illegal controlled substance users, as well as prosecuting and incarcerating those who would use firearms to commit crimes." So far those state sheriff associations who have challenged Obama are: Nevada, South Carolina, California, Illinois, Montana, Utah, Florida, Georgia, New York, Colorado, New Mexico, Nebraska, Wyoming and Indiana. Their approach to gun control jives with House GOP leaders who have vowed to fight efforts to ban assault-style weapons, limit the size of magazines, expand to a universal background check system and register guns. The Obama-style approach, however, is alive in the Senate. Supporters of the 380 sheriffs in 15 states who so far have vowed to defy new state and federal gun control laws claim that legislation is starting to pop up around the nation to fire any state elected or appointed law enforcement official who doesn't obey federal orders. The first effort emerged in Texas. Legislation proposed by Dallas Democratic Rep. Yvonne Davis would remove any sheriff or law enforcement officer who refuses to enforce state or federal laws. What's more, it would remove any elected or appointed law enforcement officer for simply stating or signing any document stating that they will not obey federal orders. A gun lobbyist told Secrets, "Beware because once something like this is introduced in one state, it will be followed very quickly in several other states." Secrets has charted the growing group of sheriffs opposed to new gun control initiatives. They argue that citizens should be allowed by buy the types of weapons they want to defend themselves. They also claim that there is no way to tell the difference between old rifle and pistol magazines and new ones that President Obama wants to ban. Mayors Gone Wild Another member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns arrested BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff March 26, 2013 12:17 pm Mayors Against Illegal Guns member and Democratic Gainesville, Fla., Mayor Craig Lowe was arrested on charges of driving under the influence and property damage after police found him asleep in his car at the scene of a crash last Thursday. Police said Lowe appeared intoxicated and his Honda Civic was badly damaged, according to WKMG in Orlando.

I regret that my actions Thursday morning have disappointed so many friends, supporters, and citizens of Gainesville, Lowe said in a statement. I hope that in the future I will again prove worthy of the publics trust and confidence. The Gainesville Democrat faces a mayoral runoff election on April 16. His arraignment is scheduled for April 11, according to the Florida Alligator. Lowe was one of 30 mayors featured in a recent ad released by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a gun-restriction lobbying group led by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Lowe is the latest member of Mayors Against Illegal Firearms to have a run-in with the law. Marcus Hook, Pa., Mayor James Schiliro (R.) was arrested for reckless endangerment and other criminal charges last week after he allegedly fired a handgun inside his home during a boozefueled argument with a 20-year-old man. Schiliro had allegedly served the minor alcohol and demanded sexual favors when the dispute broke out.

Other members and former members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns have previously been charged with felony corruption, assault of a police officer, and child sex crimes. Mayor Bloomberg should be more interested in the conduct of MAIG members than trying to pry into the personal lives of gun owners or soda drinkers, said Second Amendment Foundation executive vice president Alan Gottlieb in a statement. If anybody needs a background check, it would be a MAIG member.

A 50-Point Swing Against Targeted Drone Killings of U.S. Citizens

By David WeigelPosted Monday, March 25, 2013, at 10:08 AM

Drones hang on display in the exposition hall of the Border Security Expo on March 12, 2013 in Phoenix, Arizona.

A year ago, as the presidential race was taking shape, The Washington Post's pollster asked voters whether they favored the use of drones to kill terrorists or terror suspects if they were "American citizens living in other countries." The net rating at the time was positive: 65 percent for, 26 percent against. Today, after a month of Rand Paul-driven discussion of drone warfare, Gallup asks basically the same question: Should the U.S. "use drones to launch airstrikes in other countries against U.S. citizens living abroad who are suspected terrorists?" The new numbers: 41 percent for, 52 percent against. The lede of the poll is even kinder to Paul, finding as high as 79 percent opposition to targeted killing in the United States. But that's a new question. On the old question, we've seen a real

Unmanned Flight

The Drones Come Home Unmanned aircraft have proved their prowess against al Qaeda. Now theyre poised to take off on the home front. Possible missions: patrolling borders, tracking perps, dusting crops. And maybe watching us all? By John Horgan Photograph by Joe McNally At the edge of a stubbly, dried-out alfalfa field outside Grand Junction, Colorado, Deputy Sheriff Derek Johnson, a stocky young man with a buzz cut, squints at a speck crawling across the brilliant, hazy sky. Its not a vulture or crow but a Falcona new brand of unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, and Johnson is flying it. The sheriff s office here in Mesa County, a plateau of farms and ranches corralled by bone-hued mountains, is weighing the Falcons potential for spotting lost hikers and criminals on the lam. A laptop on a table in front of Johnson shows the drones flickering images of a nearby highway.

Standing behind Johnson, watching him watch the Falcon, is its designer, Chris Miser. Rockjawed, arms crossed, sunglasses pushed atop his shaved head, Miser is a former Air Force captain who worked on military drones before quitting in 2007 to found his own company in Aurora, Colorado. The Falcon has an eight-foot wingspan but weighs just 9.5 pounds. Powered by an electric motor, it carries two swiveling cameras, visible and infrared, and a GPS-guided autopilot. Sophisticated enough that it cant be exported without a U.S. government license, the Falcon is roughly comparable, Miser says, to the Raven, a hand-launched military dronebut much cheaper. He plans to sell two drones and support equipment for about the price of a squad car. A law signed by President Barack Obama in February 2012 directs the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to throw American airspace wide open to drones by September 30, 2015. But for now Mesa County, with its empty skies, is one of only a few jurisdictions with an FAA permit to fly one. The sheriff s office has a three-foot-wide helicopter drone called a Draganflyer, which stays aloft for just 20 minutes. The Falcon can fly for an hour, and its easy to operate. You just put in the coordinates, and it flies itself, says Benjamin Miller, who manages the unmanned aircraft program for the sheriff s office. To navigate, Johnson types the desired altitude and airspeed into the laptop and clicks targets on a digital map; the autopilot does the rest. To launch the Falcon, you simply hurl it into the air. An accelerometer switches on the propeller only after the bird has taken flight, so it wont slice the hand that launches it. The stench from a nearby chicken-processing plant wafts over the alfalfa field. Lets go ahead and tell it to land, Miser says to Johnson. After the deputy sheriff clicks on the laptop, the Falcon swoops lower, releases a neon orange parachute, and drifts gently to the ground, just yards from the spot Johnson clicked on. The Raven cant do that, Miser says proudly. Offspring of 9/11 A dozen years ago only two communities cared much about drones. One was hobbyists who flew radio-controlled planes and choppers for fun. The other was the military, which carried out surveillance missions with unmanned aircraft like the General Atomics Predator.

Then came 9/11, followed by the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and drones rapidly became an essential tool of the U.S. armed forces. The Pentagon armed the Predator and a larger unmanned surveillance plane, the Reaper, with missiles, so that their operatorssitting in offices in places like Nevada or New Yorkcould destroy as well as spy on targets thousands of miles away. Aerospace firms churned out a host of smaller drones with increasingly clever computer chips and keen sensorscameras but also instruments that measure airborne chemicals, pathogens, radioactive materials. The U.S. has deployed more than 11,000 military drones, up from fewer than 200 in 2002. They carry out a wide variety of missions while saving money and American lives. Within a generation they could replace most manned military aircraft, says John Pike, a defense expert at the think tank GlobalSecurity.org. Pike suspects that the F-35 Lightning II, now under development by Lockheed Martin, might be the last fighter with an ejector seat, and might get converted into a drone itself. At least 50 other countries have drones, and some, notably China, Israel, and Iran, have their own manufacturers. Aviation firmsas well as university and government researchersare designing a flock of next-generation aircraft, ranging in size from robotic moths and hummingbirds to Boeings Phantom Eye, a hydrogen-fueled behemoth with a 150-foot wingspan that can cruise at 65,000 feet for up to four days. More than a thousand companies, from tiny start-ups like Misers to major defense contractors, are now in the drone businessand some are trying to steer drones into the civilian world. Predators already help Customs and Border Protection agents spot smugglers and illegal immigrants sneaking into the U.S. NASA-operated Global Hawks record atmospheric data and peer into hurricanes. Drones have helped scientists gather data on volcanoes in Costa Rica, archaeological sites in Russia and Peru, and flooding in North Dakota. So far only a dozen police departments, including ones in Miami and Seattle, have applied to the FAA for permits to fly drones. But drone advocateswho generally prefer the term UAV, for unmanned aerial vehiclesay all 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. are potential customers. They hope UAVs will soon become essential too for agriculture (checking and spraying crops, finding lost cattle), journalism (scoping out public events or celebrity backyards), weather forecasting, traffic control. The skys the limit, pun intended, says Bill Borgia, an

