Sock Puppet Planet: The Secret State's Quest for 'Persona Management Software'

Not since AT&T whistleblower Marc Klein's 2006 revelations that U.S. telecommunications giants were secretly collaborating with the government to spy on Americans, has a story driven home the point that we are confronted by a daunting set of invisible enemies: the security and intelligence firms constellating the dark skies of the National Security State.

As echoes from last month's disclosures by the cyber-guerrilla collective Anonymous continue to reverberate, leaked HBGary emails and documents are providing tantalizing insight into just how little daylight there is between private companies and the government.

The latest front in the ongoing war against civil liberties and privacy rights is the Pentagon's interest in "persona management software."

A euphemism for a suite of high-tech tools that equip an operative--military or corporate, take your pick--with multiple avatars or sock puppets, our latter day shadow warriors hope to achieve a leg up on their opponents in the "war of ideas" through stealthy propaganda campaigns rebranded as "information operations."

A Pervasive Surveillance State

The signs of a pervasive surveillance state are all around us. From the "persistent cookies" that track our every move across the internet to indexing dissidents already preemptively detained in public and private data bases: threats to our freedom to speak out without harassment, or worse, have never been greater.

As constitutional scholar Jack Balkin warned, the transformation of what was once a democratic republic based on the rule of law into a "National Surveillance State," feature "huge investments in electronic surveillance and various end runs around traditional Bill of Rights protections and expectations about procedure."

"These end runs," Balkin wrote, "included public private cooperation in surveillance and exchange of information, expansion of the state secrets doctrine, expansion of administrative warrants and national security letters, a system of preventive detention, expanded use of military prisons, extraordinary rendition to other countries, and aggressive interrogation techniques outside of those countenanced by the traditional laws of war."

Continuing the civil liberties' onslaught, The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Barack Obama's "change" regime has issued new rules that "allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades."

The Journal points out that the administrative "revision" of long-standing rules and case law "marks another step back from [Obama's] pre-election criticism of unorthodox counterterror methods."

Also last week, The Raw Story revealed that the FBI has plans to "embark on a $1 billion biometrics project and construct an advanced biometrics facility to be shared with the Pentagon."

The Bureau's new biometrics center, part of which is already operating in Clarksburg, West Virginia, "will be based on a system constructed by defense contractor Lockheed Martin."

"Starting with fingerprints," The Raw Story disclosed, the center will function as "a global law enforcement database for the sharing of those biometric images." Once ramped-up "the system is slated to expand outward, eventually encompassing facial mapping and other advanced forms of computer-aided identification."

The transformation of the FBI into a political Department of Precrime is underscored by moves to gift state and local police agencies with electronic fingerprint scanners. Local cops would be "empowered to capture prints from any suspect, even if they haven't been arrested or convicted of a crime."

"In such a context," Stephen Graham cautions in Cities Under Siege, "Western security and military doctrine is being rapidly imagined in ways that dramatically blur the juridical and operational separation between policing, intelligence and the military; distinctions between war and peace; and those between local, national and global operations."

This precarious state of affairs, Graham avers, under conditions of global economic crisis in the so-called democratic West as well as along the periphery in what was once called the Third World, has meant that "wars and associated mobilizations ... become both boundless and more or less permanent."

Under such conditions, Dick Cheney's infamous statement that the "War on Terror" might last "decades" means, according to Graham, that "emerging security policies are founded on the profiling of individuals, places, behaviours, associations, and groups."

But to profile more effectively, whether in Cairo, Kabul, or New York, state security apparatchiks and their private partners find it necessary to squeeze ever more data from a surveillance system already glutted by an overabundance of "situational awareness."

"Last October," Secrecy News reported, "the DNI revealed that the FY2010 budget for the National Intelligence Program (NIP) was $53.1 billion. And the Secretary of Defense revealed that the FY2010 budget for the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) was $27.0 billion, the first time the MIP budget had been disclosed, for an aggregate total intelligence budget of $80.1 billion for FY 2010."

This excludes of course, the CIA and Pentagon's black budget that hides a welter of top secret and above Special Access Programs under a dizzying array of code names and acronyms. In February, Wired disclosed that the black budget "appears to be about $56 billion, the same as last year," but this "may only be the tip of an iceberg of secret funds."

While the scandalous nature of such outlays during a period of intense economic and social attacks on the working class are obvious, less obvious are the means employed by the so-called "intelligence community" to defend an indefensible system of exploitation and corruption.

Which brings us back to the HBGary hack.

"Operation MetalGear"

While media have focused, rightly so, on the sleazy campaign proposed to Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by the high-powered law firm and lobby shop Hunton & Williams (H&W) to bring down WikiLeaks and tar Chamber critics, the treasure trove of emails leaked by Anonymous also revealed a host of Pentagon programs pointed directly at the heart of our freedom to communicate.

In fact, The Tech Herald revealed that while Palantir and Berico sought to distance themselves from HBGary and Hunton & William's private spy op, "in 2005, Palantir was one of countless startups funded by the CIA, thanks to their venture funding arm, In-Q-Tel."

"Most of In-Q-Tel's investments," journalist Steve Ragan wrote, "center on companies that specialize in automatic collection and processing of information."

In other words Palantir, and dozens of other security start-ups to the tune of $200 million since 1999, was a recipient of taxpayer-funded largess from the CIA's venture capitalist arm for products inherently "dual-use" in nature.

"Palantir Technologies," The Tech Herald revealed, was "the main workhorse when it comes to Team Themis' activities."

In proposals sent to H&W, a firm recommended to Bank of America by a Justice Department insider, "Team Themis said they would 'leverage their extensive knowledge of Palantir's development and data integration environments' allowing all of the data collected to be 'seamlessly integrated into the Palantir analysis framework to enhance link and artifact analysis'."

Following the sting of HBGary Federal and parent company HBGary, Anonymous disclosed on-going interest and contract bids between those firms, Booz Allen Hamilton and the U.S. Air Force to develop software that will allow cyber-warriors to create fake personas that help "manage" Pentagon interventions into social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

As Ragan points out, while the "idea for such technology isn't new," and that "reputation and persona management techniques have been used by the government and the private sector for years," what makes these disclosures uniquely disturbing are apparent plans by the secret state to use the software for propaganda campaigns that can just as easily target an American audience as one in a foreign country.

While neither HBGary nor Booz Allen secured those contracts, interest by HBGary Federal's disgraced former CEO Aaron Barr and others catering to the needs of the militarist state continue to drive development forward.

Dubbed "Operation MetalGear", Anonymous believes that the program "involves an army of fake cyber personalities immersed in social networking websites for the purposes of manipulating the mass population via influence, crawling information from major online communities (such as Facebook), and identifying anonymous personalities via correlating stored information from multiple sources to establish connections between separate online accounts, using this information to arrest dissidents and activists who work anonymously."

As readers recall, such tools were precisely what Aaron Barr boasted would help law enforcement officials take down Anonymous and identify WikiLeaks supporters.

According to a solicitation (RTB220610) found on the FedBizOpps.Gov web site, under the Orwellian tag "Freedom of Information Act Support," the Air Force is seeking software that "will allow 10 personas per user, replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographacilly [sic] consistent."

We're informed that "individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online persons from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries."

Creepily, "personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user's situational awareness by displaying real-time local information."

Aiming for maximum opacity, the RFI demands that the licence "protects the identity of government agencies and enterprise organizations." An "enterprise organization" is a euphemism for a private contractor hired by the government to do its dirty work.

The proposal specifies that the licensed software will enable "organizations to manage their persistent online personas by assigning static IP addresses to each persona. Individuals can perform static impersonations, which allow them to look like the same person over time. Also allows organizations that frequent same site/service often to easily switch IP addresses to look like ordinary users as opposed to one organization."

While Barr's premature boasting may have brought Team Themis to ground, one wonders how many other similar operations continue today under cover of the Defense Department's black budget.

Corporate Cut-Outs

Following up on last month's revelations, The Guardian disclosed that a "Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an 'online persona management service' that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world."

That firm, a shadowy Los Angeles-based outfit called Ntrepid is devoid of information on its corporate web site although a company profile avers that the firm "provides national security and law enforcement customers with software, hardware, and managed services for cyber operations, analytics, linguistics, and tagging & tracking."

According to Guardian reporters Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain, Ntrepid was awarded a $2.76M contract by CENTCOM, which refused to disclose "whether the multiple persona project is already in operation or discuss any related contracts."

Blurring corporate lines of accountability even further, The Tech Herald revealed that Ntrepid may be nothing more than a "ghost corporation," a cut-out wholly owned and operated by Cubic Corporation.

A San Diego-based firm describing itself as "a global leader in defense and transportation systems and services" that "is emerging as an international supplier of smart cards and RFID solutions," Cubic clocks in at No. 75 on Washington Technology's list of 2010 Top Government Contractors.

Founded by Walter J. Zable, the firm's Chairman of the Board and CEO, Cubic has been described as one of the oldest and largest defense electronics firms on the West Coast.

