May 21 2008
Are you one of the lucky 8 million?
The new issue of Radar magazine has a feature that oughta scare the shit out of you. The Last Roundup is a piece by Christopher Ketcham that details a secret government spy program that may very well spy on or detain as many as 8 million Americans.
Entitled “Main Core”, it first came to light last year during the testimony of James Comey, who worked right under then-attorney general John Ashcroft.You might remember hearing something about Alberto Gonzales trying his damnedest to get a bedridden and hospitalized Ashcrof to sign off on and certify a new surveillance program. Ashcroft wouldn’t sign it, and due to his condition, Comey was acting AG, and he wouldn’t sign off on it either, at one point later threatening resignation over the matter.
Kecham dug around and found that the program involves a massive data-mining effort. And here’s the scary part:
According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.
Yeah, sounds like something in Stalin’s Soviet Union, doesn’t it? And as far as what would constitute a “national emergency”? Well, it’s not too clear:
Of course, federal law is somewhat vague as to what might constitute a “national emergency.” Executive orders issued over the past three decades define it as a “natural disaster, military attack, [or] technological or other emergency,” while Department of Defense documents include eventualities like “riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, [and] disorder prejudicial to public law and order.” According to one news report, even “national opposition to U.S. military invasion abroad” could be a trigger.
And what kind of info?
Main Core also allegedly draws on four smaller databases that, in turn, cull from federal, state, and local “intelligence” reports; print and broadcast media; financial records; “commercial databases”; and unidentified “private sector entities.” Additional information comes from a database known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, which generates watch lists from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for use by airlines, law enforcement, and border posts. According to the Washington Post, the Terrorist Identities list has quadrupled in size between 2003 and 2007 to include about 435,000 names. The FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center border crossing list, which listed 755,000 persons as of fall 2007, grows by 200,000 names a year. A former NSA officer tells Radar that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, using an electronic-funds transfer surveillance program, also contributes data to Main Core, as does a Pentagon program that was created in 2002 to monitor antiwar protesters and environmental activists such as Greenpeace.
If previous FEMA and FBI lists are any indication, the Main Core database includes dissidents and activists of various stripes, political and tax protesters, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, gun owners, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, and a great many other harmless, average people.
It’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Ketcham really did his homework on this, citing many historical examples and telling signs as to what is involved.
So it’s a crapshoot as to what could trigger something like this. But that’s only part of the deal. The Continuancy of Government (COG) plans could indeed very much be a police state, with the executive branch holding all of the cards. There’s a lot more to it than I can paraphrase here, but it’s indeed quite chilling in its scope. Go and read the whole thing.
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I’m proud to likely be on such a list.
While the threat and the possibility of massive detentions/roundups of “enemy’s of the State”, etc are very real and chilling, there is also a good deal of history the shows the government is much more adapt at slipping these kinds of meme’s into the public that can often glorify and exaggerate their capabilities and prowess in hopes it will act as a deterrent. Again, not that what they’re actually capable of isn’t scary as all hell, but think about to some of their COINTELPRO tactics, and instances like the bumbling, hapless Feds who followed/spied on celeb “threats” like John Lennon in the 50’s and 60’s- their systems, their resources, their methods, and the sometimes genious folks who work on this shit is horrific, but where ever their systems need real-world follow-through and implementation you have actual people acting, and actual people are quite prone to slip-ups, mistakes, and general baboonary.
I’m almost positive I’m on that list: ex-spook turned angry leftwing bastard and half-foreign national. At least I hope so.
I’m probably on it as well… Listen to us,wearing it like it’s a badge of honor.
We can all talk about it when we’re together in the Alaskan (or would it be North Dakotan?) gulag.
Funny thing is, I used to feel fairly alone in my anti-Bush rantings (I started well before 9/11, sending him snotty and sarcastic letters about what a “great” job he was doing and claiming to be his “number 1 fan”), my rantings about the erosion of liberty and the documents that support it, and my rantings about benefits of Democratic Socialism. Now, it doesn’t seem so unusual. Maybe I’ve just gravitated to like-minded people.
Otherwise, my life is very mainstream. But you never know how you look to “them.”
Sad thing is, we were right about most of this from the get-go. Much of what was thought of as treasonous back then is mainstream now. Bush has always been a lying, deceiving asshole. It just took the rest of the country about 7 years to figure it out.