engineer at Lockheed Martin. Once we get UAVs in the hands of potential users, theyll think of lots of cool applications. The biggest obstacle, advocates say, is current FAA rules, which tightly restrict drone flights by private companies and government agencies (though not by individual hobbyists). Even with an FAA permit, operators cant fly UAVs above 400 feet or near airports or other zones with heavy air traffic, and they must maintain visual contact with the drones. All that may change, though, under the new law, which requires the FAA to allow the safe integration of UAVs into U.S. airspace. If the FAA relaxes its rules, says Mark Brown, the civilian market for dronesand especially small, low-cost, tactical dronescould soon dwarf military sales, which in 2011 totaled more than three billion dollars. Brown, a former astronaut who is now an aerospace consultant in Dayton, Ohio, helps bring drone manufacturers and potential customers together. The success of military UAVs, he contends, has created an appetite for more, more, more! Browns PowerPoint presentation is called On the Threshold of a Dream. Dreaming in Dayton Drone fever is especially palpable in Dayton, cradle of American aviation, home of the Wright brothers and of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Even before the recent recession, Dayton was struggling. Over the past decade several large companies, including General Motors, have shut down operations here. But Daytons airport is lined with advertisements for aerospace companies; an ad for the Predator Mission Aircrew Training System shows two men in flight suits staring stoically at a battery of computer monitors. The city is dotted with drone entrepreneurs. This is one of the few new industries with a chance to grow rapidly, Brown says. One of those entrepreneurs is Donald Smith, a bearish former Navy aircraft technician with ginger hair and a goatee. His firm, UA Vision, manufactures a delta-wing drone called the Spear. Made of polystyrene foam wrapped in woven carbon fiber or other fabrics, the Spear comes in several sizes; the smallest has a four-foot wingspan and weighs less than four pounds. It resembles a toy B-1 bomber. Smith sees it being used to keep track of pets, livestock, wildlife, even Alzheimers patientsanything or anyone equipped with radio-frequency identification tags that can be read remotely.

In the street outside the UA Vision factory a co-worker tosses the drone into the air, and Smith takes control of it with a handheld device. The drone swoops up and almost out of sight, plummets, corkscrews, loops the loop, skims a deserted lot across the street, arcs back up, and then slows down until it seems to hover, motionless, above us. Smith grins at me. This plane is fully aerobatic, he says. A few miles away at Wright-Patterson stands the Air Force Institute of Technology, a center of military drone research. A bronze statue of a bedraggled winged man, Icarus, adorns the entrancea symbol both of aviation daring and of catastrophic navigation error. In one of the labs John Raquet, a balding, bespectacled civilian, is designing new navigation systems for drones. GPS is vulnerable, he explains. Its signals can be blocked by buildings or deliberately jammed. In December 2011, when a CIA drone crashed in Iran, authorities there claimed they had diverted it by hacking its GPS. Raquets team is working on a system that would allow a drone to also navigate visually, like a human pilot, using a camera paired with pattern-recognition software. The labs goal, Raquet repeatedly emphasizes, is systems that you can trust. A drone equipped with his visual navigation system, Racquet says, might even recognize power lines and drain electricity from them with a bat hook, recharging its batteries on the fly. (This would be stealing, so Raquet would not recommend it for civilians.) He demonstrates the stunt for me with a square drone powered by rotors at each corner. On the first try the drone, buzzing like a nest of enraged hornets, flips over. On the second it crashes into a wall. This demonstrates the need for trust, Raquet says with a strained smile. Finally the quad-rotor wobbles into the air and drapes a hook over a cable slung across the room. Down the hall from Raquets lab, Richard Cobb is trying to make drones that hide in plain sight. DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has challenged researchers to build drones that mimic the size and behavior of bugs and birds. Cobbs answer is a robotic hawk moth, with wings made of carbon fiber and Mylar. Piezoelectric motors flap the wings 30 times a second, so rapidly they vanish in a blur. Fashioning bug-size drones that can stay aloft for more than a few minutes, though, will require enormous advances in battery technology. Cobb expects it to take more than a decade.

The Air Force has nonetheless already constructed a micro-aviary at Wright-Patterson for flight-testing small drones. Its a cavernous chamber35 feet high and covering almost 4,000 square feetwith padded walls. Micro-aviary researchers, much of whose work is classified, decline to let me witness a flight test. But they do show me an animated video starring microUAVs that resemble winged, multi-legged bugs. The drones swarm through alleys, crawl across windowsills, and perch on power lines. One of them sneaks up on a scowling man holding a gun and shoots him in the head. The video concludes, Unobtrusive, pervasive, lethal: micro air vehicles. What, one might ask, will prevent terrorists and criminals from getting their hands on some kind of lethal drone? Although American officials rarely discuss the threat in public, they take it seriously. The militant Islamic group Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, says it has obtained drones from Iran. Last November a federal court sentenced a Massachusetts man to 17 years in prison for plotting to attack Washington, D.C., with drones loaded with C-4 explosives. Exercises carried out by security agencies suggest that defending against small drones would be difficult. Under a program called Black Dart, a mini-drone two feet long tested defenses at a military range. A video from its onboard camera shows a puff of smoke in the distance, from which emerges a tiny dot that rapidly grows larger before whizzing harmlessly past: That was a surface-to-air missile missing its mark. In a second video an F-16 fighter plane races past the drone without spotting it. The answer to the threat of drone attacks, some engineers say, is more drones. The new field is counter-UAVs, says Stephen Griffiths, an engineer for the Utah-based avionics firm Procerus Technologies. Artificial-vision systems designed by Procerus would enable one UAV to spot and destroy another, either by ramming it or shooting it down. If you can dream it, Griffiths says, you can do it. Eventually drones may become smart enough to operate autonomously, with minimal human supervision. But Griffiths believes the ultimate decision to attack will remain with humans. Another Mans Nightmare Even when controlled by skilled, well-intentioned operators, drones can pose a hazardthats what the FAA is concerned about. The safety record of military drones is not reassuring. Since 2001, according to the Air Force, its three main UAVsthe Predator, Global Hawk, and

Reaperhave been involved in at least 120 mishaps, 76 of which destroyed the drone. The statistics dont include drones operated by the other branches of the military or the CIA. Nor do they include drone attacks that accidentally killed civilians or U.S. or allied troops. Even some proponents insist that drones must become much more reliable before theyre ready for widespread deployment in U.S. airspace. No one should begrudge the FAA its mission of assuring safety, even if it adds significant costs to UAVs, says Richard Scudder, who runs a University of Dayton laboratory that tests prototypes. One serious accident, Scudder points out, such as a drone striking a child playing in her backyard, could set the industry back years. If we screw the pooch with this technology now, he says, its going to be a real mess. A drone crashing into a backyard would be messy; a drone crashing into a commercial airliner could be much worse. In Dayton the firm Defense Research Associates (DRA) is working on a sense and avoid system that would be cheaper and more compact than radar, says DRA project manager Andrew White. The principle is simple: A camera detects an object thats rapidly growing larger and sends a signal to the autopilot, which swerves the UAV out of harms way. The DRA device, White suggests, could prevent collisions like the one that occurred in 2011 in Afghanistan, when a 400-pound Shadow drone smashed into a C-130 Hercules transport plane. The C-130 managed to land safely with the drone poking out of its wing. The prospect of American skies swarming with drones raises more than just safety concerns. It alarms privacy advocates as well. Infrared and radio-band sensors used by the military can peer through clouds and foliage and can evenmore than one source tells medetect people inside buildings. Commercially available sensors too are extraordinarily sensitive. In Colorado, Chris Miser detaches the infrared camera from the Falcon, points it at me, and asks me to place my hand on my chest for just a moment. Several seconds later the live image from the camera still registers the heat of my handprint on my T-shirt. During the last few years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, unmanned aircraft monitored Baghdad 24/7, turning the entire city into the equivalent of a convenience store crammed with security cameras. After a roadside bombing U.S. officials could run videos in reverse to track bombers back to their hideouts. This practice is called persistent surveillance. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worries that as drones become cheaper and more reliable, law enforcement agencies may be tempted to carry out persistent surveillance of U.S. citizens. The

Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures, but its not clear how courts will apply that to drones. What Jay Stanley of the ACLU calls his nightmare scenario begins with drones supporting mostly unobjectionable police raids and chases. Soon, however, networks of linked drones and computers gain the ability to automatically track multiple vehicles and bodies as they move around a city, much as the cell phone network hands calls from one tower to the next. The nightmare climaxes with authorities combining drone video and cell phone tracking to build up databases of peoples routine comings and goingsdatabases they can then mine for suspicious behavior. Stanleys nightmare doesnt even include the possibility that police drones might be armed. Whos Driving? The invention that escapes our control, proliferating whether or not it benefits humanity, has been a persistent fear of the industrial agewith good reason. Nuclear weapons are too easy an example; consider what cars have done to our landscape over the past century, and its fair to wonder whos in the drivers seat, them or us. Most people would say cars have, on the whole, benefited humanity. A century from now there may be the same agreement about drones, if we take steps early on to control the risks. At the Mesa County sheriff s office Benjamin Miller says he has no interest in armed drones. I want to save lives, not take lives, he says. Chris Miser expresses the same sentiment. When he was in the Air Force, he helped maintain and design lethal drones, including the Switchblade, which fits in a backpack and carries a grenade-size explosive. For the Falcon, Miser envisions lifesaving missions. He pictures it finding, say, a child who has wandered away from a campground. Successes like that, he says, would prove the Falcons value. They would help him feel a lot better about what Im doing.

As Spy Drones Come to the U.S., We Must Protect Our Privacy The U.S. government must shield its citizens from the multiplying eyes of surveillance drones By The Editors

Before the decade is out, there may be thousands more eyes in the sky. Unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones, are already a staple of modern warfare. Now they are set to take on a much larger role in the U.S. Congress has directed the Federal Aviation Administration to set rules by 2015 for how drones may be used in domestic airspace. These rules could open up the skies to unmanned vehicles of all typesfrom large surveillance drones used by the military to insect-size prototypes being developed in university laboratories. The technology promises to be immensely useful. Public safety agencies can use drones to survey wildfires, conduct search-and-rescue operations, or pursue heavily armed suspects. Farmers will use them to survey their fields; energy companies will fly drones over critical machinery. Still, drones also pose an immense threat to privacy. The proliferation of small, inexpensive aerial vehicles with video downlinks will dramatically alter the cost-benefit ratio of surveillance. No longer will law-enforcement agencies need to consider the expense and risk of operating a helicopter when gathering evidence. Consequently, law-enforcement agencies will have ample opportunity and motivation to deploy drones on open-ended sorties. It is not hard to imagine blanket campaigns that survey entire cities for backyard marijuana plants or even building code violations. Privacy advocates rightly worry that drones, equipped with high-resolution video cameras, infrared detectors and even facial-recognition software, will let snoops into realms that have long been considered private. The privacy threat does not just come from law enforcement, either. Paparazzi and private detectives will find drones just as easy to use as the cops. Your neighbor is not allowed go into your yard without your permissionwill he be able to keep a drone hovering just above it? Case law paints a hazy picture of how drones could be employed for surveillance. A 1989 Supreme Court decision ruled that police may use helicopters to peer into semiprivate areas say, the backyard of a homewithout first obtaining a warrant. Such speculative reconnaissance,

however, has been naturally limited by the costs of helicopter operations. Will the same law apply to unmanned drones, which are not similarly constrained? A more recent case poses troubling questions about access to the most sacrosanct spaces. In 2001 the Supreme Court ruled that police could not use thermal-imaging technology to gather evidence about the goings-on hidden inside a residence without first obtaining a warrant. The court reasoned that governmental use of a device that is not in general public usea thermal imagerconstitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment and therefore requires a judge's approval. Yet if unmanned aerial vehicles become as prevalent as manufacturers hope, one could argue that drones are exempt from that precedent. Already the faa has permitted a handful of law-enforcement agencies to operate drones on a short-term basis. The limited regulations accompanying those permits (which, thankfully, preclude attaching any weapons to the drones) are insufficient to protect the privacy of citizens. Perhaps this should not be surprising. The faa is not in the business of privacy protection. Its primary concern is with the safety of domestic airspace. No federal agency, in fact, can be held accountable if drones are not used responsibly and in a way that respects the Fourth Amendment. As such, Congress should proactively enact laws that confine domestic drones to reasonable, useful purposes. Several sensible ideas were proposed during the last session of Congress, including a bill that would have outlawed drone spying without a warrant and instituted important transparency and accountability measures for their use. But that bill failed to make it out of a subcommittee. The present Congress must be more active than its predecessor in heading off this clear and impending threat to personal privacy. Obama's Crackdown on Whistleblowers Tim Shorrock

March 26, 2013

(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) In the annals of national security, the Obama administration will long be remembered for its unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. Since 2009, it has employed the World War Iera Espionage Act a record six times to prosecute government officials suspected of leaking classified information. The latest example is John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer serving a thirty-month term in federal prison for publicly identifying an intelligence operative involved in torture. Its a pattern: the whistleblowers are punished, sometimes severely, while the perpetrators of the crimes they expose remain free. Research support provided by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute. Tim Shorrock, who has been contributing to The Nation since 1983, is the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of...The hypocrisy is best illustrated in the case of four whistleblowers from the National Security Agency: Thomas Drake, William Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis. Falsely accused of leaking in 2007, they have endured years of legal harassment for exposing the waste and fraud behind a multibillion-dollar contract for a system called Trailblazer, which was supposed to revolutionize the way the NSA produced signals intelligence (SIGINT) in the digital age. Instead, it was canceled in 2006 and remains one of the worst failures in US intelligence history. But the money spent on this privatization scheme, like so much at the NSA, remains a state secret.

The story goes back to 2002, when three of the whistleblowersLoomis, Wiebe and Binney asked the Pentagon to investigate the NSA for wasting millions and millions of dollars on Trailblazer, which had been chosen as the agencys flagship system for analyzing intercepted communications over a smaller and cheaper in-house program known as ThinThread. That program was invented by Loomis, one of the NSAs top software engineers, and Binney, a legendary crypto-scientist, both of whom began working for the NSA during the Vietnam War. But despite ThinThreads proven capacity to collect actionable intelligence, agency director Gen. Michael Hayden vetoed the idea of deploying the system in August 2001, just three weeks before 9/11. Haydens decisions, the whistleblowers told The Nation, left the NSA without a system to analyze the trillions of bits of foreign SIGINT flowing over the Internet at warp speed, as ThinThread could do. During the summer of 2001, when the system was blinking red with dangerous terrorist chatter (in former CIA Director George Tenets famous words), they say the agency failed to detect critical phone and e-mail communications that could have tipped US intelligence to Al Qaedas plans to attack. NSA intelligence basically stopped in its tracks when they canceled ThinThread, says Wiebe, sitting next to Binney at an Olive Garden restaurant just a stones throw from NSA headquarters in Columbia, Maryland. And the people who paid for it were those who died on 9/11. The NSA Four are now speaking out for the first time about the corporate corruption that led to this debacle and sparked their decision to blow the whistle. In exclusive interviews with The Nation, they have described a toxic mix of bid-rigging, cronyism and fraud involving senior NSA officials and several of the nations largest intelligence contractors. They have also provided an inside look at how Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the governments fourth-largest contractor, squandered billions of dollars on a vast data-mining scheme that never produced an iota of intelligence. That corruption was the heart of our complaintthe untold treasure spent on a program that never delivered, Drake explained to me one morning in Bethesda, Maryland, across the street from the local Apple Store where he now works. He wants it understood that the NSA Fours case was not primarily about President Bushs warrantless domestic surveillance program, as outrageous as that was. Some in the press think we blew the whistle on Trailblazer because, oh, it violated peoples rights, he said. Well, it didnt violate anybodys rights, or create any intelligence, because it never delivered anything. But theres a direct link between their case and domestic spying: the technology developed at the NSA to analyze foreign SIGINTincluding programs created for ThinThreadwas illegally directed toward Americans when the agency radically expanded its surveillance programs after the 9/11 attacks. In response, Drake, Wiebe and Binney have taken to the media to expose and denounce what they say is a vast and unconstitutional program of domestic surveillance and eavesdropping. By using the NSA to spy on American citizens, Binney told me, the United States has created a police state with few parallels in history: Its better than anything that the KGB, the Stasi, or the

