Jun 26, 2017 | Economy, Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
The first billionaire in U.S. History was John D. Rockefeller. He and J. P. Morgan dominated late 19th and early 20th Centuries economic and political history, more especially after they teamed up to create The Council on Foreign Relations in 1921—quickly becoming the most powerful political special interest group in U.S. History. Recently we published a column showing John D. Rockefeller’s grandson David, as the most influential individual in post World War II America and perhaps in the world.
Most U.S. History textbooks show how oil baron John D. Rockefeller worked ruthlessly to monopolize 90% of the oil industry in the United States but few have given focus to David’s working to demonize the fossil fuel industry of his grandfather in favor of alternative energy dominance wherein the Rockefeller family is now heavily vested. But first he had to popularize a myth—fossil fuels change the climate and thus must be managed at the world level. The myth insures their place of wealth with alternative energy and creates a need for a world government that they, because of their wealth, would manage, as they have the U.S. government.
What has been known by those who specialize in special interest group politics, is now more fully explained in a 24 page report by the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute called The Rockefeller Way: The Family’s Covert ‘Climate Change’ Plan, released December 2016. They concluded: “Since the beginning of their philanthropic endeavors, the Rockefellers have used social causes to amass influence in policy areas of their choosing. Since the 1980s, their cause of choice has been the climate change agenda (originally called global warming). Their crusade to collapse the fossil fuel industry in favor of renewable energy is well-documented, from their involvement in major global climate treaties and organizations—the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1992 to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol—to spending hundreds of millions to advance the renewable energy industry. Through their Sustainable Development Program, the Rockefellers continue to promote their self-serving ‘clean energy’ policies throughout both the federal government and general public.”
Their point, “As the most prolific benefactors of the climate activist movement, the Rockefellers’ impact on the energy industry sees no bounds, as the family’s objectives permeate throughout federal and state energy policy, as well as international social engineering globalist compacts such as Agenda 21.”
So how has the public been convinced that global warming is real? This they accomplished, “through the Rockefellers’ web of family foundations, universities, and institutions, as well as huge grants to other charities….” As a result of this web, “they have gained unprecedented influence in healthcare, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, energy, and the environment. Their highly complex integration of hedge funds, interlocking boards positions, and non-profit organizations has steered public policy on these issues and provided them with foreknowledge of emerging markets and access to the developing worlds’ natural resources.”
Conditioning Americans to accept their views has progressed through multiple generations affecting most areas. The report continues: “Since the beginning of their philanthropic endeavors, the Rockefellers have used social causes to amass influence in policy areas of their choosing. Since the 1980’s their cause of choice has been the climate change agenda (originally called global warming).” When global warming could not be proved they changed terminology to climate change that can be shown to change over time somewhere on the globe.
When one side of an issue receives much greater funding than the other the resultant public support or non-support becomes predictable. Catastrophic science (the world is coming to an end) has always been more easily funded. When the Rockefellers want something they fund those “proving” the need, as with Columbia University’s Journalism School’s Energy and Environmental Reporting Fellowship Project, then Rockefeller media outlets such as The New York Times, the Washington Post and Time magazine publicize the findings of the Rockefeller financed studies. It’s really quite simple.
It is no wonder the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), created in 1940 by John D.’s five grandsons: John, Nelson, Laurence, Winthrop, and finally David, to advance international governing bodies, “boast of being one of the first major global warming activists” institutions. Certainly funding attests to the boast: the formation of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988 and the establishment of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. RBF funded the global adaptation of the Rio Treaty reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 5.2 % by 2012 and in 1997 “helped promote and orchestrate the Kyoto Protocol with Japan.” In Europe the RBF “donated $10 million to fund an alliance of local, state, and federal leaders in the United Kingdom and Germany to address the issue.”
Major Rockefeller tax-exempt foundations are The Rockefeller Foundation, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Rockefeller Family Fund, and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Inc. All four have “poured tens of millions into major green activist groups.” Indeed without them the global warming or climate change issue comparatively would be non-existent. For the Rockefellers it does not matter whether true, only that it is the vehicle that sustains their wealth and power over the United States and their best argument to expand that power, through their New World Order, over the whole world. In the late 1800’s John D. Rockefeller did not have the power to veil his influence over America, today the Rockefeller family does.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jun 12, 2017 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
The most influential individual in post-World War II history had a hand in creating the United Nations, even donating the property for the building in 1946. No one had greater claim to influence since. By the mid-seventies he owned dominating interests in The New York Times, CBS, NBC, and ABC (Senate Document 93-62, Disclosure of Corporate Ownership, 1974). He was also chairman of the 50 year-old Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most powerful special interest group in U.S. history from which both major political parties always selected their Secretary of States, Ambassadors to Russia, China, the United Nations and a third of all cabinet posts. In the last fifty years, (until Donald Trump) either the president or the vice president was an open CFR member. Members also held leadership positions in the vast majority of major media outlets in the U.S.
