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<blockquote data-quote="Billybob" data-source="post: 2406999" data-attributes="member: 1294"><p>Interesting history...</p><p></p><p>The first congressman to battle the NSA is dead. No-one noticed, no-one cares.</p><p></p><p>He asked questions never asked or answered since the start of the Cold War: What was Americas intelligence budget? What was the purpose of the CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies and programs? Were they succeeding by their own standards? Were taxpayers getting their moneys worth? Were they making America safer?</p><p></p><p>Those were exactly the questions that the intel apparatus did not want asked. The Church Committee focused on excesses and abuses, implying that with the proper reforms and oversights, the intelligence structures could be set right. But as the Pike Committee started pulling up the floorboards, what they discovered quickly led Rep. Pike and others to declare that the entire intelligence apparatus was a dangerous boondoggle. Not only were taxpayers getting fleeced, but agencies like the NSA and CIA were a direct threat to Americas security and democracy, the proverbial monkey playing with a live grenade. The problem was that Pike asked the right questionsand that led him to some very wrong answers, as far as the powers that be were concerned.</p><p></p><p>It was Pikes committee that got the first ever admissionfrom CIA director William Colbythat the NSA was routinely tapping Americans phone calls. Days after that stunning confession, Pike succeeded in getting the head of the NSA, Lew Allen Jr., to testify in public before his committeethe first time in history that an NSA chief publicly testified. It was the first time that the NSA publicly maintained that it was legally entitled to wiretap Americans communications overseas, in spite of the 1934 Communications Act and other legal restrictions placed on other intelligence and law enforcement agencies.</p><p></p><p>It was also the first time an NSA chief publicly lied to Congress, claiming it was not eavesdropping on domestic or overseas phone calls involving American citizens. (Technically, legalistically, the NSA argued that it hadnt liedthe reason being that since Americans werent specifically targeted in the NSAs vast data-vacuuming programs in the 1970s, recording and storing every phone call and telex cable in computers which were then data-mined for keywords, that therefore they werent technically eavesdropping on Americans who just happened to be swept up into the wiretapping vacuum.)</p><p></p><p>Pike quickly discovered the fundamental problem with the NSA: It was by far the largest intelligence agency, and yet it was birthed unlike any other, as a series of murky executive orders under Truman at the peak of Cold War hysteria. Digging into the NSAs murky beginnings, it quickly became clear that the agency was explicitly chartered in such a way that placed it beyond legal accountability, out of reach of the other branches of government. Unlike the CIA, which came into being under an act of Congress, the NSAs founding charter was a national secret...</p><p></p><p><a href="http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-the-nsa-is-dead-no-one-noticed-no-one-cares/" target="_blank">http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-the-nsa-is-dead-no-one-noticed-no-one-cares/</a></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Billybob, post: 2406999, member: 1294"] Interesting history... The first congressman to battle the NSA is dead. No-one noticed, no-one cares. He asked questions never asked or answered since the start of the Cold War: What was Americas intelligence budget? What was the purpose of the CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies and programs? Were they succeeding by their own standards? Were taxpayers getting their moneys worth? Were they making America safer? Those were exactly the questions that the intel apparatus did not want asked. The Church Committee focused on excesses and abuses, implying that with the proper reforms and oversights, the intelligence structures could be set right. But as the Pike Committee started pulling up the floorboards, what they discovered quickly led Rep. Pike and others to declare that the entire intelligence apparatus was a dangerous boondoggle. Not only were taxpayers getting fleeced, but agencies like the NSA and CIA were a direct threat to Americas security and democracy, the proverbial monkey playing with a live grenade. The problem was that Pike asked the right questionsand that led him to some very wrong answers, as far as the powers that be were concerned. It was Pikes committee that got the first ever admissionfrom CIA director William Colbythat the NSA was routinely tapping Americans phone calls. Days after that stunning confession, Pike succeeded in getting the head of the NSA, Lew Allen Jr., to testify in public before his committeethe first time in history that an NSA chief publicly testified. It was the first time that the NSA publicly maintained that it was legally entitled to wiretap Americans communications overseas, in spite of the 1934 Communications Act and other legal restrictions placed on other intelligence and law enforcement agencies. It was also the first time an NSA chief publicly lied to Congress, claiming it was not eavesdropping on domestic or overseas phone calls involving American citizens. (Technically, legalistically, the NSA argued that it hadnt liedthe reason being that since Americans werent specifically targeted in the NSAs vast data-vacuuming programs in the 1970s, recording and storing every phone call and telex cable in computers which were then data-mined for keywords, that therefore they werent technically eavesdropping on Americans who just happened to be swept up into the wiretapping vacuum.) Pike quickly discovered the fundamental problem with the NSA: It was by far the largest intelligence agency, and yet it was birthed unlike any other, as a series of murky executive orders under Truman at the peak of Cold War hysteria. Digging into the NSAs murky beginnings, it quickly became clear that the agency was explicitly chartered in such a way that placed it beyond legal accountability, out of reach of the other branches of government. Unlike the CIA, which came into being under an act of Congress, the NSAs founding charter was a national secret... [url]http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-the-nsa-is-dead-no-one-noticed-no-one-cares/[/url] [/QUOTE]
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