The War On Secrecy

Here is a "must read" article from Russ Baker's "Who, What, Why" which includes some fascinating information on the activities (often illegal) linking private corporations to government agencies and their admitted use of propaganda techniques to ensure that their nefarious dealings remain "under the radar".
The Saga of Barrett Brown: Inside Anonymous and the War on Secrecy

*Side note: for those who don't know Mr. Baker, he is the author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, and since you are on ATS, I'm sure you'll enjoy the read!

This, for me, is the ultimate conspiracy. It boils down to the "you can't handle the truth" ideology that exists in governments calling themselves democracies. In essence, this usually means we are running an extremely lucrative racket syphoning your tax dollars into our bank accounts, and do not want you to know about it!

The article starts with the story of Barrett Brown, but takes us down the rabbit hole he uncovered which reveals the levels to which corporations and government agencies are willing to go to protect their racket.

I'll do my best to summarize...

The Barrett Brown case is simply the latest in a string of prosecutions in which the government pursues anyone involved in making information “liberated” from governmental or corporate entities easily accessible to the public.

The Obama administration’s assault on accountability is dual-pronged: attack the messenger (as in the case of Brown, WikiLeaks, even New York Times reporters) and attack the source (Bradley Manning, John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, etc.). In fact, seven of those sources have been indicted as traitors under the 1917 Espionage Act during the Obama years alone—more than double the “espionage” charges against whistleblowers by all previous presidential administrations combined.

I know, nothing new so far, but it is startling that in a government supposedly run "by the people", anyone who tries to educate the people about the actions of their government are deemed traitors... indeed, the truth IS the enemy!

Now for the good stuff...

Officially unrelated to these charges is the real nut of the government’s dispute with Brown: his personal initiative known as ProjectPM.

ProjectPM is a crowd-sourced research effort to study e-mails pilfered by Anonymous from military and intelligence contractor HBGary and to post these raw, primary-source documents to a website where readers can edit and contribute further information.
Then, to use these documents to map out the relationships between private contractors and the federal government that form our current national security state.

*bold mine*

The whole story begins with a revenge operation on HBGary following claims n a Financial Times article to have uncovered the identity of three members of Anonymous and threatening to publish them.

Although this was an operation taken purely out of revenge against a smug opponent, important data emerged from the leaked e-mails, including evidence that a number of corporate actors, identified in the e-mails as “Team Themis,” were conspiring to commit a range of crimes..

This is the crucial part, and goes to show just how much influence big business has on government. (If, in fact they are not one and the same!)

The obvious news here was that federal contractors were concocting such unethical and possibly illegal plans to smear and discredit Americans. But more importantly, they had been solicited to do so by some of America’s most powerful entities who were engaged in an information war against their critics (and, by extension, the public).

The Chamber is the primary DC lobbying arm of America’s largest corporate interests, such as Goldman Sachs, Chevron and Texaco. It lobbies politicians for “pro-business” trade and industrial policy, and spends more money on a yearly basis than any other lobbying organization in the country.

*bold mine*

The hackers and ProjectPM researchers soon hit additional paydirt. They discovered that the corporate security cowboys were also pitching a plan of disinformation and sabotage against WikiLeaks, which had publicly claimed it was in possession of a similar document cache from Bank of America (BoA). And these revelations hinted at more to come.

So, WikiLeaks, which was already no friend of governments worldwide for their role in exposing truth, was going to become the victims of an all out propaganda campaign because of information they potentially had on Bank of America. Again, the question is: "what was Bank of America so afraid we would find out?".

In a nation operating under the rule of law, one might presume that exposure of the “Team Themis” conspiracy would prompt official investigations of some sort, even if the proposed activities were in the planning stages. But the e-mails reveal a different role for the Department of Justice (DOJ).

What they show was that the DOJ actually suggested to Bank of America that it hire a public relations firm associated with, yes, you guessed it, "Team Themis" which would help run a concerted propaganda campaign against WikiLeaks. If we are to judge the way the mainstream media has attacked WikiLeaks, it would appear the money was well spent!

As one of the leading software contractors for the Departments of State, Justice, Homeland Security, and Defense, as well as the nation’s 16 spy agencies, ManTech International (parent company of HB Gary) has seen its yearly revenue rise by more than 600% between 2001-2010. ManTech is so embedded with the national security state that its employees are often placed inside the military units they support.

*bold mine, to emphasize the interlacing of private corporate interests within the agencies who decide where to spend our tax dollars... and yes, that reads: 16 spy agencies! (Just who they are spying on and who they are protecting is exactly the point of this article.)

Well, this post is already long enough, but I believe the point is made.

The article continues to show that these firms and government agencies are bypassing the law to access personal information and create a database on every citizen of the planet. They are also experts in the use of "sock-puppets" as another tool in their propaganda campaign against their own citizens.

A final little diddy, for those of us who are perplexed as to how the brutal repression of protests in certain dictatorships in the Middle East were ignored by our mainstream press:

And these initiatives appear to be just the tip of the iceberg. Other evidence points to American PR firms using digital sabotage techniques against dissidents from Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, whose U.S.-friendly monarchies happened to be their clients.

Money well spent!

The final point in this very interesting article points to the recent "Chinese hacking scandal" and how it will be used to push these tactics even further... never let a good event go to waste.

The ultimate question is: "Can you handle the truth?" and "Who gets to decide?"

Enjoy and discuss,

the Billmeister