Cass Sunstein and CIA Director at Time of the Leak are the Advisers Fixing the “Crisis” Caused by Snowden Psyop (archive)

(archived from December 13, 2013)

by Scott Creighton

UPDATE: See update at end of article

UPDATE 2: See recent revelations about the Sunstein group’s recommendations. Here’s a hint : keep spying and collecting data.

UPDATE 3: Sunstein group recommended telecom companies collect and hold data themselves. See quote at end of article

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Sunstein “government can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes,”

The Manufactured Hero Edward Snowden psyop is coming to a dramatic conclusion. While Sibel Edmonds is exposing Glenn Greenwald as the money-grubbing fraud that he is with help from a virtual army of Twitter pit-bulls (keep at it you guys), I happened to run across something new that should help put it all into a slightly clearer perspective.

This latest development along with the good work of Sibel Edmonds on this matter, should make the Manufactured Hero saga of Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald perfectly clear as nothing more than a psyop designed to ready the public mind to accept this year’s version of Big Business’ wet-dream… CISPA.

No two ways about it now. No question. We are in deep deep deep doo-doo folks. And Sunstein agent Greenwald is shoveling just as fast as he can.

 

I’m not going to rehash all the reasons I have for thinking that this entire episode was a fabricated piece of artificial reality TV put on in order to swing the general public behind a new piece of legislation or two that will effectively take the place of the corporate wet-dream that was CISPA last year.

• The Curious Timing of the Snowden “Leak” and Obama’s Formation of the PCLOB – Laying the Groundwork for CISPA
• The Missing Motive of the Snowden Psyop: CISPA (yes… CISPA)

I’m not going to go into how the narrative was custom designed to make everyone hate/fear the NSA making us ready “for the discussion” about how to privatize much of the department’s responsibilities, handing them over to Big Business like those 800 companies that were begging for CISPA last year and taking road trips to D.C. pressing congress to pass it just a month before “Edward Snowden” showed up.

“I’ll (Obama) be meeting with them (PCLOB) and what I want to do is to set up and structure a national conversation not only about these two programs but also about the general problem of these big data sets because this is not going to be restricted to government entities,” Politico

Come on: a high school flunkie security guard rising to the top of some CIA station overseas suddenly develops a conscience and decides out of the blue to turn whistle-blower? His “pole dancing superhero” girlfriend who to this day has simply vanished? His taking off to Hong Kong to hide from national spooks a block away from CIA headquarters in a country practically run by the CIA? Then his amazing vanishing act for over a month in a tiny transit hub in Moscow where not one of the hundreds of reporters ever saw him or any of the travelers or workers there? The only photo of him supposedly in Russia is of the back of his head? He hides from reporters in Russia as they gathered by the hundreds 20 feet from the conference room where he supposedly had a meeting? And just for giggles, don’t forget the guy in Russia helping “Edwardo” stay hidden, just happened to help Hillary Clinton run her little color revolution attempt before their latest election.

• Snowden Psyop: Reporters left Transit Hub a While Ago. They Know He’s Not There

And now of course we can add Glenn Greenwald’s “checkbook journalism” to the sordid saga. How exactly is it that Glenn can trip the light fantastic with a reported 50,000 to 1 million “stolen or leaked” SUPER SECRET documents belonging to the NSA… and he’s still alive? Still free to roam about selling them off bit by bit to various MSM “news” outlets? That’s to say nothing of Glenn’s new pro-CISPA globalist billionaire sugar daddy.

• Glenn Greenwald Cashes In: CISPA Backing eBay Founder Sets Him Up with His Own Network Oct. 2013

What do you think your life expectancy would be if you had 10 of those you were trying to shop around? Hm?

Not only is he still alive and banking the bucks, but the intrepid Mr. Greenwald and his publicists are negotiating his book and film deals, readying themselves to “Zero Dark Thirty’ the Snowden psyop for posterity’s sake of course.

Yesterday the honorable Jeremy Scaghill went over to the Huffington Post to promote the official story of the bin Laden killing. Scagboy is a partner of Mr. Greenwald, don’t ya know.

Well, let’s just say there’s enough reason to believe we need not believe the official narrative of the Snowjob Affair. I mean, that’s too say nothing of the fact that his big revelations were already well known because real whistle-blowers, the non-invisible kind, told us everything Snowden supposedly leaked long before Glenn cooked up his little deal.

