These are tense times for the friendly folks at Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the social media dictatorship, has steered his multi-billion dollar corporation into the stormy seas of multiple civil courtroom battles over violating user rights.
There is no question that Facebook is guilty of numerous civil rights violations. The Cambridge Analytics scandal of 2018 caused Facebook shares (FB) to plummet. Subsequent scandals have created a continuous decline in the company’s shareholder value.
But that doesn’t seem to matter to a company which seems to be fueled by higher sources, perhaps related to the federal surveillance state.
CORRECT, they don’t care. Millie Weaver – Shadowgate Documentary Exposes This as an intentional ‘Ploy’ to restructure data sharing
In a video dated March 9, 2019, PeterOfEngland spoke out in an earnest warning about “the criminal behavior of Facebook, its data collection network, and its working with the United States government – the Pentagon initially – to begin what’s called an ontological data collection point on what’s called ‘designated targets.’”
We the People of the World are the designated targets who were selected by the U.S. government, the CIA, and the Pentagon, according to Peter.
Was it a mere coincidence that on the very same day that Facebook launched – February 4, 2004 – a Pentagon civilian spy project called LifeLog shut down?
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Pentagon-sponsored Project LifeLog was set up to collect data on all individuals. DARPA functions as the Defense Department’s research branch and is responsible for spending oodles of legally unaccountable taxpayer dollars to conduct Black Operations, secret from public scrutiny.
The data our government was interested in was – and still is – “every conceivable and imaginable platform possible,” said Peter.
LifeLog is “an ontology-based (sub)system that captures, stores, and makes accessible the flow of one person’s experience in and interactions with the world in order to support a broad spectrum of associates/assistants and other system capabilities.”
LifeLog was designed to be an all-encompassing personal data vacuuming system “aimed to gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees or does: the phone calls made, the TV shows watched, the magazines read, the plane tickets bought, the e-mail sent and received.”
Why bother with this massive collection of individual citizen’s personal, professional, and social activities, you ask? “Out of this seemingly endless ocean of information, computer scientists would plot distinctive routes in the data, mapping relationships, memories, events and experiences.”
Back in 2004, civil rights activists immediately opposed the surveillance scheme, raising the red flag that LifeLog could be turned against Us the People and “become the ultimate tool for profiling potential enemies of the state.”
The U.S. government responded by shutting down Project LifeLog. Or did they? In February 2004, “Researchers close to the project say they’re not sure why it was dropped late last month. Darpa hasn’t provided an explanation for LifeLog’s quiet cancellation. ‘A change in priorities’ is the only rationale agency spokeswoman Jan Walker gave to Wired News.”
Observers such as PeterOfEngland wonder if LifeLog was replaced by Facebook, which, oddly enough, launched on February 4, 2004 – the very same day DARPA announced the termination of their public surveillance Project LifeLog.
The thinking here is that the determined masterminds at DARPA realized that people might not flock to divulge their personal information to a cold, hard-hearted government agency. But Facebook was warm and inviting: “Sign up for a free account and make Friends” – thumbs up!
The public did flock to Facebook. We were told, in 2004, that the social media platform was the brainchild of a couple of Harvard students (Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin) who wanted a face-pic-based school directory to keep in touch with classmates and other associates. The “social networking service launched as FaceMash in July 2003, but later changing to TheFacebook on February 4, 2004.”
Just look at Facebook now! Some people post every intimate detail of their daily lives as well as vital information: name, address, phone, email, web address, family names, veterinarian’s name, etc.
Harvard students made up the initial test base, followed by “other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada, corporations, and by September 2006, to everyone with a valid email address along with an age requirement of being 13 and older.”
Facebook’s growth and social acceptance were nothing short of phenomenal. This makes perfect sense if Facebook is actually a government-sponsored psyop (psychic operation or mind control). It appears, more and more, that this is the case, as Facebook “Community Standards” are suppressing free speech about anything anti-establishmentarian.
Not surprisingly, other world governments and the NSA also got on board with the covert agenda to ease user-friendly Facebook into the role of Global Personal Information Gatherer.
