James Bamford, "Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal": The New York Times Continues to Wage War Against Israel

So, you're interested in having a guest opinion piece published in The New York Times? Unless you're Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin or Henry Kissinger, it's not an easy thing to do. On the other hand, if you write an opinion piece - no matter how vapid or inane - excoriating Israel, you're chances of being published improve immeasurably.

In a fatuous guest New York Times op-ed entitled "Israel’s N.S.A. Scandal," James Bamford tells us how he "had the rare opportunity to hang out for three days with Edward J. Snowden" in Moscow this past summer. And apparently during the time that Bamford "hung out" with this American traitor, he was told that "the N.S.A. was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to a large and very secretive Israeli military organization known as Unit 8200." Bamford informs us:

"Mr. Snowden stressed that the transfer of intercepts to Israel contained the communications — email as well as phone calls — of countless Arab- and Palestinian-Americans whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian territories could become targets based on the communications. 'I think that’s amazing,' he told me. 'It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen.'

It appears that Mr. Snowden’s fears were warranted. Last week, 43 veterans of Unit 8200 — many still serving in the reserves — accused the organization of startling abuses. In a letter to their commanders, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to the head of the Israeli army, they charged that Israel used information collected against innocent Palestinians for 'political persecution.' In testimonies and interviews given to the media, they specified that data were gathered on Palestinians’ sexual orientations, infidelities, money problems, family medical conditions and other private matters that could be used to coerce Palestinians into becoming collaborators or create divisions in their society."

Oh my goodness, the NSA passes communications from Palestinians to Israeli intelligence. Apparently unbeknownst to Bamford, Israel also shares intelligence with the United States. That's what friendly intel agencies do. (Would Bamford have us believe that the US doesn't share such information with the UK's MI6?)

A violation of privacy? No question about it. However, as Bamford is surely aware, every time you make an overseas call, your conversation is recorded. Say a "magic" word, and your conversation gets "special attention." That's the price we pay in order to attempt to avoid another 9/11. Sure, it's a nasty trade-off, but I personally prefer not to see another 2,600 people incinerated in a skyscraper, and I am willing to sacrifice much of my personal privacy to ensure that this does not happen again.

The Mossad and the Shin Bet make use of information concerning sexual orientations, infidelities and money problems to coerce people into becoming collaborators? Tell me, are there espionage organizations which don't do this?

And if Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the US, is raising money in the US to fund its terror activities, is this of no interest to Israel and the US?

Okay, 43 reservists and former reservists from Unit 8200, from among the thousands of Israelis who have served in this unit, published a letter criticizing Israeli intelligence gathering efforts. Am I supposed to be shocked? Doesn't this speak volumes about the tolerant nature of Israeli society, which allows citizens from a broad spectrum of political views to express their views without fear of imprisonment or corporal punishment? And are we to understand that the thousands of other Israelis who served in Unit 8200 didn't sign the letter because they are stupider than these 43 persons or less moral?

Bamford concludes his opinion piece by observing how Snowden informed him:

"It’s much like how the F.B.I. tried to use Martin Luther King’s infidelity to talk him into killing himself . . . We said those kinds of things were inappropriate back in the ’60s. Why are we doing that now? Why are we getting involved in this again?"

It never occurs to Bamford that unlike Hamas, Martin Luthor King never encouraged suicide bombings, indiscriminately fired thousands of missiles at Israeli population centers, or called for the murder of all Jews.

Only The New York Times would stoop so low as to publish this offensive tripe.

New York Times Editorial, "This Week, Mass Surveillance Wins": Don't Blame Obama

Today, in response to the decision of a federal district court upholding the constitutionality of the NSA's colossal collection of telephone data from the American public, The New York Times begins by observing in an editorial entitled "This Week, Mass Surveillance Wins" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/opinion/this-week-mass-surveillance-wins.html?_r=0):

"Has the National Security Agency’s mass collection of Americans’ phone records actually helped to prevent terrorist attacks?

No, according to the 300-page report issued this month by a panel of legal and intelligence experts appointed by President Obama.