Those following his life the last 50 years know him as the one individual in U.S. history who could phone the White House, day or night, and expect the occupant, Democrat or Republican, to come to the phone. He was a confidant of many world leaders. He was powerful enough to persuade President Jimmy Carter to allow his friend, the extremely controversial, despised and deposed Shah of Iran, to come to the United States for medical treatment, disregarding intelligence warnings of retaliation if he did so. This resulted in the U.S. Embassy takeover and the Iranian Hostage Crises of 1979-1981.
In 1973 he created the Trilateral Commission, the most powerful special interest group in the world, designed to dominate the economies of Japan, North America and Western Europe. His thinking was that dominating these three geographical areas would allow him to indirectly dominate the world. His two notable lieutenants, one Henry Kissinger, influenced Republican administrations, the other Zig Brzezinski, influenced Democratic administrations, both became household names, the first more so with Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, the latter with Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. There might be some differences in what became “his” contending political parties, but in things that affected foreign policy and the interests of the establishment there were few.
Although not a founder of the Bilderbergers, a world government confab of the super rich of the western world, founded in 1954 by Prince Bernard of the Netherlands, he came to have membership and great influence in this group as well. It is here, behind closed doors, that he was most candid about his world government aspirations. In a 1991 meeting he spoke of his control of the American press. “We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of and intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries” (The New American, April 17, 2017, p 42). Twenty-six years have passed since he boasted of his influence over the press and most Americans remain blind to the control over them. What is known, as the “Establishment Press” is “his” press.
By now most who read more than just the establishment press or their tributaries, who downplay all the above, know that the most influential person in post World War II era, and the one to whom we have referred is David Rockefeller, grandson of oil baron John D. Rockefeller.
To the ignorant who still insist that they are not dodo birds, and almost as though to test the level of his ability to manipulate them, he confessed everything. In his published autobiography Memoirs, 15 years ago, he wrote. “For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum … attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it” (p. 405).
His fingerprints are all over all free trade agreements especially NAFTA, FTAA, CAFTA, and SPP. He Founded the Council of the Americas, the Americas Society, the forum of the Americas, the U.S. Council of the Mexico-U.S. Business Committee and the Institute of International Economics to accomplish these economic/political unifications.
Still, even after his death on March 20, 2017, at age 101,“his” press did not share the extent of David Rockefeller’s decades long control over both major political parties. How is this possible with the level of greatness he acquired? Because the control remains in place? A quiet death with little acclamation does not bring attention to the “secret combination” for economic world power that he waged so successfully. Today his organizations advocating a new world order, including the U.N., are as strong and determined as ever, and remain mostly undetected.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Apr 24, 2017 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Please understand, I am no fan of the United Nations, the globalist pipe dream for world government supported by every president since its inception except Ronald Reagan and possibly Donald Trump. Still, it was created in San Francisco, is housed in Rockefeller donated property in New York City, and we were signatories of its charter which prohibits what Trump just did to Syria. This begs the question.
Is an attack warranted under international law on a sovereign nation that has not attacked the United States and, if not, why shouldn’t we be viewed as an aggressor nation by our initiating one? A giant irony is that we punished Syria for violating international law by our also violating international law. Who says two wrongs do not make a right?
Consider the following United Nations Charter violations by the United States when we attacked Syria: Article 2, Sec. 4, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state….” Even our threat of the use of force is a violation. The only exception to the use of force is self-defense as stipulated in Art. 51. “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
Donald Trump made no case to the United Nations prior to attacking the sovereign country of Syria. He has not, and will not, because he would have to justify such action on the basis that Syria had first shown actual aggression toward the United States necessitating our responding in self-defense. This he cannot do. Were U. S. citizens gassed we could respond in self-defense but we were not. Such acts of aggression justifying self defense must immediately be provided to the UN Security Council who then decide “such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
Other United Nation Charter rules also need satisfied. Article 39 stipulates that “the Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.” Even before this takes place Article 40 must be satisfied which reads: “In order to prevent an aggravation of the situation, the Security Council may, before making the recommendations or deciding upon the measures provided for in Article 39, call upon the parties concerned to comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable. Such provisional measures shall be without prejudice to the rights, claims, or position of the parties concerned. The Security Council shall duly take account of failure to comply with such provisional measures.” So we see that in order for a state to use force in self-defense, it or some other state must have suffered an armed attack. Such has not been demonstrated with respect to Syria.
