A WRITERS DELIGHT, SPIES AND WHISTLEBLOWERS!

(Gary S. Bekkum, Aljazeera, Evan Caminker)

(USA TODAY, Susan Reverby, Michael Dobbs)

(The Washington Post, Lesley Curwen, Frazer Chronicle)

 

This is what it is, do we fear terrorist bombers, or our own Federal Government, and it is what the question is about with regards to spies and whistleblowers. It’s almost like picking your own poison….. brand A or brand X.

 

Unlike whistleblowers in the United States, there has been a long history of spies all the way back to the American Revolution. The Cupler Ring was formed by Benjamin Tallmadge to infiltrate British controlled New York City in 1777, or early 1778. The Ring conducted covert activity with regards to troop location and movement until the end of the American Revolutionary War.

 

The British also had a spy, Benjamin Church, who, through infiltration reported American troop location, size and movement. There was also a double agent who must have sold information to the highest bidder, Edward Bancroft. Bancroft was a professional man, a doctor, scientist, writer, and by 1777 was a spy for the British under the direction of Silas Deane.

 

Sometime in 1777 Bancroft became acquainted with Benjamin Franklin, and fearing more a war between England and the French, he became a double agent for the America’s and Franklin. After the Revolutionary war, Bancroft became a wealthy businessman, and it wasn’t until the 1890’s that his spying activity was revealed in letters and documents.

 

Edward Snowden’s leak about the National Security Agency, (NSA), and the fact that American intelligence agencies were retrieving all sorts of cell phone, and internet information could be one of the most sensational leaks in American spydom history.

 

Is Snowden following in the footsteps of other great leakers, Wiki-leakers Julian Assange and his purported cohort Wiki dumper, Bradley Manning, and Pentagon Papers exposer, Daniel Ellsberg? Or maybe Snowden is following Peter Buxtun, the exposer of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, or maybe W. Mark Felt, known only as deep throat and his leaking of United States President Richard Nixon and his multitude of political and unlawful shenanigans about all sorts of evil doings.

 

Now Edward Snowden is about to embark on the journey of his life through the judicial system that is the United States Government, the intelligence community as well as the U.S. Military. Without much doubt, Snowden will come out the other side resembling several pounds of hamburger. As my friend and yours, Senator Lindsey Graham stated…..”I hope we follow Mr. Snowden to the ends of the earth to bring him to justice,” Snowden must have done something really terrible for Mr. Graham to make such an adamant statement.

 

I mean…..gee Mr. Graham, I don’t want to know who you’re talking to, or about what, when, or where, it’s your own business…..and maybe that is the crux of the problem that I have about this harvesting of information, what Lindsay Graham talks about is his own business…..and nobody else’s.

 

There are laws and regulations all over the place that aim at protecting our privacy, he you’ve gotta stand 5’ behind a person at the bank, or the airport, and Walgreens pharmacy…..yet its okay for the National Security Agency listening to me talking to my broker…..”I don’t think so.”  

 

 

BUT THIS DEAL GOES DEEPER

I remember the afternoon of September 11, 2001, my wife crying, walking on the sidewalk in front of our house lamenting about how “our world would never be the same”. I remember my next door neighbor, Martin, talking about how the government would really “ramp up efforts to control” what people would have access to, and how some of our rights would be no more and Martin, at the time was 79 years old.

 

People today are so busy providing for their families that much of what government floats down the stream of life goes unnoticed until somebody literally blows the whistle. So when Senator Lindsey Graham talks about going to the ends of the earth for justice…..I think we’d all better read between the lines a bit and discover what really is going on.

 

People have blown the whistle,  dumped, or exposed information down through the years to varying degrees, from a cook spitting in prepared food, to handicapped people not have access to all sorts of public as well as private entrant and exit facilities. Of course the higher the exposure, or dumpage, the higher the steaks for the dumper!

 

Government needs oversight, without proper oversight, this kind of thing goes on all the time, (spying on American citizens by Americans). What we have here is some joker way up high that has made a decision to listen to the American public because they (whoever they are), felt the action germane to the intelligence and protection of the United States.

 

And these people, without exception pull an Oliver North each and every time, by that I mean they stand unabashed and claim that their actions were in the best interest of the United States of America. I get so sick and tired of these people…..they are part of the problem, not the solution of what troubles this country.

 

I don’t particularly care what some old hatchet faced Senator, I won’t name her…..Diane Feinstein, says when she is questioned about the NSA listening in and recording all sorts of my personal information. Oh wait, “we’ve been reassured that the Federal Government will ONLY take a limited amount of private info,” like my neighbor used to say…..YA, RIGHT!

 

You know what…..since September 11, 2001 there has been a total of 44 incidents of whistle blowing in the United States for all kinds of transcriptions. Since 1971, according to my sources, there were 16 listed incidents of people who thought transgressions in the private sector or public sectors were serious enough to come forward and face the disdain of government or private company, and the probable loss of their position.

 

A POSSIBLE CO-CULPIRT HERE

I have a Verizon phone, I have a Time Warner bundle…..land line phone, television and computer…..and I now wonder about the security of them all. I fully expect one day while I’m blogging for one of those scary faces to suddenly come on my computer and frighten the living hell out of me…..”I ain’t lyun”.

 

Have you ever seen the National Security Agency’s building, it’s huge…..I’ve only seen pictures, but trust me, the complex is one worthy of an agency that can snoop anywhere it wants. For me, the aspect of challenging a governmental agency with the firepower that the NSA obviously has would be a challenge I frankly would not be interested in.

 

 

Obviously Microsoft, Yahoo, Paltalk, You Tube, Skype, AOL, Verizon, Google, Facebook and Apple didn’t feel the need to take on the challenge either, as they allowed the NSA to troll and collect our personal data from their data banks.

 

The seeming ease that NSA was allowed to gather this information begs to question exactly what kind of drugs these public carriers of information and connecting services that they sell were on. I’m 69, so I don’t give much of a crap, my life really for all intents and purposes is over…..and I can tell you that the NSA would have a really hard time getting any information from me…..(ARE YOU TAKING THIS DOWN?

 

The next time that the NSA comes calling, Microsoft, Yahoo, Paltalk, You Tube, Skype, AOL, Verizon, Google, Facebook, and Apple…..do what you do best, go public, grab a huge amount of free advertising, you’ll never need you’re marketing department again.

 

One thing that really bothers me, it actually bugs the crap out of me, in and among all this posturing by governmental agencies, both branches of government, and the antsy wiggling by departments throughout Capitol Hill and the intelligence community, why do they need to spy on us.

 

The United States surveillance and intelligence community of the country is handed an almost blank check to do their business. They collectively talk about how many incidents of terrorism here in the homeland has been identified, and stopped, yet there is a need for more terrorism watch.

 

Gee, to me it kind of sounds like an old term from a sports contest, whenever a team ran up the score it was called PILING ON, is that what our government is doing to us…..you know, come to think about it…..it’s exactly what it feels like…..and it’s getting to the point where I can’t breathe…..how about you?

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!