NSA – ILANA MERCER

Doubting The Intelligence Of The Intelligence Community

Ilana Mercer — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 01:24:51 +0000

Peter Strzok, the disgraced and disgraceful Federal Bureau of Investigation official, is the very definition of a slimy swamp creature. Strzok twitched, grimaced and ranted his way to infamy during a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, on July 12.

In no way had he failed to discharge his professional unbiased obligation to the public, asserted Strzok. He had merely expressed the hope that “the American population would not elect somebody demonstrating such horrible, disgusting behavior.”

But we did not elect YOU, Mr. Strzok. We elected Mr. Trump.

Strzok is the youthful face of the venerated “Intelligence Community,” itself part of the sprawling political machine that makes up the D.C. comitatus, now writhing like a fire breathing mythical monster against President Donald Trump.

Smug, self-satisfied, cheating creature that he is, Strzok can’t take responsibility for his own misconduct, and blames … Russia for dividing America. In the largely progressive bureau, moreover, Agent Strzok is neither underling nor outlier, for that matter.

He’s an overlord, having risen “to become the Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, the second-highest position in that division.”

As Ann Coulter observed, the FBI is not the FBI of J. Edgar Hoover.

Neither is the Intelligence Community Philip Haney’s IC any longer.

Haney was a heroic, soft-spoken, demure employee at the Department of Homeland Security. Agents like him are often fired if they don’t get with the program. He didn’t.

Haney’s method and the authentic intelligence he mined and developed might have stopped the likes of the San Bernardino mass murderers and many others. Instead, his higher-ups in the “Intelligence Community” made Haney and his data disappear.

Post Haney, the FBI failed to adequately screen and stop Syed Farook and blushing bride Tashfeen Malik.

A “blind bootlicking faith in spooks” is certainly unwarranted and may even be foolish.

What of odious individuals like former FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and his predecessor, James Comey, now openly campaigning for the Democrats? Are these leaders outliers in the “Intelligence Community”?

As Peter Strzok might say to his paramour in a private tweet, “Who ya gonna believe, the Intelligence Community or your own lying eyes?” The Bureau in particular and the IC cabal, in general, appear to be dominated by the likes of the dull-witted Mr. Strzok.

Similarly, it’s hard to think of a more partisan operator than John O. Brennan—he ran the CIA under President Obama. True to type, he cast a vote for Communist Party USA, back in 1976, when the current Russia monomania would have been justified. Brennan has dubbed President Trump a traitor for having dared to doubt people like himself.

The very embodiment of the Surveillance State at its worst is Michael V. Hayden. Hayden has moved seamlessly from the National Security Agency and the CIA to CNN where he beats up on Trump.

The former Bush employee hollered treason:

“One of the most disgraceful performances of an American president in front of a Russian leader,” Hayden inveighed. Not only had POTUS dared to explore the possibility of a truce with Russia, which is a formidable nuclear power; but the president had the temerity to express a smidgen of skepticism about a community littered with spooks like … Mr. Hayden.

As one wag noted, not unreasonably, ours is “a highly-politicized intelligence community, infiltrated over decades by cadres of Deep State operatives and sleeper agents, whose goal is to bring down this presidency.”

The latest pillorying heaped upon the president by the permanent establishment has it that, “Trump chose to stand with Vladimir Putin, instead of the American People.” Trump, to be precise, had the temerity to “openly question his own intelligence agencies’ firm finding that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S.”

Pray tell, since when does the Deep State—FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, DNI, (Director of National Intelligence), on and on—represent, or stand for, the American People? The president, conversely, actually got the support of at least 60 million Americans.

That’s a LOT of support.

Outside the Beltway, ordinary folks—Deplorables, if you will—have to sympathize with the president’s initial and honest appraisal of the Intelligence Community’s collective intelligence.

This is the community that has sent us into quite a few recreational, hobby wars.

And this is the community that regularly intercepts but fails to surveil and stop the likes of mass murderers Syed Farook and bride Tashfeen Malik. Or, Orlando nightclub killer Omar Mateen, whose father the Bureau saw fit to hire as an informant. The same “community” has invited the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Arab-American Institute to help shape FBI counterterrorism training.

The FBI might not be very intelligent at all.

About the quality of that intelligence, consider: On August 3, 2016, as the mad media were amping up their Russia monomania, a frenzied BuzzFeed—it calls itself a news org—reported that “the Russian foreign ministry had wired nearly $30,000 through a Kremlin-backed bank to its embassy in Washington, DC.”