There exists other complications; even had the UN ruled Syria an aggressor nation, which it has not, and sanctioned a coalition force against Syria, the President sought the support of no other countries to bomb with him. The Syrian offense had already occurred so the mission was to punish the perpetrator, clearly not self-defense. Syria had signed only one of two treaties prohibiting the use of gas and it contained no enforcement provisions and no one made the United States the policeman of the world. Finally, although there is no doubt that chemical weapons were used on Syrians, the source of such, although presumed, has not been definitively proved. Everyone remembers the “proof” presented to the United Nations by Colin Powel, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when it did not. Assad maintains that his own men were gassed as well.
The Assad regime may well have gassed her own people, which Assad aggressively denies, but he has not attacked another country. We, on the other hand, did just this when we bombed Syria. Had the U.S. attacked, Russia or China either would have retaliated with immediate war and asked the United Nations to define the United States as the aggressor nation and insisted they define Donald Trump a war criminal. That could have been followed by a “call upon the parties concerned,” the United States especially, “to comply with such provisional measures as it deems necessary or desirable,” which could include economic sanctions as has been used on other nations.
Did we think when we signed the UN Charter, creating the “world government,” that the rules did not apply to us, that we could just bomb whomever, whenever, and wherever we wished as with our drone strikes on multiple countries under President Obama. Unfortunately for President Trump, but fortunately for us, the U. N. Charter does not allow a military attack on a sovereign nation just to punish them.
Someone needs to save the president from his ignorance of international law before he does a preemptive strike on North Korea. Another option, if we are not going to be subjected to world law, is to pull out of the United Nations, a move that I have long supported.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Apr 17, 2017 | Constitution, Globalism, Liberty Articles
Harold Pease, Ph. D
Even though President Donald Trump believes it proper to bomb Syria, a country that has done us no harm, he has no constitutional authority to do so. Because weak Congress’s have not punished previous presidents, both Democrat and Republican, when they did the same, it does not make it constitutional. Despite compelling humanitarian reasons justifying the action, the gassing of children with sarin gas, presumed by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, we lack the treasure and ability to be the policeman of the world. Where would it end? Most of the world has dictators and tyrants as leaders. We would never be able to stop bombing someone.
The making and funding of war were clearly denied the president in the U.S. Constitution because he, as Founder James Madison argued, “had the most propensity for war.” The Constitution reads: only Congress has the right “to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.” War requires the blood of our young warriors, and this requires the permission of the people who are required to be the fodder for such. Only the people’s representatives can “provide and maintain a navy or make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces” and for “calling forth the militia…to repel invasions.” Only the people’s representatives can “provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States….” Congress is directly responsible for any acquisition of property for military use. All of this is in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and belongs to the legislative branch alone.
The Constitution does not use the words “national security” but “common defense,” defined by eight parameters, clauses 10-17, just noted, with the word defense primary. Not a single Founder would have approved of our turning “common defense” into “common offense.”
Funding for war is yet another constitutional check and is entirely left with the House of Representatives. The Constitution says: “no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years.” Two years is the designated time that a member of the House is elected and authorized to represent his people. So, neither Presidents Barack Obama nor Trump can expend monies for military activity without congressional approval. Article I, Section 7 requires that “all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives….” This clause is how the people, through their elected representatives, control a war happy president.
The only war power a president is allowed to have in the Constitution is as “Commander in Chief of the army and navy of the United States, … when called into the actual service of the United States,” which is done only by Congress, not by himself. No president has constitutional authority to engage in war without a declaration of war—even if done by other presidents before him. To commit our young to potential death unilaterally is not a presidential power, and doing so should be an impeachable offense. If the Executive Branch can effectively remove this power from Congress, giving it to itself, we are close to losing the rest of the Constitution as well.
In the Obama Administration, Congress was not consulted when American planes bombed Libya (2011, 2015), or his authorizing drone strikes in several middle-eastern countries (2013-2016) killing designated individuals—all such have traditionally been considered acts of war. Certainly these would be treated as such were they perpetrated on U.S. soil by another country. The Syrian chemical use in their civil war had already occurred, so the Trump bombing strike was to punish the perpetrator, clearly not self-defense.