Chock-a-block with high-level connections to right-wing Republicans including Darrell Issa, Duncan Hunter and Dan Coates, during the 2010 election cycle Cubic officers donated some $90,000 to Republican candidates, including $25,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee and some $30,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org.

With some $1 billion in 2009 revenue largely derived from the Defense Department, the company's "Cyber Solutions" division "provides specialized cyber security products and solutions for defense, intelligence and homeland security customers."

The RFI for the Air Force disclosed by Anonymous Ragan reports, "was written for Anonymizer, a company acquired in 2008 by intelligence contractor Abraxas Corporation. The reasoning is that they had existing persona management software and abilities."

In turn, Abraxas was purchased by Cubic in 2010 for $124 million, an acquisition which Washington Technology described as one of the "best intelligence-related" deals of the year.

As The Tech Herald revealed, "some of the top talent at Anonymizer, who later went to Abraxas, left the Cubic umbrella to start another intelligence firm. They are now listed as organizational leaders for Ntrepid, the ultimate winner of the $2.7 million dollar government contract."

Speculation is now rife that since "Ntrepid's corporate registry lists Abraxas' previous CEO and founder, Richard Helms, as the director and officer, along with Wesley Husted, the former CFO, who is an Ntrepid officer as well," the new firm may be little more than an under-the-radar front for Cubic.

Amongst the Security Services offered by the firm we learn that "Cubic subsidiaries are working individually and in concert to develop a wide range of security solutions" that include: "C4ISR data links for homeland security intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions;" a Cubic Virtual Analysis Center which promises to deliver "superior situational awareness to decision makers in government, industry and nonprofit organizations," human behavior pattern analysis, and other areas lusted after by securocrats.

The Guardian informs us that the "multiple persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition forces."

"Since then," Fielding and Cobain wrote, "OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East."

While CENTCOM's then-commander, General David Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee last year that the program was designed to "counter extremist ideology and propaganda," in light of HBGary revelations, one must ask whether firms involved in the dirty tricks campaign against WikiLeaks have deployed versions of "persona management software" against domestic opponents.

While we cannot say with certainty this is the case, mission creep from other "War on Terror" fronts, notably ongoing NSA warrantless wiretapping programs and Defense Department spy ops against antiwar activists, also involving "public-private partnerships" amongst security firms and the secret state, should give pause.

In Blow to Press Freedom, Justice Department Moves to Seize WikiLeaks Twitter Accounts

In a new blow to press freedom and internet users' privacy rights here in the heimat, Obama's Justice Department won a significant victory on Friday.

As part of the secret state's campaign against whistleblowers and transparency advocates, U.S. Magistrate Theresa Buchanan granted federal prosecutors access to WikiLeaks-related Twitter accounts.

The 20-page ruling, issued in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, upheld government demands that it be allowed to seize the Twitter accounts of WikiLeaks supporters Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a leftist member of the Icelandic parliament, computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum and Rop Gonggrijp, the cofounder of the Dutch ISP XS4All.

Jónsdóttir was specifically targeted for her role in helping WikiLeaks release the Collateral Murder video last year that exposed the wanton slaughter of a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad, including two Reuters photojournalists, by a U.S. military Apache helicopter crew. Two children were also seriously wounded in the unprovoked attack.

The ruling also grants access to the Twitter accounts of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, the imprisoned and tortured Army private indicted for "aiding the enemy" over his alleged leak of incriminating documents that disclosed state crimes, charges which carry a potential death penalty.

Meanwhile, the cyber-guerrilla collective Anonymous, responsible for the HBGary hack that revealed plans by the Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to target WikiLeaks and Chamber opponents, "has promised to avenge Manning, and wage a media war with the U.S. military," The Tech Herald reports.

Buchanan's ruling ordered that the micro-blogging site cough-up information to the government about what internet and email addresses are associated with the whistleblowers, as part of an "ongoing investigation" by a federal grand jury believed to be seeking criminal charges against WikiLeaks supporters.

The judge rejected arguments by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and private attorneys representing the account holders, dismissing claims that there were First Amendment issues involved because the activists "have already made their Twitter posts and associations publicly available."

In dismissing privacy concerns, Buchanan also ruled that the account holders had "no Fourth Amendment privacy interest in their IP addresses," and that federal privacy law did not apply because prosecutors were not seeking the contents of the communications themselves, a spurious argument.

Denouncing the ruling, EFF noted in a press release that "secret government demands for information about the subscribers' communications came to light only because Twitter took steps to ensure their customers were notified and had the opportunity to respond."

The ACLU and EFF are also seeking from the court similar orders issued by the Obama administration to other companies, widely reported to include Google and Facebook.

When the story first broke, WikiLeaks demanded that Google and Facebook reveal the contents of subpoenas they may have received from the government. However both multibillion firms, chock-a-block with contracts from the secret state as disclosed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) have refused all comment, leading critics to assume they have already complied with orders to hand over the data.

The ACLU's Aden Fine, a staff attorney with the group's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project said that Buchanan's ruling "gives the government the ability to secretly amass private information related to individuals' Internet communications." Decrying the judge's order, Fine commented: "If this ruling stands, our client may be prevented from challenging the government's requests to other companies because she might never know if and how many other companies have been ordered to turn over information about her."

EFF's Legal Director Cindy Cohn added, "with so much of our digital private information being held by third parties--whether in the cloud or on social networking sites like Twitter--the government can track your every move and statement without you ever having a chance to protect yourself."

Underscoring Cohn's point, EFF revealed back in August that "a number of documents from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) highlighted the government's ability to scour not only social networks, but record each and every corner of the Internet."

Both privacy watchdog groups plan to appeal the ruling.

As Antifascist Calling reported last month, the secret state began a criminal investigation of WikiLeaks and founder Julian Assange last July after the secret-spilling web site began releasing a mountain of classified files on the imperialist Empire's criminal invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

That probe was accelerated after WikiLeaks Cablegate revelations began last November and the group threatened to release compromising files on a "major American bank," believed to be the Bank of America.

While WikiLeaks hasn't followed up, Zero Hedge reported Friday that Anonymous "is claiming to be have emails and documents which prove 'fraud' was committed by Bank of America employees, and the group says it'll release them on Monday."

CNET News noted that "Buchanan's order isn't a traditional subpoena. Rather, it's what's known as a 2703(d) order, which allows police to obtain certain records from a Web site or Internet provider if they are 'relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation'."

Investigative journalist Declan McCullagh reports that a 2703(d) order "is broad" and covers "connection records, or records of session times and durations," and "records of user activity for any connections made to or from the account," including internet addresses used.

In other words, the order covers "all records" and "correspondence" relating to the accounts and is also "broad enough to sweep in the content of messages such as direct messages sent through Twitter or tweets from a nonpublic account."

According to EFF's Cindy Cohn, the Justice Department narrowed their request "to avoid asking for content" so as to avoid a federal appeals court decision that a "a 2703(d) order is insufficient for content data and a search warrant is necessary." Cohn told CNET "it sure seemed like the order sought" to sweep up message content as well.

Cohn told Bloomberg News even though Buchanan's order didn't involve content, "the judge downplayed what can be learned from non-content information that we give to third-parties all the time."

In February, San Francisco-based attorney John Keker who represents Jacob Appelbaum, argued in court that "it is incredibly powerful to know who the opposition is and who they're working with," and that turning over such information to a grand jury would violate Fourth Amendment guarantees against warrantless searches and seizures by the national security state.

For their part, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Davis argued in court that the government's request was "routine."

Davis told the court, "this is a standard--as this court knows well--investigative measure used in criminal investigations every day of the year all over the country."

As the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers escalates, prosecutions and threats of the same have focused journalists and corporate watchdogs in their gunsights.

Secrecy News disclosed last week that former National Security Agency official Thomas A. Drake, charged last year "with unauthorized retention of classified information about controversial NSA programs, should not be allowed to argue in court that overclassification is widespread or that he was engaged in whistleblowing in the public interest."

According to federal prosecutors, while "the defendant may claim that the current classification system is ineffectual or illegal and prevents his ability to air allegations of waste, fraud and abuse to the attention of the public," the secret state is arguing that such concerns are "irrelevant." Illegal or not, the defendant's "obligation" was to "protect classified information."

This from an administration that claimed one of its "top priorities" would be to "Protect Whistleblowers"!

As Salon's Glenn Greenwald pointed out last year: "Most of what our Government does of any real significance happens in the dark."

"Whistleblowers are one of the very few avenues we have left for learning about any of that," Greenwald wrote. "And politicians eager to preserve their own power and ability to operate in secret--such as Barack Obama--see whistleblowers as their Top Enemy."

"Hence," the Salon columnist informed us, "we have a series of aggressive prosecutions from the Obama administration of Bush era exposures of abuse and illegality--acts that flagrantly violate Obama's Look Forward, Not Backward decree used to protect high-level Bush administration criminals." And, I might add, "high-level criminals" within his own administration.