But Facebook got sloppy about user privacy and security concerns and is now staring down the barrel of lawsuits brought by large numbers of angry users whose personal information was abused by the social media spy site.
Perhaps foreshadowing the fate of Facebook, on February 1, 2019, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Facebook can be sued for allowing users’ private data to fall into the hands of third-parties such as Cambridge Analytics.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled briefly that “The injury is the disclosure of private information.”
We couldn’t agree more. But will this flagrant violation of civil rights shutter Facebook for good? Only time will tell.
There is one way to shut down Facebook for good. What if they have a social media platform and nobody came?
“The Things that bother me is the hole in the Pentagon being too small for a plane, the lawn isn’t mussed up, and the government is not showing the plane hittingwhen many cameras photographed it. At the WTC, 3 buildings came down like demolitions, and two of them were hit by a plane, but the third one they said, “do you want us to pull it?” …and they pulled it, and it looked just like the other two! Those things bother me! In Pennsylvania, the plane that went down, it was just a hole in the ground! There wasn’t any wreckage, or skid marks, there wasn’t any tear in the earth…and no one’s ever really found out about that! So, every place there’s questions!”
The history of pilotless aircraft in the United States military stretches back to the days of the Wright brothers. It’s difficult to describe any good that emerges from warfare, but many modern technological advancements — computers, zippers, microwaves — can be traced back to conflicts of a bygone era. Today unmanned aerial vehicles are being used by a whole slew of people, the U.S. Department of Defense being just one primary example. While drones have been used routinely to support or undertake lethal force abroad for over a decade, their domestic applications are just now being given more serious consideration. The capabilities and contributions of UAVs have, up until recently, been propelled more or less exclusively by the defense community. UAV technology may currently be associated with what some would consider secretive and nefarious militarism, but in examining the range of practical, commercial applications we can only hope that drone technology will begin to move away from the dark side.
President Obama’s approach to counterterrorism has been marked by his embrace of drone technology to target terrorist operatives. But they’ve come a long way since their first strike operations: drone backpacks are now used by soldiers, and Predator drones come equipped with even more powerful warheads. U.S. DOD spending on drones increased from $284M in 2000 to $3.3B in October of 2012. Small surveillance drones, called Cicadas, are now being released from balloons to collect data on the ground in Iraq. In short, the military has a seemingly infinite range of uses for unmanned aerial vehicles, large and small. And the scope of drone missions only continues to expand, as the technology necessary to program and operate them becomes at once more commonplace and versatile. Over the next decade, the Pentagon anticipates that the number of “multirole” UAVs (those capable of both spying and striking) will nearly quadruple.
As of October 2013, the Federal Aviation Administration had issued 285 clearance certificates for drones inside the United States. Under pressure from the Unmanned Systems Caucus (or drone lobby) the Department of Homeland Security has accepted eight Predator drones for use along the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders. The FAA is set to further open skies to commercial drones by 2015, allowing civilians to finally explore and expand upon the uses of UAV technology. But even with the law by their side, can civilian companies ever hope to utilize drones to the extent in which they are employed by the military? Many recognize the civil potential of flying robots, but recognize that with certain valuable contributions also comes the possibility of tighter law enforcement and increased government surveillance.
The dualistic nature of drones is being explored by hobbyists and venture capitalists alike. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is even developing a program that will employ drones and satellite internet to deliver internet to disenfranchised communities throughout the world. While this probably speaks to Zuckerberg’s opportunism (and his desire to compete in the marketplace against Google’s Loon Project and HughesNet Internet) that isn’t to say that people in underserved communities don’t stand to benefit. The U.S. government already uses drones to protect endangered wildlife species, like the sandhill crane, and researchers in Indonesia and Malaysia are also using unmanned aerial devices to monitor the activity of similarly threatened orangutan populations. UAV systems are emerging as key tools in agricultural innovation and the monitoring of natural resources. Search and rescue missions, 3-D mapping and surveying projects, and hurricane tracking projects are also being carried out by UAVs. With unmanned aircraft, it seems the sky’s the limit for civil and commercial usage.