Gestapo and SS ever had. He compared the situation to the Weimar Republic, a brief period of liberal democracy that preceded the Nazi takeover of Germany. Were just waiting to turn the key, he said. *** James Bamford, the worlds foremost authority on the NSA, said Americans should take Binney seriously. Remember, he was the equivalent of a general because of his rank at the NSA, he said. In terms of going public with their names and faces, the NSA Four rank as the most important whistleblowers in NSA history, he added. Obviously, I think theyre very credible. Because of their experience in some of the NSAs most secret programs, the NSA Four are indispensable to understanding the agencys unconstitutional operations, said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director for the ACLU. NSA is an extraordinarily powerful agency with sophisticated technology that is poorly understood by many experts. It operates behind a veil of secrecy that is penetrated only occasionally by whistleblowers like these. In 2011, the Pentagons Office of the Inspector General (OIG) declassified parts of its 2005 audit of Trailblazer and ThinThread, which was triggered by the NSA Fours complaint. Its report severely admonished the NSA for wasting its resources on Trailblazer (the amounts are redacted). It also found that the agency had overlooked fraud and abuse and modified or suppressed studies that put ThinThread in a positive light. The NSA, the Office of the Inspector General concluded, disregarded solutions to urgent national security needs. And in a chilling comment that foreshadowed the governments persecution of the whistleblowers, the OIG noted twice that some of the NSAers and contractors who came forward were in great fear of retaliation. Many people we interviewed asked not to be identified for fear of management reprisal, it stated. The OIG report is the governments only public response to the extraordinary charges made by the whistleblowers. The NSA would not comment on any aspect of this story. Neither would SAIC or any of the other contractors involved with Trailblazer. Eventually, one intelligence source responded to the most serious charge, but only if promised anonymity. Essentially, what theyre saying is that we missed 9/11, said a former high-ranking government official with intimate knowledge of the NSAs SIGINT capabilities. Thats absolutely bizarre. I mean, how hard is it to prove a negative? The only way I can respond is to violate a sacred oath I take very seriously, and I wont do that. In fact, none of the whistleblowers were convicted of leaking classified information. Yet all have paid dearly for speaking out. This is all about retaliation, reprisals, revenge and retribution, said Jesselyn Radack, the Government Accountability Project lawyer who represents the whistleblowers before the OIG. She describes the charges against Drake as ludicrous. Tom was not charged with disclosing classified material but retaining information for possible disclosure, she told me. In 2010, Eric Holders Justice Department indicted Drake on ten felony counts, including five under the Espionage Act, based primarily on Drakes conversations with a single reporter. Those

charges were dropped in 2011 after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of exceeding the authorized use of a computer. The FBIs investigation of the other three ended at the same time. But like Drake, they lost their security clearances and thus their ability to work in intelligence. None of the whistleblowers have any doubt about who is responsible for the intelligence failures. No NSA director did as much damage to the agency as Gen. Michael V. Hayden, Binney told me. Hayden is now a principal with the Chertoff Group, the intelligence advisory company led by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. His primary job there is advising government agencies and corporations about cybersecurity, which keeps him in constant contact with the NSA. The press office at the Chertoff Group never responded to my requests to interview Hayden, so I tracked him down myself. In February, after he made an appearance at George Washington University, I asked Hayden if the NSA would have been better off not wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on Trailblazer and going with its in-house system, ThinThread. In his first public comments on Trailblazer since 2005, Hayden admitted that the NSA and its contractors overreached. The agency outsourced how we gathered other peoples communications, he said. And that was a bridge too far for industry. We tried a moonshot, and it failed. But he wouldnt comment on ThinThread (which, as Drake wryly pointed out to me, did get to the moon). Last October, at a conference on cybersecurity at the National Press Club, I asked Hayden about the whistleblowers charges regarding the NSAs domestic surveillance program. At the mention of the term whistleblowers, he suppressed a smile. As a former NSA director, I can tell you there is no workforce in the federal government more conscientious about privacy and Fourth Amendment rights, he told me, avoiding any direct mention of his critics from the agency. But thats a trusting sort of thing, and I realize it doesnt have much purchase in America. The public, he added, must understand that the agency has a problem. To be good, NSA needs to be powerful, and frankly it needs to be a bit secret. The message was clear: people like the NSA Four should stay quiet. But heres the irony: Even though Trailblazer failed, the massive enterprise it created set the model for the wholesale privatization of national security work after 9/11. As I described in my 2008 book Spies for Hire, this tsunami of taxpayer largesse reached into every nook and cranny of the intelligence-industrial complex that had slowly been built over the 1980s and 90s to service the vast CIA and Pentagon needs for surveillance, reconnaissance and advanced IT. In the end, a handful of contractors earned at least $1.2 billion from Trailblazer, and probably several billion more, since huge amounts were squeezed from other parts of the NSA, including its detachments in the Army, Navy and Air Force. It was a feeding frenzy, recalls Drake. One incident in particular crystallized the greed and hubris that gripped the NSAs top officials at the time. It happened right after the 9/11 catastrophe, when Samuel Visner, a former SAIC executive who ran Trailblazer for the agencys SIGINT division, held a meeting with contractors working on ThinThread (one of them still works inside the NSA; he is the source for this anecdote). Now that Trailblazer was the NSAs chosen SIGINT project, the contractors were worried that they would be cut out of the money loop. But Visner assured them that, in the wake of the attacks, their worries were gone.

We can milk this thing all the way to 2015, he said, according to separate accounts by Drake, Binney and Wiebe, who heard it directly from the contractor. Theres plenty to go around. In 2003, Visner returned to SAIC as a director of its Intelligence, Security and Technology Group. Visner is now a vice president in charge of cybersecurity policy at CSC, one of the NSAs most valued contractors (neither CSC nor Visner would comment). *** Trailblazer marked a dramatic shift for the agency, away from small, government-led research projects that hired contractors only for specific functions to huge projects run by contractors who answer only to the senior leadership of the NSA. Since its origins during the Cold War, the NSA had led the world in encryption, computer and voice-processing technologies. But all of its development work was done by an elite corps of government scientists and mathematicians. Until the 1980s, virtually everything was done in-house, says Loomis, who spent much of his career in the agencys telecommunications and computer services directorate. As for contracting for development, he added, that did not happen. That began to change around the turn of the century, when the NSA was forced to wrestle with enormous technological changes. For most of its existence, the agency had been focused on radio and microwave signals traveling through the atmosphere. The telecom revolution and the Internet altered the game forever. Suddenly the NSA was deluged with digitized cellphone traffic and e-mail flowing across fiber-optic cables that were almost impossible to intercept. It was an explosion, Hayden told me at George Washington University. And if youre a signals intelligence organizationwe eavesdrop, right?if your technology isnt the technology of the target, then guess what you are? Deaf! Hayden was appointed director in 1999, when the agency was struggling to figure a way out of this conundrum. His solution was to turn away from the NSAs historic legacy and privatize. Hayden made a fateful choice, says Drake. If were not going to make it, were going to buy it. That was the mantra. Hayden couched his plan as transformation. Trailblazer, its centerpiece, involved turning the NSAs most precious asset, SIGINT analysis, over to the private sector, from the development to the operations stage. The idea was to use cutting-edge technologies to analyze intercepted cellphone and e-mail traffic for clues to plots against the country. But Drake, who had extensive experience as a contractor and in the private sector, says it was flawed from the start. *** In the early 1990s, after a stint in Air Force intelligence and the CIA, Drake was assigned to a top-secret NSA project called MINSTREL that was digitizing intercepted voice communications. But he came in as a contractor and his actual employer was the now-defunct GTE Government Systems. There, he encountered his first corruption, including massive cost overruns and fraud; in 1992, he reported GTE to the Pentagon hotline. Thats how I became a whistleblower, he told me (MINSTREL, like Trailblazer, was canceled without becoming operational). Drake later worked inside the NSA for Booz Allen Hamilton and other contractors before finding work in the late 1990s as a private consultant in Silicon Valley. He returned to the NSA in 2001 as a