Yet in a ruling issued on Friday, Judge William Pauley III of the Federal District Court in Manhattan came to the opposite conclusion. 'The effectiveness of bulk telephony metadata collection cannot be seriously disputed,' Judge Pauley wrote in a deeply troubling decision dismissing a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union that challenged the constitutionality of the N.S.A.’s bulk data collection program."

The conclusion of the editorial board of The Times:

"The presidential panel made many good recommendations to reform both the surveillance law and the intelligence court that rules on government surveillance requests. Congress and Mr. Obama should adopt as many of these as possible. Court rulings will not suffice to rein in an agency that continues to take advantage of the law’s vague and malleable standards."

Hold your horses! The federal district court opinion can and should be appealed to a federal circuit court, and if need be, the circuit court's decision can be appealed to the US Supreme Court. Yes, this process could take years.

In addition, Congress can enact legislation limiting the power of the NSA. This might also have to wait until after the 2014 midterm elections.

Meanwhile, however, President Obama, a would-be Constitutional lawyer, can immediately adopt his panel's recommendations, rein in his agency and also fire James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, who, as acknowledged by The Times, "falsely told the Senate Intelligence Committee in March that the N.S.A. was not collecting any type of data at all on hundreds of millions of Americans." But Obama isn't doing anything of the sort. You see, the federal government knows best.

Does the editorial board of The Times place the blame on the president, where it squarely belongs? No, Obama's cheerleaders at The Times can't bring themselves to do this.

New York Times Editorial, "Mr. Obama’s Disappointing Response": "Disappointing"? How About "Outrageous"?

In a new editorial entitled "Mr. Obama’s Disappointing Response" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/21/opinion/mr-obamas-disappointing-response.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0), The New York Times responds to Obama's decision to ignore the recommendations of his own panel on government surveillance:

"By the time President Obama gave his news conference on Friday, there was really only one course to take on surveillance policy from an ethical, moral, constitutional and even political point of view. And that was to embrace the recommendations of his handpicked panel on government spying — and bills pending in Congress — to end the obvious excesses. He could have started by suspending the constitutionally questionable (and evidently pointless) collection of data on every phone call and email that Americans make.

He did not do any of that."

Hmm, the abnegation of fundamental Constitutional rights of American citizens by a would-be Constitutional lawyer is merely "disappointing"?

How about "outrageous"?

Can you only begin to imagine the response of The Times if Bush had behaved in this fashion? Bush would have been skinned alive by The Times and the rest of America's liberal media.

However, unlike Barbara Walters (see: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/12/17/barbara_walters_on_obama_we_thought_he_was_going_to_be_the_next_messiah.html), the editorial board of The New York Times has yet to recognize that Obama is a false messiah.

Maureen Dowd, "Spying Run Amok": Live Free or Diet

Are you a regular reader of this blog? Well, you will be amused to know that this blog is also sometimes read by a handful of the world's intelligence agencies, and that there is one such agency that reads it before all the others. Ah, he's paranoid, some of you might say. In fact, I don't give a damn if it is read by these agencies, perhaps owing to my age (see the last paragraphs of: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/12/david-brooks-thought-leader-thoughts-of.html).

In her latest New York Times op-ed  entitled "Spying Run Amok" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/18/opinion/dowd-spying-run-amok.html?_r=0), Maureen Dowd begins by describing the demise of a certain "Homeland" character, whose unpredictability and ambiguous motives she compares with those of Edward Snowden.

"Homeland"? The creator of "Homeland" is now reading a screenplay that I wrote last month, and I await his determination with quite a bit of excitement, although I am also prepared for disappointment, inasmuch as such is the way of the world in Hollywood. I am fortunate that my primary involvement at this stage of my life is biotech, which also increasingly involves code breaking of the Maker, if you will.

But I digress, or perhaps I don't.

Dowd writes today:

"Though the Justice Department tried to justify the mammoth hoovering by insisting on the need for speed, [Judge Richard J. Leon] pointed out that the N.S.A. couldn’t cite a single instance in which its haystack of data had produced the needle to puncture an imminent attack."

Of course, Judge Leon is correct, as best illustrated by the Boston Marathon bombing, which could have been prevented if the government had known how to sort through that "haystack of data."

