The Last Roundup: MAIN CORE

In my case, there’s no way the programs I want to talk to Congress about should be public ever, unless maybe in 200 years they want to declassify them. You should never learn about it; no one at the Times should ever learn about these things.
– Russell Tice, Former NSA SIGINT Officer


I’m going to provide a one paragraph summary, just to make sure that the implications of this are clear to everyone:

The U.S. Government has, almost certainly, established a database and tracking system for something like eight million Americans who have been designated as threats to national security. The system is called MAIN CORE and it is being run under the auspices of highly classified Continuity of Government (COG) operations. MAIN CORE uses a variety of intelligence sources as inputs, including your email, web activity, telephone and private financial information. In the event of a major national security crisis, it is alleged that Americans listed in the MAIN CORE database, “Could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.”

The Last Roundup, by Christopher Ketcham, appeared in the May/June 2008 issue of Radar Magazine. (Full text here and here.)

Below are some excerpts from The Last Roundup. I have provided explicit pointers to the related materials on Cryptogon:

Read moreThe Last Roundup: MAIN CORE

Germans said to plan major surveillance centre

Berlin – Germany is planning to set up a new authority to combine its various eavesdropping operations in a purpose-built headquarters near Cologne, the news magazine Der Spiegel said Saturday.

The combined police and espionage centre would be modelled on the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States or the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Britain.

The project was being pushed by the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police and domestic intelligence, the magazine said in a story to appear in print on Monday.

Approached for comment by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, a ministry spokesman a possible merger of telecommunications surveillance was at the “consideration” stage.

Including surveillance by the 16 German states, Germany had more than 75 surveillance offices at present, Der Spiegel said.

The interior ministry was keen to take away surveillance functions from the BND foreign intelligence service, and would argue that a new authority similar to the NSA could provide foreign and domestic eavesdropping from one spot.

A revamp was needed because modern communications were mainly digital and used sophisticated new encryption methods, creating a risk that police and intelligence services would be unable to crack the codes, according to Der Spiegel.

Source: DPA

Nukes in the Taiwan Crisis

Click on image to view higher resolution
Nuclear bombs in Asia at the time of the Taiwan Strait crisis are listed (red box) in this Strategic Air Command document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Thanks to the efforts of Bill Burr at the National Security Archive, some of the veil covering U.S. nuclear war planning against China in the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis now has been lifted by a declassified military study.

It shows that on the day after the Chinese began shelling the Quemoy islands on August 23, 1958, U.S. Air Force Headquarters apparently assured Pacific Air Forces “that, assuming presidential approval, any Communist assault upon the offshore islands would trigger immediate nuclear retaliation.” Yet President Dwight D. Eisenhower fortunately rejected the use of nuclear weapons immediately, even if China invaded the islands, and emphasized that under no circumstances would these weapons be used without his approval.

Caution against nuclear use didn’t mean not planning for it, however, and in the years after the Taiwan Strait crisis an enormous nuclear build-up occurred in the Far East. The numbers started to decline in the 1970s, and for a period during the 1980s and first half of the 1990s, nuclear planning against China was reduced to reserve force contingencies. In the past decade, however, China has again become a focus for U.S. nuclear strike planning.

The Available Nuclear Bombs

Shortly after the Chinese shelling of Quemoy began, General Nathan Twining, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained during a meeting with President Eisenhower’s cabinet that U.S. aircraft at the outset would drop 10-15 kilotons nuclear bombs on selected fields in the vicinity of Amoy (Xiamen). The Pacific Air Forces drew up a contingency plan based on the assumption that the United States would carry out the nuclear strikes necessary to defeat the attacking Chinese forces.

