Decades ago outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led America and her allies to victory in World War II, warned of the burgeoning “military-industrial complex” that threatened our republican democracy.
Today the term “military-industrial complex” could be interchanged with “Deep State,” a cabal of faceless, unelected and increasingly unaccountable officials within the intelligence community and federal law enforcement.
We’re seeing the politicization of the FBI and the Department of Justice under President Obama play out in the form of a bogus “Russian dossier” — a ‘political opposition’ document that was transformed into a legitimate, but wholly unsubstantiated, ‘intelligence’ asset, and then used to improperly obtain a surveillance warrant so the previous White House could spy on a rival presidential campaign.
Think about that for a moment and let it sink in: Since the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for the dossier, that means Obama and his sycophants in Justice and the FBI were colluding with the candidate they wanted to succeed Obama, and to blazes with the candidate the American people wanted.
It gets worse if you can believe that. Based on what happened in federal court last with the National Security Agency, it now appears our intelligence community is operating completely independent of the government — a development that ought to scare the bejesus out of every American, regardless of your political affiliation. And its transformation began long before Obama got to the Oval Office. (Related: Rep. Jim Jordan: ‘Shocking’ FISA memo context revealed proving MASSIVE corruption at ‘HIGHEST levels’ (Video))
“Nowhere is that ‘independence’ of the ‘state within a state’ more evident than in the blatant and egregious news this week that the [NSA] destroyed surveillance data it pledged to preserve in connection with pending lawsuits,” noted Zero Hedge on Friday.
What’s more, the agency “apparently never took some of the steps it told a federal court it had taken to make sure the information wasn’t destroyed, according to recent court filings.”
What’s worse, the agency (thus far) has gotten away with this massive abuse of power with the equivalent of a shoulder shrug and, “Oops! Sorry ‘bout that.”
As Politico reported further, the NSA has been under court order since 2007 to preserve all data related to some of its foreign surveillance efforts. But in court, the agency’s lawyers said that data was ‘accidentally’ deleted and no one yet knows why.
And this comes as Congress just scrambled to reauthorize for six years the NSA’s legal authority used to get permission to conduct most of its surveillance (Trump signed it into law Friday).
The court order came following revelations from the George W. Bush administration that, after the 9/11 attacks, he had ordered warrantless wiretapping of international communications, in gross violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The agency’s nefarious actions go further: For years NSA officials have been certifying to the courts that it was complying with its required duties to preserve the data — an out-and-out lie.
In a filing, the NSA told U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White on Thursday, as well as in another little-noticed submission last year, that it did not preserve data relating to Internet communications that were intercepted between 2001 and 2007 under the Bush program.
Moreover, backup tapes that may have mitigated the loss were erased in 2009, 2011, and 2016, said the agency.
“The NSA sincerely regrets its failure to prevent the deletion of this data,” NSA’s deputy director of capabilities, identified publicly as “Elizabeth B.,” wrote in a declaration filed in October. “NSA senior management is fully aware of this failure, and the Agency is committed to taking swift action to respond to the loss of this data.”
Sure it is.
As you might expect, failure to adhere to a court order most often results in criminal penalties. But thus far, there doesn’t appear to be any indication that anyone in government is pushing White to hold people responsible and impose any sort of punishment.
The Deep State has an obvious and blatant disdain for the very same American citizens it was formulated to protect. It’s gotten worse in the Trump era; whereas Bush and Obama tolerated and even enabled the IC’s malfeasance, Trump has vowed to rein it in. That alone puts him in danger.
More on this subject in the coming days.
J.D. Heyes is also editor-in-chief of The National Sentinel.
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