As the World Socialist Web Site pointed out last month, "the aim" of the Obama administration "is not only to extract revenge for WikiLeaks having published thousands of US Embassy cables detailing Washington's involvement in spying, torture and assassinations. It is also intended as a warning to any individual or group that tries to expose the dirty reality of imperialist diplomacy."

With any semblance of public accountability, let alone justice, closed off by America's capitalist elites, in and outside of government, whistleblowing web sites like WikiLeaks, Public Intelligence, Cryptome and Anonymous, may very well be the last line of defense we have for exposing state crimes against what little remains of our democracy.

"The WikiLeaks Threat" and Other Tales from the Dark Side

It all began with news that WikiLeaks would soon shine a spotlight on the thieves dominating the global financial sector, those self-styled "masters of the universe" reigning over capitalism's Borg hive.

Scant months later, as a result of hubris and egomaniacal greed, an enormous window was smashed open and a sharp, merciless light flooded the dark recesses of the dirty world of corporate spying.

Last November, Julian Assange told Forbes that WikiLeaks next target would be a "major American bank."

"It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume," Assange informed journalist Andy Greenberg. "For this, there's only one similar example. It's like the Enron emails."

This was no idle threat. Back in January, Swiss whistleblower Rudolf Elmer, a former executive with Switzerland's Bank Julius Baer turned over two CDs to Assange at a London press conference.

WikiLeaks first brush with notoriety, readers will recall, came in 2008 when a federal district court judge in San Francisco first clamped down and then rescinded an order that would have shuttered the web site over their release of highly-compromising internal Baer documents; files which revealed secret trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.

The next Baer disclosures are reportedly chock-a-block with new information on tax dodges by "about 40 politicians along with business people, multinational conglomerates and figures from the art world," leaks which The Independent claims could spark a major international scandal.

Elmer, once Baer's man in the British-controlled corporatist paradise, handed Assange information that purportedly included "all the back-up data held on Julius Baer's computer server in the Caymans at the time he was sacked, including accounts, correspondence, memos and resolutions dealing with 114 trusts, 80 companies, 60 funds and 1,330 individuals," according to The Guardian.

It was enough to get Bank of America executives to break out in a cold sweat. After all, Assange told Forbes that WikiLeaks has the hard drive of a bank official loaded with some 5 gigabytes, or 200,000 pages of text, disclosures that would "take down" a major American bank and reveal a pervasive "ecosystem of corruption."

Better break out the biohazard suits!

Shortly after the Forbes interview, The New York Times reported that a high-level conference call amongst key executives, led by BofA's chief risk officer, Bruce R. Thompson, brain-stormed what damaging information might lay buried in the dark silicon brain of that missing hard drive, and concluded that the bank's "counterespionage work was only just beginning."

In full crisis mode, BofA brought in the ultra-spooky consulting firm and private spy shop Booz Allen Hamilton, former National Intelligence oberführer Mike McConnell's current haunt along with the high-powered law firm and lobby shop Hunton & Williams (H&W).

Clocking in at No. 9 on Washington Technology's 2010 list of "Top 100 Government Contractors," Booz Allen raked-in some $3.3 billion last year from various defense and intelligence agencies across the secret state.

Reporting for CorpWatch, investigative journalist Tim Shorrock informs us that "among the many services Booz Allen provides to intelligence agencies ... are wargaming ... as well as data-mining and data analysis, signals intelligence systems engineering (an NSA specialty), intelligence analysis and operations support, the design and analysis of cryptographic or code-breaking systems (another NSA specialty), and 'outsourcing/privatization strategy and planning'."

For their part, Hunton & Williams have long been connected with lobbying for right-wing causes and corporate clients (two terms entirely synonymous) in the banking and energy sectors. The Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org web site reports that anti-union stalwarts, far-right Koch Industries, paid the firm some $160,000 last year for lobbying and other unspecified "services."

Other clients, according to OpenSecrets and SourceWatch, include Acxiom Corporation, American Electric Power, the climate change-denying Americans for Affordable Climate Policy, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Duke Energy, Entergy Corporation, Gas Processors Association (the friendly "fracking" people!), General Dynamics, MasterCard, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Southern Company, Wells Fargo and many, many more!

According to published reports, in early December H&W's go-to guy, John W. Woods, held a meeting with BofA's management team touting the firm's expertise--and connections to the White House and Congress--in hopes of convincing the bank to retain them for their internal probe of WikiLeaks.

It didn't help matters in the "perception management" department when word leaked out that the bank had begun buying up web addresses and domain names that might prove embarrassing should disclosures bring forth those proverbial "smoking guns."

So BofA crisis managers did what they do best when faced with similar sticky situations: they turned to the "experts" and outsourced.

In turn, Booz Allen and H&W also did what they do best: they subcontracted out the dirty tricks portfolio to security grifters meant to do the heavy-lifting they believed would provide that indispensable element of "plausible deniability" lusted after by capitalist thugs and governments everywhere.

Unfortunately for the principals, that high-speed corporate spy train was about to make an unannounced stop.

Anatomy of an "Information Op"

Last month The Tech Herald revealed that private security firms HBGary Federal (currently offline), HBGary, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies were contacted by Hunton & Williams and called upon to "develop a strategic plan of attack against Wikileaks."

We learned that H&W "would act as outside counsel on retainer, while Palantir would take care of network and insider threat investigations. For their part, Berico Technologies and HBGary Federal would analyze WikiLeaks," The Tech Herald reported.

According to journalist Steve Ragan, that campaign was to have included a dirty tricks operation targeting critical journalists, including Salon's Glenn Greenwald, WikiLeaks supporters, their families and the group itself through "cyber attacks, disinformation, and other potential proactive tactics."

It seemed like a smart bet at the time. After all, HBGary Federal sold themselves as "experts in threat intelligence and open source analysis" with a focus on "Information Operations (INFOOPS); influence operations, social media exploitation, new media development."

Palantir claimed their security "products" are "broadly deployed throughout the National intelligence and defense communities" as well as "Fortune 50 companies focused on cybersecurity, counter-fraud and insider threat investigations."

Palantir's Government division even bragged that they deliver "the only platform that can be used at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels within the US Intelligence, Defense, and Law Enforcement Communities," and that they can draw "in any type of data, such as unstructured message traffic, structured identity data, link charts, spreadsheets, SIGINT, ELINT, IMINT and documents."

Playing second fiddle to none, Berico told prospective clients that "we are trusted advisors in the areas of technology integration, high-end consulting, cyberspace operations, and intelligence analysis for specialized units and agencies throughout the intelligence community (IC)."

As a dark world denizen of the Pentagon Berico had partnered-up with SAIC and--guess who!--Booz Allen, "winning" a five year, $130 million contract with the Army Intelligence Campaign Initiatives Group (AI-CAG).

According to Berico publicists we learned that the firm "will assist the AI-CIG government program office in producing and developing strategies, concepts, architectures, road maps, and analyses regarding integration of existing and future ISR programs, as well as support to the Army's Intelligence mission."

Meanwhile, a second covert op, also brokered by H&W and using the same players was being stitched-up on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

ThinkProgress investigative journalist Lee Fang revealed that sordid corporate campaign sought to undermine Chamber critics through the production and selective leaking of false documents that could then be called out as fabrications.

Fang reported that "the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams" and the above-named security outfits "to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com."

"The security firms," Fang wrote, "hoped to obtain $200,000 for initial background research, then charge up to $2 million for a larger disinformation campaign against progressives."

Rounding out what appears to be part of a larger "public-private partnership" targeting corporate and government critics, The Tech Herald learned that the H&W team "were recommended to Bank of America's general counsel by the Department of Justice," and that the firm was "using the meeting to pitch Bank of America on retaining them for an internal investigation surrounding WikiLeaks."

On paper it seemed like a slam dunk.

Anonymous Enters the Frame

Published reports, notably those of Ars Technica journalist Nate Anderson, have since revealed that Aaron Barr, HBGary Federal's CEO claimed he could exploit social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and IRC and "easily" gather information about WikiLeaks and their supporters which could then be used to "take down" the organization.

But when Barr boasted to the Financial Times that he had penetrated the cyber-guerrilla collective Anonymous, the group that launched distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks against PayPal, Visa, MasterCard and other firms which cut-off funds to WikiLeaks after Cablegate revelations, claiming "he had collected information on the core leaders, including many of their real names, and that they could be arrested if law enforcement had the same data," it was a boast too far.

Shortly thereafter, the masked cyber-marauders wrote: "You have blindly charged into the Anonymous hive, a hive from which you've tried to steal honey. Did you think the bees would not defend it? Well here we are. You've angered the hive, and now you are being stung."

In a stunning coup, Anonymous had penetrated HBGary Federal and parent company HBGary's "secure" servers, seizing a treasure trove of more than 70,000 internal emails and other documents, then posted them on the internet along with a search engine.

It didn't help win hearts and minds when Forbes' Andy Greenberg reported that "the head of one of those firms also suggested going after the thousands of individuals who have donated to the group."