At that time, the Matador nuclear cruise missile was already deployed in Taiwan. The missile could deliver a 20 kt W5 warhead to a range of about 965 km (600 miles). From Taiwan, the Matador could potentially have hit Chinese troop concentrations around Amoy, but General Twining apparently favored bombs. Nuclear bombs, however, did not arrive in Taiwan until January 1960, but a declassified document previously released to me under FOIA shows they were available on Guam and Okinawa. The bombs included three types – Mk-6 (only Guam), Mk-36 Mod 1, and Mk-39 Mod 0 – with yields ranging from 8 kilotons to 10 megatons (see Table 1).

Table 1:
Nuclear Bombs Deployed Near Taiwan, June 1958
Base Bomb Type Yield(s) Custodian Unit
Anderson AFB,
Okinawa
Mk-6
Mk-36 Mod 1
Mk-39 Mod 0
8, 22, 61, 160 kt
10,000 kt
~3,750 kt
3 ADS
Kadena AB, Okinawa Mk-36 Mod 1
Mk-39 Mod 0
10,000 kt
~3,750 kt
12 ADS
Sources: U.S. Strategic Air Command, History of the Strategic Air Command 1 January 1958 – 30 June 1958, Historical Study Number 73, Volume 1, n.d. [1959] p. 89. Document obtained under FOIA; Chuck Hansen, Swords of Armageddon, Version 2, 2002.

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The Mk-6 was a tactical bomb that could be delivered in a ground or airburst mode by a variety of Air Force and Navy aircraft and probably would have been the weapon of choice for the Taiwan scenario. The Mk-36 and Mk-39 were both strategic megaton weapons more suited for use against large area targets such as cities or to “dig up” underground facilities.

In mid-August, five Strategic Air Command B-47 bombers on Guam were put on alert to conduct nuclear strikes against airfields on the Chinese mainland if necessary. Such attacks would be necessary, General Twining said, if initial nuclear strikes against troop concentrations failed to cause China to lift their blockade of Quemoy.

Read moreNukes in the Taiwan Crisis

In ‘Spies for Hire,’ U.S. Security Gets Outsourced

It’s become a $50 billion a year industry: Corporations like Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, and IBM are being paid to do things the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Pentagon usually do, including analysis, covert operations, electronic surveillance and reconnaissance.Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock details the outsourcing of U.S. intelligence in his new book, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.

Shorrock has covered the intersection of business and national security for over 25 years, writing for such publications as The Nation, Mother Jones and Salon.com, among others.
'Spies for Hire' coverOn May 9, 2006, John Humphrey, a former CIA officer making his way up the management ladder of one of the nation’s largest intelligence contractors, made a stunning disclosure to Intelcon, a national intelligence conference and exhibition at a hotel in Bethesda, Maryland. Outsourcing, Humphrey declared, was out of control. Contractors deployed in Iraq and other hotspots overseas were making decisions and handling documents that, in earlier times, had been the sole responsibility of U.S. military and intelligence officers. This had caused a “paradigm shift” in the relationship between government and the private sector, and left companies like his in an untenable position.

Five years ago, “you’d never have a contractor supporting an operation on the field where they’re making a recommendation to an officer,” said Humphrey. Nor would you find a contractor “making little contributions here and there” in the reports intelligence officers sent back to Washington. “This concerns me a lot, the way these lines are blurring,” he went on. “We shouldn’t be involved in some of these intelligence operations, or the planning, or the interrogations and what have you.” Unless government started taking more responsibility in the field, he warned, the “blowback” for the contracting industry could be profound.

The intelligence professionals in the room looked stunned. They had just sat through two days of upbeat discussions about the annual $10-billion expansion of U.S. intelligence budgets and the opportunities that money presented for defense contractors, information technology vendors, and former national security officials who still held their top secret security clearances. Upstairs in the exhibition hall, thirty-five companies were displaying the latest high-tech spying equipment and competing to recruit new employees, who could earn up to three times government pay by migrating to the private sector. Words like “blowback” did not come easily at such gatherings.