But this is all “old news”. You guys come here for new news. Fresh, ripe off the vine news.

You want it? You got it.

Who is currently working in the Obama White House to hash out those new “reforms” to the domestic spying apparatus and overhauling the NSA operation as a result of the Snowden Psyop?

Well, lets let the main stream media tell you since I’m nothing more than a conspiracy theorist:

“A White House-appointed task force is to recommend an overhaul of the National Security Agency, including changing the controversial bulk phone record collection and giving it civilian leadership, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The panel of experts called the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology was called in August in response to the public revelations of the NSA’s mass electronic surveillance by whistleblower Edward Snowden.” RT Dec. 13

“Statement by the Press Secretary on the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology – On August 9, President Obama called for a high-level group of experts to review our intelligence and communications technologies.  Today the President met with the members of this group: Richard Clarke, Michael Morell, Geoffrey Stone, Cass Sunstein and Peter Swire.” White House press release Aug. 2013

That’s right folks… the guy who helped create the “cognitive infiltration” technique for use steering alternative movements in nefarious directions on behalf of the ruling elite, Cass Sunstein, is one of the five advisers coming up with the “fix” to the Edward Snowden crisis.

Cass hails from the University of Chicago, home of neo-liberalism and our current president. He is married to Samantha Power, Obama’s brutal regime changer in Libya and currently on his National Security advisory team.

But Mr. Sunstein has another dubious talent and career focus which I think BEGS us to delve into it a little more. Pardon the long quote and the Wiki reference, but it is well sourced.

“Sunstein co-authored a 2008 paper with Adrian Vermeule, titled “Conspiracy Theories,” dealing with the risks and possible government responses to false conspiracy theories resulting from “cascades” of faulty information within groups that may ultimately lead to violence. In this article they wrote, “The existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be.” They go on to propose that, “the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups”,^[30] where they suggest, among other tactics, “Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.”^[30] They refer, several times, to groups that promote the view that the US Government was responsible or complicit in the September 11 attacks as “extremist groups.”

The authors declare that there are five responses a government can take toward conspiracy theories: “We can readily imagine a series of possible responses. (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help.” However, the authors advocate that each “instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs and benefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. However, our main policy idea is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of the groups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4) and (5).”

Sunstein and Vermeule also analyze the practice of recruiting “nongovernmental officials”; they suggest that “government can supply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them into action from behind the scenes,” further warning that “too close a connection will be self-defeating if it is exposed.”^[30] Sunstein and Vermeule argue that the practice of enlisting non-government officials, “might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves. There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however. The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts.” Wikipedia

Let’s understand this.

Domestic surveillance CERTAINLY falls under the rubric of “the government’s antiterrorism policies” so don’t come back at me with “oh, he’s talking about “truthers” Scott”

Wrong. He’s talking about ANYTHING that interferes with their current agenda whatever the case may be. And CISPA, the failed remake of our entire domestic security spying infrastructure, certainly qualifies as part of their War on Terror”

The idea behind cognitive infiltration is to take a targeted group who think in a similar matter about a given topic, say 9/11 or CISPA, and gently nudge them back into “rightthink” . Take Jon Gold for instance in the Truth Movement. Perfect example.

Now here we have a major crisis at hand. It wasn’t the Snowden psyop that was the crisis, that was the fix.

The CRISIS involved getting a piece of legislation passed through congress that the VAST majority of the American people didn’t want last year thanks to a bunch of “conspiracy theorists” who actively worked to expose it’s fascist nature to the rest of society.

But there were 800 major corporations who really really wanted to see these reforms in our domestic infrastructure take place largely because it puts immense power in their hands to marshal the internet anyway they deem fit to.

In fact, they sent their PR rock stars to D.C. just weeks prior to the Snowden “leaks” affair to push their bought and paid for congressmen ($65 million in contributions last year to pro-CISPA legislators)

So, the CRISIS involved how to get the alternative community on board with these new reforms. Answer?

enlisting non-government officials, “might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves.

Glenn Greenwald is basically offering up the rebuttal to those who question the need to “have the discussion between giving up some freedoms in exchange for security”. Who else would have similar clout with the anti-globalist, pro-rights groups? Greenwald markets himself simultaneously as an anti-establishment libertarian as well as a socialist … covering all the bases of those fringe type folks who make up the majority of the counter-culture activists here in the States. Greenwald’s credibility was artificially manufactured as his near immediate rise in the alternative journalism world was facilitated by almost weekly appearances on clearly controlled op sites like the Huffington Post and Democracy NOW!