"A quick search of the company's WikiLeaks-related conversations," Forbes reports, "shows that Aaron Barr, the HBGary chief executive who first caught the attention of Anonymous by boasting that he'd penetrated the group and identified its leaders, also suggested other tactics against WikiLeaks ... namely, tracking and intimidating anyone who had given money to WikiLeaks."

Another in a long line of "smartest guys in the room," Barr averred that "the security firms 'need to get people to understand that if they support the organization we will come after them. Transaction records are easily identifiable'."

While BofA has sought to distance the bank from the project and Hunton & Williams have refused to comment, leaked emails paint a damning picture indeed.

In early December, John Woods wrote executives at HBGary, Berico and Palantir that "Richard [Wyatt, another H&W partner] and I am meeting with senior executives at a large US Bank tomorrow regarding Wikileaks. We want to sell this team as part of what we are talking about. I need a favor. I need five to six slides on Wikileaks--who they are, how they operate and how this group may help this bank. Please advise if you can help get me something ASAP. My call is at noon."

Barr replied, "Sure thing. I will work on it tonight. Sam?"

Eli Bingham, a top Palantir executive chimed in, "Fine by me."

A day later, Palantir code monkey Matthew Steckman wrote that Woods and other principles should review the attached WikiLeaks slide deck.

That now-infamous PowerPoint presentation appearing under the Palantir logo, titled "The WikiLeaks Threat," was rushed into production by the firms' self-styled "Themis Group," named after the Greek Titan who embodied divine order, law and custom. Lacking imagination, it was suspiciously similar to a 2008 Pentagon proposal to destroy WikiLeaks.

• Feed the fuel between the feuding groups. Disinformation. Create messages around actions of sabotage or discredit the opposing organizations. Submit fake documents and then call out the error.

• Create concern over the security of the infrastructure. Create exposure stories. If the process is believed not to be secure they are done.

• Cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters. This would kill the project. Since the servers are now in Sweden and France putting a team together to get access is more straightforward.

• Media campaign to push the radial [sic] and reckless nature of WikiLeaks activities. Sustain pressure. Does nothing for the fanatics, but creates concern and doubt among moderates.

• Search for leaks. Use social media to profile and identify risky behavior of employees. (The WikiLeaks Threat: An Overview by Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies, December 2, 2010)

In their presentation, Themis Group luminaries averred that "this threat requires advanced subject matter expertise in cybersecurity, insider threats, counter cyber-­fraud, targeting analysis, [and] social media exploitation."

Lusting mightily after a contract they believed could be worth millions, not to mention media publicity that just might land them future deals with the secret state, they claimed that "Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies represent deep domain knowledge in each of these areas."

"If the deal came through," Ars Technica reported, it would put HBGary Federal in a "healthy position." The Themis Group then "decided to ask for $2 million per month, for six months, for the first phase of the project, putting $500,000 to $700,000 per month in HBGary Federal's pocket."

On a parallel track, in late January Barr wrote Woods that he was "doing research on the anonymous group for a security presentation I am giving next month and have collected information that identified the organization operations and communications infrastructure as well as key players by name. I don't think anyone else has this data. ... I thought you might be interested to hear this given the other opportunity we discussed."

Woods replied: "I have a client that may be interested. Pursuant to a mandate from my client, we are working through Booz Allen on this type of activity. You should expect a call from Bill Wansley at Booz shortly."

With plans (apparently) moving forward, Barr contacted William J. Wansley, a Senior Vice President with Booz Allen Hamilton January 28 on what he claimed were alleged links between Anonymous and WikiLeaks he had scraped from Facebook, Twitter and IRC. For his part, Wansley had written Barr informing him of the upcoming meeting at Booz Allen "to discuss how you may be able to support our project."

In a February 5 email to Woods, Barr, ever the publicity whore, cited the Financial Times piece writing, "I have made significant progress on the group and have 80-90% of their leadership mapped out. Meeting with Govies next week. I have tight few weeks and have told the folks supporting our other effort that I will not be able to give them much support until my presentation is over on Feb. 14th. Sorry for the timing."

Woods replied, "Good luck with the government. We look forward to seeing the [Anonymous] paper when it is published."

Nuclear Fallout

While they're now running for cover, Greg Hoglund and Penny Leavy, the husband and wife duo at the helm of parent company HBGary, wrote that Barr's disclosures would demonstrate how "HBGary Federal flexes private intelligence muscle:"

HBGary Federal, the specialized and classified services arm of HBGary, flexes it's muscle today by revealing the identities of all the top management within the group Anonymous, the group behind the DDOS attacks associated with Wikileaks. HBGary Federal constructed and maintained multiple digital identities and penetrated the trust upper management of Anonymous, and was subsequently able to learn actual identities of the primary management team. This information was critical for law enforcement, yet all the intelligence work was done without law enforcement or government involvement. Only after achieving the mission did Aaron Barr, the CEO of HBGary Federal, reveal this information to the Feds. This underscores the need for new blood in the intelligence community and the abilities of small agile teams that are unhindered by the bureaucratic machine. (Greg Hoglund to Aaron Barr, "Re: story is really taking shape," Friday, February 4, 2011)

One might also add, any public oversight over out-of-control private and public surveillance machines.

Underscoring that point, Secrecy News reported that the Obama regime refuses "to rescind certain classified legal opinions issued by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that asserted legal justifications for the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program," claiming that "the review process" is "ongoing," and likely to continue indefinitely.

Barr's "muscle flexing" presentation wasn't meant to be. Even as he boasted that he had "mapped out" Anonymous and was planning on meeting with "Govies next week," in reality it was Anonymous who had brought their own unique cartographic skills to bear in exposing BofA's dirty little WikiLeaks project!

Weeks later, HBGary Federal crashed and burned and Aaron Barr has since resigned. Barr told ThreatPost he needed to "focus on taking care of my family and rebuilding my reputation."

For their part, HBGary's Hoglund and Leavy have been reduced to pleading with Anonymous that their corporate and personal emails remain private. And given the brisk business between HBGary and secret state agencies such as the CIA and the National Security Agency, one can see why they'd want to quietly melt back into the shadows. Good luck with that!

Meanwhile across the icy Potomac, Forbes reported that three Hunton & Williams partners, John Woods, Richard Wyatt Jr. and Robert Quackenboss, will soon be answering charges filed last month with the Washington, D.C. Bar Association that could lead to their disbarment.

According to the complaint filed by attorney Kevin Zeese on behalf of his clients VelvetRevolution.us and StopTheChamber.com, the trio are charged with soliciting illegal acts that include domestic spying, cyber stalking, spear phishing, cyber attacks, and theft in furtherance of the Themis Group's black op.

Proving the old adage that the best defense is a good offense, Anonymous was at it again, taking down two web sites, Americans for Prosperity and Northern Quilt, connected to far-right puppetmasters, billionaires David and Charles Koch.

Last Sunday, Anonymous declared war on the Koch brothers for their support of Wisconsin governor, and Koch sock puppet Scott Walker, for his unconscionable attacks on the wages and workplace rights of public employees and workers everywhere.

In a statement dubbed OpWisconsin, Anonymous wrote: "It has come to our attention that the brothers, David and Charles Koch--the billionaire owners of Koch Industries--have long attempted to usurp American Democracy. Their actions to undermine the legitimate political process in Wisconsin are the final straw. Starting today we fight back."

The group accuses the brothers Koch of stitching-up a plan, in the interest of fighting "deficits" mind you, that would hand them a monopoly over Wisconsin utilities; a "privatization" at fire sale prices.

"Koch Industries, and oligarchs like them," declared Anonymous, "have most recently started to manipulate the political agenda in Wisconsin. Governor Walker's union-busting budget plan contains a clause that went nearly unnoticed. This clause would allow the sale of publicly owned utility plants in Wisconsin to private parties (specifically, Koch Industries) at any price, no matter how low, without a public bidding process. The Koch's have helped to fuel the unrest in Wisconsin and the drive behind the bill to eliminate the collective bargaining power of unions in a bid to gain a monopoly over the state's power supplies."

"Anonymous hears the voice of the downtrodden American people," the cyber-guerrillas proclaimed, "whose rights and liberties are being systematically removed one by one, even when their own government refuses to listen or worse--is complicit in these attacks."

In what could be a preview of a new virtual offensive against vicious capitalists and their political bagmen here in the heimat, Anonymous threw down the gauntlet and declared--as BofA, the Chamber of Commerce and Themis Group thugs learned to their dismay: "We are actively seeking vulnerabilities."

It seems there's quite a few people out there besides Assange who enjoy "crushing bastards"!

As Clinton Hawks 'Freedom to Connect,' Justice Department Shields 'War on Terror' Fraudsters, Targets WikiLeaks

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was praising the role that the internet played in toppling oppressive regimes (ironically enough, close U.S. allies), the Justice Department was in court in Alexandria, Virginia seeking to invade the privacy and political rights of WikiLeaks supporters even as it shields well-connected "War on Terror" fraudsters.