You see, the haystack is important, but without the tools to sort through it, it is just a mountain of manure.

Don't get me wrong: I agree with Dowd. I am aghast by the unregulated collection of data by the NSA, which violates all freedoms which Americans should hold dear. I italicize should, because these are freedoms which should be held dear, but aren't. Moreover, I find it shocking that an American president, who claims to be a Constitutional lawyer, allowed the NSA to run amok.

Yeah, right, he didn't know.

But the bottom line is this: In this age of narcissism in which we live, in which the president himself is a prime purveyor of this new opiate of the masses, do Americans care more about the NSA or the NFL? Which is more important to them: their Diet Coke or their adherence to the principle of "Live free or die"?

You decide.

Maureen Dowd, "Creeping Cloud": Are You Under a Cloud of Suspicion?

Clouds can be both "good" (e.g., "on cloud nine") and bad" (e.g., "under a cloud of suspicion"), but like the weather, of which they form a part, they can be hard to influence.

From what Maureen Dowd tells us in her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Creeping Cloud" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/opinion/sunday/dowd-creeping-cloud.html), the "data cloud," billowing up from the N.S.A.'s Bluffdale facility, appears to be out of control. Dowd writes:

"James Bamford, the chronicler of the untrammeled powers of the 'Puzzle Palace,' as he calls the N.S.A., wrote in Wired that the Utah tower of Babel may be able to store a yottabyte. That is equal to a septillion bytes or about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

'It’s basically the N.S.A.’s external hard drive,' Bamford told me, noting that our phone call was no doubt being logged by the Bluffdale computers. 'It holds more private information than anyplace else on earth.'

Bamford believes that the N.S.A. has transmogrified from an agency that 'watched the Soviet Union to make sure it didn’t blow us up with nuclear weapons,' to one 'that keeps collecting and collecting and collecting but doesn’t seem to do us any good.'

'They saw 9/11 and all these other terrorist attacks on CNN. They didn’t have a clue. The more electronic hay they stack on their haystack, the more difficult it is to find the needle.'

Bamford believes that Americans need to get out of their crouch on terrorism and get alarmed that James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, can deceive Congress without even a reprimand from the president."

As I have remarked in the past, mountains of raw data, without a methodology to sort through it, is entirely worthless.

Americans need to get alarmed that James Clapper sought to deceive Congress without a reprimand from the president? Why? Susan Rice sought to deceive all Americans regarding the reason for the attack against the Benghazi consulate, yet she was promoted to United States National Security Advisor by Obama.

But more to the point, Dowd's opinion piece was surely written before publication today of a New York Times article entitled "N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/nsa-examines-social-networks-of-us-citizens.html?pagewanted=all) by James Risen and Laura Poitras, which points to worrisome overreaching by the N.S.A:

"Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans’ social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials.

. . . .

The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners.

N.S.A. officials declined to say how many Americans have been caught up in the effort, including people involved in no wrongdoing."

And where is constitutional lawyer Barack Obama while this inclement, amorphous cloud grows darker and larger overhead?

If this is anything like the IRS scandal, he is probably reading about it in the newspapers like the rest of us, before heading out to the links.

Gail Collins, "Expect the Unexpected": Let's Put the Theory to the Test

You want something unexpected? Don't go searching for it in Gail Collins's column.

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Expect the Unexpected" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/opinion/collins-expect-the-unexpected.html?_r=0), Gail Collins, as might be expected, refers us to approval by the Senate yesterday of the immigration reform bill and defeat in Texas of an anti-abortion bill. Collins - excuse me as I stifle a yawn - writes:

"Every once in a while, something happens that challenges your entire view of the order of the universe. For instance, this week the U.S. Senate actually passed something. Meanwhile, in Texas, liberal Democrats and the abortion rights movement won a huge political victory.

. . . .

Americans have conflicted attitudes toward this issue, but one thing that’s consistently clear is that they don’t want a wholesale abortion ban."

Yada yada yada.