Read moreIn ‘Spies for Hire,’ U.S. Security Gets Outsourced

Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” Harks Back to an Earlier Intel Operation

Rush Limbaugh’s handlers are having themselves a little joke with Operation Chaos. Limbaugh has launched his version of Operation Chaos to mess with the Democrats in true Karl Rove fashion. There is of course an older version of Operation Chaos. It was devised by the CIA.

Donald J. Myers writes for the Tampa Tribune: “Prior to the Texas and Ohio primary elections, Rush Limbaugh implemented his ‘operation chaos.’ The purpose of this was to have Republicans vote in Democratic primaries for Sen. Hillary Clinton in order to keep her in the race and continue the fight between her and Sen. Barack Obama.”

On the surface, this appears to be an attempt to have the two Democrats self destruct and thus hand the election to McCain, who is run by the same neocons who ran Bush for the last seven plus years. In fact, Limbaugh does not support McCain, he supports Hillary, same as Rupert Murdoch, who hosted fundraisers for the “liberal” Clinton. Murdoch and Limbaugh are supposed “conservatives,” so on the surface it seems rather strange they would come out in Hillary’s corner.

But then Hillary is the candidate of choice for the Bilderbergers, same as Bill Clinton was their candidate. Of course, it does not matter if Hillary, Obama, or McCain “win” the “election” come November, as turned upside down they are virtually identical — controlled by the bankers and beholden to multinational corporations. Even so, the insiders and the ruling elite are fond of running one minion against another. Our rulers call this “democracy.” It is nothing of the sort, even in the technical sense — democracy is essentially mob rule — and the mob is not allowed to do much except spectate and push the mandated button on a Diebold machine when the time comes.

As for the other Operation Chaos — it was a domestic snoop and neutralize project conducted by the CIA with the help of the FBI and the NSA. Call it a collaborative project. “CHAOS project amassed thousands of files on Americans, indexed hundreds of thousands of Americans into its computer records, and disseminated thousands of reports about Americans to the FBI and other government offices. Some of the information concerned the domestic activity of those Americans,” noted the Church committee in 1976. The most notable targets were Americans involved in the antiwar movement in the late 60s and early 70s, a big thorn in the side of Nixon and the establishment.

Read moreLimbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” Harks Back to an Earlier Intel Operation

Administration Set to Use New Spy Program in U.S.

The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation’s most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea’s legal authority.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department’s new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities — such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.

Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.

Read moreAdministration Set to Use New Spy Program in U.S.

Homeland Security invokes nuclear bomb, as Bush quietly links cybersecurity program to NSA

Department of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff has dropped the bomb.

At a speech to hundreds of security professionals Wednesday, Chertoff declared that the federal government has created a cyber security “Manhattan Project,” referencing the 1941-1946 project led by the Army Corps of Engineers to develop American’s first atomic bomb.

According to Wired’s Ryan Singel, Chertoff gave few details of what the government actually plans to do.

He cites a little-noticed presidential order: “In January, President Bush signed a presidential order expanding the role of DHS and the NSA in government computer security,” Singel writes. “Its contents are classified, but the U.S. Director of National Intelligence has said he wants the NSA to monitor America’s internet traffic and Google searches for signs of cyber attack.”

The National Security Agency was the key player in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was revealed by the New York Times in 2005.

Sound familiar? Yesterday, documents acquired by the Electronic Frontier Foundation under the Freedom of Information act showed the FBI has engaged in a massive cyber surveillance project that targets terror suspects emails, telephone calls and instant messagesand is able to get some information without a court order.

Last week, the ACLU revealed documents showing that the Pentagon was using the FBI to spy on Americans. The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans’ Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, according to Pentagon documents.

Read moreHomeland Security invokes nuclear bomb, as Bush quietly links cybersecurity program to NSA

Bush Administration Memo Says Fourth Amendment Does Not Apply

NEW YORK – A newly disclosed secret memo authored by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in March 2003 that asserts President Bush has unlimited power to order brutal interrogations of detainees also reveals a radical interpretation of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure. The memo, declassified yesterday as the result of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, cites a still-secret DOJ memo from 2001 that found that the “Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.”