Intercepted by American intelligence, the Russian wire stipulated that the funds were meant “to finance the election campaign of 2016.”

Was this not “meddling in our election” or what? Did we finally have irrefutable evidence of Kremlin culpability? The FBI certainly thought so.

“Worse still, this was only one of 60 transfers that were being scrutinized by the FBI,” wrote the Economist, in November of 2017. “Similar transfers were made to other countries.”

As it transpired, the money was wired from the Kremlin to embassies the world over. Its purpose? Russia was preparing to hold parliamentary elections in 2016 and had sent funds to Russian embassies “to organize the polling for expatriates.”

While it did update its Fake News factoids, Buzzfeed felt no compunction whatsoever to remove the erroneous item or publicly question their sources in the unimpeachable “Intelligence Community.”

Most news media are just not as inquisitive as … President Trump.

©2018 ILANA MERCER
Quarterly Review, The Unz Review, WND.com,
The Ludwig von Mises Centre for Property & Freedom,
Constitution.com
July 19

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Perks Are For Perps With The Right Pigmentation

Ilana Mercer — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 05:19:15 +0000

If you’re a criminal alien with “family relationships” in the U.S., are studying on the American taxpayer’s dime, are the recipient of the “attention of [pro-amnesty] advocacy groups,” and have “been here a long time”; if you are the focus of “political considerations,” were in the midst of applying for legal status when, oops, you stumbled into crime, have made a career of traffic offenses or have violated state law the Obama administration does not want enforced (identity theft and fraud are examples); if charges are pending against you, but you have yet to be convicted—KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.

You’re more than qualified for leniency, or for what the Obama administration has termed “prosecutorial discretion.” Deportation is no threat to you. Congratulations! You’re on schedule for joining what the American Founding Fathers had hoped would be a commonwealth of virtue.

As for the youthful criminal alien who still has that certain, impish je ne sais quoi—why, he’ll qualify right away for this administration’s “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” program. DACA is not quite the proposed DREAM Act, but it’ll get the offender all the benefits he can dream of—education, food stamps, health care, a shot at a job—and a reprieve from deportation.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the Obama administration’s “prosecutorial discretion criteria are allowing factors such as family relationships, political considerations, or attention from advocacy groups to trump criminal convictions as factors leading to deportation.”

In 2013, ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) released 68,000 criminal aliens back into the community. Much of their offenses were of the drunken-driving variety—among them were no homeschoolers on the lam from Germany, thank God! But, as FoxNews.com reported, the skill-sets in this sample of criminal aliens did include murder and rape.

For a second, I thought of encouraging my only sister, stuck in South Africa as she is, to live on the edge and consider becoming an illegal alien in the USA. It’s the easiest path to de facto permanent residency. No need for an education. No need for proficiency in the English language. “Press two for Spanish” is all the conversational eloquence required.

Public charges are preferred. Ditto a vice or two. But who am I kidding? Little sister lacks what it takes. She’s not made of the right stuff. With an ethic of work and self-reliance, she’d be the bane of this country. Besides, white immigrants like us have no “advocacy groups” and aren’t subject to “political considerations,” when faced with deportation. Still, I’d like Soledad O’Brien, of the “Black, Brown and Plain Boring in America” CNN series, to know this: Although we lack pigment appeal—white immigrants weep for their far-away families just as brown people do. Except that we cry behind closed doors.

Yes, perks are for perps with the right pigmentation.

So clear a point is this that in the last amnesty bill, introduced in 2013 by the Senate, “illegal alien” is a thing of the past. The “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” (S.744) achieves legal leveling not by defending our country’s borders, but through the near abolition of the illegal versus legal distinction. In S.744, these new, privileged wards of the state are known as “Registered Provisional Immigrants.” RPIs will enjoy protections unavailable to nationals, or to immigrants who’re in the U.S. on merit.

In marked contrast to an RPI, there is not much you, me and Chancellor Merkel can do if Gen. Keith Alexander’s National Security Agency and apparatus sics its spies on us. The same goes for our rights under the successors of Lois Lerner and Sarah Hall Ingram, at the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt division.

But woe betide the NSA or IRS agent who does unto a registered provisional Democrat what he did to a tea-party patriot. The “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” promises to name and shame this wicked government worker.