member of the agencys senior executive service. As a result of these experiences, Drake knew that hiring big corporations to develop new technologies ran against the grain of the information revolution. Trailblazer was an industrial-age model so inappropriate for the digital age, he said. The model of innovation in the computer industry was very small teams, skunk teams, developing the next critical applications. And here we were going in the completely opposite direction. Thats because corporationsand their moles inside the NSAran Trailblazer from the start. The fix began in 2000, when Hayden hired Bill Black, a wily NSAer who had worked at the highest levels of SIGINT in Europe as Haydens deputy. For the previous three years, from 1997 to 2000, hed been working for SAIC, then a rising San Diego defense contractor with extensive contacts in the intelligence community. Blacks new job at the NSA was to carry out Haydens transformation plan by siphoning business to companies like his. To get the Trailblazer contract up and running, Black hired one of his closest associates from SAIC: Sam Visner, who had left the NSA in the mid-1990s to work as a contractor. Visner was a true believer. His father had been a scientist on the Manhattan Project during World War II, and according to his former associates, he saw Trailblazer as the twenty-first-century equivalent of the atomic bomb needed to win the war on terror. Haydens hiring of him and Black, the whistleblowers say, set the stage for SAIC winning the Trailblazer contract. In April 2001, the NSA awarded the first part of the contract to SAIC, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and TRW, which was absorbed into Northrop Grumman in 2002. Their job was to define the architecture, cost, and acquisition approach for the project, according to a 2001 NSA press release. The results of their deliberations were announced in September 2002, when the NSA, as recommended by the companies, awarded the prime contract, called the Technology Demonstration Platform, to SAIC. It was initially worth $280 million. SAICs team included Northrop Grumman, Boeing and CSCthe company where Visner now works. By this time, Drake was a senior change leader reporting to Maureen Baginski, who was the agencys director of signals intelligence and number three in the hierarchy, behind Hayden and Black. Drake sat in on many of the Trailblazer meetings and claims the concept setup was a scam. He told me that the four companies agreed secretly that the prime contract would go to SAIC, while they would divvy up big chunks of the subcontracting among themselves. Later, as a material witness for the Pentagons OIG, he provided investigators with hundreds of documents relating to the bidding and award process for Trailblazer; they remain classified, and Drake can talk about them only indirectly. Most crucial, he says, were statements he collected from NSA officials showing that agency leaders had told their procurement office to hand the award to SAIC. The orders came from the very top, Drake says. They just ensured it was weighted in a way to award it to SAIC and its subcontractors. That was the deal. I went over these details with a government procurement analyst who once worked for the Pentagons OIG and has had access to classified contracts. He could not comment on the record because of his current position in government, but was shocked at the evidence of collusion. Thats the fraud, waste and abuse right there, he said. Youre steering the contract to a favored client. Thats blatant and outright favoritism. The impropriety is apparent.

The primary showcase for Trailblazer was a large building leased by Northrop Grumman in the National Business Park next to the NSA. There the agency and its contractors showed their system off to congressional overseers and intelligence leaders. The sessions took on increasing urgency after 9/11. Basically, they took one whole portion of their facility to turn into a demonstration room, a showcase, Drake recalls. But thats all it was: show and tell, a dog and pony show. Very large screens, fancy computers stacked up, a directors place in the middle. But I have to tell you, there was nothing behind it. Congress and the NSA finally agreed. After millions of dollars in cost overruns, Trailblazer was quietly terminated in 2006 by the current NSA director, Gen. Keith Alexander. *** If Trailblazer was a massive corporate boondoggle, ThinThread was the embodiment of the skunk team approach that had made the NSA the crown jewel of US intelligence. It cost less than $3 million, was small enough to be loaded onto a laptop, and included anonymization software that protected the privacy rights of US persons guaranteed in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). And while Trailblazer employed hundreds of contractors, ThinThread was the work of less than a dozen NSA employees and a handful of contractors. It came out of the NSAs SIGINT Automation Research Center, or SARC, where Loomis was director of R&D. In the late 1990s, he began working on tackling the Internet and the rapidly growing use of cellphones and e-mail. I knew more and more intelligence and law enforcement targets would be making use of these cheap commodity electronics, Loomis told me, sitting in the living room of his Baltimore home. So I jumped in with both feet. The genius of the group was Bill Binney, Loomiss deputy at SARC. An amiable man who suffers from diabetes, Binney joined the NSA in 1966 while in the Army and began working as a civilian in 1970. In 1997, he was named technical director of SARCs World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. Thats when I started looking at the world, Binney told me. While the NSA brass and their corporate advisers believed the Internet could be tamed only by a massive corporate-run program, Binney found that cracking it was relatively simple. The secret was in the numbering system established by telecom providers: every phone has a number, every e-mail has an address, and every computer linked to the Internet has a unique identifier. The encryption systems from the past were so much more complex, he says. This was simple shit. ThinThread was basically three programs. The front end, analyzing incoming streams of Internet traffic, had been developed by Loomis. It could take massive amounts of input and reassemble it in a sensible order, he says. And then, with a minimum amount of bandwidth requirements, could provide it to whoever was interested in a particular topic and do it while accommodating all privacy concerns that are required by FISA. The middle portion was the anonymization software that hid the identities of US persons until there was sufficient evidence to obtain a warrant (Trailblazer had no built-in FISA protections). The back end, built by Binney, was the most powerful element of the system. It translated the data to create graphs showing

relationships and patterns that could tell analysts which targets they should look at and which calls should be listened to. Best of all, it was fully automated, and could even be remotely controlled, Binney says. But there was another crucial difference with the Trailblazer model: ThinThread did its automated analysis at the point of interception; Trailblazer downloaded everything flowing over the Internet and analyzed it after the fact with key words and phrases. Trailblazer made no distinction up front, says Binney. They didnt try to determine ahead of the interception what to listen to. They just took it all. This model of taking it all remains the NSAs modus operandi, and it is why, Binney and Wiebe say, the agency is building a massive data center in Utah. The ThinThread prototype went live in the fall of 2000 and, according to my sources, was deployed at two top-secret NSA listening posts. One was the Yakima Research Station in Washington State, which gathers electronic communications from the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East. The other was in Germany and focused primarily on Europe. It was also installed at Fort Meade. In addition, several allied foreign intelligence agencies were given the program to conduct lawful surveillance in their own corners of the world. Those recipients included Canada, Germany, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. ThinThread was basically operational, says Binney. Thats why we proposed early deployment in January 2001. As ThinThread was being tested, word spread throughout the intelligence community that the NSA had a cheap Trailblazer that could help with surveillance. One day, Charlie Allen, a legendary figure who was head of collections for the entire intelligence community under George Tenet, came to see it. Black, Baginski and Visner were given demonstrations as well. But Hayden never visited the SARC, says Binney. Not once. Yet on August 20, 2001at 4:30 in the afternoon, Loomis says, reading from his notes of the meetingBaginski informed him that ThinThread would not become operational. Why? It would have made Trailblazer meaningless, says Binney. During this time, Binney and Wiebe, who was working on the ThinThread team as a SIGINT analyst, were called in to describe their system to congressional oversight committee staff, in particular a GOP staffer named Diane Roark. Long concerned about the NSAs technical problems, she demanded that it keep ThinThread alive and provided funds to keep it going (she declined to be interviewed). According to the whistleblowers, the 2002 intelligence budget, which was signed by President Bush, included $9 million for ThinThread and an order to Hayden to install it at eighteen sites around the world considered the most critical for counterterrorism. But the NSA, they say, defied the spending directive (ironically, considering what happened after 9/11, Haydens general counsel told Loomis that ThinThread did not meet the agencys FISA requirements). Then came the shock of 9/11. With the entire intelligence community frantically working to find who was responsible, the SARC team tried to persuade Baginski to put ThinThread into operation. With each passing day, Wiebe e-mailed her on October 8, more and more information is coming out regarding the facts re what Al Qaeda is using for communications, yet