But the business of drones still comes with plenty of risks. The American Civil Liberties Union has warned of a “dystopian future” in which “mass, suspicionless searches of the general population” are the norm. Given the history of drones as advanced tools of the government and military, this doesn’t seem like an empty threat. And for now, the law still stands in the way of any real development on the commercial end. Despite the fact that many ideas for drones, from the delivery of Amazon parcels to Domino’s pizzas, have been suggested, the military still holds the key to their innovation from an American standpoint. Their function as a militaristic tool remains at the forefront of their continued growth, resulting in large spending increases for advanced cameras, sensors, and systems with attack capabilities. But the integration of drone technology into domestic airspace by law enforcement — and later, by corporations — seems inevitable. As technological improvements continue to catapult the UAV industry into the future, the true beneficiaries of these developments remain to be seen.
9/11 Events Decrypted: How is it possible that a rag-tag band of half-baked ‘terrorists’ penetrated the most sophisticated military airspace defense system in the WORLD, four times in a single morning? Take a closer look at the actual conspiracy-theory (ie, the ‘Official Version’ as which can not be proven), versus actual reported events which include: multiple explosions, Military planes, strange Orbs, Manipulated news footage, precision targeted airliners with impossible trajectories, suspicious stock trades, emptied Gold Vaults, billion dollar insurance policies and crime scene evidence destroyed immediately with NO investigation. The list goes on — tune in for the full story and little known facts, uncovered.
Personal Interview with FBI / Pentagon Employee who Says no Plane hit the building that day, from her professional experience and lack of on site evidence of any plane or wreckage. No jet fuel anywhere, or smell of jet fuel. No one else on site had seen any crash evidence or plane wreckage. Believes government fabricated ‘official’ story.
Romney’s close relationship with Orit Gadiesh and Israeli military intelligence is the real reason he is the chosen candidate of the Zionist establishment. Romney is being supported by high-level Zionists, Israeli military intelligence, and their controlled media network.
First of all, to the idiots who monitor all our communications, internet, telephone, who knows how far they have gone or are going, do not think there aren’t lists of those who oppose this illegal effort and will see to it you are indicted. If you believe the current form of government is going to be superseded by a corporate plutocracy as in the Canadian TV shown “Continuum,” (find it) you are mistaken.
The old power bases are gone, too many have been burned. Playing spy as though you think the courts still support FISA will get you some GITMO time, don’t take my word for it, “times are a changin.’”
Homeland Security (DHS) is strangling the efforts of several older institutions. This is beyond just “turf war” and is becoming an embarrassment.
The machinery put together during Bush II is entirely dysfunctional, control of the Justice Department is gone, in fact, under Holder, we aren’t sure it exists anymore. Only Homeland Security is still around and will be held accountable, not for passenger searches but for childish plots. Go ahead, bug the Pentagon, you won’ t like it.
Here is where things stand on 9/11 today:
The official accepted belief on the towers is that the two were destroyed by 4 small nuclear devices, two in the basement, two on upper floors, that produced over a million degrees of heat that dissolved the building, put out minor radiation for a short distance and kept fires burning for months. It vaporized enough steel to build 3 huge aircraft carriers and huge beams hundreds of yards away show more damage than anything in Hiroshima. This is the official opinion of DARPA and the US Army. This is highly classified but I am printing it anyway.
Building 7 is said to have been destroyed with conventional explosives.
No official secret finding has been reached on the Pentagon attack other than that wreckage from a Columbia crash in 1995 was dumped on the lawn and the site was altered during the day to simulate an air crash. I have not been given access to anything beyond this and choose not to make something up.
The official finding as to rationale for the 9/11 attacks was to cheat insurance companies out of billions. Those who have examined US policy said that there were other simpler possibilities for bringing the US to war other than the 9/11 action against the US. (for those who don’t catch the connection, it has been accepted that 9/11 was an “inside job”)
Many Israeli teams were involved in 9/11 and the twin tower attack was entirely an Israeli action with our military and intelligence services denying involvement. This is not my opinion, this is official.
