The ‘NSA surveillance’ story the Washington Post won’t print: covert ops
by Jon Rappoport
March 24, 2014
In the world of spying and social engineering, the punch line you see coming isn’t always the real one. It’s just a setup for something else.
In many of my articles over the past 13 years, I’ve been explaining how this works in various covert theaters of operation.
Here’s another one.
To set the stage, read these three quotes from a March 18 Washington Post story, “NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve and replay phone calls”:
“The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording ‘100 percent’ of a foreign country’s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place.”
“The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for ‘retrospective retrieval,’ and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere.”
“At the request of US officials, the Washington Post is withholding details that could be used to identify the country where the system is being employed or other countries where its use was envisioned.”
Okay. This last quote reveals that the Post won’t print the name of the country the NSA has completely blanketed. The Post knows which country it is, but it won’t say.
So that’s the apparent punch line.
That sets up an argument about how much secrecy the NSA should have in its work, and whether the press should go along with the government and conceal certain facts.
The Post story, and the Post’s refusal to “name the country” is very much like a film teaser or trailer: “We know what country it is but we aren’t saying at this time. Stay tuned. More exciting revelations to follow…and who knows? We might break our code of silence and tell you the name of that blanketed nation! Is it Afghanistan? Iraq? France? England?”
So what’s the real bottom-line op here?
It’s all about keeping the NSA story alive, in order that people know they’re being spied on 24/7. That’s the social engineering aspect. That’s the game.
And in that regard, the slow-drip method of releasing Snowden files is quite useful. It appears to be a smart journalistic strategy, to “keep the issue before the public so that a true debate about government secrecy and spying can take place.”
But the debate isn’t effective. The NSA isn’t being curbed. If one of its channels of snooping is cut back, another one will emerge.
No, the actual op is: keep reminding people they’re being spied on; that will make them more cautious; that will make make them conform in action, speech, and thought.
That’s the goal. And in that sense, it doesn’t really matter whether the NSA is blanketing the populace with its programs. It only matters that people believe it’s happening.
This op is as old as the hills. For example, a famous manual for the Catholic Inquisition, the Directorium Inquisitorium, reprinted in Rome in 1578, contained the following:
“…punishment does not take place primarily for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evil they would commit.”
The Inquisition was a traveling circus for Church sadists and control freaks. It held show trials, torture sessions, and public executions.
Today, in less overt terms, the op is still all about weaning the population away from the “evil they would commit.”
Today, as in the past, every person is considered a potential threat. So he must be monitored and spied on. More than that, every person must believe he’s being spied on.
All this “media and public debate”about the NSA keeps the pot percolating and boiling—so that people are put on notice every few days that the NSA is looking over their shoulder.
People at the Washington Post may actually believe they’re engaged in a moral struggle to define where national security ends and the public’s right to know begins. But they’re dupes in a larger op.
Whether you believe Ed Snowden is a hero for our times or a Trojan Horse wheeled into our midst, the deep op is the same: release his files via the slow-drip method, keeping them in the hands of “responsible journalists,” provoke an ongoing “debate about the public good and the right to privacy,” and thus:
Prove to everyone everywhere that they’re under surveillance, and therefore should tailor and reduce their behavior to more extreme forms of conformity and assent.
That’s the actual punch line.
You’ve heard the term “metadata”? It basically means data about data. Well, this is a meta-op. It piggybacks on the “debate about spying,” and it does its work with relative invisibility.
Major intelligence ops are always layered. They use “honorable concerns in a free democracy” as fronts, behind which they hide.
Mass spying on the public is an honorable concern. That’s why the meta-op works. It preys on and uses evidence of real crimes to achieve its own crimes.
Jon Rappoport
The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
Reblogged this on Spartan of Truth.
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Reblogged this on Julia etc. and commented:
Yep, agreed. You may want to consider to see Snowden in this light “Prove to everyone everywhere that they’re under surveillance, and therefore should tailor and reduce their behavior to more extreme forms of conformity and assent.”
Agreed, my feeling all along with “hero” Snowden. Reblogged here http://juliaetc.wordpress.com/
Reblogged this on News You May Have Missed and commented:
The story the Washington Post won’t print
Mar24
It certainly is all about people knowing they are being spied on. The TV is the biggest social engineering component. First there is the news. But recent TV dramas (i.e. Person of Interest) try to show that blanket spying on everyone is a good thing. Look at recent history of CSI type dramas, with their incredible technology which can catch a person with just trace fiber evidence. Look at how they over exaggerate the capabilities of DNA evidence. It is all fear, putting you in a state of fear. This comes from paranoia at the top, the fear that people are planning and organizing for their demise. They are trying to show everyone that no matter what is tried they will be caught. But nothing could be further from the truth. The “evil they would commit” is justice for the most horrendous crimes mankind and the planet have endured, and it is coming no matter what.
I can honestly say that this blanket spying thing has already had the desired effect on me, making me afraid to speak my mind when on the phone with someone.
Better to live free for a moment on your feet, than a thousand years on your knees,afraid.
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GYG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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This also works for my studies (personal research) into the day-to-day psycho-manipulation that is played out upon the public. There is definitely a strong pressure towards conformity in ALL of the political messages and “news” media!
