critical intelligence techniques..more incentive to try to kill the story,
Loved Ones…you are led to feel as though you are not being monitored.

Loved Ones…you are led to feel your conversations are private.

Loved Ones…you are led to feel you have some amount of privacy.

However this feeling is only a cultivation of false emotions…a talented cultivation of false feelings…as your manipulation through the technologies you fund result with you being manipulated by behavior modification techniques…..behavior modification techniques sourced from those who control from a seed of greed.

Loved ones the disclosure of Rep. Jane Harman’s intercepted conversation with a suspected Israeli agent has created reactions on multiple fronts.

But one of the most overlooked angles has a deeper significance: Lawmakers who were supposed to provide oversight of the National Security Agency's warrant less eavesdropping program reportedly tried to keep the public from knowing about it.

Deep within The New York Times' follow up to a report about Harman's wiretapped conversation, the paper disclosed that in December 2005, Harman and other "congressional leaders" met with Philip Taubman -- then the chief of the Times' Washington bureau -- to urge the paper not to publish the story that revealed the NSA program's existence.

On the surface, that meeting could add credibility to reports that then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales intervened to stop an FBI investigation of Harman because he needed her help in supporting the NSA program.

But more broadly, the revelation of the Times meeting raises questions about the effectiveness of Congress' role as a watchdog over intelligence activities like the NSA program -- because the only lawmakers who would have known about it at the time were the ones who were supposed to provide oversight over the controversial initiative.

Before the Times broke the story of the NSA program in December 2005, the Bush administration's briefings to Congress about the program were limited to the gang of 8 a select group of lawmakers who are singled out under a 1991 law to receive briefings from the executive branch about covert activities.

The group consists of the Senate majority and minority leader, the House Speaker and minority leader, and the chairmen and ranking minority party members of the two Intelligence committees.

They're limited in many important ways: They can't have any staff in the room with them, they can't take notes, and they can't discuss what they've heard with anyone who wasn't there.

But given that the Bush administration wasn't briefing any other members of Congress about the NSA program, the Gang of Eight was the only oversight tool Congress had.

The Times didn't identify the other lawmakers who asked the paper not to publish its story about the program, and Taubman, now a consulting professor at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, e-mailed that "I don't have anything to add" to the Times' account of the meeting. Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for the Times, said only that "we got a great deal of advice -- solicited and unsolicted -- about the possible risks of publishing our story.

In the end, we made our own decision. We published."

But during the period before the NSA program became public, the members of the Gang of Eight would have included

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.; Nancy Pelosi, initially the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, and later the House minority leader; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.; Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and later Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate minority leaders at the time; Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., the ranking Democrat on Senate Intelligence; House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich.; and Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the ranking Democrat on House Intelligence after Pelosi became minority leader.

Most of those current and former lawmakers, including Harman, did not respond to inquiries about whether they attended the Times meeting, though a Democratic aide said Pelosi wasn't there.

As a vocal critic of the program, Pelosi would have had little reason to argue against the publication of the story, and Rockefeller later made his private concerns public.

Republican members of the gang would have had more incentive to try to kill the story, since most GOP lawmakers later said the Times jeopardized national security by running the story.

Harman, however, was caught between the two sides.

She scolded the Times for running the story, saying the disclosure of the NSA program damaged critical intelligence techniques…

But she also criticized the Bush administration for limiting its briefings to the Gang of Eight, writing that "as a general matter, Gang of Eight briefings do not provide adequate oversight…

Since then, Pelosi has suggested she might push to have the restrictions on the Gang of Eight loosened.

In February, she told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that the restraint on the gang's ability to object to covert operations "just isn't right ... because it gives all the cards to the administration and then if you say anything about it, you have violated our national security."

And in his February confirmation hearing CIA Director Leon E. Panetta vowed to give more briefings to the full Intelligence committees, saying the Bush administration "overused" and "abused" the Gang of Eight process.

Loved ones…the real question, though, is whether the full Intelligence committees will be any more committed to active oversight of covert activities -- and even a public debate, when possible -- than the Gang of Eight has been….as when you understand your private communications are used to manipulate you your own behavior will change…your own behavior will not include significant changes to your communications via electronic means.

Loved Ones…your mail…your black berry…your email…your telephone…and your spoke words are all AT ANY TIME susceptible to recording by those in power within this our own country….you do not need to fear others from outside our borders….you need to understand the threat to your freedoms are sourced from domestic groups….groups who you fund with your taxes….fund with your monies….

You and all your loved ones are always in my prayers,

Samuel Joseph Bell
www.angelicinfusion.com
- posted by Samuel Bell @ 2:47 AM