Scarcely batting an eyelash, Madame Clinton told her audience at George Washington University that "the goal is not to tell people how to use the internet any more than we ought to tell people how to use any public square, whether it's Tahrir Square or Times Square."

Rich with rhetorical flourishes that should have evoked gales of laughter but didn't (this is America, after all), Clinton averred that "together, the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association online comprise what I've called the freedom to connect. The United States supports this freedom for people everywhere, and we have called on other nations to do the same."

Really?

Has the honorable Secretary attended a demonstration of late, or found herself on the receiving end of a police baton, a rubber bullet, a jolt from a taser or ear-piercing blast from a "nonlethal" sonic weapon?

Or perhaps Madame Clinton has been served with a National Security Letter that arrives with its own built-in, permanent gag order, had her organization infiltrated by provocateurs, been the focus of "spear phishing" attacks by a secret state agency, say the FBI or one of their private contractors, who've implanted surveillance software on her laptop or smart phone, or summoned by subpoena to appear before a Star Chamber-like grand jury?

I didn't think so.

The Secretary's hypocrisy and mendacity would be amusing if the American people hadn't already lived through a decade where the cheapening of constitutional rights, particularly First and Fourth Amendment guarantees, hadn't been eroded to the point of savage annihilation by all branches of government and by both capitalist parties.

After all, in the filthy Washington trough where money rules, "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans alike are joined at the hip and outdo one another in paying obeisance to the National Security State.

Indeed, just a hop, skip and a jump across the icy Potomac, an Alexandria courthouse witnessed the "change" regime's Justice Department move to seize the contents of private Twitter accounts, including those of left-wing Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, and other WikiLeaks supporters.

While Mrs. Clinton hypocritically praised the role of social networking sites in helping to bring down torture-friendly, corrupt regimes in Egypt and Tunisia (close U.S. allies in the multibillion dollar kabuki dance known as the "War on Terror"), a grand jury was investigating whether there are grounds for filing criminal charges against WikiLeaks, its founder Julian Assange, and the heroic Bradley Manning, the incarcerated Army private suspected of leaking compromising files to the organization.

Outraged by revelations of American war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Apache helicopter gunship murder of a dozen people, including two Reuters journalists, as well as the release of thousands of diplomatic cables, the secret state is bringing the full weight of its formidable machinery down upon anyone, anywhere who have the temerity to challenge the lies of our militarist masters.

Denouncing the Obama regime's latest assault, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argued that forcing Twitter to turn over users' data to the government would hand the state a veritable road map of people connected to WikiLeaks, including journalists who may have communicated with the group, and would seriously chill free speech.

EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn pointed out that "Twitter is a publication and communication service, so the information sought by the government relates to what these individuals said and where they were when they said it. This raises serious First and Fourth Amendment concerns. It is especially troubling since the request seeks information about all statements made by these people, regardless of whether their speech relates to WikiLeaks."

Public knowledge of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's criminal probe recently surfaced when U.S. Magistrate Theresa Carroll Buchanan, granted a motion by three Twitter clients that partially unsealed some government filings in the case.

Plaintiffs' attorneys argued that Buchanan should overturn her earlier ruling ordering Twitter "to disclose its clients' data, as well as unseal documents in the case, including requests from prosecutors to get information from other technology companies," the The Washington Post reported.

When news of the federal government's fishing expedition first broke in January, The New York Times reported that what made the case unusual weren't de rigueur secret state subpoenas, but the fact that Twitter challenged the Justice Department's gag order "and won the right to inform the people whose records the government was seeking."

The Times noted that "WikiLeaks says it suspects that other large sites like Google and Facebook have received similar requests and simply went along with the government."

Such demands, and long-suspected capitulation by internet behemoths Google and Facebook, are at the heart of current debates over data retention.

As security analyst and surveillance critic Christopher Soghoian pointed out last month, "The hypocrisy of the government's push for such data retention is clear when compared to the extreme efforts that government agencies go to in order to shield their own communications, documents and other records from the American people."

Particularly when lawbreaking by favored contractors are cloaked by bogus claims of "national security."

Shielding a "War on Terror" Fraudster

One sordid example among hundreds of similar cases which have come to light was recently uncovered The New York Times.

Investigative journalists Eric Lichtblau and James Risen disclosed that for "eight years, government officials turned to Dennis Montgomery, a California computer programmer, for eye-popping technology that he said could catch terrorists."

Montgomery's "eye-popping technology" was a fraud, a multimillion grift that bamboozled the Pentagon's Special Operations Command and other secret state agencies and almost resulted in the 2003 shoot-down of passenger planes heading towards the U.S.

Hardly the "smartest guy in the room," Montgomery is awaiting trial in Nevada on charges "of trying to pass $1.8 million in bad checks at casinos." However, "he has not been charged with wrongdoing in the federal contracts, nor has the government tried to get back any of the money it paid."

In the last few months Obama's Justice Department, Lichtblau and Risen inform us, have "gotten protective orders from two federal judges keeping details of the technology out of court," and "says it is guarding state secrets that would threaten national security if disclosed."

According to the Times, the software suite Montgomery sold the Pentagon was chock-a-block with snake-oil claims that it "could find terrorist plots hidden in broadcasts of the Arab network Al Jazeera; identify terrorists from Predator drone videos; and detect noise from hostile submarines."

These claims "prompted an international false alarm that led President George W. Bush to order airliners to turn around over the Atlantic Ocean in 2003."

In a famous incident of Bush administration fear mongering that coincided with the Christmas holidays for maximum effect, and hyped of course by the media as the latest in a series of "grave threats" to the heimat, Montgomery reported the alarming news to his CIA contacts.

But as Global Research analyst Michel Chossudovsky pointed out at the time, the Bush administration had "chosen the Christmas holiday to wage a campaign of fear and intimidation. Its ultimate objective consists in manipulating Americans into accepting a de facto military government, as a means to 'protect their civil liberties'."

Chossudovsky averred, and facts that came to light years later proved beyond all reasonable doubt that "the terrorist alert was fabricated by the CIA." A cynical deceit facilitated by "War on Terror" fraudster Montgomery.

According to the Times, Montgomery had claimed that "hidden in the crawl bars broadcast by Al Jazeera, someone had planted information about specific American-bound flights from Britain, France and Mexico that were hijacking targets."

CIA officials then "rushed the information to Mr. Bush, who ordered those flights to be turned around or grounded before they could enter American airspace."

"Senior administration officials," the Times revealed, "even talked about shooting down planes identified as targets because they feared that supposed hijackers would use the planes to attack the United States, according to a former senior intelligence official who was at a meeting where the idea was discussed."

While the anonymous official later called the idea "crazy," nevertheless snake-oil salesman Montgomery had convinced intelligence officials that the fabricated threat was "real and credible."

Despite the fact the United States was a hair's breath from blasting commercial airliners from the skies and killing hundreds of innocent people, the CIA "never did an assessment to determine how a ruse had turned into a full-blown international incident, officials said, nor was anyone held accountable."

"In fact," the Times reports, "agency officials who oversaw the technology directorate--including Donald Kerr, who helped persuade George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, that the software was credible--were promoted, former officials said."

""Nobody was blamed," a former CIA official told the Times. "They acted like it never happened."

Kerr, a long-time fixture in the national security establishment, was formerly an executive vice president with the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). After serving as the CIA's Deputy Director for Science of Technology, he was rewarded for his role in the "planes incident" fiasco with an appointment by Bush as the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the top secret Pentagon satrapy that flies America's fleet of intelligence satellites. And since being well-connected means never having to say your sorry, Kerr is currently the Deputy Director of U.S. National Intelligence where he continues to labor mightily to "keep us safe."

Despite serious misgivings about Montgomery's firm, eTreppid Technologies, the secret state was eager to buy his company's dodgy software. Why? As it turns out, Montgomery was, as they say, juiced.

Along with partner Warren Trepp, described as a former "top trader for the junk-bond king [and convicted fraudster] Michael Milken," Montgomery's company "with the help of Representative Jim Gibbons, a Republican who would become Nevada's governor and was a longtime friend of Mr. Trepp's, the company won the attention of intelligence officials in Washington."

Some of Montgomery's "friends" also included "Edra Blixseth, a onetime billionaire who with her former husband had run the Yellowstone Club in Montana."

Back in October, the Associated Press reported that the FBI had opened a criminal probe and was investigating the former co-owner of the swank Yellowstone Club, whose members include Bill Gates and former Vice President Dan Quayle, over charges that she bilked creditors at the time of her messy divorce.

A well-connected Republican insider, according to AP, investigators are probing "a massive real estate scheme fueled by greed, fraud and hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-advised loans."

"The current federal inquiry into Edra Blixseth," AP informed us, "involves a series of multimillion dollar loans she took out or guaranteed around the time of her divorce, according to an attorney familiar with the matter."

"Court records show," according to AP, that "she claimed to be worth $782 million at the time of another loan, for $950,000. Within months, she filed for personal bankruptcy owing creditors at least $157 million."

Like her pal Montgomery, Blixseth claims she did "nothing wrong." What's that old saw about birds of a feather?