This just further serves the “Shock-and-Awe” treatment that many UNITED NATION’s bureaucrats talked about years ago. The idea is to “shock-and-awe” the world’s peoples into acquiescence and acceptance to all political policies.
– Rev. Dragon’s Eye
The first two accusations in the second sentence are technically correct but misleading, since the Inquisition far more often held trials in camera as it found it better to work in the shadows, and it preferred to avoid torture so it could keep that in reserve as a last line of approach. The last accusation is completely false, since the Inquisition was only part of a wider process, like the prosecution within a court system; once the Inquisition had done its part it never executed anybody, publicly or not, but only passed them over to the civil authority for secular handling once the religious and non-physical side had been handled (e.g., a penitent confession). But it would be even more misleading just to stop with pointing that out, since the secular handling was almost certain to involve harsh measures, even public execution.
That first sentence is even further off the mark. The speech George Bernard Shaw researched and put in the mouth of the Inquisitor in his play Saint Joan is far closer:-
Earlier parts of that cited passage also illuminate the tendency to avoid torture.
@ P. M. Lawrence
Ah seems you are trying to split hairs…my friend what has been stated by Jon, is, far far gentler compared to the real truth of the matter of the Catholic Church.
The Holy See has been responsible for a lot more than the Inquisition. There is a direct relationship between the Catholic Church and well over 1200 years of atrocities. The inquisition being one of their most publicized moments in that far from illustrious history. The Catholic Church went to great extremes to show their power to a public. The Inquisition is about show, quite like Snowden and the NSA.
But I am digressing…so…keeping to the point, the Inquisition which lastly nearly 335 years was responsible under the strict guidance and carefully laid out plan of an extremely paranoid Tommy Torquemada for 30,000 Jewish executions. And execution meant burning. It resulted also in the exodus of 250,000 Jews and close to 450,000 other religious types from Spain. And all this during Tommy’s sixteen year reign as Grand inquisitor. Two thousand executions of which he was directly responsible being the main chastiser during the trial. Tomas Torquemada has been compared to Hitler. He was a sadist who hated anyone who opposed the church. He even terrified Pope Alexander VI, who tried to soften the Inquisition’s stance close to end of Torquemada life by appointing four Grand Inquisitors. This did not soften the results, as the momentum Tommy’s Inquisition inspired went on to even greater atrocities. Central America under Hernán Cortés and his Jesuits a little over 50 years after Torquemada’s death resulted in the deaths of 100,000 in Mexico. And uncountable numbers in Central America. The savagery was beyond imagining.
So…
”The Inquisition was a traveling circus for Church sadists and control freaks. It held show trials, torture sessions, and public executions.”
Oh and BTW George Bernard Shaw was a Fabian and eugenist of the highest order…you do know he was responsible for the creation of the London school of Economics, and the idea of sustainable development adopted into the UN’s Agenda 21. Shaw is a Catholic, and has been suspected of being a Jesuit. So I would think he has a bias.
http://www.rarebooks.nd.edu/exhibits/inquisition/text/instructions.html
“The accused woman lay naked on an escalera, a ladder tipped so that her head was lower than her feet. The torturer had stretched her out to her full length and bound her tightly. Iron prongs held her jaws open. Her nostrils were stopped, allowing breathing only through her mouth. She struggled, but her bounds permitted little movement, and days of relentless questioning had left her exhausted. The torturer draped a piece of linen loosely over her open mouth. Jugs of water lined a nearby wall. Three other men stood over the woman in the torture chamber. A doctor observed her reactions and assessed her general condition. The mandates of the 15th Century Spanish Inquisition required the presence of a physician to monitor the health of the accused. The purpose of torture would be nullified if the accused was physically unable to hear and understand the proceedings. A confession, if it came, had to be a pure act, not the half-conscious ramblings of a mortally wounded sinner. A clerk sat at a crude wooden table, poised to write down the particulars of the session. The man in charge of the proceedings, the inquisitor, ignored the woman’s panicked squeals and read through the charges levied against her. Witnesses had previously testified that on several successive Saturdays, smoke did not emerge from the woman’s chimney, a strong indication that she was secretly a practicing Jew. Judaism forbids manual labor on the Sabbath, and starting a fire was considered manual labor. During questioning the woman had insisted that although she was born a Jew, she was now a converse, a convert to Catholicism. But the telltale signs, which were outlined by the Grand Inquisitor himself, Tomas de Torquemada, indicated that she was in fact a heretic, a practicing Jew pretending to be a Catholic and secretly subverting the Catholic faith. When the inquisitor finished reviewing the charges, he looked to the doctor who gave him a nod of assent. The inquisitor then pointed to the jugs of water and told the torturer to be ready. The torturer lifted one of the sloshing jugs; each contained one liter of water. The woman’s eyes widened in panic. She knew what was coming, and she tried to scream. The first level of torture employed by the Spanish Inquisition was the “water cure.” Water was poured into the accused’s open mouth. The linen cloth was washed into the opening of the throat, preventing the accused from spitting the water back out. The overwhelming sensation of drowning forced the accused to swallow the water. The rules of torture as written by Torquemada, a man whom historians have compared to Hitler, stipulated that no more than eight liters of water could be used in a single session. The torturer held the earthen jug in his arms, ready to follow the inquisitor’s orders. The woman cried and struggled for breath, anticipating the worst. The inquisitor stepped forward and spoke. “We shall begin.”” – Anthony Bruno
No, I’m not splitting hairs, I’m trying to head off a profound misunderstanding that will otherwise interfere with knowing your enemy, an issue of target identification, as it were.
