At 02:17 AM 7/7/00 -0500, John Kelsey wrote:
>The other possibility is that the bigger parties occasionally get a tidbit
>of useful information from Echelon on their political rivals, irritating
>journalists about to make them look bad, or similar stuff.
Duncan Campbell made a presentation to the German Bundestag
yesterday in a closed session:
http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/special/ech/6895/1.html
What Ducan told them about interception capabilities reportedly
"raised eyebrows," whether in feigned surprise at what the snoops
have been long-known to do or what journalists and news consumers
can do as they, too, gain access to technologies once limited to spies
and cpomplicitous officeholders and intel budget boosters.
Orchestrated leaks don't have the insider cachet, and political/publicity
value, if news consumers can get the dirty laundry directly. The recent
suicide of John Millis, staff director of the House Committee on Intelligence,
may be linked to his leaking too much about technological snooping
capabilities. Maybe more on that from Wayne Madsen.
And suggestions by the Wash Post that Bill Gertz at the Wash Times is
telling too many intel secrets, may be linked to the spin, budget-boosting
and recruiting campaign called The Year of Intelligence, which, in turn
seems linked to the increasing foreign interest in Echelon and beyond-
Echelon programs to defend US intellectual property -- the most valuable
of which is secret, by design and by Potemkin-inflation.
None of the hearings on Echelon and Beyond are going to tell the
public much except that the information being gathered is far too
important for the public to know, that it is the political ideology of
secrecy which shall prevail, as ever, and if a keeper of the secrets
breaks that vow suicide is certain.
If Duncan can only tell what he knows in closed session, then the
threat of his suicide looms.
