New DNI: Overseeing Aggression Abroad, Repression at Home

[Jan Klimkowski]

Change you can believe in?

Nah - the same old shit served up by the military-multinational-intelligence-complex and its new puppet leader, the oh-so-smooth Obama.

Clapper, 69, is a close ally of current Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a former CIA Director under Poppy Bush and an architect of the Iran-Contra coverup. Currently the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Clapper replaced Stephen A. Cambone in 2007, a crony of former Secretary of Defense, the unindicted war criminal Donald Rumsfeld.

Like many retired military officials who leverage national "service" as entrée to the lucrative world of outsourced corporate spying, Clapper was the Chief Operating Officer for Detica DFI, a British intelligence and security firm that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the scandal-tainted BAE Systems.

According to a blurb on the firm's web site, "Detica specialises in collecting, managing and exploiting information to reveal actionable intelligence." Doubtless, Clapper found himself right at home.

Last October, the British high-tech news magazine The Register, revealed that Detica and Lockheed Martin had secured a multi-billion pound contract with the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the U.K.'s National Security Agency for work on a domestic snooping project called "Mastering the Internet." That top secret program is currently developing systems and methods for extracting intelligence from huge volumes of surveillance data generated by online services.

Clapper has no problem with sub-contracting torture.... sorry, interrogation...

Clapper has been deeply involved in the synergies between agencies and contractors that make such counterinsurgency campaigns possible, and has worked for and advised many of the companies that profit from Obama’s intelligence wars. Moreover, as someone with close ties to industry, Clapper is comfortable with contractors at the highest level of U.S. intelligence, including the extremely controversial area of interrogations.

In a 2007 incident that I recount in my book, Clapper was asked by a Senate committee (which had the scandal of Abu Ghraib on its mind), to explain in writing the “proper role” of contractors in interrogation. “I believe it is permissible for contractors to participate in detainee interrogation, as long as they comply with the policies and guidance which govern DOD military and civilian interrogators,” he replied. Surprisingly, Mike McConnell, who was Bush’s DNI and a contractor himself, answered quite differently, telling the same committee: “I can’t imagine using contractors for anything like that.”