The immigration reform bill? As observed by Jonathan Tobin in Commentary:

"Though the yes votes, comprising more than two-thirds of the Senate, represented an impressive bipartisan coalition the prospects of passage in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives are slim if not entirely non-existent. The ability of anti-reform forces to rally much of the GOP grass roots to oppose the reform proposal as “amnesty” or a fraudulent attempt to bolster border security has entirely intimidated the House leadership and much of the party. Though some supporters of the idea, such as Rep. Paul Ryan, are vowing to bring forward a version of reform that might conceivably be meshed with the Senate bill in a conference, passage of any compromise that might conceivably satisfy either party seems unlikely."

Re Texas, I am pro-choice, but I am far more concerned by the NSA's attack on civil liberties than by the 11-hour filibuster in Austin.

Okay, you're still looking for something unexpected? Let's try something new!

Cheesecake in the JG Caesarea blog? Pandering? No way! This is my daughter, Barr, who is trying to advance her modeling career. Having provided you with Arnold's picture yesterday (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/06/david-brooks-nation-of-mutts.html), doesn't Barr deserve equal time?

Roger Cohen, "The Service of Snowden": "History, the Real Sort, Will Judge Him Kindly"?

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Service of Snowden" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinion/global/the-service-of-snowden.html), Roger Cohen asks if Edward Snowden is a "self-aggrandizing geek who betrayed his country and his employer" or a "brave young American determined to fight — at the risk of long imprisonment — against his country’s post-9/11 lurch toward invasion of citizens’ lives."

Cohen's justifies Snowden's activities by observing:

"We would not know how the N.S.A., through its Prism and other programs, has become, in the words of my colleagues James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, 'the virtual landlord of the digital assets of Americans and foreigners alike.' We would not know how it has been able to access the e-mails or Facebook accounts or videos of citizens across the world; nor how it has secretly acquired the phone records of millions of Americans; nor how through requests to the compliant and secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (F.I.S.A.) it has been able to bend nine U.S. Internet companies to its demands for access to clients’ digital information."

Cohen's conclusion:

"Snowden has broken the law of his country. We do not know what, if anything, he has offered China or Russia — or been coerced or tricked into handing over. He has, through his choice of destination, embraced states that suppress individual rights and use the Internet as an instrument of control and persecution. His movements have sent the wrong message.

Still, he has performed a critical service. History, the real sort, will judge him kindly."

As I wrote in the past, instead of going after Iran and Hezbollah, the Obama administration has focused its efforts upon eroding American civil liberties (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/06/david-ignatius-edward-snowdens.html). Moreover, I believe that a cost/benefit analysis tells us that the cost to American civil liberties of PRISM and other such NSA programs vastly outweighs the counter-terrorism benefits. As has often been asked, why didn't PRISM prevent the Boston Marathon bombing even after US intelligence services were warned in advance by Russia concerning the Tsarnaev brothers?

But does this in any way justify Snowden's conduct? Indeed, we don't know what Snowden passed on to Russia and China.

More to the point, there were other ways that Snowden could have conveyed his objections to these infringements of American civil liberties without revealing American secrets to countries that make mincemeat of basic human rights. With minimum effort, he could have brought the matter before members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sure, there would have been no notoriety, but it could have been done without damaging the United States in broad-brush fashion.

"History, the real sort, will judge him kindly"? I don't know what the "real sort" of history is. Perhaps it is of the kind that will justify Cohen's infamous past declaration that Iran is "not totalitarian."

I don't judge Snowden kindly, nor will I ever. Moreover, if history judges him at all, it will ultimately be as one more footnote to a disastrous Obama presidency.

Gail Collins, "The Other Side of the Story": What About Sharyl Attkisson?

"I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal e-mail."

- Edward Snowden

Query: Has James Clapper, US Director of National Intelligence, specifically rebutted Snowden's allegation?

Where is President Obama's rebuttal? Or did he only learn about this by reading the newspapers like the rest of us? In reality, the president is in deep hiding, waiting for the storm to blow over, and will be soon off to Africa - a trip which will cost US taxpayers up to $100 million (see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-trip-to-africa-poses-special-challenges-enormous-costs/2013/06/13/29d9270a-cd29-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html). Unfortunately for Obama, the storm shows no sign of abating.