Certainly, it is as irrelevant to the moral culpability as a criminal’s defence against a charge of burglary that he was on the other side of town burning a house down at the time. But only patrolling for people going equipped for burglary is going to miss many such arsonists, so it matters.
The Inquisition was not as was made out, simply the outworking of the efforts of “sadists and control freaks”, but rather it matched C.S. Lewis’s observation that:-
Someone in 1930s Germany who was on the look out for something like that faulty description of the Inquisition would have had his fears allayed by Himmler’s sincere and partially successful efforts to weed out “sadists and control freaks” from the SS – such people were even sometimes put in concentration camps themselves, when practical. Himmler wanted a higher calling for his men and their work.
So I was no more quibbling than was C.S. Lewis; these distinctions matter.
Incidentally, the Inquisition started out as a centralised quality control function to ensure that the bishops’ policing of heresy couldn’t be captured itself, a concern during and after the Albigensian Crusade of the early thirteenth century. As such, it was necessarily an add on to a wider system.
Nothing more zealous than a convert…Lewis became so staunch of the Catholic church that he sometimes became a bore to Tolkien, especially in his rambling of the ‘Lord of the Rings’ being an allegory of the true church.
You quote me Himmler, another Catholic. I find it hilarious, you placing Himmler opposing “sadists and control freaks” in the same sentence.
Catholicism shouldn’t be called a religion, it is more of an architecture of thought. A state of fear, guilt, shame and loathing. And it is by nature violence. There is a reason to the “give me a boy till seven, and I will make him a catholic for life.” It’s about indoctrination…
The Inquisition as centralized quality control…hah; how about as the rotten fruit of what was the Albigensian crusades and the persecution of the Cathar, probably the most advanced society of it’s time. A wonderful coincidence that they were Gnostic, a hated ancient heresy. And those Cathar crusades were bought and paid for from a church under Innocent lll as a favor to Phillip the second, who seemed to not be able to control his finances and borrowed incessantly, even from the Cathars.
The Albigensian crusade is the a teaching ground for what latter would become the Inquisition. The Cathar held great lands, and were very wealthy. Which was a great incentive for mercenary recruitment.
The Dominican order was formed and institutionalized during the Cathar slaughter, because of the Cathars. The Dominican perfected their means of persecuting heresies. That festering hatred that the church, a few hundred years later created the paranoia and sadistic Tomas De Torquemada, a Dominican friar who rose to become a serial killer, the Grand and great Inquisitor. This mad man is only out done by Hitler ( catholic) and the staunchly catholic Cortez the Conquistador.
The inquisition is about spectacle, gore and terror, quite like the previous Ceasars and the Circus, only in a travelling road show. The inquisition inspired the greatest conversions to Catholicism to that date.
Michael
“The Philippines is a terrible name, coming from Spain. Phillip II was the father of the inquisition, who I believe died of syphilis. It is my great regret that we didn’t change the name of our country.” – Imelda Marcos
However there is always the real possibility that keeping such a story in front of the public will galvanize them to secure their own information in any way they can and to lobby their representatives for political protection. I know that I am currently searching for a net carrier that is not US based, for a laptop that is not US produced and for software that is as close to being secure against snooping as one can find these days.
sorry, you missed the point. it is not about fear but they are preparing list of people to be neutralized in soviet America. I am sure you are aware that some 67 millions Russians were executed in soviet gulags? if they are openly claiming spying then it means the list is complete.
Since the Snowden leaks began to shower us via the news media I have noticed a trend on Facebook where I have a considerable presence. I’m member of scores of active groups and in the wake of Snowden’s first emerging and bringing to the fore of the public mind that which conspiracy and deep reality researchers have known for more than ten years, I’ve seen more than a dozen of the groups in which I’m a member change their privacy settings from Open to Closed or from Closed the Secret. The only exception was following a discussion where the observations and reflections which I present in this comment was forwarded. That group dealt with people’s poor use of language (Norwegian language) and the group’s change from Open to Closed was reversed a short time following that discussion.
These observations clearly corroborate the efficiency of the strategy which Jon Rappoport exposes in the present article. People do feel that their private space has been invaded by Big Brother, and they make feeble, subconscious attempts to compensate for their encroached private sphere. I’m sure similar changes can be discovered in other areas of social interaction in our societies as well. Which is sure to raise the level of alienation in the populace further still.
The only way out of this as it appears to me is through applying the lore and practices of Wilhelm Reich, not the ‘orgone magic’ of various alternative media/conspiracy lore outlets, but his seminal teachings on the workings of the life energy in the human organism – the discussions of the function of the orgasm, Sex Economy, the muscular armoring, etc.
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