Page 112 - Elana Freeland - Under an Ionized Sky

Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Hayden became NSA director, he publicly announced Project Groundbreaker
and formalized the fact that the NSA was run by the military-industrial-intelligence complex—2,690 revolving-door
military contractors like Computer Sciences Corporation, Logicon (a Northrop Grumman subsidiary), Conquest Inc.,
SAIC, Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, Telcordia Technologies, etc.
The NSA has the power to bypass the Joint Chiefs of Staff and give direct commands to signals intelligence (SIGINT)
military units while farming out intelligence functions: Counterterrorism under Signals Intelligence Division (SID) to
Fort Gordon, Georgia; electronics intelligence (ELINT) to Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado, where the
super-secret Aerospace Data Facility answers only to the Pentagon; SIGINT to Medina Regional SIGINT Operations
Center (RSOC) at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas; etc.
The NSA runs all U.S. intelligence agencies. The Intelligence Reform Act of December 2004 consolidated America’s
sixteen intelligence agencies into one Intelligence Community (IC) run out of the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence (ODNI) but reporting directly to the NSA.
The NSA has the entire telecommunications industry in a vise grip. As a “dual-use” defense contractor, the
telecommunications industry makes billions from NSA and military contracts and billions from consumers’ obsession
with dual-use cell phones, towers, Internet, etc. Verint Systems, Verizon, and the NSA are good examples of the
unconstitutional revolving door favored by the military-industrial-intelligence complex:
Skyway Global LLC, the St. Petersburg, FL company that owned the DC-9 airline busted in Mexico carrying 5.5 tons
of cocaine, made its headquarters in a 79,000 sq. ft. building owned by Verint Systems (NASDAQ: VRNT), a foreign
telecommunications company with a contract to wiretap the U.S. for the NSA through the communication lines of
Verizon, which handles almost half of all landline and cell phone calls in the U.S. Verint’s founder and CEO, Jacob
“Kobi” Alexander, is a former Israeli intelligence officer who is today a fugitive from justice living in Namibia, where
he has for several years been fighting extradition to the U.S. On Verint’s Board of Directors is Lieutenant General
Kenneth A. Minihan, former director of the NSA, which has led to speculation that the company today is a joint NSA-
Mossad operation. 19

Before becoming the thirty-first chairman of the FCC in 2013, Tom Wheeler was CEO for
the wireless industry trade group Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA).
Wheeler’s job is to maintain FCC standards and assure “back doors” for whatever the military
and NSA need. No conflict of interest here; move along.
Too little too late, legal maneuvers to undo or limit the NSA’s gains over the past seventy
years are underway. Two lawsuits challenge illegal NSA dragnet surveillance programs: the class
action Shubert v. Obama (2006), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jewel v. NSA (2008).
Thus far, the government’s invocation of the state secrets privilege has been rejected, thanks to
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the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Oklahoma, California, Indiana, and Washington
State introduced legislation in 2014 under the 4th Amendment Protection Act to cut off water,
electricity, gas and all services provided by state vendors to the NSA—Washington State
examples being Cray Inc., which builds NSA supercomputers, and an NSA listening station is at
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the Army’s Yakima Training Center. In HB 2272, Washington State adds prohibiting the use
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of unconstitutionally gathered data in state court, blocking public universities from accepting
NSA research monies or recruiting agents, and de-incentivizing corporations from stepping in to
counter such state measures. 23
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a civilian agency answering to the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). DHS oversees fusion centers, black projects, COG
operations (including federal detention camps often located on “closed” military bases or Bureau
of Land Management lands, etc.). DHS covers domestic and international terrorism.
An example of international DHS: In Washington, D.C. on Friday, April 13, 2007, the
Swedish Defence minister and DHS director Michael Chertoff signed the “Agreement Between
the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden and the Government of the USA in the Area of
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Scientific and Technical Cooperation For the Protection of National Security,” giving Sweden
access to billions of NSA dollars, as similar agreements with Canada, Mexico, Australia, the UK,
and Singapore have—dollars funneling into Swedish biotech corporations, institutions,