the only relevant weapon in your arsenal continues to sit on the sidelines 27 days after the events of September 11. Baginski, who is now the CEO of Summit Solutions, a contractor specializing in SIGINT interception, told me, Im not going to talk about it. But she did take action. According to Drake, Baginski approved a plan to plug ThinThreads automated analysis system into an enormous NSA database called PINWALE that included records of thousands of cellphone calls and e-mails. They found actionable intelligencelinks between individuals and organizationsthat had not previously been discovered or had not been shared before 9/11. Drake, who was ThinThreads program manager by this time, still cant talk specifics because the information remains classified; but he insists it could have alerted US intelligence to the 9/11 plot. And thats what caused them to finally shut ThinThread down, because of the severe embarrassment it could have caused, he told me. In the weeks after the attacks, NSAers became aware that Hayden had changed the rules of engagement by throwing out the warrants required for surveillance of US persons. As the public was to learn in December 2005, when the secret wiretapping was exposed in The New York Times, the NSA was sifting through oceans of cellphone and e-mail traffic from AT&T, Verizon and other carriers. This massive data-mining program was given a secret code name: Stellar Wind. It came as a shock to many NSA employees. People came to me and said, My God, theyre pointing our system toward the United States, recalls Drake. For Binney, the last straw came when he learned that the graphing software he had developed for ThinThread had been attached to the NSAs database to begin the hot pursuit of Al Qaeda suspectsbut without the privacy restraints he and Loomis had built in. They took the graphing software and began tracking relationships on a gargantuan scale, he told me. They considered it domestic intelligence. *** On October 31, 2001, seven weeks after 9/11, Binney and Wiebe walked out the NSAs doors for the last time. I couldnt take the corruption anymore, Binney told me. Loomis left too, taking a job with a nearby contractor. In September 2002, they signed an official letter of complaint to the Pentagon OIG that was joined by Roark, the House staffer. Drake, who stayed on at the NSA until 2008, testified as a material witness. When the OIG released its report in 2005, it exonerated the whistleblowers. The NSA, it concluded, was developing a less capable long-term digital network exploitation solution that will take longer and cost significantly more to develop than ThinThread. After they left the NSA, Binney, Wiebe and Loomis were granted permission to form a company and sell the analytical skills they had developed for the NSA and ThinThread to other government agencies. But they quickly found theyd been blackballed. All three told me the NSA contacted every agency approached by the whistleblowersincluding the Army Intelligence and Security Command and the National Reconnaissance Officeand persuaded them not to do business with the three. Weve been denied untold hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential income as a result, Wiebe told me. The three are considering a lawsuit against the NSA officials responsible. But redress is going to be difficult: in late March, Binney and Wiebe were informed by the Pentagons inspector general that their 2012 request for an

investigation into reprisals against whistleblower and a review of their clearances had been rejected. The alleged personnel actions occurredover a decade ago and are outside the scope of whistleblower provisionsof US law, the OIG said in a letter made available by their attorney, Jesselyn Radack (Drakes complaint is still outstanding). Meanwhile, the NSA Four watch in grim fascination as the crackdown on whistleblowers continues, and Congress and the Supreme Court approve laws legalizing the surveillance state theyve spoken out against. They see some hope in President Obamas recent order extending legal protections to intelligence whistleblowers. But like other observers, they are waiting to see if its implementation will have any effect. Without real protections, they say, accountability is impossible. When you permit something like Trailblazer and no heads roll except for the whistleblowers, what kind of message does that send to the American public? asked Loomis. Despite the recent setback, Binney and Wiebe remain determined to speak out against the surveillance state. Im trying to stir shit up, Binney told me. Im hoping they charge me, because that would get me into court and I could really talk about this in the open. Drake, for his part, has become a leading voice for civil liberties; on March 15 he delivered a powerful speech about whistleblowing at the National Press Club. Speaking in the same room where General Hayden haughtily dismissed his case last fall, he slammed a government that prefers to operate in the shadows and finds the First Amendment a constraint on its activities. The act of taking off the veil of government secrecy has more often than not turned truth-tellers and whistleblowers into turncoats and traitors, who are then burned, blacklisted and broken by the government on the stake of national security, he said. And yet I was saved by the First Amendment, the court of public opinion and the free pressincluding the strengths and growing resilience of the alternative media. Those rights of expression, he added, are the very cornerstone of all our liberties and freedoms. And that may be the most important lesson of all. No one except John Kiriakou is being held accountable for Americas torture policythough Kiriakou didnt torture anyone, he just blew the whistle on it. Read Peter Van Buren on the Obama administrations Protecting Torturers, Prosecuting Whistleblowers (Sept. 11, 2012; originally on TomDispatch.com). Brain scans can predict whether a criminal is likely to reoffend

Experts scanned anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in 96 prisoners The area is associated with decision-making and action In convicts the area showed 'low activity' in executive functioning skills

By Amanda Williams PUBLISHED: 10:41 EST, 26 March 2013

Scientists have found a way to predict whether convicted criminals are likely to re-offend by looking at their brain Neuroscientists claim to have found a way to predict whether convicted criminals are likely to re-offend by looking at their brain scans According to American imaging experts, convicts showing low activity in an area of the brain associated with decision-making and action are more likely to be arrested again. A team led by Kent Kiehl, a neuroscientist at the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, studied a group of 96 male prisoners shortly before they were due to be released. They scanned prisoners brains while they were carrying out computer tasks in which subjects had to make quick decisions and inhibit impulsive reactions. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to focus on activity in a section of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) - a small region in the front of the brain involved in motor control and executive functioning. They then followed the subjects for four years. Among the ex-criminals studied, those who had lower ACC activity during the quick-decision tasks were more likely to be arrested again after getting out of prison.

This was even after the researchers accounted for other risk factors such as age, drug and alcohol abuse and psychopathic traits, Nature.com reports.

According to American brain imaging experts, convicts showing low activity in an area of the brain associated with decision-making and action are more likely to be arrested again Men who were in the lower half of the ACC activity ranking had a 2.6-fold higher rate of rearrest for all crimes and a 4.3-fold higher rate for nonviolent crimes. The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1. Kiehl admits that more work is needed to prove the technique and added that low ACC activity could have a variety of causes impulsivity, caffeine use, vascular health, low motivation or better neural efficiency and not all of these are related to criminal behaviour. Why The Government Is Desperately Trying To Inflate A New Housing Bubble

The Federal government and Federal Reserve are trying to inflate another housing bubble to save the "too big to fail" banks from a richly deserved day of reckoning.

If we want to understand why the U.S. government is doing its best to inflate another housing bubble, we must start with the Devil's Pact partnership of the government and the "too big to fail" banks. Simply put, the TBTF banks would not exist without the Federal Reserve and Federal government bailouts, subsidies and protection from transparent marked-tomarket pricing of the banks' collateral and risk.

The basis if this partnership is simple: the banks' enormous profits and financial power have enabled them to capture the regulatory machinery of the government (the Central State) and the political machinery controlled by its elected officials.

To understand the true meaning of the housing bubble, we need to understand how banks reap outsized profits. In classic capitalism, banks earn profits by maximizing the allocation of capital. In practical terms, this means lending money to low-risk, high-growth, high profitmargin enterprises, and avoiding lending to high-risk, low-margin enterprises.

In the industrial era, banks reaped profits by funding large, centralized industrial corporations. In the post-industrial economy, banks began skimming huge profits from credit cards and other consumer loans. Mortgages remained a low-risk, low-yield business that operated more like a utility than an investment bank.

When domestic opportunities for profit shriveled in the stagflationary 1970s, U.S. banks went international, loaning billions of dollars to South American nations at high rates of interest. The money-center banks assumed that sovereign debt (i.e. loans to governments) were low-risk. These loans generated enormous profits for the banks, until the unthinkable happened: the debtor-nations defaulted on their sovereign debt.

The Federal government and the Federal Reserve had to step in and save the banks from the consequences of their faulty risk assessment and rapacious pursuit of high-risk, high-yield profits.

By the 1990s, the new knowledge economy corporations had little need for bank credit. Technology companies generated so much cash, they either didn't need bank loans or if they chose to borrow money, they did so via the corporate bond market. Having already tapped

almost every qualified borrower with a mortgage, auto loan or credit card, the big U.S. banks had once again run out of highly profitable markets to exploit.

The government and Fed-created housing bubble handed the big banks a new market to exploit: high-yield mortgages to marginally qualified buyers guaranteed by Federal agencies (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, VA, etc.), i.e. subprime mortgages.