Several Israeli teams were arrested on 9/11, one after the George Washington Bridge explosion. There were other attacks on 9/11 thwarted by police, one on the Lincoln Tunnel. There is no evidence of an attack on the Verrazano Bridge or Brooklyn Bridge. Arrests were made of the Israeli’s at the GWB, hard proof exists but the arrests at the Lincoln Tunnel, two Israeli citizens, van of explosives and weapons is only backed by limited police testimony and they are scared to death. An authoritative source on the scene says the terrorists, Israelis, were turned over to Bernie Kerik, Police Commissioner and never heard from again.
Thousands of cancer victims, hundreds, maybe thousands dead of “radiation poisoning” already are attributed to use of fire hoses directly on the moulton nuclear “ground zero” which put radiated water vapor into the air which was unintended. These nuclear heat chambers below the twin towers put out massive heat for 64 days under a flood of continual cold water although there is no official attribution to their heat source. Perhaps it was burning asbestos and insurance policies?
An outrageously false cover story about a “toxic stew” involving “dry wall” was part of the “official record.” By that standard, every firefighter, drywaller or person who has lived in a building with drywall is actually dead but not yet informed.
Thousands of New Yorkers are dying of radiation poisoning from 9/11 and being “monitored” or being offered payments from a several billion dollar fund that mysterious appeared to buy their silence.
Other groups have evidence regarding the aircraft, crews, passengers, “theoretical phone calls and text messages” with much of it in FBI files. Some of that information is evidence worthy and some is not but there is much that can be introduced in court.
Many people who are potential witnesses have disappeared, thousands have been threatened. The numbers are so large that they in themselves have been used by some as proof there was a massive coverup conspiracy. “Why or how could so many people be controlled or killed and what kind of person would do this?”
Do you really want that question answered? You think the million plus dead on Rwanda was an accident? You never heard of the uncounted dead in Guatemala, Mexico and where you have heard, you have been lulled into immunity.
VITAL INTERESTS
There technically was no “9/11″ and thus, any defense of American interests through military occupation, stimulation of insurrection, emplacement of puppet governments and theft of resources, no matter how profitable for the gang inside the Beltway, is not sustainable.
America has no vital interests in Central Asia nor is there any potential threat to oil supplies in a nation that has the choice of becoming oil independent in less than 3 years. (Can prove this is court).
Even Iran would sell us all their oil at deep discount and take payment in new Jeeps and Fords if we wanted, were we not run by crazy people. Want me to prove it to you?
ROMNEY, MASTER CRIMINAL AND SPY OR SIMPLY A “WANNABEE ANTI-CHRIST?” (Thanks to Tex Marrs and Christopher Bollyn)
Orit Gadiesh (Hebrew: אורית גדיש) is an Israeli-American corporate strategist and chairwoman of management consulting firm Bain & Company. Source-Wikipedia
We are now holding strong proof that Romney and “Bain Capital” are agents of the State of Israel who is attempting to rig an American election on behalf of a group of European entities unfriendly to the continued freedoms left to the American people.
Mitt Romney is, in fact, a clear and present danger to the United States. Chris Bollyn has stated the following, and I find Chris a credible source:
ROMNEY’S ISRAELI HANDLER – Orit Gadiesh, former “War Room” assistant to Ezer Weizman and Moshe Dayan, is the daughter of Israeli Brigadier General Falk Gadiesh (born Falk Gruenfeld, Berlin, 1921) and his Ukrainian-born wife. Gadiesh is chairman of the management consulting firm Bain & Company, the parent company of Bain Capital, and was the company’s managing director under CEO Mitt Romney in 1992. “She’s like a Jewish mother figure to many of the people at Bain,” ex-Bainie Dan Quinn told Fortune magazine in 1996.
