US Army declares war on press freedom

I never saw this site before. It looks pretty straight up though.

LINK

The Cyber Warfare specialists of Fort Huachuca, operating well outside the authority of the US Constitution, censor the internet, run “sock puppet” websites spreading propaganda and disinformation, orchestrate smear campaigns against journalists and activists who are not under total control and use electronic countermeasures to silence freedom of speech.

The implications of this story, if true go way beyond Benghazi and IRS scandals. This is a whole new direction of Un-American
activities right up there with the NSA. I know a lot of Americans hold the military in high regard, in spite of the incredible political
tool they have become.

If there is some basis in fact, it smacks of a bunch of trainees fooling around. It sounds pretty amateur.
Still highly illegal

a reply to: UMayBRite!

I've read the entire article, and the only form of "proof" is:

"Computer security teams working with Veterans Today traced a pattern of attacks to Fort Huachuca, headquarters of the US Army Intelligence School."

That's it. So the proof is someone tried "hacking" them, and did a very poor job of doing it, and happened to be located in Fort Huachuca, which is 110 acres large.

I'll need more proof before I believe the US ARMY has independently declared a "War on Press Freedom"

Well, it's a Press TV thing, so that makes it suspect. It's an Iranian site if I remember correctly.

On the other hand, there doesn't have to be any kind of scandal for me to believe that the U.S. government is already doing this. I mean, after what they've done with Snowden, I don't believe a word of any scandal involving a journalist or U.S. official until I've researched the situation in depth, and half the time even then I come to the conclusion that everybody's doing it, it's just that this person happened to get caught.

I know the government's doing all this and probably more of the above. Propaganda isn't propaganda unless it's a total lie, after all. There's a lot of shades of gray in that.

a reply to: UMayBRite!

This doesn't make sense our military would never betray us. Now if it's Homeland Security, the cops, etc. different story.

a reply to: UMayBRite!

It's PressTV. Fort Huachuca is pretty well known for a "Secret" base. LOL.

And they teamed up with the kooks of Veterans Today as well? I'd be surprised if "The Onion" didn't pick up this story and polish it up some.

a reply to: TDawgRex

This one really does smack of propaganda for the stupid people. All the way around.

a reply to: UMayBRite!

Welcome (belatedly) to ATS, Always nice to see fresh young people coming in to give us geezers a shot of life.

Maybe I can help a little. PressTV is an official organ of the Islamic government of Iran, completely controlled by the government. It's up to you whether you'd like to call it a "news" source, or a "propaganda" source. The source that PressTV relies on in it's article is Veterans Today. That site also has it's share of critics. Consider one critical article written in January, 2011 found in the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center (a group with it's own critics.)

Gordon Duff, the senior editor and chairman of the board at VT, is a prolific proponent of these anti-Israel conspiracy theories, including the Wikileaks claims. Though he does occasionally write on issues and policies that directly affect American veterans (he claims to be a Marine Vietnam veteran), most of his ammo is reserved for churning out articles that claim 9/11 was a U.S./Israel conspiracy and that Israel controls the U.S. government. According to Duff and VT contributors like author and attorney Jeff Gates, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a civil rights watchdog group, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a lobbying group, are Zionist-controlled fronts for Israeli intelligence operations.

In December, Duff claimed that “insiders at the ADL” admitted that Israel was behind Wikileaks, perhaps a slam at an ADL piece a few days earlier. In that article, the ADL pointed out that many of the conspiracy theories about Israel and Wikileaks “are being promulgated by … anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist” Gordon Duff. Marilyn Mayo, a director at the ADL Center on Extremism, told Hatewatch that Duff did not speak to anyone at the ADL and, like other conspiracy theorists, he “makes information up and presents it as the truth.” Indeed, Duff claimed that the ADL website was “loading up with warnings and attacks” defending Wikileaks and Assange. But the ADL’s website claims nothing of the sort and Duff provides no evidence that the “ADL source” he says he is quoting actually exists.

VT has its supporters — check the comments (some virulently anti-Semitic) on any of its articles — but also detractors. A contributor at Burn Pit, a discussion list maintained by American Legion members, refuses to comment or answer questions about articles at VT. In early 2010, the blogger said that, according to VT, “9-11, just like everything else that has happened in the past 50 years to the detriment of the US and the world, is nothing short of the fauilt [sic] of an international cabal of Jews, which is my second reason for never replying to VT nonsense.”

www.splcenter.org...

None of the above proves that the article is factually erroneous, but when a questionable site relies on a second questionable site, and both are connected by a common hate, we have to look much more closely. Allow me to spend just a couple of minutes on that.