The October 2001 memo was almost certainly meant to provide a legal basis for the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, which President Bush launched the same month the memo was issued. As a component of the Department of Defense, the NSA is a military agency.

“The recent disclosures underscore the Bush administration’s extraordinarily sweeping conception of executive power,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “The administration’s lawyers believe the president should be permitted to violate statutory law, to violate international treaties, and even to violate the Fourth Amendment inside the U.S. They believe that the president should be above the law.

Read moreBush Administration Memo Says Fourth Amendment Does Not Apply

Hayden: White Boy al-Qaeda on the Rise

“Al-Qaeda, in its haven in western Pakistan, is training operatives who are ‘western’ in appearance, making it easier for them to get past U.S. airport security, Central Intelligence Director Michael Hayden said,” reports Bloomberg.

Does anybody who looks “western” have an easy time getting past airport security? Mr. Hayden needs to visit an airport and see for himself — just about everybody, from grandmothers to toddlers, are under suspicion, even if they look Scandinavian. It has nothing to do with actual suspicion. It has to do with sending a message: you live in a police state now, get used to it, and if you don’t want to end up dead in a holding cell like Carol Ann Gotbaum, you’ll submit and not complain.

Of course, Mr. Hayden, as the head honcho of the CIA, is “catapulting the propaganda,” as Bush might call it. Now that al-Qaeda operatives look like stock brokers and cashiers at the local Stop ‘n Gas, we need to push ahead with the control grid, now only partially in place. Our rulers think we need to hear this kind of nonsense every few weeks, just to remind us and get us accustomed to those CCTV cameras everywhere and the NSA vacuuming up our telephone conversations and emails. It’s all to protect us from the white boy al-Qaeda.

Read moreHayden: White Boy al-Qaeda on the Rise

CIA enlists Google’s help for spy work

US intelligence agencies are using Google’s technology to help its agents share information about their suspects

Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects.

Agencies such as the National Security Agency have bought servers on which Google-supplied search technology is used to process information gathered by networks of spies around the world.

Read moreCIA enlists Google’s help for spy work

Do Americans Care About Big Brother?

 survailance_0316.jpg

The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in Virginia. the NCTC has elements of the FBI and CIA where terrorism-related information is
shared on a real-time basis.

Christopher Morris / VII for TIME

 

Pity America’s poor civil libertarians. In recent weeks, the papers have been full of stories about the warehousing of information on Americans by the National Security Agency, the interception of financial information by the CIA, the stripping of authority from a civilian intelligence oversight board by the White House, and the compilation of suspicious activity reports from banks by the Treasury Department. On Thursday, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine released a report documenting continuing misuse of Patriot Act powers by the FBI. And to judge from the reaction in the country, nobody cares.

Read moreDo Americans Care About Big Brother?

Feds Stage Cyberstorm to Prep for Attack

Government Concerned About Rising Number of Sophisticated Cyber Attacks.

The Department of Homeland Security has begun to conduct a multination cybersecurity drill to learn how to respond to the increasing number of cyberattacks that have been launched against U.S. computer infrastructure and financial networks worldwide.

dhs_cyberattacks_080312_ms.jpg

Read moreFeds Stage Cyberstorm to Prep for Attack

NSA shifts to e-mail, Web, data-mining dragnet

The National Security Agency was once known for its skill in eavesdropping on the world’s telephone calls through radio dishes in out-of-the-way places like England’s Menwith Hill, Australia’s Pine Gap, and Washington state’s Yakima Training Center.

Today those massive installations, which listened in on phone conversations beamed over microwave links, are becoming something akin to relics of the Cold War. As more communications traffic travels through fiber links, and as e-mail and text messaging supplant phone calls, the spy agency that once intercepted telegrams is adapting yet again.

Read moreNSA shifts to e-mail, Web, data-mining dragnet