Bain Capital owns Clear Channel, the largest radio station group owner in the United States. Clear Channel owns the networks which air the most popular radio talk shows, including The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Glenn Beck Program, The Sean Hannity Show, America Now with Andy Dean, Coast to Coast AM, The Savage Nation, The Mark Levin Show, and The Dave Ramsey Show. (Graphic: “Rush Limbaugh Spills the Beans on the Jewish Conspiracy” by Pat Healy)
Mitt Romney was a co-founder of Bain Capital along with Bill Bain, seen here. Bain was ousted in 1991 and Romney served as CEO of Bain & Company in 1991-1992. In May 1991, while Romney was CEO, Gadiesh was named chairman of the company’s Policy Committee, which set the company’s business strategy and policy. In 1992, under Romney, she became managing director. Orit Gadiesh, who has worked at Bain & Co. since 1977, became chairman of Bain & Co. in 1993.
Orit Gadiesh, born in Israel in 1951, has worked closely with Mitt Romney since at least 1991, and probably much longer since she joined Bain & Company in 1977, when she was 26. Romney appointed Gadiesh to his transition team when he became governor of Massachusetts in November 2002. Gadiesh is the daughter of Falk Gadiesh, an Israeli brigadier general and former member of the general staff who reorganized the Israeli army in the early 1950s after a stint at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Falk’s daughter Orit was chosen to serve in Israeli military intelligence. Her first position in the Israeli military was as assistant to Ezer Weizman, the deputy chief of staff who later became president of Israel. During the early 1970s, she worked in the war room, a bunker where Gen. Moshe Dayan was in charge. As a war room assistant to Weizman, Orit provided military leaders with documents and correspondence.
Prior to joining Bain & Company, Gadiesh served in the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army. Currently, she is on the board of directors of the Peres Center for Peace, an organization headed by a former chief of staff of the Israeli military, Lt. General Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. The high-level Mossadnik Avner Azulay, managing director of the Marc Rich Foundation, is also on the executive board of the Peres Center.
ROMNEY’S INTELLIGENCE CHIEF AND CAMPAIGN ADVISER – Mitt Romney named Michael Chertoff, the Israeli agent who supervised the destruction of the crucial evidence of 9/11, co-chair of his counterterrorism and intelligence advisory committee in October 2011. The 9/11 cover-up continues.
Mitt Romney attended the Mossad’s “Herzliya Conference on Israeli Security” in 2007. Romney and the current Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked together as consultants at the Boston Consulting Group early in their careers.
Romney’s close relationship with Orit Gadiesh and Israeli military intelligence is the real reason he is the chosen candidate of the Zionist establishment. Romney is being supported by high-level Zionists, Israeli military intelligence, and their controlled media network. This relationship between the Israeli military and Mitt Romney, a presidential candidate, should be of great concern to all Americans because this is how the Israeli military plans to drag the United States into a war with Iran.
RON PAUL
If it is not clear it should be. Ron Paul won the Republican nomination for president. He could have won the Democratic nomination just as easily. The only reason we are seeing Romney is that he is a foreign agent who represents an attempt at further overthrowing American freedoms and has absolutely no right to represent himself as a candidate from the Republican Party.
The nominating process, which has yet to conclude, has been wrought with vote rigging, millions in bribes and violations of every kind.
Ron Paul won and Romney is a foreign spy, a demagogue, a dangerous fanatic and has spent his life as part of an organized crime syndicate. Most elections, priaries, caucuses were rigged, almost all show clear criminal activity and there is no effort to correct this because the election for president of the United States is being managed from Tel Aviv (read Moscow).
He makes Obama look good. Does America need a president put in office by another rigged election, this one with 4 wives (only a rumor from people near him) and over 10000 illegal Swiss bank accounts. Bain Capital, according to reliable sources is one of the biggest sources of terrorist funding on earth, biggest traders in conflict diamonds, and deeply involved in human trafficking.
Did Romney learn this as a Mormon Bishop?
CANADA
Last week, Canada’s banking system crashed, something kept out of their papers. America sent Canada $131 billion dollars to underwrite their currency or Canada would be gone. Canada has prided itself at being independent, at being free, at being a model nation.
Want some unpleasant truth?
Israeli spies run Canadas’ government and economic system through blackmail, bribery and intimidation.