Federal agencies loosened lending standards so those who by prudent risk-management would not qualify for mortgages were now able to borrow vast sums with little or no money down, and the Fed pushed interest and mortgage rates down to lows not seen in generations in the wake of the dot-com bust of 2000.

For PR purposes, this vast expansion of bank lending was sold as a high-minded extension of the "ownership society" (i.e. homeownership) to those households who had previously been denied the opportunity to become debt-serfs due to unfairly tight lending standards. In reality, the entire "ownership society" campaign masked the true intent, which was to open new and unexploited territory for the big U.S. banks to plunder.

Even better (from the bankers' point of view), loosened regulations and oversight enabled banks to carve up mortgages into tranches that were then bundled into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that could be peddled worldwide as "safe" investments for pension funds, townships, insurance companies, etc.

The housing bubble enabled big banks to skim tens of billions of dollars in profits from originating mortgages to marginal buyers and securitizing mortgages into MBS. This is the heart of what I call the Neocolonial Model of Financialization: rather than make risky sovereigndebt loans to international borrowers, the big U.S. banks came home and exploited the low-risk domestic housing/mortgage market.

When the bubble burst, as all speculative bubbles eventually do, the banks were rendered insolvent: their collateral (the mortgaged housing) had lost much of its value, and mortgages that had been sold as essentially risk-free were revealed as defaults waiting to happen.

The Fed and Federal government immediately stepped in to save their treasured partner, the parasitic banking sector, from righteously earned destruction. The bailouts, guarantees and backstops totaled about $23 trillion, roughly 150% of the entire American Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and roughly twice the 2008 value of all U.S. residential mortgages (almost $12 trillion).

The housing index has yet to decline to an inflation-adjusted pre-bubble level: valuations are still higher than they were before the bubble.

To enable the TBTF banks to once again skim billions in profits, the Federal government and Federal Reserve immediately began trying to reflate the housing bubble. Tax credits were lavished to new home buyers, mortgaged rates were driven even lower, and the Fed began buying $1+ trillion of private mortgages.

The first tax-credit frenzy faded once the credits expired, but the Fed's zero-interest-rate policy (ZIRP) gave investors no choice but to put their money in risky assets: stocks, high-risk corporate bonds or residential housing. As we can see in this year-over-year percentage chart of the Case-Shiller Index, these policies have sparked another spike up in housing prices (restricting inventory played a key role in this, of course).

As a result, the housing bubble is alive and well in markets such as Los Angeles:

If you have any doubts that the banking sector dearly loved the housing bubble, take a look at this chart and note that mortgage debt more than tripled during the bubble. For context on the enormity of that $8.2 trillion expansion of mortgage debt:that $8.2 trillion is three times the 2005 GDP of Europe's largest economy, Germany. (The GDP of Germany in 2005 was $2.7 trillion.)

Thanks to writeoffs and writedowns, mortgage debt has declined in recent years, but we need to remember that if pre-bubble growth trends in population and housing valuations had remained in place, total mortgage debt in the U.S. would be around $5 trillion, not $10 trillion. The $1 trillion writedown in mortgage debt is just the start; we only need to write down another $5 trillion to get back to a non-bubble level of debt.

Meanwhile, total consumer debt has barely budged. In other words, that $1 trillion reduction in mortgage debt has been offset with rising student loans, auto loans and other consumer debt.

The total debt load on U.S. households remains at bubble levels, more than twice the debt owed in 2000. Population growth since 2000 accounts for 9.7% of this additional debt, meaning that if debt had risen at pre-bubble rates, total debt would be around $6.5 trillion rather than $13 trillion.

Recall that adjusted income for most households has declined sharply since 2000.So the Fed's zero-interest rate policy is simply a holding action that enables over-indebted households to keep making their debt payments to the banks.

Many people claim the Federal government and Federal Reserve are trying to inflate a new housing bubble to trigger a new "wealth effect," i.e. people seeing their home equity rising once again will feel encouraged to borrow and blow money like they did in 2001-2008.

But if we look at current income (down) and debt levels (still high), there is little hope for a renewed wealth effect from housing. That leaves us with this conclusion:

The Federal government and Federal Reserve are trying to inflate another housing bubble to save the "too big to fail" banks from a richly deserved day of reckoning.

The Internet 'Narcissism Epidemic'

Don't let popularity set your standard. Bill Davidow Mar 26 2013

stuartpilbrow/Flickr

We are in the midst of a "narcissism epidemic," concluded psychologists Jean M. Twnege and W. Keith Campbell in their 2009 book. One study they describe showed that among a group of 37,000 college students, narcissistic personality traits rose just as quickly as obesity from the 1980s to the present. Fortunately for narcissists, the continued explosion of social networking has provided them with productivity tools to continually expand their reach -- the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Foursquare, and occasionally Google Plus.
Those who had high scores on grandiose exhibitionism tended to amass more friends on Facebook.

Evidence for the rise in narcissism continues to come up in research and news. A study by psychologist Dr. Nathan DeWall and his team found "a statistically significant trend toward narcissism and hostility in popular music" since the 1980s. Shawn Bergman, an assistant professor of organizational psychology at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina notes that "narcissism levels among millennials are higher than previous generations." Researchers at Western Illinois University measured two socially disruptive aspects of narcissistic personalities -- grandiose exhibitionism and entitlement/exploitativeness. Those who had high scores on grandiose exhibitionism tended to amass more friends on Facebook. Buffardi and Campbell found a high correlation between Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) scores and Facebook activity. Researchers were able to identify those with high NPI scores by studying their Facebook pages.

Elias Aboujaoude, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford, notes that our ability tailor the Internet experience to our every need is making us more narcissistic. He observes, "This shift from e- to i- in prefixing Internet URLs and naming electronic gadgets and apps parallels the rise of the self-absorbed online Narcissus." He goes on to state that, "As we get accustomed to having even our most minor needs ... accommodated to this degree, we are growing more needy and more entitled. In other words, more narcissistic." In virtual space many of the physical interactions that restrain behavior vanish. Delusions of grandeur, narcissism, viciousness, impulsivity, and infantile behavior for some individuals rise to the surface. Aboujaoude, in his book Virtually You, observes, "the traits we take on online can become incorporated in our offline personalities." Just as members of a mob get swept along by others' emotions, the same thing can happen to us when we get swept up in a virtual Internet mob.
Normalcy is a benchmark any narcissist should aspire to achieve.

Beyond the basic social media platforms that narcissists use to display themselves, there is a small but growing support industry they can turn to for help and advice. Article abound providing advice on how to build fan bases on Facebook and get books reviewed on Amazon. Services allow the purchase of page views, Youtube plays, and fake social media followers of all kinds. We suspect part of the rise in narcissism is being driven by Internet tools. What is clear is that social media platforms are frequently used by those with narcissistic tendencies to feed their egos. These same applications are used by millions of others to build their businesses, coordinate events, and maintain close ties with friends and families.
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Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?

Unfortunately, narcissists are setting many of the benchmarks for everyday users. Everyday users get caught up in popularity contests and experience anxieties; some report becoming depressed because they are being out-Twittered and are lacking in thumbs ups. Social media are an important part of the lives of hundreds of millions of users around the world. If you are one of them, maintaining perspective is important. Do not let narcissists set your standards. You may be lagging far behind in the social media rat race because your NPI (Narcissistic Personality Inventory) score is not high enough. The reason you may not have thousands of followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook is because you are normal. Normalcy is a benchmark any narcissist should aspire to achieve. Rand Paul: Cut Jail Sentences for Nonviolent Drug Offenders
Monday, 25 Mar 2013 11:18 AM

Sen. Rand Paul has joined with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy in introducing a bill that would allow judges to skirt mandatory minimum jail sentences for nonviolent drug crimes, according to The Washington Post. Civil rights groups say the sentences are often too strict and don't fit most drug-related crimes, a view that Paul apparently agrees with. I dont want to encourage people to do [drugs]. I think even marijuanas a bad thing to do, the Kentucky Republican said Sunday on Fox News. But I also dont want to put people in jail who make a mistake. There are a lot of young people who do this and then later on in their 20s they grow up and get married; they quit doing things like this. Paul noted that both Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush have admitted to using drugs in their past, and that strict drug laws could have put them behind bars. Look, the last two presidents could conceivably have been put in jail for their drug use, he said. Look what would have happened. It would have ruined their lives. They got lucky, but a lot of poor kids, particularly in the inner city, dont get lucky. They dont have good attorneys. They go to jail for these things, and I think its a big mistake. Many fiscal conservatives like Paul are supporting the bipartisan bill pushed by Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, in hopes of cutting some of the costs involved in keeping nonviolent criminals locked up.