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Other Side of the Story" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/opinion/collins-the-other-side-of-the-story.html?_r=0), Gail Collins decries "national willingness to give government a blank check on national security matters" and writes about a nearly decade-old story concerning the wrongful arrest of Brandon Mayfield for the 2004 commuter train bombing in Madrid. As observed by Collins:

"Spanish officials found a suspicious fingerprint on a plastic bag at the scene. The F.B.I. ran it through its files and decided, erroneously, that it matched Mayfield’s. Further investigation revealed that Mayfield had married an Egyptian immigrant and converted to Islam — information the authorities apparently found far more compelling than the fact that he had never been to Spain.

. . . .

Spain saved the day. The Spanish investigators were dubious from the beginning that the fingerprints at the bombing site were Mayfield’s; they had been hoping, perhaps, for a person who had set foot in Europe within the last decade. They found and arrested someone whose finger was a real match."

Indeed, this was a horror story.

But where is reference by Collins to the Washington Post headline story "CBS confirms reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s computer breached" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/cbs-confirms-reporter-sharyl-attkisons-computer-breached/2013/06/14/321b77f0-d504-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html?hpid=z3)? As reported by WaPo:

"CBS News said Friday that it has confirmed a computer used by one of its Washington reporters, Sharyl Attkisson, was breached by an unknown intruder and that the hack appeared to be 'sophisticated.'

The intrusions were detected in December while Attkisson was reporting almost exclusively on the government’s response to the terrorist attacks on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. The attack on Sept. 11, 2012, killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Attkisson has previously investigated the Justice Department’s gun-tracking operation known as 'Fast and Furious.'

In a statement Friday, CBS did not identify a culprit. It said Attkisson’s computer 'was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012.'

It added: 'Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson’s accounts. While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and [removal] of data. This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion.'"

President Obama, would you care to comment on this matter? Are you willing to deny federal government involvement in the hacking of Attkisson's computer?

As Dana Milbank writes today in a Washington Post opinion piece entitled "The left turns compliant on violating civil liberties" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-the-left-turns-compliant-on-violating-civil-liberties/2013/06/14/8c30d91a-d4d2-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html?hpid=z2):

"Where have all the liberals gone?

President Obama, who as a Democratic senator accused the Bush administration of violating civil liberties in the name of security, now vigorously defends his own administration’s collection of Americans’ phone records and Internet activities.

. . . .

With some exceptions, progressive lawmakers and the liberal commentariat have been passive and acquiescent toward the secret spying programs, which would have infuriated the left had they been the work of a Republican administration."

It just keeps getting uglier with every passing day.

[This blog item certainly got "someone's" goat . . .]

David Ignatius, "Edward Snowden’s Misplaced Idealism": America's "Best Tool in Combating Terrorism"?

It's now 1:20 a.m. in New York, and the only reference to President Obama on the homepage of The New York Times is to be found under "News from A.P. & Reuters":

• "Obama, Japan's Abe Talk NKorea, China, Trade"

Similarly, if we look at the homepage of The Washington Post, the only references to Obama are:

• "Obama rallies support for Markey in Boston as Senate race tightens"
• "Obama taps Native American fundraiser for human rights post"

Or in other words, as the debate over Edward Snowden's leaks concerning massive NSA surveillance of US citizens swirls around us, Obama is nowhere in sight with leadership and guidance concerning America's ongoing battle with global terrorism. Yes, Obama is in deep hiding until the storm blows over.

In his latest Washington Post opinion piece entitled "Edward Snowden’s misplaced idealism" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-snowden-exposed-policies-approved-by-congress-courts/2013/06/12/815c8aa4-d2d7-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html?hpid=z2), David Ignatius tells us that electronic surveillance programs are America's "best tool" to combat terror. Ignatius writes:

"James Clapper, the director of national intelligence who oversees the NSA, argued last weekend that Snowden made 'reckless' disclosures about its monitoring of foreign Internet communications, and that 'potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm' could come from the revelation of a court order authorizing collection of telephone call data from Verizon. Congress and the courts will examine such claims, but how should we as citizens evaluate them?

