The real targets are top U.S. government officials, judges and military officers, senators and representatives and their staffs, even down to the district level. The source for this is the totally-credible NSA leaker Russ Tice, who was a key source for the first, explosive 2005 New York Times report on the Bush Administration's illegal warrantless wiretap program, the program which has now been continued and expanded by Obama, as Glenn Greenwald and the London Guardian continue to expose. Russ Tice is only the second of the many Snowdens whom Lyndon LaRouche has said will follow.
Tice said the following, and more, in a June 19 interview with Peter B. Collins on his program website.
The following incomplete transcription of the interview can be found on the Zerohedge website.
Tice: Okay. They went after—and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things—they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and [judiciary committees]. But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of—heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court, that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. ["That's what happened to Hillary," Lyndon LaRouche commented.] They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House—their own people. They went after antiwar groups. They went after U.S. international—U.S. companies that that do international business, you know, business around the world. They went after U.S. banking firms and financial firms that do international business. They went after NGOs that—like the Red Cross, people like that that go overseas and do humanitarian work. They went after a few antiwar civil rights groups. So, you know, don't tell me that there's no abuse, because I've had this stuff in my hand and looked at it. And in some cases, I literally was involved in the technology that was going after this stuff. [Describes the technology.]
Collins: Now Russ, the targeting of the people that you just mentioned, top military leaders, members of Congress, intelligence community leaders and the ... intelligence committees, and then executive branch appointees. This creates the basis, and the potential for massive blackmail.
Tice: Absolutely! And remember we talked about that before, that I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on. Now here's the big one. I haven't given you any names. This was is summer of 2004. One of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with, with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator from Illinois. You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives right now, would you? Its a big white house in Washington, D.C. That's who they went after. And that's the President of the United States now.
EIR transcribed a subsequent section as follows:
Tice: "And they went after—I could give you names of a bunch of different people that they went after, that I saw! The names and the phone numbers of Congress. Not only the names, but what looked like staff people too, and the staff in not only their Washington offices, but back home in the Congressional—you know, the little offices they have in their home state offices and stuff like that. This thing is INCREDIBLE, what NSA's done. They simply turned themselves, in my opinion, into a rogue agency that has J, Edgar Hoover capabilities, on a monstrous scale, on steroids."
At the same time, more Snowden documents simultaneously printed in the London Guardian and Washington Post today, show that Obama's statement that NSA activities domestic "do not involve listening to people's phone calls, do not involve reading the e-mails of U.S. citizens or U.S. residents, absent further action by a Federal court," are total lies. So are the repeated statements by Obama, DNI Clapper and NSA head Gen. Alexander, that the program is under supervision of judges and there's nothing to worry about. The actual decisions are made by NSA analysts, just as Snowden said. The function of the short, vaguely-worded decisions of the FISA court, reproduced in the two newspapers, is at best to guide the decisions the analysts make on their own.
They can intercept any communication between someone inside the United States and someone they "believe" is outside the country. A person "whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-U.S. person."
Any communications between persons inside the United States and outside the United States, they can read, keep, and use as they like. If they "inadvertently" intercept communications between two people both in the United States, they can of course read them. They can then keep them up to five years, if they believe that any of a broad array of criteria are met, including: "if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity."
[The statement that analysts decide on their own whom to wiretap, should of course be interpreted that their actual orders as to whom to blackmail are made in such a way as to leave no paper-trail, or "no fingerprints," as it is said.]
In sum, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) knew what he was talking about when he asked Eric Holder on June 6, "could you assure to us that no phones inside the Capitol were monitored of members of Congress?" and then, later in the same hearing, asked the same question about the Justices of the Supreme Court.
