Dianne Feinstein launches scathing attack on CIA over torture cover up

[Paul Rigby]

Is Feinstein trying to divert attention from the NSA scandals ? I really can't figure her out, she has been a staunch defender of the American Security State and a foreign policy hawk.

Snowden, Feinstein, CIA, NSA: the internal war

by Jon Rappoport

March 11, 2014

http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2014/0...ernal-war/

Senator Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, blows up.

She claims the CIA made efforts to sabotage her Committee's investigation of illegal CIA interrogation/torture of detainees.

The CIA vehemently denies it did anything wrong.

So a new front in the internal war opens up.

The key fact here is: Feinstein's Committee has been carrying on this investigation of the CIA for SEVERAL YEARS. It is preparing a 6000-page report.

For several years, the CIA has been aware of the coming storm.

The damage to its reputation will be large.

What does an agency like the CIA do when faced with such a problem? It tries to mount a major distraction.

Here is one hypothesis to consider:

The distraction was Edward Snowden.

Yesterday, I wrote a piece titled, "Is Edward Snowden lying?" It laid out a case that Snowden was actually still working for his former employer, the CIA, when he was handed a treasure trove of NSA documents by CIA pros.

Thus, casting a very bright light of blame on a different intell agency, the NSA.

The CIA wasn't hoping to get away clean on its torture program. But it was hoping to maintain a degree of parity with the NSA, within the US intelligence complex.

The CIA didn't want to be the odd man out with a scandal of enormous proportions on its hands. It wanted company.

For decades, the turf war over federal funding and importance has been going on, between CIA and NSA. At the CIA, for the past several years, the prospect of taking a dagger, for its torture program, and suffering the consequences, has been grim.

Absorbing public shame as the dirty little brother in the US intell nexus, while big brother, the NSA, appeared relatively clean, was too horrible to contemplate.

So the Snowden operation was launched.

Dianne Feinstein has now shown which side she's onand for whom she might be operating as a surrogate. She excoriates Snowden as a traitor, defends the NSA, and blasts the CIA with a charge of trying to torpedo her Committee's investigation.

The NSA stays silent, while privately rejoicing that the CIA is taking the heat recently reserved for it, the NSA.

In this war, there are no real winners. There is only the shifting of blame, and the hope that the enemy takes more hits. If not, then each side can console itself with the knowledge that everyone's hands are shown to be dirty.

Nothing about these events minimizes the importance of the documents Snowden's press surrogates have released, or the importance of true findings about the CIA's torture program.

But this internal war does highlight how destructive and amoral agencies and operatives of the federal government can be, even toward each other, and how low they will go.

Also highlighting the enormous rotting superstructure called the federal government, which continues to move further along in controlling our lives, while it claims to be only concerned about "the greatest good for the greatest number."

Is the NSA manipulating the stock market?

By Jon Rappoport
March 20, 2014
http://www.nomorefakenews.com

Trevor Timm of the Electronic Freedom Frontier dug up a very interesting nugget. It was embedded in the heralded December 2013 White House task force report on spying and snooping.

Under Recommendations, #31, section 2, he found this:

"Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate financial systems."

Timm quite rightly wondered: why were these warnings in the report?

Were the authors just anticipating a possible crime? Or were they reflecting the fact that the NSA had already been engaging in the crime?

If this was just a bit of anticipation, why leave it naked in the report? Why not say there was no current evidence the NSA had been manipulating financial systems?

Those systems would, of course, include the stock market, and all trading markets around the world.

Well, there is definite evidence of other NSA financial snooping. From Spiegel Online, 9/15/13:

"The National Security Agency (NSA) widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions, according to documents seen by SPIEGEL."

"The NSA's Tracfin data bank also contained data from the Brussels-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a network used by thousands of banks to send transaction information securely...the NSA spied on the organization on several levels, involving, among others, the [NSA] agency's 'tailored access operations' division..."

The NSA's "tailored access operations" division uses roughly 1000 hackers and analysts in its spying efforts.

The next step in all this spying would naturally involve penetrating trading markets and, using the deep data obtained, manipulate the markets to the advantage of the NSA and preferred clients.

The amount of money siphoned off in such an ongoing operation would be enormous.

"Looking over the shoulder" of Wall St. insiders would be child's play for NSA.

Ditto for predicting political events that would temporarily drive markets down and provide golden opportunities for highly profitable short selling.

Like drug traffickers and other mobsters, the NSA could invest their ill-gotten gains in legitimate enterprises and reap additional rewards.

And if the Pentagon, under which the NSA is organized, requires heavy amounts of money for off-the-books black budget ops, what better place to go than their own NSA?

All in all, when you operate the biggest spying and data-gathering operation in the world, the opportunities abound. Yes, knowledge is power, when the distinctions between legal and illegal are brushed off like like a few gnats on a summer day.