"Hoping to win more government money," the Times reported, "Ms. Blixseth turned to some influential friends, like Jack Kemp, the former New York congressman and Republican vice-presidential nominee, and Conrad Burns, then a Republican senator from Montana. They became minority stakeholders in the venture, called Blxware."

Burns told the Times he was "impressed" by a video presentation Montgomery gave to an unnamed "cable company." The former senator told Lichtblau and Risen that the security grifter "talked a hell of a game."

For his part, Kemp leveraged his connections with war criminal and then-Vice President Dick Cheney, "to set up a meeting in 2006 at which Mr. Kemp, Mr. Montgomery and Ms. Blixseth met with a top Cheney adviser, Samantha Ravich, to talk about expanding the government's use of the Blxware software."

When Ravich didn't jump fast enough and hand over more taxpayer boodle, Montgomery's former attorney Michael Flynn "sent an angry letter to Mr. Cheney in May 2007" and "accused the White House of abandoning a tool shown to 'save lives'," the Times reported.

But Montgomery and Blixseth still had a card to play and had some powerful friends in the Air Force who helped play them.

Lichtblau and Risen disclosed that "an Air Force contracting officer, Joseph Liberatore," who described himself as a "believer," despite skepticism from other secret state agencies including the CIA, was concerned by "problems with the no-bid contract."

According to an email obtained by the Times, Liberatore wrote that if other agencies examined the deal "we are all toast."

"In 2009," Lichtblau and Risen inform us, "the Air Force approved a $3 million deal for his technology, even though a contracting officer acknowledged that other agencies were skeptical about the software."

As Montgomery's firm crashed and burned, the Bush and now, the Obama administration, sought to cover their ass-ets and "declared that some classified details about the use of Mr. Montgomery's software were a 'state secret' that could cause grave harm if disclosed in court."

"The secrecy was so great that at a deposition Mr. Montgomery gave in November," Lichtblau and Risen report, that "two government officials showed up to monitor the questioning but refused to give their full names or the agencies they worked for."

Bottom line: while the U.S. government affirms that the private communications of American citizens are fair game to be trolled by secret state snoops, fraud and serious crimes carried out under the dark banner of an endless "War on Terror" are treated, like evidence of torture and other crimes against humanity, as if they "never happened."

Criminalizing Whistleblowing

The National Security State's assault on our right to privacy comes hard on the heels on moves in Congress, spearheaded by troglodytic Republicans (with "liberal" Democrats running a close second) to criminalize whistleblowing altogether.

Last week, the Muslim-hating Rep. Peter King (R-NY) introduced the SHIELD Act in the House, a pernicious piece of legislative flotsam that would amend the Espionage Act and make publishing classified information, and investigative journalism, a criminal offense.

Also last week, legislation was introduced in the Senate that "would broadly criminalize leaks of classified information," Secrecy News reported.

Sponsored by Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), the bill (S. 355) "would make it a felony for a government employee or contractor who has authorized access to classified information to disclose such information to an unauthorized person in violation of his or her nondisclosure agreement," Secrecy News disclosed.

In an Orwellian twist, Cardin, who received some $385,000 in campaign swag from free speech advocates such as Constellation Energy, Goldman Sachs and Patton Boggs (Mubarak's chief lobbyist in Washington) according to OpenSecrets.org, said that the bill would "promote Federal whistleblower protection statutes and regulations"!

As Secrecy News points out, the bill "does not provide for a 'public interest' defense, i.e. an argument that any damage to national security was outweighed by a benefit to the nation." In other words, you don't need to know about government high crimes and misdemeanors. Why? Because we say so.

In November, shortly after WikiLeaks began publishing Cablegate files, King fired off a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that WikiLeaks be declared a "foreign terrorist organization" and the group's founder declared a "terrorist ringleader."

We know the fate reserved for "terrorists," don't we?

As the United States sinks ever-deeper into a lawless abyss where the corporate state is lowering the boom on democracy altogether, is the day far off when Madam Clinton's avowal that we ought not "tell people how to use any public square, whether it's Tahrir Square or Times Square," come back with a vengeance to haunt America's venal ruling class?

American Police State: FBI Abuses Reveals Contempt for Political Rights, Civil Liberties

As mass revolt spreads across Egypt and the Middle East and citizens there demand jobs, civil liberties and an end to police state abuses from repressive, U.S.-backed torture regimes, the Obama administration and their congressional allies aim to expand one right here at home.

Last week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released an explosive new report documenting the lawless, constitutional-free zone under construction in America for nearly a decade.

That report, "Patterns of Misconduct: FBI Intelligence Violations from 2001-2008," reveals that the domestic political intelligence apparat spearheaded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, continues to systematically violate the rights of American citizens and legal residents.

A rather ironic state of affairs considering the free passes handed out by U.S. securocrats to actual terrorists who killed thousands of Americans on 9/11, as both WikiLeaks and FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds disclosed last week.

Although illegal practices and violations were reported by the FBI to the Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) after an unexplained two-and-a-half-year delay, a further violation of lawful guidelines, lawbreaking continued unabated; in fact, it accelerated as the Bureau was given a green light to do so by successive U.S. administrations.

The IOB is a largely toothless body created in 1976 by the Ford administration in the wake of disclosures of widespread spying and infiltration of political groups by America's secret state agencies during the sixties and seventies.

Reeling from revelations uncovered by Congress, investigative journalists and citizen activists in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Ford's caretaker government was forced to call a halt to the more egregious practices employed by the FBI to keep the lid on and crafted guidelines governing intelligence and surveillance operations.

In fact, the Attorney General's Guidelines regulating both FBI National Security Investigations and Foreign Intelligence Collection (NSIG) stipulate that "all government intelligence operations occur with sufficient oversight and within the bounds of the Constitution and other federal laws."

While it can rightly be argued these protocols were largely ineffective, and had been breeched more often than not by the 1980s under President Reagan, as revealed during the Iran-Contra scandal, and that antiwar, environmental and solidarity groups continue to be spied upon and destabilized by agents provocateurs and right-wing corporate scum, they were thrown overboard entirely by the Bush regime in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Today the "looking forward, not backward" Obama administration has whole-heartedly embraced Bushist lawlessness while charting an even more sinister course of their own, now asserting they have the authority to assassinate American citizens the Executive Branch designate as "terrorists" anywhere on earth without benefit of due process or court review.

According to EFF, more than 2,500 documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that:

* From 2001 to 2008, the FBI reported to the IOB approximately 800 violations of laws, Executive Orders, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations, although this number likely significantly under-represents the number of violations that actually occurred.
* From 2001 to 2008, the FBI investigated, at minimum, 7000 potential violations of laws, Executive Orders, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations.
* Based on the proportion of violations reported to the IOB and the FBI's own statements regarding the number of NSL [National Security Letter] violations that occurred, the actual number of violations that may have occurred from 2001 to 2008 could approach 40,000 possible violations of law, Executive Order, or other regulations governing intelligence investigations. (Electronic Frontier Foundation, Patterns of Misconduct: FBI Intelligence Violations from 2001-2008, January 30, 2011)

But FBI lawbreaking didn't stop there. Citing internal documents, EFF revealed that the Bureau also "engaged in a number of flagrant legal violations" that included, "submitting false or inaccurate declarations to courts," "using improper evidence to obtain federal grand jury subpoenas" and "accessing password protected documents without a warrant."

In other words, in order to illegally spy on Americans and haul political dissidents before Star Chamber-style grand juries, the FBI routinely committed perjury and did so with absolute impunity.

Reviewing the more than 2,500 documents EFF analysts averred that they had "uncovered alarming trends in the Bureau's intelligence investigation practices" and that the "documents suggest the FBI's intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed."

According to EFF, the "documents show that the FBI most frequently committed three types of intelligence violations--violations of internal oversight guidelines for conducting investigations; violations stemming from the abuse of National Security Letters; and violations of the Fourth Amendment, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and other laws governing intelligence investigations."

"Based on statements made by government officials and the proportion of violations occurring in the released reports," EFF estimates that "the FBI may have committed as many as 40,000 intelligence investigation violations over the past ten years."

The civil liberties' watchdogs revealed that the type of violation occurring most frequently involved the Bureau's abuse of National Security Letters (NSLs), onerous lettres de cachet, secretive administrative subpoenas with built-in gag orders used by the FBI to seize records from third-parties without any judicial review whatsoever.

Although National Security Letters have been employed by investigators since the 1970s, after 9/11 Congress passed the repressive USA PATRIOT Act which "greatly expanded the intelligence community's authority to issue NSLs."

"During the course of a terrorism or counterintelligence investigation," EFF writes, "NSLs can be used to obtain just three types of records: (1) subscriber and 'toll billing information' from telephone companies and 'electronic communications services;' (2) financial records from banks and other financial institutions; and (3) consumer identifying information and the identity of financial institutions from credit bureaus."

Abuses have been well-documented by the Justice Department's own Office of the Inspector General. In their 2008 report, the OIG disclosed that the FBI issued some 200,000 requests and that almost 60% were for investigations of U.S. citizens and legal residents.