Looking back, it kinda reminds me of little “LOVE MALALA!!!”

Let’s take a minute and look at the rest of this panel of 5 who are preparing the fix to the Snowden Psyop:

“Michael Joseph Morell was the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency and served as acting director twice in 2011 and from 2012 to 2013. Morell retired from his post on August 9, 2013” “He also managed the staff that produced the Presidential Daily Briefings for President George W. Bush” “Bush’s briefer during the September 11, 2001 attacks, and has been quoted as saying, “I would bet every dollar I have that it’s al Qaeda.” “a trusted asset to President Barack H. Obama in the Osama Bin Laden raid on May 2, 2011″

“Geoffrey R. Stone is an American law professor. He is currently the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School.”

Peter Swire is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress… was special assistant to the president for economic policy, serving in the National Economic Council under Lawrence Summers.”

As if handing over all this Snowden justified “reform” to the likes of “cognitive infiltration” Sunstein and CIA guru “I’ll bet it was al Qaeda” Morell wasn’t bad enough, there’s Richard Clarke.

“Clarke released his newest book, Cyber War, in April 2010. In April 2012, Clarke wrote an op-ed in the New York Times addressing cyberattacks. In stemming cyberattacks carried out by foreign governments and foreign hackers, particularly from China, Clarke opines that the U.S. government should be authorized to “create a major program to grab stolen data leaving the country” in a fashion similar to how the U.S. Department of Homeland Security currently searches for child pornography that crosses America’s “virtual borders.” Moreover, he suggests that the president of the United States could authorize agencies to scan Internet traffic outside the United States and seize sensitive files stolen from within the United States“

“Clarke is currently Chairman of Good Harbor Consulting and Good Harbour International, two strategic planning and corporate risk management firms; an on-air consultant for ABC News, and a contributor to the Good Harbor Report– an online community discussing homeland security, defense, and politics. He is an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School“

Here’s a guy who was Clinton and Bush I’s “terrorism czar” who repeatedly stresses his talking points that Bush II should have known that al Qaeda had plans to bring down Towers I and II and Building 7 in an obvious controlled demolition but they were asleep at the wheel I guess… who also wants to give the President sweeping authority to sweep up whatever info he wants on the world-wide web in order to defend us from those dastardly Chinese … while he also JUST HAPPENS to run a consulting firm servicing Big Business, the types that want CISPA so bad they can taste it.

“CISPA had garnered favor from corporations and lobbying groups such as Microsoft, Facebook, AT&T, IBM, Apple Inc. , Intel, Oracle Corporation, Symantec, and Verizon and the United States Chamber of Commerce, which look on it as a simple and effective means of sharing important cyber threat information with the government. Google has not taken a public position on the bill but has shown previous support for it…” List of companies who have sent letters of support for CISPA since 2012

You starting to get the picture here?

Try this on for size:

In their most concerted response yet to disclosures by the National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Twitter and AOL have published an open letter to Barack Obama and Congress on Monday, throwing their weight behind radical reforms already proposed by Washington politicians.” The Guardian

“Jay Rockefeller (D WVA) has attached a cyber-security amendment (I attached it below)  to the NDAA 2014 bill in Congress to mandate that precautions be taken to protect America’s cyber infrastructure and private entities. Those of us who represent private entities, will soon find our free access to the internet eliminated. The fact that this internet control bill is attached to the NDAA is no accident because this means that dissidents, posting anti-government rhetoric on the internet, can be snatched off the street and held indefinitely for their “terrorist” views.” Blacklisted News

“The five-strong task force (Sunstein, Clark, Morell) is to submit its recommendations to the Obama administration on Saturday, but the document is not yet finalized, and it’s not clear how much of it the White House chooses to make public.” RT

As the corporate state makes ready their demands in response to the Snowden Psyop, think about all of this for a second:

The guy who was the head of the CIA at the time of the Snowden “leaks” leaves that office just a month prior to being put on Obama’s team to come up with the “radical reforms” needed in light of the Snowden affair.

The guy who has been calling for new “sweeping powers’ for the president to rule over the global internet is also tasked with helping come up with the reforms.