Caught in the improper use of the personal data of an RPD (Registered Provisional Democrat), the agent will incur a criminal penalty. The Bill specifies that snooping on beneficiaries of S.744 will be permitted only for the purpose of determining benefits—benefits that happen to be carved out of the hide of taxpaying Americans, immigrants included, who’re bereft of equal protections.

To prevent any “errant” law-enforcement officer from daring to quiz a suspicious illegal alien about his status, a “document of special protection while waiting” will be issued to these Democrats-in-Waiting.

Oh, for the privileges of a “Registered Provisional Immigrant,” or a criminal alien, for that matter.

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Quacking Over Ducksters As Freedoms Go Poof

Ilana Mercer — Sat, 04 Jan 2014 00:28:34 +0000

While the nation fretted over the ouster of one Duckster from the parallel reality of a TV reality show, more of the protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution evaporated.

Just after Christmas, district-court Judge William Pauley ruled that the privacy protections afforded by the Constitution were relative freedoms, not absolutes ones. As such, Fourth-Amendment rights had to be calibrated against a government’s need to maintain a database of records that would (putatively) prevent future terrorist attacks.

Paraphrased by The Guardian, “Pauley argued that al-Qaida’s ‘bold jujitsu’ strategy to marry seventh century ideology with 21st century technology made it imperative that government authorities be allowed to push privacy boundaries.”

You’d think that the purview of the justice elite is to “marry” American law with Islamist ideology, rather than uphold a timeless principle that states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

“The judgment,” continued The Guardian, “directly contradicts the result of a similar challenge in a Washington court [a week earlier] which ruled the NSA’s bulk collection program was likely to prove unconstitutional and was ‘almost Orwellian’ in scale.”

Friday’s ruling, surmised the vigilant British paper, “makes it more likely that the issue will be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, although it may be overtaken by the decision of Barack Obama on whether to accept the recommendations of a White House review panel to ban the NSA from directly collecting such data.”

Indeed, in August, media-enabled megalomaniac Obama told a rapt press corps that, in his magnanimity, he’d be prepared to “jiggle” his surveillance apparatus here and there to better allay unnecessary fears (“provide greater assurances,” as the president put it).

In his remarks, Big Daddy said—in defiance of the evidence—that he was comfortable “the NSA program [was] not being abused,” going on to promise that he’d outsource the matter to a new hire: A civil liberties officer. (CNN’s Jessica Yellin was in estrus.)

This is the inglorious history of American freedom and federalism. In the rare event that the Supreme Court refuses to play along (as nicely as plaything Justice John G. Roberts did for ObamaCare)—there is always a perfectly legal, extra-constitutional, quasi-legislative, quasi-executive, quasi-judicial, “independent” regulatory commission or executive agency to kill off or override constitutional protections.

A “civil liberties officer,” for example.

The nice men in periwigs who came up with the Fourth Amendment were recklessly naive to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve to check one another. The idea of a judiciary that would police the executive as an arm of a self-correcting tripartite government was worse than naive.

As “luck” would have it, legislation that flouts the Fourth Amendment was previously in place to provide Pauley with all the positive-law backing the judge needed to justify an anti-constitutional ruling. To wit, the grounds upon which the New York jurist dismissed this ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) case against the NSA were, primarily, “that bulk collection was [already] authorized under existing laws allowing ‘relevant’ data collection to be authorized by secret US courts.”

Here you have the essence of modern-day, Managerial-State America. Natural law, common-law and Constitution have been nullified; buried under the rubble of legislation, statute, precedent, ad infinitum, rights having long-since been outsourced to the “better” judgment of bureaucrats and hired “experts.” In this case, to Eric Holder’s Department of Justice.

Not only has Obama “the sinner” trusted Holder his “sin eater” with the expansion of surveillance-state USA; he has, it would appear, charged him with dealing a one-two Knockout punch to white America. Eric Holder’s first arrest in the string of Knockout attacks across the country is a first in more than one way.

The arrest is unique in that it is of a white offender. Knockout attacks have been, almost exclusively, black-on-white hate crimes.

Were it not so disquieting for what it portends, this single arrest would be as comical as the specter of global-warming scientists marooned in Antarctic ice so densely packed that no man-made machinery can affect it.

Heeding Holder, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Texas has remanded Conrad Alvin Barrett (27 years old) to prison for breaking the jaw of a man (79 years old), while “laughing and saying; ‘Knockout'” as he beat it.