My guess is that Clapper is correct when he implicitly argues that these electronic surveillance programs are the United States’ best tool in combating terrorism. It’s probably also true that each revelation of U.S. capabilities weakens this advantage by putting adversaries such as al-Qaeda on notice about our snooping capabilities. The revelations likely make it harder, as well, for U.S. corporations and foreign allies to cooperate."

"My guess is that Clapper is correct when he implicitly argues that these electronic surveillance programs are the United States’ best tool in combating terrorism"? If Ignatius honestly believes this, he knows nothing about terrorism.

Moreover, if Clapper believes this, he should resign as director of national intelligence - and not because he lied to Congress.

An act of organized terror is premised upon:

• A target, e.g., Boston Marathon or World Trade Center.
• Accessibility of the target.
• Terrorist motivation and in some instances, readiness to pay the ultimate price.
• Infrastructure and training.
• Funding.
• State support.

Eliminate one or more of these elements, and the ability of a terrorist organization to perpetrate an act of terror is significantly weakened. So what does a massive electronic surveillance program aimed at Americans as a whole contribute to preventing terrorist acts? Maybe it might aid in "rolling up" a terrorist cell following perpetration of an act of terror, provided the cell's members have been careless, but prevent a terrorist strike? No way, Jose. Sure, there is no black and white, and the dangers to civil liberties of monitoring all Americans must be weighed against the benefits of an electronic surveillance system, but now ask yourself how PRISM helped prevent the Boston Marathon bombing, notwithstanding a warning from Moscow.

So where are we to find the biggest terrorist threat? Simple. As recently reported by CBS News (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57586946/state-dept.-iran-support-for-global-terror-surged-in-2012/):
 

"Iran last year boosted its support for global terrorism to levels not seen for two decades, the Obama administration said Thursday as it released its annual report on international trends in extremist violence. The report said the core elements of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan are headed for defeat but stressed that the network's various affiliates remain severe threats to the U.S.

The State Department's 'Country Reports on Terrorism' for 2012 left unchanged the U.S. list of 'state sponsors of terrorism.' Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria remain on that blacklist, although Iran was singled out as the worst offender and Syria was taken to task for the ongoing brutal crackdown on opponents of President Bashar Assad's regime.

The report said 2012 was "notable in demonstrating a marked resurgence of Iran's state sponsorship of terrorism." That sponsorship has been largely carried out through the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the militant Shiite Hezbollah movement, Iran's ally and proxy in Lebanon, it said.

'Iran and Hezbollah's terrorist activity has reached a tempo unseen since the 1990s, with attacks plotted in Southeast Asia, Europe, and Africa,' it said. Those included an attack on a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Bulgaria that killed six, as well as thwarted strikes in India, Thailand, Georgia and Kenya.

The report's 'strategic assessment' said core al Qaeda continues to weaken as its leaders increasingly fight for survival. But it said that leadership losses with the core have driven al Qaeda affiliates to become more independent by setting their own agendas and targets and raising money on their own, primarily through kidnapping and other crimes."

So how is the US counteracting Iranian sponsored terrorism? Answer: It's not. During his first term as president, Obama presided over a "charm campaign" aimed at Tehran, which failed. Meanwhile, toothless negotiations over Iran's nuclear weapons development program, managed by Catherine Ashton, the EU's nincompoop High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy, continue.

Moreover, given that Obama has demonstrated that his "red line" involving the use by Syria's Bashar al-Assad of chemical weapons is toothless, Russian President Vladimir Putin is now claiming that "I have no doubt that Iran is adhering to the rules in this area [nuclear weapons proliferation], because there is no proof of the opposite" (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/russias-putin-says-iran-nuclear-push-peaceful-170035158.html), i.e. kicking sand on 98-pound weakling Barack Obama.

Hezbollah? The US is finally asking the EU to sanction this Iranian terror proxy (see: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/04/in-europe-a-growing-case-for-banning-hezbollah/275035/), yet the Obama administration has not done nearly enough to prevent Hezbollah from raising funds or procuring weapons.

