Loretta Lynch: US Will Be ‘Less Safe’ If Congress Doesn’t Reauthorize Patriot Act

[n2doc]

Attorney General Loretta Lynch believes the United States will be “less safe” if Congress doesn’t reauthorize the Patriot Act.

Speaking to “CBS This Morning,” Lynch expressed concerns about not allowing the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of millions of Americans’ phone records.

“My biggest fear … is that we will lose important eyes on people who have made it clear … that their mission is to harm American people here and abroad,” Lynch said.

She continued, “I think that we run the risk … of essentially being less safe. I think that we lose important tools. I think that we lose the ability to intercept these communications, which have proven very important in cases that we have built in the past. I am very concerned that the American people will be unprotected if this law expires. I’m hopeful, however, that Congress, who I know is working on this issue, will come to a resolution.”

Lynch’s comments come as the Senate is set to vote today on the expiring sections of the Patriot Act.

more
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/05/22/loretta-lynch-us-will-be-less-safe-if-congress-doesnt-reauthorize-patriot-act/

[HassleCat]

1. Right

Because we caught so many terrorists by allowing NSA intelligence analysts to spy on ex girlfriends. Keep up the good work.

[peace13]

2. And Americans will be Josh Duggered once more....

It never ends.

[deutsey]

3. Is there evidence that the Patriot Act

has protected us from people whose "mission is to harm American people"?

Lynch (and Nora O'Donnell, from what I saw of the interview) seem to be appealing to fear: "My biggest fear", "we run the risk...of essentially being less safe", "the American people will be unprotected..."

Are there data that support the efficacy of the Act in protecting against terrorism?

[reddread]

7. not according to this unsavory source

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/21/fbi-admits-patriot-act-snooping-powers-didnt-crack/

[deutsey]

11. Thanks. Here's a link to the (heavily redacted) report itself

https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2015/o1505.pdf

[reddread]

12. thank you

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. I am not sure whether to thank you or not

but I guess I will be curling up to that after I finish writing the story involving an interview yesterday.

Yeah, yeah, I got plenty of coffee...outrage, not so much anymore.

[hobbit709]

4. History repeats way too often.

Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich of 2001 is what I call it.

The Roman Republic started on it's way to become the Roman Empire when the citizens of Rome willingly gave up some of their rights because they were frightened.

[Autumn]

5. Well bless her heart.

[KG]

6. gotta keep the fear industry growing.

[FLPanhandle]

8. To quote one of the founding fathers

Like conversative enjoy doing so much...

"Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither" - Ben Franklin.

[Romeo.lima333]

9. right cause we dont want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud

[aspirant]

10. And the Civil Rights Dept

is under her control?

[newfie11]

13. Bull shit nt

[WDIM]

14. Sounds like the Bush Regime.

Fear us into complacency.

The US today is just as safe or dangerous depending on your perspective as it was on 9-10-2001.

The NSA and the rest of the overgrown government agencies that exploded under Bush have out stayed their welcome and have wasted enough of our tax dollars.

[TexasProgresive]

15. That's SOP

No executive will voluntarily give up power. It's just the way it is. As AG Lynch wants the authority that her predecessors wielded. This is not a defense of AG Lynch's position just saying that it is to be expected no matter who is in the job.

[GeorgeGist]

16. And so it goes ...

never missed a beat.

[subterranean]

17. But we'll still be safe, right?

Just a little less safe. I think I can live with that.

Now, if she had said Americans will be in "grave danger," then I'd be a lot more worried!

[raouldukelives]

18. They hate us for our freedoms. By stripping them, the hate is gone. nt

[alarimer]

19. Bullshit.

Fear-mongering. Boy, she got with the program in short order.

[AgingAmerican]

21. Sick of this right wing hair on fire paranoid nonsense

nt

[Octafish]

23. I think banksters and warmongers will be less safe.

CIA moonlights in corporate world

In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.

In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.

The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.

SNIP...

But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial institutions in the global economy.

The firm is called Business Intelligence Advisors, and it is based in Boston. BIA was founded and is staffed by a number of retired CIA officers, and it specializes in the arcane field of “deception detection.” BIA’s clients have included Goldman Sachs and the enormous hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, according to spokesmen for both firms.

CONTINUED...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32290.html#ixzz0eIFPhHBh

Sometimes a fortune rests on a mere scrap of information, jawohl.

Stratfor: executive boasted of 'trusted former CIA cronies'

By Alex Spillius, Diplomatic Correspondent
9:08PM GMT 28 Feb 2012
The Telegraph

A senior executive with the private intelligence firm Stratfor boasted to colleagues about his "trusted former CIA cronies" and promised to "see what I can uncover" about a classified FBI investigation, according to emails released by the WikiLeaks.

Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence at the Texas firm, also informed members of staff that he had a copy of the confidential indictment on Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

The second batch of five million internal Stratfor emails obtained by the Anonymous computer hacking group revealed that the company has high level sources within the United States and other governments, runs a network of paid informants that includes embassy staff and journalists and planned a hedge fund, Stratcap, based on its secret intelligence.

SNIP...

Mr Assange labelled the company as a "private intelligence Enron", in reference to the energy giant that collapsed after a false accounting scandal.

CONTINUED...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9111784/Stratfor-executive-boasted-of-trusted-former-CIA-cronies.html

Then, there's Booz Allen, NSA's go-to private spyhaus, vacuums and filters the right stuff for Carlyle Group, a buy-partisan business which always seems to know where and what to bomb and make a buck.

The Knights of the Revolving Door

When War is Swell: the Carlyle Group and the Middle East at War

by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
CounterPunch, Weekend Edition September 6-8, 2013

Paris.

A couple of weeks ago, in a dress rehearsal for her next presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, the doyenne of humanitarian interventionism, made a pit-stop at the Carlyle Group to brief former luminaries of the imperial war rooms about her shoot-first-don’t-ask-questions foreign policy.

For those of you who have put the playbill of the Bush administration into a time capsule and buried it beneath the compost bin, the Carlyle Group is essentially a hedge fund for war-making and high tech espionage. They are the people who brought you the Iraq war and all those intrusive niceties of Homeland Security. Call them the Knights of the Revolving Door, many of Carlyle’s executives and investors having spent decades in the Pentagon, the CIA or the State Department, before cashing in for more lucrative careers as war profiteers. They are now licking their chops at the prospect for an all-out war against Syria, no doubt hoping that the conflagration will soon spread to Lebanon, Jordan and, the big prize, Iran.

For a refresher course on the sprawling tentacles of the Carlyle Group, here’s an essay that first appeared in CounterPunch’s print edition in 2004. Sadly, not much has changed in the intervening years, except these feted souls have gotten much, much richer. – JSC

Across all fronts, Bush’s war deteriorates with stunning rapidity. The death count of American soldiers killed in Iraq will soon top 1000, with no end in sight. The members of the handpicked Iraqi Governor Council are being knocked off one after another. Once loyal Shia clerics, like Ayatollah Sistani, are now telling the administration to pull out or face a nationalist insurgency. The trail of culpability for the abuse, torture and murder of Iraqi detainees seems to lead inexorably into the office of Donald Rumsfeld. The war for Iraqi oil has ended up driving the price of crude oil through the roof. Even Kurdish leaders, brutalized by the Ba’athists for decades, are now saying Iraq was a safer place under their nemesis Saddam Hussein. Like Medea whacking her own kids, the US turned on its own creation, Ahmed Chalabi, raiding his Baghdad compound and fingering him as an agent of the ayatollahs of Iran. And on and on it goes.

Still not all of the president’s men are in a despairing mood. Amid the wreckage, there remain opportunities for profit and plunder. Halliburton and Bechtel’s triumphs in Iraq have been chewed over for months. Less well chronicled is the profiteering of the Carlyle Group, a company with ties that extend directly into the Oval Office itself.

Even Pappy Bush stands in line to profit handsomely from his son’s war making. The former president is on retainer with the Carlyle Group, the largest privately held defense contractor in the nation. Carlyle is run by Frank Carlucci, who served as the National Security advisor and Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Carlucci has his own embeds in the current Bush administration. At Princeton, his college roommate was Donald Rumsfeld. They’ve remained close friends and business associates ever since. When you have friends like this, you don’t need to hire lobbyists..

Bush Sr. serves as a kind of global emissary for Carlyle. The ex-president doesn’t negotiate arms deals; he simply opens the door for them, a kind of high level meet-and-greet. His special area of influence is the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia, where the Bush family has extensive business and political ties. According to an account in the Washington Post, Bush Sr. earns around $500,000 for each speech he makes on Carlyle’s behalf.

One of the Saudi investors lured to Carlyle by Bush was the BinLaden Group, the construction conglomerate owned by the family of Osama bin Laden. According to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, Bush convinced Shafiq Bin Laden, Osama’s half brother, to sink $2 million of BinLaden Group money into Carlyle’s accounts. In a pr move, the Carlyle group cut its ties to the BinLaden Group in October 2001.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/06/when-war-is-swell-the-carlyle-group-and-the-middle-east-at-war/

This barely scratches the surface. The reality is that underneath what shows for public navigators is one enormous iceberg made from blood-red ice, invisible to the proles and serfs who are doing their best to keep afloat in a frozen sea of austerity, endless war and debt servitude, thanks to the banksters and warmongers' ability to use the USA PATRIOT Act to their advantage.