More Truth about 9/11 Leaks Out

NSA Security running amok to plug leaks about 9/11 ------------

Thu Jul 9, 2009 10:08 pm (PDT)

NSA Security running amok to plug leaks about 9/11
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jul 7, 2009, 00:17

(WMR) -- WMR has learned that the National Security
Group, responsible for security, has grown to an immense security and
counter-intelligence force, with an estimated one thousand government
employees, contractors, and paid informants. NSAs Security
force is reportedly primarily tasked with plugging any leaks of
classified or other information that points to U.S. governments
involvement with the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
NSA Security has doggedly pursued a number of NSA employees, some in
sting operations, others in frequent polygraphs and
repeated security interviews where threats are made by thuggish NSA
security agents with and without the presence of FBI agents, and others
in constant surveillance operations at their homes, churches, and
other locations away from the Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters of the
agency.

The most egregious NSA Security operation against an NSA employee was
the 2004 arrest of NSA analyst Ken Ford, Jr. Ford became a target of
opportunity for NSA Security and the FBI after Vice President Dick
Cheney noted his name on an NSA signals intelligence report on Saddam
Husseins government that stated that there was no proof from
interceptions of Iraqi communications that Saddam Hussein possessed
weapons of mass destruction.

Cheney and other neocons in the Bush White House arranged for a
“sting” operation to be mounted as retribution against
Ford. Ford was charged with taking classified papers home from NSA
headquarters, something that is quite impossible considering the
stringent security in place at one of the most-secured complexes in the
world.

Ford was convicted by a tainted jury and sentenced to seven years in
federal prison. Ford, who is African-American, originally had an
African-American federal trial judge. However, the judge was replaced by
a pro-Iraq war Jewish U.S. judge, Peter Messitte, who set out to
ensure a guilty conviction of Ford in cahoots with Jewish U.S.
Attorney for Maryland Rod Rosenstein, and Jewish Assistant U.S.
Attorney for Southern Maryland David Salem, both Bush appointees.
Nothing was done by the judge or prosecutors to dismiss from the jury
a contractor whose company had major contracts with NSA. The trio of
Messitte, Rosenstein, and Salem have also
rocket-docketed a number of cases, resulting in
slam-dunk convictions, against Arab- and Iranian-Americans in the
southern district of Maryland.

NSAs Security chief is Kemp Ensor III. Ensor has built up what
amounts to a massive law enforcement and intelligence agency in Maryland
that operates as a virtual independent operation that answers to no one.
Marylands congressional delegation has shown little interest in
oversight over the security operation.

In fact, WMR has learned that many NSA employees, aware of the political
and other misuse of their agency by the Bush-Cheney administration,
avidly backed Barack Obama for president hoping that the past era when
NSA complied with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and
the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution would be restored. However,
many NSA employees are bitterly disappointed that Obama has done nothing
to curtail not only the widespread surveillance of the communications of
law-abiding Americans but the constant Stasi-like
harassment and surveillance conducted by Ensors team of agents
and confidential informants.

WMR has also learned that NSA Security has been authorized to work
directly with Washington area local police department intelligence
divisions to carry out its surveillance of not only NSA employees and
contractors, but journalists who report on the activities of NSA. Two
police departments mentioned in this respect are the Alexandria,
Virginia, and Anne Arundel County, Maryland, sheriff departments.
One senior level NSA official recently found himself sitting in front of
NSA Security questioners asking why he gave his NSA business cards to
some students at a university. It turns out the official was trying to
recruit students for NSA employment. When the official asked why there
was a problem in his handing out his business cards, the answer by NSA
Security was that some of them, all American citizens, had
Russian last names.

Even former NSA employees and contractors are being subjected to
continual NSA Security surveillance and harassment at their work places
and other locations, according to WMRs sources. Some have lost
their jobs as a result of pressure from NSA Security.
WMR has in the past reported on NSA surveillance of journalists. On
December 28, 2005, we reported: WMR has learned that the
National Security Agency (NSA), on the orders of the Bush
administration, eavesdropped on the private conversations and e-mail of
its own employees, employees of other U.S. intelligence agencies --
including the CIA and DIA -- and their contacts in the media, Congress,
and oversight agencies and offices. The journalist surveillance program,
code named ˜FIRSTFRUITS, was part of a Director of
Central Intelligence (DCI) program that was maintained at least until
October 2004 and was authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss. FIRSTFRUITS was
authorized as part of a DCI Countering Denial and
Deception program responsible to an entity known as the Foreign
Denial and Deception Committee (FDDC). Since the intelligence
communitys reorganization, the DCI has been replaced by the
Director of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte and his
deputy, former NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden.

Since the revelation of the NSA journalist monitoring database, which
later added communications intercepts of journalists phone
calls, emails, and faxes to its database, NSA Security has, according to
information received by WMR, conducted physical surveillance of
journalists it deems to be threats to the operations of the agency. The
top targeted journalists, who make up a virtual rogues
gallery at NSA Security, complete with photographs and other
personal information, are: former Baltimore Sun and current Wall Street
Journal reporter Siobhan Gorman, Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz,
former Baltimore Sun and current New York Times reporter Scott Shane,
Baltimore Sun reporter Phil McGowan, author James Bamford, New York
Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, and this editor, Wayne
Madsen.

In addition to the aforementioned, FIRSTFRUITS also contained the
names of former Washington Post reporter Vernon Loeb, New Yorker
journalist Seymour Hersh, and UPIs John C.. K. Daly.

Ironically, NSA Security allegedly has its own connections in the news
media. A Washington Times source revealed that the papers
writer of the Inside the Beltway column, John
McCaslin, has a relative inside NSA Security -- Robert McCaslin, the
chief of NSA Security counter-intelligence and the chief
sting agent against Ford. Robert McCaslin, according
to the Times source, is the brother of the papers columnist.

NSA Security is also able to utilize the agencys most
sophisticated electronic surveillance systems to monitor the activities
of journalists. The cell phones of journalists are routinely used as
listening devices, even when turned off. And what was considered a
sure-fire method of avoiding having a cell phone used as a transmitter,
removing the batteries in what has become known as batteries
out conversations, is no longer safe. Even when the batteries
are removed, the global positioning system (GPS) chip in cell phones
continues to have enough residual power that two to three pings from
satellites can give away a persons location and what other
uniquely identifiable cell phones are at the same location.

The bottom line is that a number of NSA personnel who were on duty in
the months leading up to 9/11, the day of the attacks, and subsequent
weeks and months, are aware of undeniable facts that point to a massive
cover-up by the Bush-Cheney administration of the circumstances
surrounding 9/11, including what actually befell United Airlines flight
93 and who was issuing direct military orders from the White House.
The Obama administration, rather than lessen the pressure on the NSA
personnel, has turned up the heat and is resorting to even more
draconian methods to ensure silence. The word from inside NSA is that a
state of fear exists and the mission of the agency, to conduct
surveillance of foreign communications to provide threat indications and
warnings to U..S. troops and policy makers and protect sensitive U.S.
government communications from unauthorized eavesdropping is suffering
as a result.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2009 WayneMadenReport.comWayne Madsen is a Washington,
DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist.
He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription
required).