And finally, Cass Sunstein, a man who put forth the notion that the government should ban conspiracy theorists or charge them some sort of “tax” to stop them and use “non government actors” to influence alternative movements by feeding them deliberate disinformation, is also part of the president’s task force create all those radical reforms needed because of Edward Snowden and the non-government actor… Glenn Greenwald.

Now, in the past, some people thought I might have been reaching a bit when I wrote about the connections between the Snowden Psyop and Big Business’s DEMAND they get CISPA passed this year after it failed last year.

Do you remember how viciously those of us who raised questions about the validity of this whole affair were attacked across the board when we did? I was called an “Edward Snowden Truther” by Salon magazine (same corporation that Glenn Greenwald got his start with. hmmm). Even so-called ‘alternative” journalists like Lindorf and Tarpley railed against anyone who made mention of any questions regarding the ridiculous Snowden story (kinda like Rivero rails against those who question the official story of the Pentagon on 9/11)

In my years of doing this stuff I have found that when there is such a rapid, rabid universal reaction to questions about anything being brought up, there is usually something to those questions. But that’s just me.

We’ve come full circle. The Snowden reforms are nearly ready. Big Business is voicing their approval as we speak. And the authors of all this new “CHANGE” are some of the most controversial figures in the White House today.

The Snowden Psyop was always intended to give those 800 companies exactly what they wanted: a population ready to accept the radical reforms of CISPA that they rejected just a year before. They needed a “heroic looking” patsy and an alternative dissident movement approved salesman to pitch the plan and sway the public and so that’s what they got.

That’s the Manufactured Hero story in a nutshell and as sad as it is, the majority of alternative minded activists are going to stand and applaud the new CISPA inspired radical reforms until it’s too late too change them and the internet is effective handed over to Big Business, for our “national interests” of course.

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UPDATE:

Chew on this for a second.

Let’s say this is all about CISPA and shutting down the free and open exchange of ideas on the internet. About shuttering the doors of many alternative investigative website like this one or Global Research or FireDogLake or any number of them out there.

What is going to happen? Where are those people who depend on that news and analysis going to turn to find their news on a daily basis?

You think they’re going to have a sudden IQ reduction and start watching CNN or Fox News?

And what are the billionaire globalist and his for-profit “alternative news truth teller” hero doing?

They are setting up a new alternative investigative journalism network, that’s what they’re doing.

In anticipation of the massive hole that is about to be formed in the market, Glenn Greenwald and his billionaire owner are about to spend a quarter of a billion dollars setting up a replacement to fill that void for millions of potential viewers.

Almost like they see it coming, huh?

food for thought.

UPDATE 2: from New York Times

“A presidential advisory committee charged with examining the operations of the National Security Agency has concluded that a program to collect data on every phone call made in the United States should continue, though under broad new restraints that would be intended to increase privacy protections, according to officials with knowledge of the report’s contents…

… The advisory report offers the first signs that the revelations by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor who took thousands of documents from the agency’s archives and has given some of them to news organizations, may lead to changes in the programs he exposed…

… Caitlin Hayden, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council, declined to discuss any specific recommendations of the panel…

… Among its members are Richard A. Clarke, who served in the Clinton administration and both Bush administrations and has become an expert on digital conflict; Michael J. Morell, a former deputy director of the C.I.A.; and Cass R. Sunstein, a Harvard Law School professor who served in the Obama White House and is married to Samantha Power, the ambassador to the United Nations…

… Two officials said that the advisers had gone further to challenge the intelligence agencies’ ways of doing business than they had expected. “There’s going to be a lot of pushback to some of their ideas,” said one person familiar with the contents, who declined to go into detail.

Let’s see, we’re on the cusp of the new CISPA and the TPP being implemented around the same time the Obamacare corporatist “healthcare” plan hits high gear.

Can you imagine how many millions would be in the streets protesting this fascist slide down Bush’s ‘slippery” slope right now if McCain or Romney were in the White House? All hail left-cover baby! jesus

UPDATE 3:

“The external panel, formally known as the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, had considered recommending an end to the bulk collection program, an official familiar with the deliberations said. But that recommendation “had been changed or withdrawn,” the official said. Instead, sources said, the panel recommended that phone companies retain the records and have the NSA transmit numbers suspected of terrorism links to be run against them.” Washington Post