The Day That TV News Died March 25, 2013 by Chris Hedges I am not sure exactly when the death of television news took place. The descent was gradual a slide into the tawdry, the trivial and the inane, into the charade on cable news channels such as Fox and MSNBC in which hosts hold up corporate political puppets to laud or ridicule, and treat celebrity foibles as legitimate news. But if I had to pick a date when commercial television

decided amassing corporate money and providing entertainment were its central mission, when it consciously chose to become a carnival act, it would probably be Feb. 25, 2003, when MSNBC took Phil Donahue off the air because of his opposition to the calls for war in Iraq. Donahue and Bill Moyers, the last honest men on national television, were the only two major TV news personalities who presented the viewpoints of those of us who challenged the rush to war in Iraq. General Electric and Microsoft MSNBCs founders and defense contractors that went on to make tremendous profits from the war were not about to tolerate a dissenting voice. Donahue was fired, and at PBS Moyers was subjected to tremendous pressure. An internal MSNBC memo leaked to the press stated that Donahue was hurting the image of the network. He would be a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war, the memo read. Donahue never returned to the airwaves. The celebrity trolls who currently reign on commercial television, who bill themselves as liberal or conservative, read from the same corporate script. They spin the same court gossip. They ignore what the corporate state wants ignored. They champion what the corporate state wants championed. They do not challenge or acknowledge the structures of corporate power. Their role is to funnel viewer energy back into our dead political system to make us believe that Democrats or Republicans are not corporate pawns. The cable shows, whose hyperbolic hosts work to make us afraid of self-identified liberals or self-identified conservatives, are part of a rigged political system, one in which it is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, General Electric or ExxonMobil. These corporations, in return for the fear-based propaganda, pay the lavish salaries of celebrity news people, usually in the millions of dollars. They make their shows profitable. And when there is war these news personalities assume their patriotic roles as cheerleaders, as Chris Matthews who makes an estimated $5 million a year did, along with the other MSNBC and Fox hosts. It does not matter that these celebrities and their guests, usually retired generals or government officials, got the war terribly wrong. Just as it does not matter that Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman were wrong on the wonders of unfettered corporate capitalism and globalization. What mattered then and what matters now is likability known in television and advertising as the Q score not honesty and truth. Television news celebrities are in the business of sales, not journalism. They peddle the ideology of the corporate state. And too many of us are buying. The lie of omission is still a lie. It is what these news celebrities do not mention that exposes their complicity with corporate power. They do not speak about Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, a provision that allows the government to use the military to hold U.S. citizens and strip them of due process. They do not decry the trashing of our most basic civil liberties, allowing acts such as warrantless wiretapping and executive orders for the assassination of U.S. citizens. They do not devote significant time to climate scientists to explain the crisis that is enveloping our planet. They do not confront the reckless assault of the fossil fuel industry on the ecosystem. They very rarely produce long-form documentaries or news reports on our urban and rural poor, who have been rendered invisible, or on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or on corporate corruption on Wall Street. That is not why they are paid. They are paid to stymie meaningful debate. They are paid to discredit or ignore the nations most astute

critics of corporatism, among them Cornel West, Medea Benjamin, Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky. They are paid to chatter mindlessly, hour after hour, filling our heads with the theater of the absurd. They play clips of their television rivals ridiculing them and ridicule their rivals in return. Television news looks as if it was lifted from Rudyard Kiplings portrait of the Bandarlog monkeys in The Jungle Book. The Bandar-log, considered insane by the other animals in the jungle because of their complete self-absorption, lack of discipline and outsized vanity, chant in unison: We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true. When I reached him by phone recently in New York, Donahue said of the pressure the network put on him near the end, It evolved into an absurdity. He continued: We were told we had to have two conservatives for every liberal on the show. I was considered a liberal. I could have Richard Perle on alone but not Dennis Kucinich. You felt the tremendous fear corporate media had for being on an unpopular side during the ramp-up for a war. And lets not forget that General Electrics biggest customer at the time was Donald Rumsfeld [then the secretary of defense]. Elite media features elite power. No other voices are heard. Donahue spent four years after leaving MSNBC making the movie documentary Body of War with fellow director/producer Ellen Spiro, about the paralyzed Iraq War veteran Tomas Young. The film, which Donahue funded himself, began when he accompanied Nader to visit Young in the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Here is this kid lying there whacked on morphine, Donahue said. His mother, as we are standing by the bed looking down, explained his injuries. He is a T-4. The bullet came through the collarbone and exited between the shoulder blades. He is paralyzed from the nipples down. He was emaciated. His cheekbones were sticking out. He was as white as the sheets he was lying on. He was 24 years old. I thought, People should see this. This is awful. Former TV talk show host Phil Donahue poses for a photograph in downtown Los Angeles on Wed. April 23,2008. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel) Donahue noted that only a very small percentage of Americans have a close relative who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan and an even smaller number make the personal sacrifice of a Tomas Young. Nobody sees the pain, he said. The war is sanitized. I said, Tomas, I want to make a movie that shows the pain, I want to make a movie that shows up close what war really means, but I cant do it without your permission, Donahue remembered. Tomas said, I do too. But once again Donahue ran into the corporate monolith: Commercial distributors proved reluctant to pick up the film. Donahue was told that the film, although it had received great critical acclaim, was too depressing and not uplifting. Distributors asked him who would go to see a film about someone in a wheelchair. Donahue managed to get openings in Chicago, Seattle, Palm Springs, New York, Washington and Boston, but the runs were painfully brief.

I didnt have the money to run full-page ads, he said. Hollywood often spends more on promotion than it does on the movie. And so we died. What happens now is that peace groups are showing it. We opened the Veterans for Peace convention in Miami. Failure is not unfamiliar to me. And yet, I am stunned at how many Americans stand mute. The End of America In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship." "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage." The Obituary follows: America: Born 1776, Died 2012 It doesn't hurt to read this several times. Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the last Presidential election: Number of States won by: Obama: 19 Romney: 29 Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000 Romney: 2,427,000 Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million Romney: 143 million Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Obama: 13.2 Romney: 2.1 Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Romney won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income tenements and living off various forms of government welfare."

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase. If the governmental dependency phase were to include the somewhat productive side, law enforcement, firefighters, forest service, teachers, etc., not counting the bureaucracies and elected and appointed staffs, bloated as they are but still working, sort of, and paying something in taxes, then that number is closer to 70 percent of the entire population is on the dole of one sort or another. No the nation cannot survive long with such a disparity in those on the dole, those in the 1 percent wealthiest whose productivity is suspect; as the investments bear little resemblance to the investment patterns that turned on productive invention, technological innovation and raw manufacturing productivity. Today speculation, mergers and acquisitions provide little new wealth and no new productivity. Even in the high tech field productivity is more or less reduced to third world wage structures and the brains reserved for those few at the top. Innovation helps some in start-ups but few find longevity in the actual productive side of product development.

Craig B Hulet was both speech writer and Special Assistant for Special Projects to Congressman Jack Metcalf (Retired); he has been a consultant to federal law enforcement DEA, ATF&E of Justice/Homeland Security for over 25 years; he has written four books on international relations and philosophy, his latest is The Hydra of Carnage: Bushs Imperial War-making and the Rule of Law - An Analysis of the Objectives and Delusions of Empire. He has appeared on over 12,000 hours of TV and Radio: The History Channel De-Coded; He is a regular on Coast to Coast AM w/ George Noory and Coffee Talk KBKW; CNN, C-Span ; European Television "American Dream" and The Arsenio Hall Show; he has written for Soldier of Fortune Magazine, International Combat Arms, Financial Security Digest, etc.; Hulet served in Vietnam 1969-70, 101st Airborne, C Troop 2/17th Air Cav and graduated 3rd in his class at Aberdeen Proving Grounds Ordnance School MOS 45J20 Weapons. He remains a paid analyst and consultant in various areas of geopolitical, business and security issues: terrorism and military affairs. Hulet lives in the ancient old growth Quinault Rain Forest.