Given the symbiosis amongst American secret state agencies and grifting corporations, EFF discovered that "the frequency with which companies [received] NSLs--phone companies, internet providers, banks, or credit bureaus--contributed to the FBI’s NSL abuse."

"In over half of all NSL violations reviewed by EFF, the private entity receiving the NSL either provided more information than requested or turned over information without receiving a valid legal justification from the FBI."

In fact, "companies were all too willing to comply with the FBI's requests, and--in many cases--the Bureau readily incorporated the over-produced information into its investigatory databases."

This too is hardly surprising, given the enormous profits generated by the surveillance state for their corporate beneficiaries. As The Washington Post revealed in their investigative series, Top Secret America, more than 800,000 corporate employees have been issued top secret and above security clearances. Beholden to their employers and not the public who foots the bill and is the victim of their excesses, accountability is a fiction and oversight a contemptible fraud.

In a follow-up piece, Monitoring America, investigative journalists Dana Priest and William M. Arkin revealed that the FBI "is building a database with the names and certain personal information, such as employment history, of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents whom a local police officer or a fellow citizen believed to be acting suspiciously."

In other words, in order to "keep us safe" unaccountable securocrats are constructing a Stasi-like political intelligence system that has overthrown the traditional legal concept of probable cause in favor of a regime rooted in fear and suspicion; one where innocent activities such as taking a photograph or attending an antiwar rally now serves as a pretext for opening a national security investigation.

According to Priest and Arkin, the Bureau database "is accessible to an increasing number of local law enforcement and military criminal investigators, increasing concerns that it could somehow end up in the public domain," and used by employers to terminate political dissidents or other "undesirable" citizens merely on the basis of allegations emanating from who knows where.

As Antifascist Calling reported in October, "predictive behavior" security firms, generously funded by the CIA's venture capitalist arm, In-Q-Tel, have increasingly turned to monitoring social media sites such as Blogger, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube and are exploiting powerful computer algorithms for their clients--your boss--thereby transforming private communications into "actionable intelligence" that just might get you fired.

In one case, EFF discovered that the FBI "requested email header information for two email addresses used by a U.S. person." In response, researchers averred "the email service provider returned two CDs containing the full content of all emails in the accounts. The FBI eventually (and properly) sequestered the CDs, notified the email provider of the overproduction, and re-issued an NSL for the originally requested header information; but, in response to the second NSL, the email provider again provided the FBI with the full content of all emails in the accounts."

To make matters worse, "third-parties not only willingly cooperated with FBI NSLs when the legal justification was unclear, however: they responded to NSLs without any legal justification at all."

In conclusion, EFF wrote that "while the reports documenting the FBI's abuse of the Constitution, FISA, and other intelligence laws are troubling, EFF's analysis is necessarily incomplete: it is impossible to know the severity of the FBI's legal violations until the Bureau stops concealing its most serious violations behind a wall of arbitrary secrecy."

This sordid state of affairs is likely to continue given Congress's utter lack of interest in protecting Americans' constitutionally-protected right to privacy, free speech and assembly.

With new moves afoot in Congress to pass a data retention law that requires internet service providers to retain records of users' online activity or, as in the repressive Egyptian U.S. client state, handing the Executive Branch a "kill-switch" that would disconnect the American people from the internet in the event of a "national emergency," the U.S. oligarchy is planning for the future.

As the World Socialist Web Site points out, "The US government is well aware that the Internet provides a forum for rapid communication and organization, as demonstrated by the events in Egypt this week. In an attempt to block communication within Egypt and with the external world, US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak cut off the country's access to the Internet altogether."

"Similarly," left-wing journalist Patrick Zimmerman writes, "the fundamental goal of the US government in its attempts to gain control of the Internet and monitor user activity has nothing to do with the 'war on terror' or prosecuting criminals. Under conditions of growing social inequality, government austerity, and expanding war abroad, the government anticipates the growth of social opposition in the United States."

The Bush regime's "preemptive war" doctrine has been fully incorporated into the Obama administration's "homeland security" paradigm. The formidable police state apparatus that accompanies America's imperial adventures abroad are now deployed at home where they have devastating effects on an already dysfunctional democracy sliding ever-closer towards an authoritarian abyss.

Dirty Work in the Balkans: NATO's KLA Frankenstein

The U.S. and German-installed leadership of Kosovo finds itself under siege after the Council of Europe voted Tuesday to endorse a report charging senior members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) of controlling a brisk trade in human organs, sex slaves and narcotics.

Coming on the heels of a retrial later this year of KLA commander and former Prime Minister, Ramush Haradinaj, by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, an enormous can of worms is about to burst open.

Last month, Antifascist Calling reported that Hashim Thaçi, the current Prime Minister of the breakaway Serb province, and other members of the self-styled Drenica Group, were accused by Council of Europe investigators of running a virtual mafia state.

According to Swiss parliamentarian Dick Marty, the Council's Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Thaçi, Dr. Shaip Muja, and other leading members of the government directed--and profited from--an international criminal enterprise whose tentacles spread across Europe into Israel, Turkey and South Africa.

For his part, Thaçi has repudiated the allegations and has threatened to sue Marty for libel. Sali Berisha, Albania's current Prime Minister and Thaçi's close ally, dismissed the investigation as a "completely racist and defamatory report," according to The New York Times.

That's rather rich coming from a politician who held office during the systematic looting of Albania's impoverished people during the "economic liberalization" of the 1990s.

At the time, Berisha's Democratic Party government urged Albanians to invest in dodgy pyramid funds, massive Ponzi schemes that were little more than fronts for drug money laundering and arms trafficking.

More than a decade ago, Global Research analyst Michel Chossudovsky documented how the largest fund, "VEFA Holdings had been set up by the Guegue 'families' of Northern Albania with the support of Western banking interests," even though the fund "was under investigation in Italy in 1997 for its ties to the Mafia which allegedly used VEFA to launder large amounts of dirty money."

By 1997, two-thirds of the Albanian population who believed fairy tales of capitalist prosperity spun by their kleptocratic leaders and the IMF, lost some $1.2 billion to the well-connected fraudsters. When the full extent of the crisis reached critical mass, it sparked an armed revolt that was only suppressed after the UN Security Council deployed some 7,000 NATO troops that occupied the country; more than 2,000 people were killed.

Today the Berisha regime, like their junior partners in Pristina, face a new legitimacy crisis.

As the World Socialist Web Site reported, mass protests broke out in Tirana last week, with more than 20,000 demonstrators taking to the streets, after a nationally broadcast report showed a Deputy Prime Minister from Berisha's party "in secretly taped talks, openly negotiating the level of bribes to back the construction of a new hydroelectric power station."

As is the wont of gangster states everywhere, "police responded with extreme violence against the demonstrators; three people died and dozens were injured."

While the charges against Thaçi and his confederates are shocking, evidence that these horrific crimes have been known for years, and suppressed, both by the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) and by top American and German officials--the political mandarins pulling Balkan strings--lend weight to suspicions that a protective wall was built around their protégés; facts borne out by subsequent NATO investigations, also suppressed.

Leaked Military Intelligence Reports

On Monday, a series of NATO reports were leaked to The Guardian. Military intelligence officials, according to investigative journalist Paul Lewis, identified Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi as one of the "'biggest fish' in organised crime in his country."

Marked "Secret" by NATO spooks, Lewis disclosed that the 2004 reports also "indicate that the US and other western powers backing Kosovo's government have had extensive knowledge of its criminal connections for several years."

According to The Guardian, the files, tagged "'USA KFOR' ... provide detailed information about organised criminal networks in Kosovo based on reports by western intelligence agencies and informants," and also "identify another senior ruling politician in Kosovo as having links to the Albanian mafia, stating that he exerts considerable control over Thaçi, a former guerrilla leader."

As noted above, with the Council of Europe demanding a formal investigation into charges that Thaçi's criminal enterprise presided over a grisly traffic in human organs and exerted "violent control" over the heroin trade, it appears that the American and German-backed narco statelet is in for a very rough ride.

In the NATO reports, The Guardian revealed that Thaçi "is identified as one of a triumvirate of 'biggest fish' in organised criminal circles."

"So too," Lewis writes, "is Xhavit Haliti, a former head of logistics for the KLA who is now a close ally of the prime minister and a senior parliamentarian in his ruling PDK party."

The reports suggest "that behind his role as a prominent politician, Haliti is also a senior organised criminal who carries a Czech 9mm pistol and holds considerable sway over the prime minister."

Described as "'the power behind Hashim Thaçi', one report states that Haliti has strong ties with the Albanian mafia and Kosovo's secret service, known as KShiK."

The former KLA logistics specialist, according to The Guardian, suggest that Haliti "'more or less ran' a fund for the Kosovo war in the late 1990s, profiting from the fund personally before the money dried up. 'As a result, Haliti turned to organised crime on a grand scale,' the reports state'."