Canada has smuggled more nuclear technology and refined uranium than any other country on earth and are a greater danger than even Germany and North Korea, the biggest exporters of WMD technologies.
If one were to want to find an evil empire, the “secret society” ruling sectors of both Canada and Germany, whose citizens are kept in absolute ignorance, are the real world axis of evil or as close as we have now. A few decades ago, one could have made a list including East Germany, South Africa, Libya, Germany (even then), Czechoslovakia.
I love Canada, my family helped found it but watchfulness and strength are needed more in Canada than petty socialism, political correctness and stifling the truth, which is Canada’s greatest skill as yet. Let me look in the drawer here, I think I still have charters awarding us everything from Windsor and Amherstburg to well past Toronto. Now, if I want to repossess Southern Ontario, I have to negotiate with Timothy Geithner who seems to be holding the mortgage on Canada.
What kind of nation would accept a secret bailout with counterfeit money? (For my Canadian friends, ask about the $131 billion, where did it go and who authorized it?)
CONCLUSION
These are the hard facts and accepted theories by the real experts, without any of the speculation of activists or “conspiracy theory” folks. There is more, much more, but how much anger is allowed?
What we can’t do is walk away from our political system when we have one party of foreign controlled traitors, the GOP and another of petty mobsters and incompetents, the Democrats. We have what we deserved. When we were offered the candidate we dreamed of, perhaps not the charisma of Bobby Kennedy but Ron Paul, once free of the “bought and paid for” congress, could and is likely to begin restoring America.
Let us first jail those who created this upcoming election and do it quickly, ridding ourselves of Mr. Romney, Mr. Adelson, Mr. Netanyahu, Ms. “Ferkel” Merkel of Germany and the pack of thieves who have taken control of Canada.
Maybe an early place to look for our Israeli friends is Wisconsin.
WASHINGTON – The co-owner of a major Pentagon propaganda contractor publicly admitted Thursday that he was behind a series of websites used to discredit two USA TODAY journalists who had reported on the contractor.
Screengrab from home page of leoniegroup.comCamille Chidiac, a minority owner of Leonie Industries, says he acted independently of the company when he created web sites and social media accounts in an effort to discredit two USA TODAY journalists.
Camille Chidiac, a minority owner of Leonie Industries, says he acted independently of the company when he created web sites and social media accounts in an effort to discredit two USA TODAY journalists.
The online “misinformation campaign,” first reported last month, has raised questions about whether the Pentagon or its contractors had turned its propaganda operations against U.S. citizens. But Camille Chidiac, the minority owner of Leonie Industries and its former president, said he was responsible for the online activity and was operating independent of the company or the Pentagon.
“I take full responsibility for having some of the discussion forums opened and reproducing their previously published USA TODAY articles on them,” he said a statement released by his attorney, Lin Wood, of Atlanta.
“I recognize and deeply regret that my actions have caused concerns for Leonie and the U.S. military. This was never my intention. As an immediate corrective action, I am in the process of completely divesting my remaining minority ownership from Leonie,” Chidiac said.
Chidiac, who stepped down as president of Leonie in 2008, said he used only personal funds to create the websites using proxy services to hide his involvement. Although Chidiac has continued to represent Leonie at various conferences, the company said any involvement was “informal and unofficial.”
The Pentagon said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was aware of the statement and “has directed the department to review this matter and to take appropriate action.”
“We were deeply disappointed to read this disclosure from Leonie Industries. Smear campaigns — online or anywhere else — are intolerable, and we reject this kind of behavior,” said Pentagon press secretary George Little.
In February, USA TODAY reported on the Pentagon’s “information operations” program, which was coming under criticism even within the Pentagon for spending hundreds of millions for poorly monitored marketing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Leonie, which was founded by Chidiac and his sister, Rema DuPont, has received at least $120 million in Pentagon contracts since 2009. DuPont owns 51% of the company; Chidiac 49%. The pair had $4 million in liens for unpaid federal income taxes, although federal records show those tax liens have since been paid off.