The question is not whether this is a good arrest. If he’s guilty, let Barrett rot. The question is, why have there been no arrests for the multiple killings and maiming of innocents by feral black thugs across the country?

Befitting a banana republic, Holder, who carries water for President Camacho, is likely attempting to deploy the law to frame the Knockout phenomenon as an equal-opportunity crime. This is the administration’s ultimate racial reprisal against white victims of hate crimes: “know thy place, Honky!”

MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry will no doubt deem the “banana” usage here to be racist, “conceived by a group of wealthy white men who needed to . . . render [a black man] inferior and unequal and diminish his accomplishments.” This is what our unsharpened pencil thinks of the word “Obamacare.”

But Obama and his fans “can’t have their banana and eat it.” It is an incontrovertible fact that under Strong Man Obama, America’s banana-republic- and surveillance-state credentials are that much stronger.

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From Sexting To Snooping In Surveillance-State USA

Ilana Mercer — Fri, 17 May 2013 07:17:57 +0000

Peeping Sam had promised, after all, that covert surveillance would never be executed against ‘United States persons.’ Were a ‘United States person’ to fall under suspicion, he or she would not be subjected to surveillance without ‘judicial and congressional oversight,’ puled the same perverts ~ilana

No wonder the language being deployed to describe the forlorn Associated-Press reporters is something redolent of a jilted lover. The AP has been violated by its beloved Barack Obama and his gang-bangers. The news agency has gone from sexting, so to speak, with the president, to being snooped on by him.

Politico offered readers an endearingly intimate glimpse “Inside the AP,” where the flaccid folks were overcome by feelings of “fear” and “determination.” Nevertheless, they had not lost their resolve, and were proceeding with “heads-down determination.”

What made The Beloved and his dream team turn to rough play?

According to the (idiomatic) mainstream, Obama’s Justice Department had been monitoring AP phonelines in D.C., in the Hartford and New York bureaus, and in Congress. Subpoenaed too were the phone logs, “credit card receipts, airplane records and other digital information,” belonging to individual AP editors and reporters. All this in violation of Fourth-Amendment protections; without presenting a judge with evidence of probable cause, and absent a search warrant (all SOP, or standard operating procedure, at the Transportation Security Administration).

The Justice Department in the person of Attorney General Eric Holder has claimed, comically, to have been looking to plug a “very, very, very, serious leak.” Perhaps “the most serious” since the AG started his prosecutorial career in 1976.

A pesky detail has eluded all those invincibly stupid special interests who’re piping up for the privacy of the press, as opposed to fighting for the privacy of all Americans. Have the various tele-lawyers, the director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and protesting members of the House Judiciary Committee forgotten the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, whose provisions were extended until December 31, 2017, by the people’s representatives?

There is nothing new about warrantless wiretapping—other than that the American people haven’t been particularly exercised about them. They’ve trusted Uncle Sam to go about this activity judiciously. Peeping Sam had promised, after all, that covert surveillance would never be executed against “United States persons.” Were a “United States person” to fall under suspicion, he or she would not be subjected to surveillance without “judicial and congressional oversight,” puled the same perverts.

It’s not as if the National Security Agency (NSA) under George Bush was not accused of bypassing the courts to spy on the 43rd president’s many critics. It was! Sideshow “O,” however, has done Bush one better. Obama is using the FISA provisions against “friendlies.”

George Bush, you’ll recall (or maybe not), also authorized the President’s Surveillance Program (PSP). Subsumed within the PSP are activities whose scope has yet to be disclosed. Attorney General Holder, at the behest of President Obama—no doubt—is expanding the remits of the Surveillance State, as did “W” before him.

The incontinent coverage of the AP outrage has a delusional quality. Contra those whose job it is to feign indignation on TV—America is not a free country. Media convulsions notwithstanding, the government is reading over your shoulder—has been doing so for some time. It can spy on Americans without breaking the law.

It is perfectly permissible for the state to monitor you, me or The Other Guy, without a “perfunctory nod to due process and legal restraint.” In other words, without a court order.

National Journal is agreed, writing that “the Obama administration technically broke no rules.” Companies that give up this information to the government have “immunity,” which has been “built into a 2008 revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”

Here’s the other rub: FISA permits surveillance sans court order, explains Wikipedia, for “the period of one year provided it is only for foreign intelligence.”

And provided the president has authorized the fishing expedition.

In my understanding of the impossibly convoluted and cancerous Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Obama has to have authorized the dragnet that was cast at the Associated Press.

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