Such information was long known in Western intelligence and political circles, especially amongst secret state agencies such as the American CIA, DEA and FBI, Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst, or BND, Britain's MI6 and Italy's military-intelligence service, SISMI, as Marty disclosed last month.

In 1994 for example, The New York Times reported that the Observatoire Géopolitique des Drogues released a report documenting that "Albanian groups in Macedonia and Kosovo Province in Serbia are trading heroin for large quantities of weapons for use in a brewing conflict in Kosovo."

According to the Times, "Albanian traffickers were supplied with heroin and weapons by mafia-like groups in Georgia and Armenia. The Albanians then pay for the supplies by reselling the heroin in the West."

A year later, Jane's Intelligence Review reported that "if left unchecked ... Albanian narco-terrorism could lead to a Colombian syndrome in the southern Balkans, or the emergence of a situation in which the Albanian mafia becomes powerful enough to control one or more states in the region."

Following NATO's 1999 bombing campaign that completed the sought-after break-up of Yugoslavia, that situation came to pass; Kosovo has since metastasized into a key link in the international narcotics supply chain.

NATO spooks averred that Haliti is "highly involved in prostitution, weapons and drugs smuggling" and that he serves as Thaçi's chief "political and financial adviser," and, according to the documents, he is arguably "the real boss" in the relationship.

Like Haradinaj, Haliti "is linked to the alleged intimidation of political opponents in Kosovo and two suspected murders dating back to the late 1990s, when KLA infighting is said to have resulted in numerous killings," Lewis reports.

In 2008, Haradinaj and Idriz Balaj were acquitted by the U.S.-sponsored ICTY "victors tribunal" of charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Lahi Brahimaj, Haradinaj's uncle, was sentenced to six years' imprisonment for the torture of two people at KLA headquarters.

A retrial was ordered last summer after evidence emerged that Haradinaj, long-suspected of running a parallel organized crime ring to Thaçi's that also trafficked arms, drugs and sexual slaves across Europe, a fact long-known--and similarly suppressed--by the mafia state's closest allies, Germany and the United States, may have intimidated witnesses who had agreed to testify against his faction of the KLA leadership.

A former nightclub bouncer who morphed into a "freedom fighter" during the 1990s, Haradinaj has been accused by prosecutors of crimes committed between March and September 1998 in the Dukagjin area of western Kosovo.

According to The Guardian, "Haradinaj was a commander of the KLA in Dukagjin, Balaj was the commander of the Black Eagles unit within the KLA, and Brahimaj a KLA member stationed in the force's headquarters in the town of Jablanica."

The appeals court ruled that "in the context of the serious witness intimidation that formed the context of the trial, it was clear that the trial chamber seriously erred in failing to take adequate measures to secure the testimony of certain witnesses."

The indictment charges that the KLA "persecuted and abducted civilians thought to be collaborating with Serbian forces in the Dukagjin area and that Haradinaj, Balaj, and Brahimaj were responsible for abduction, murder, torture and ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Roma and fellow Albanians through a joint criminal enterprise, including the murder of 39 people whose bodies were retrieved from a lake," The Guardian disclosed.

But in a case that demonstrates the cosy relations amongst KLA leaders and their Western puppetmasters despite, or possibly because of their links to organized crime, German Foreign Policy revealed that "high ranking UN officials helped intimidate witnesses due to testify in The Hague against Haradinaj."

This charge was echoed by Special Rapporteur Dick Marty. He told Center for Investigative Reporting journalists Michael Montgomery and Altin Raxhimi, who broke the Kosovo organ trafficking story two years ago, that his investigation "could be hindered by witness safety and other security concerns."

"If, as a witness, you do not have complete assurance that your statements will be kept confidential, and that as a witness you are truly protected, clearly you won't talk to these institutions," Marty said.

Such problems are compounded when the leading lights overseeing Kosovo's administration, Germany and the United States, have every reason to scuttle any credible investigation into the crimes of their clients, particularly when a serious probe would reveal their own complicity.

Eyes Wide Shut

The Haradinaj cover-up is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

According to German Foreign Policy, "the structures of organized crime in Kosovo, in which Haradinaj is said to play an important role, extend all the way to Germany. It is being reported that German government authorities prevented investigations of Kosovo Albanians residing in Germany."

Investigative journalist Boris Kanzleiter told the left-leaning online magazine that the UN administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) and its newest iteration, the European Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) "maintains very close ties to Haradinaj."

The former head of UNMIK, Sören Jessen-Petersen, referred to him as a "close partner and friend." Kanzleiter said that "Jessen-Petersen's successor, the German diplomat, Joachim Ruecker, also has a close relationship to him."

Kanzleiter told the journal, "accusations were made that high-ranking UNMIK functionaries were directly involved in the intimidation of witnesses."

These reports should be taken seriously, especially in light of allegations that even before Haradinaj's first trial, a witness against the former Prime Minister was killed in what was then described as "an unsolved auto accident."

"Back in 2002," German Foreign Policy reported, "three witnesses and two investigating officials were assassinated in the context of the trial against Haradinaj's clan."

Similar to the modus operandi of Thaçi's enterprise, the newsmagazine reported that the BND had concluded that Haradinaj's "network of [drugs and arms] smugglers were operating 'throughout the Balkans', extending 'into Greece, Italy, Switzerland and all the way to Germany'."

Not that any of this mattered to Germany or the United States. German Foreign Policy also reported that despite overwhelming evidence of KLA links to the global drugs trade, political circles in Berlin vetoed official investigations into KLA narcotics trafficking.

In 2005 "the State Offices of Criminal Investigation of Bavaria and Lower Saxony tried to convince the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation to open a centralized investigation concerning the known [Kosovo-Albanian] clans and individuals in Germany" because "many criminal culprits from the entourage of the KLA have settled in Germany."

The author noted "this demand was refused." Indeed, "even though the Austrian Federal Office of Investigation and the Italian police strongly insisted that their German colleagues finally initiate these investigations, the rejection ... according to a confidential source in the Austrian Federal Office of Criminal Investigation, came straight from the Interior Ministry in Berlin."

As we have since learned, Haliti and other top KLA officials have also been linked to organized crime in Marty's report. The human rights Rapporteur accused Haliti, like Haradinaj, of having ordered "assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations" of those who ran afoul of Thaçi's underworld associates.

In 2009, German Foreign Policy reported yet another "new scandal" threatened to upset the apple cart. "A former agent of the Kosovo intelligence service explained that a close associate of Kosovo's incumbent Prime Minister, Hashim Thaçi, had commissioned the assassinations of political opponents."

"The newest mafia scandal involving Pristina's secessionist regime was set in motion by the former secret agent Nazim Bllaca," the magazine disclosed.

According to the publication, "Bllaca alleges that he had been in the employ of the secret service, SHIK, since the end of the war waged against Yugoslavia in 1999 by NATO and the troops of Kosovo's terrorist UCK [KLA] militia."

The former secret state agent claimed "he had personally committed 17 crimes in the course of his SHIK activities, including extortion, assassination, assaults, torture and serving as a contract killer."

Marty told the Center for Investigative Reporting that "Bllaca's experience did not bode well for other insiders who are considering cooperating with the authorities." EULEX officials only placed Bllaca under protective custody a week after he went public with his allegations, in what could only be described as an open-ended invitation for an assassin's bullet.

Despite such revelations, diplomatic cables unearthed by WikiLeaks show that the U.S. Embassy views their Frankenstein creations in an entirely favorable light.

A Cablegate file dated 02-17-10, "Kosovo Celebrates Second Anniversary with Successes and Challenges," 10PRISTINA84, informs us that "two years have seen political stability that has allowed the country to create legitimate new institutions," but that the narco state "must use its string of economic reforms and privatizations as a springboard to motivate private-sector growth."

Such as auctioning-off the Trepca mining complex at fire-sale prices. As The New York Times reported back in 1998, the Trepca mines are "the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans, worth at least $5 billion."

Summing up the reasons for NATO's war, one mine director told Times' reporter Chris Hedges: "The war in Kosovo is about the mines, nothing else. This is Serbia's Kuwait--the heart of Kosovo. We export to France, Switzerland, Greece, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Russia and Belgium.

"We export to a firm in New York, but I would prefer not to name it. And in addition to all this Kosovo has 17 billion tons of coal reserves. Naturally, the Albanians want all this for themselves."

Judging by the flood of heroin reaching European and North American "markets," one can only conclude that if fleets of armored Mercedes and BMWs prowling Pristina streets are a growth metric then by all means, America and Germany's "nation building" enterprise has been a real achievement!

In light of reports of widespread criminality that would make a Wall Street hedge fund manager blush, we're told by the U.S. Embassy that the Thaçi government "must prioritize the rule of law and the fight against corruption."

Laying it on thick, despite damning intelligence reports by their own secret services, the Embassy avers that "Kosovo's independence has been a success story." Indeed, "the international community and the Kosovars, themselves, can feel good about the positive steps that have occurred over the past two years."

That is, if one closes one's eyes when stepping over the corpses.