Ft. Huachuca? The US Army Cyber Command is at Fort Belvoir, VA. The Information Operations Command is also at Belvoir. So is the Army Intelligence and Security Command.

Finally, there is NETCOM. Yep, they're at Ft Huachuca, all right. What's their mission?

Mission: NETCOM/9th SC(A) plans, engineers, installs, integrates, protects and operates Army Cyberspace, enabling Mission Command through all phases of Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental and Multinational operations.

They're network managers, installers, a lot of hardware work. The descriptions for all these commands are here:
www.arcyber.army.mil...

[Just found some new stuff] huachuca.army.mil... That's the web site for Ft. Huachuca. If you click on the units, you'll get sent to their web pages, EXCEPT for Intelligence and Security Command, Training Doctrine and Support where I got an SSL warning. Possible? Maybe, but from the little I knew about them they left it to other groups to go "offensive" on communications.

(Just as a personal note, if I was still in the service, I'd probably be assigned to INSCOM. At least that was the new name for the group I was with.)

Huachuca looks pretty doubtful, but look at what else is said in the PressTV article:

By definition, the US Army is a terror organization.

By definition, the US Army is controlled by a foreign government that may well represent a “clear and present danger” to the security of the United States.

Thus, by definition as outlined in Federal Statute, the actions of these intelligence and psychological warfare commands are, technically, acts of insurrection and, by definition, potentially treason, a capital crime punishable by life imprisonment and even death.

By definition, the US Army is at war with America.

By definition, the US Army is the American Gestapo.

By definition, the US Army is involved in racketeering and extortion.

By definition, the US Army is guilty of mail and wire fraud and conspiracy.

The PressTV article was written by Gordon Duff, the editor and site manager for Veterans Today. He cites himself as the source for the information?

I was going to go through the rest of the article for other facts, but I've had enough. I can't believe in this article, but perhaps others can.

With respect,
Charles1952

Press TV. Enough said.

As others, I was a little frustrated with all the allegations-without-proof/sources...
But, this story is not far from one that was published just a tad over a year ago, about General Keith Alexander, called The Secret War.

.

originally posted by: UMayBRite!
I never saw this site before. It looks pretty straight up though.

LINK

The Cyber Warfare specialists of Fort Huachuca, operating well outside the authority of the US Constitution, censor the internet, run “sock puppet” websites spreading propaganda and disinformation, orchestrate smear campaigns against journalists and activists who are not under total control and use electronic countermeasures to silence freedom of speech.

The implications of this story, if true go way beyond Benghazi and IRS scandals. This is a whole new direction of Un-American
activities right up there with the NSA. I know a lot of Americans hold the military in high regard, in spite of the incredible political
tool they have become.

If there is some basis in fact, it smacks of a bunch of trainees fooling around. It sounds pretty amateur.
Still highly illegal

About five years into the Iraq war the Pentagon got permission to form its own central intelligence gathering organization, including trained surveillance agents who could operate within the general public anywhere. Iraq was used as the first staging point for the spy school, which included American and Israeli trainers and of course Arabs from various parts of the Middle Eastern origins (i.e. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran).

But the NSA also has an obscure branch that performs electronic surveillance (phone tapping) and activity reports on military targets and is ideologically oriented. I cannot remember the name of that department now, but I know it exists because I made a call to my wife and some guy answered using the department acronym, stated his first name and asked, "how can I help you sir?" When I looked up the acronym the guy used to identify, it was a section of the NSA used to spy on persons considered a concern to the military/pentagon. I had a clearance and was involved in political activities during my tenure in the Army in western Europe and especially after discharge. That began in the early to mid 70s and continued beyond, but the phone incident took place more recently during the Iraq war when I was a peace activist. I also wrote a letter to Pres. Bush critical of policies that closed mosques in the US and criminalized views and speech (public or private) not aligned with his ideological dogma.

In my opinion, the mass surveillance programs (and there are many) of the NSA, Pentagon and dozens of departments of HLS, has many layers and is principally purposed to detect and manage belief systems and ideological inferences which do not jive with the aggressive status-quo of the government.

It is also used to manage terrorist activity to the advantage of the US government in concert with Pakistan and other governments. As Seymour Hirsch pointed out, the US has deep covert relationships with terrorist groups in Lebanon and may actually give funding and material support to such groups without their knowledge.

Investigations have also drawn evidence that the Israeli government has given covert support to terrorist groups in the Palestinian occupied territories as a hedge against their disputed right to conduct harsh security initiatives in civilian populations.