The next terrorist attack? I don't expect another 9/11-type attack. Rather, I expect an Iranian cyber assault on America's weak underbelly, i.e., computer systems responsible for the functioning of banks, financial markets, interstate transportation and telecommunications. This would also prove a disaster.

Bottom line: Instead of going after Iran and Hezbollah, the Obama administration is focusing its efforts on American civil liberties. But heck, what do I know?

Thomas Friedman, "Blowing a Whistle": The NSA Is Going to Save Us from Another 9/11

Suppose terrorists have hidden a dirty bomb in Manhattan and are threatening to detonate the bomb unless the US releases all of its Guantanamo prisoners. The bomb is timed to go off in another two hours, and there is no time to evacuate the city. Millions are expected to die slow painful deaths from radiation poisoning and cancer unless the bomb is found and defused. Then suddenly, one of the al-Qaeda conspirators is captured, but he refuses to talk. Would you waterboard him, or read him his rights and wait for his lawyer?

Me? Wait for his lawyer? I wouldn't hesitate to go far beyond waterboarding the bastard, and yet I am appalled by the revelations of NSA information gathering, which contribute very little to American security. Even with warnings from Moscow, this data didn't prevent the Boston Marathon bombing. You see, it has nothing to do with the quantity of the data accumulated, and everything to do with theory and focus.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Blowing a Whistle" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/12/opinion/friedman-blowing-a-whistle.html), Thomas Friedman plays on our 9/11 paranoia:

"Yes, I worry about potential government abuse of privacy from a program designed to prevent another 9/11 — abuse that, so far, does not appear to have happened. But I worry even more about another 9/11. That is, I worry about something that’s already happened once — that was staggeringly costly — and that terrorists aspire to repeat.

I worry about that even more, not because I don’t care about civil liberties, but because what I cherish most about America is our open society, and I believe that if there is one more 9/11 — or worse, an attack involving nuclear material — it could lead to the end of the open society as we know it. If there were another 9/11, I fear that 99 percent of Americans would tell their members of Congress: 'Do whatever you need to do to, privacy be damned, just make sure this does not happen again.' That is what I fear most.

That is why I’ll reluctantly, very reluctantly, trade off the government using data mining to look for suspicious patterns in phone numbers called and e-mail addresses — and then have to go to a judge to get a warrant to actually look at the content under guidelines set by Congress — to prevent a day where, out of fear, we give government a license to look at anyone, any e-mail, any phone call, anywhere, anytime."

Tom wants to "prevent a day where, out of fear, we give government a license to look at anyone, any e-mail, any phone call, anywhere, anytime"? Me, too. But didn't Snowden just tell us that "I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal e-mail" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance)?

Friedman quotes from an essay by David Simon, the creator of HBO’s "The Wire": "this kind of data collection has been a baseline logic of an American anti-terrorism effort that is effectively asked to find the needles before they are planted into haystacks, to prevent even such modest, grass-rooted conspiracies as the Boston Marathon bombing before they occur." Okay, but did it stop the Boston Marathon bombing? Not a chance.

Sure, I want to prevent a future 9/11, which is more likely to arise today as the result of an Iranian cyber attack, but unlike Tom, I'm going to be politically incorrect. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey (http://www.pewforum.org/Muslim/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-exec.aspx):

"Few U.S. Muslims voice support for suicide bombing or other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam; 81% say such acts are never justified, while fewer than one-in-ten say violence against civilians either is often justified (1%) or is sometimes justified (7%) to defend Islam."

Only 1% of US Muslims "say violence against civilians is often justified," and only 7% say that such violence "is sometimes justified"? These numbers are frightening. As I said earlier, everything has to do with theory and focus - here is your focus. Thanks to Pew, there is no additional need for theory.

And where is Obama in the midst of this storm? From the isolation of Rancho Mirage in California, he will soon be traveling to Tanzania. On Tuesday, Politico reporter Glenn Thrush Tuesday asked Jay Carney whether President Obama should "have a fireside chat with the American people" about the NSA’s surveillance program. Carney's answer (see: http://freebeacon.com/carney-refuses-to-answer-why-obama-wont-speak-to-american-people-directly-about-nsa-scandal/):

"I’m not saying — I think I just said, Glenn, although I appreciate yours and the former Attorney General’s specific recommendations about the modalities of presidential communication, the president has and will speak about this subject."