Even before the stories ran, USA TODAY Pentagon reporter Tom Vanden Brook noticed that someone registered the site tomvandenbrook.com. Twitter and Facebook accounts were also registered in his name, and a Wikipedia entry and discussion group postings misrepresented his reporting on the West Virginia Sago Mine disaster.
Chidiac said he clearly labeled the websites as “fan sites” of Vanden Brook and his editor, Ray Locker, but said comments on the websites “quickly degenerated from legitimate criticism to immature and irrelevant rhetoric by unknown users.”
Chidiac’s attorney said the Twitter and Wikipedia entries were created by someone else with “absolutely no relationship or connection with Leonie Industries,” whom he did not name.
One online reputation expert, Andy Beal, said the effort appeared to be coordinated and called it a “sophisticated reputation attack.”
The distribution of federally funded propaganda for domestic targets could be a violation of a federal law prohibiting the Defense Department from spending money for “propaganda purposes within the United States.” The company said no federal funds were used.
“Mr. Chidiac does not have access to Leonie’s bank accounts and other financial resources, derived from government contracts or otherwise, and he used non-Leonie funds to participate in the online activity,” said a statement from Gar Smith, Leonie’s director of marketing and communications. “This was the act of an individual, not the company.”
Smith said Chidiac was in the process of divesting himself of his 49% stake, but that the terms of that deal were a matter between DuPont and Chidiac.
Leonie said it’s “in the process of informing government officials of the situation,” though it’s unclear whether the episode will affect Leonie’s Pentagon contracts.
In March, the Pentagon’s inspector general told members of Congress that the Defense Criminal Investigative Service had launched an investigation into issues raised by the USA TODAY report. Last week, a House committee voted to cut the Pentagon’s “information operations” budget by one-third.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., a critic of the information operations program, called for congressional hearings on the matter.
“Now we know the truth about these online smear campaigns,” he said. “There must be zero tolerance for attacks on the press.”
Chidiac’s attorney said Chidiac was “personally offended” by USA TODAY’s reporting on his tax troubles, which he felt were unfairly characterized. “I do not believe the previous reporting has properly recognized the excellent work that has been performed by the employees of Leonie in support of U.S. military efforts over the past several years,” Wood said.
Susan Weiss, executive editor of USA TODAY, said the newspaper would continue reporting on the information operations industry. “I am glad to see that we now know who was responsible for these false attacks on Tom Vanden Brook, Ray Locker and USA TODAY. We stand behind our reporters and our stories,” she said.
If the Pentagon gets its way, the gentleman doodling on his notepad as your next overseas business trip goes on endlessly could be a soldier, sailor, airman or marine in disguise.
This extraordinary redefinition of the U.S. military’s authorities for clandestine action overseas is officially part of a Pentagon wish list for revisions to its legal authorities recently sent to Congress.
There’s another change the proposal would make — one that seems boring and bureaucratic, but explains a great deal. Authority for overseeing the Defense Department’s human spying lies with the Defense Intelligence Agency. The proposal would give it instead to the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, the top aide for intel to the secretary of defense. And that undersecretary, Michael Vickers, is one of the Pentagon’s leading advocates of the transformation of special operations forces into elite intelligence operatives. Basically, Vickers would take control of a broad expansion in clandestine military activity.
Notice how the proposal says that using the cover of “commercial activities” would “provide an important safeguard for U.S. military forces.” Perhaps it would. But it would also place businessmen in danger. Once civilian commercial activities become a front for U.S. military spying, then foreign governments will likely view normal businessmen as targets for their own counterspying, or even detention.
This is why medical aid workers had such a negative reaction to the CIA’s use of a Pakistani doctor tocollect DNA in the town where Osama bin Laden was hiding under the cover of a vaccination program. If civilian activities become tied up with military activities, then the civilians who perform them will be seen as military targets, even if they have nothing to do with the military themselves.
“Additional classified background information regarding the Department’s conduct of its commercial cover program will be made available to the armed services committees,” the Pentagon promises in the proposal. Perhaps the generals will brief congressional staff in business suits.