Yup, they're already firing up the teleprompters, but in the meantime, the president is doing what he does best: He likes to watch.

David Brooks, "The Solitary Leaker": Data Mining or Strip Mining?

Were you ever a whistleblower? For almost 40 years I have been privy to government, corporate and military secrets, and during this entire period there was indeed one instance - many years ago - when I wrote to a government regulatory authority concerning the "distribution" of corporate assets among management and highly placed friends. The information was passed from the regulatory authority to the board of directions of this august institution. Given its haste to dispose of this time bomb, they promptly created a new rule: If the source of information is "anonymous," we won't discuss it, i.e. we don't care if it's true. On the other hand, serious efforts were undertaken to determine who was responsible for the leak.

Me? I learned that there is much to be said for the pleasure of growing broccoli, sans anxiety, in my garden.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Solitary Leaker" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/opinion/brooks-the-solitary-leaker.html?_r=0), David Brooks addresses the leak by Edward Snowden of "data mining procedures of the National Security Agency." Brooks claims that Snowden engaged in a series of betrayals against "honesty and integrity," "friends," "employers," "open government," "the privacy of us all," and "the Consitution." Yup, that's a whole lot of betraying.

But hold your horses, David. NSA "data mining procedures"? Given the enormity of the information being gathered, the limited value of this information, and the resultant damage to the Constitutional rights of the individual, I prefer to label this "strip mining."

Brooks, of course, argues, "If federal security agencies can’t do vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive eavesdropping methods." My goodness, federal security agencies will need to go after bad guys with names after first obtaining court orders for wiretaps?  Just think, in the interests of privacy and First Amendment freedom, they might just have to do things the oldfangled, time consuming way. What a disaster!

Brooks isn't concerned about Snowden's claim that "I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal e-mail" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance)? I certainly am worried.

Brooks writes, "The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed." On the other hand, I would argue that the founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could access from his desk the most intimate thoughts of any citizen.

Brooks concludes:

"Judging by his comments reported in the news media so far, Snowden was obsessed with the danger of data mining but completely oblivious to his betrayals and toward the damage he has done to social arrangements and the invisible bonds that hold them together."

Well, in case Brooks hasn't noticed, we have just begun to learn to what extent "social arrangements and the invisible bonds that hold them together" have unraveled without connection to Snowden. A US ambassador can be sacrificed without his government so much as lifting a finger to protect him in order to perpetuate a pre-election myth that the president had brought al-Qaeda to heel. The IRS can engage in flagrant discrimination against conservative organizations (I am not a conservative), while making "Star Trek" movies and spending millions of dollars on lavish conferences. The EPA can similarly engage in discrimination against conservative organizations (see: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/06/10/now-the-environmental-protection-agency/#more-826874).  The Department of Energy can engage in nepotistic hiring practices (see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/06/10/report-nepotism-open-and-widely-accepted-at-energy-department/?hpid=z3).

"Social arrangements and the invisible bonds that hold them together"? As W.C. Fields once said, "Sounds like a bubble in a bathtub."

Don't get me wrong: I don't agree with the manner in which Snowden leaked this information, and he should be extradited and prosecuted. However, I also believe that NSA outsourcing and "strip mining procedures" need to be urgently reviewed and radically revised.

And then there is also that "small" matter of how James Clapper lied to the Senate. As observed by Dana Milbank in an opinion piece entitled "Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks are backlash of too much secrecy" in today's Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-edward-snowdens-nsa-leaks-are-the-backlash-of-too-much-secrecy/2013/06/10/eddb4462-d215-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html?hpid=z2):

"Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper at a Senate hearing in March, 'Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?'

'No, sir,' Clapper testified.

'It does not?' Wyden pressed.

'Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.'

We now know that Clapper was not telling the truth."

Query for Brooks: When America's Director of National Intelligence is prepared to tell falsehoods to Congress, what does this say of his precious "social arrangements and the invisible bonds that hold them together"?