The last four presidents, two of each major political party, have bombed the following 10 sovereign nations (some multiple years): Somalia 1993, 2007-2008 & 2011, Bosnia 1994-1995, Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998 & 2001-2015, Yugoslavia 1999, Yemen 2002 & 2009-2011, Iraq 1991-2015, Pakistan 2007-2015, Libya 2011 & 2015, and Syria 2014-2016 & 2017. None of these were preceded by a declaration of war. Most of these American attacks had no specific congressional authorization. They were all justified under national security. Probably only Afghanistan can be viewed as self-defense. Where do we get authority to bomb other countries at executive will, certainly not from the Constitution?
To protect the Constitution, the House of Representatives in March of 2012, attempted to place President Obama on short notice that the next disregard of their power would be grounds for impeachment. We might wish to give Trump the same warning. Concurrent resolution H. Con. Res. 107 read, “Whereas the cornerstone of the Republic is honoring Congress’s exclusive power to declare war under article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that, except in response to an actual or imminent attack against the territory of the United States, the use of offensive military force by a President without prior and clear authorization of an Act of Congress violates Congress’s exclusive power to declare war under article 1, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution and therefore constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under article II, section 4 of the Constitution.”
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Apr 3, 2017 | Constitution, Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
The most globalist and influential political action organization in the United States is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The Donald Trump Administration is the most clean of CFR influence in many decades, perhaps since Calvin Coolidge. Traditionally this organization claims either the president or the vice president in every administration, and always the Secretary of State, and ambassadorships to the United Nations, Russia and China. Under Trump it claims none of these posts. Moreover, CFR members largely fill the majority of presidential cabinets. Normally, they have highly placed members in both major political parties and thus for almost 100 years they win every presidential election.
They are the moneyed elite capable of bringing to candidates the millions of dollars that are needed to win. They are in both political parties and they own the major media outlets. Thus their influence over presidential candidates for a hundred years is never really covered, but all presidential candidates know of their influence and power. No candidate for president gets to office without CFR approval, until now.
Over the decades they have been called the shadow government, the secret combination, the moneyed establishment, the eastern establishment and now just the establishment. They have hated only two presidential party nominees Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Donald Trump in 2016. The first they destroyed, the second they seek to remove or destroy.
President Woodrow Wilson was the first president to reference a secret influence over politics at the highest level. In his The New Freedom (1913) he wrote of his experience with a hidden force: “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
A hundred years later, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, identified the CFR as her source of direction when she addressed them in their new D. C. “sub-center down the street.” She told them: “I am delighted to be at these new headquarters. I have been often to the mother ship in New York City but it is good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council so this will mean that I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.”
In the presidential campaign the establishment media portrayed Donald Trump as a joke—certainly not a serious candidate, not a real conservative, a flip-flopper on the issues, anti-women, anti-immigration, insulting to everyone, a braggart, only into himself, least likely to beat Hillary Clinton, only attractive to white males, and not in touch with reality with respect to the Middle East, and more. They were wrong. A third of these charges would have easily destroyed previous candidates. As president they work to obstruct everything he does. He is vilified in virtually every national press outlet.
Unfortunately Trump’s CFR record, although the best ever, is no longer pure. CFR Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster replaced General Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser and Neil M. Gorsuch as U.S. Supreme Court justice, is imminent. Gorsuch was first listed as a CFR member in the 2007 Annual Report and thereafter for five years. He is not currently listed. Gorsuch must be questioned regarding this affiliation. Membership in the CFR is by invitation only following a period of observation making certain that your loyalty to the values of the organization are impeccable. Those values are empowerment of the United Nations, internationalism, world government, nation building and eradicating national borders—each out of harmony with the Constitution as created by the Founders.
Gorsuch may be promoted as an originalist on the Constitution but as a member of an organization that sees the Constitution as an obstruction to the New World Order, which the CFR promotes, the Senate must know which loyalty is primary and if not the Constitution he must be rejected by all Senators. Should a decision come before him that forces him to choose between two loyalties, internationalism and U.S. nationalism, which will he endorse?
Another concern surfaces; Ruth Bader Ginsburg also has CFR membership and thus two of the nine justices of the highest court in the land could have a higher loyalty. She has made no secret that she views international law (UN law) as constitutional. In fact her loyalty to the Constitution came into question in 2012 when the Egyptian government sought her advice in the writing of a new constitution. She recommended the South African or Canadian models and could not recommend the U.S Constitution. Two of nine justices who may have a higher loyalty than the Constitution is two too many.
Trump would be better off to avoid all globalist organizations and members in his administration. There are plenty of experts available without globalist sympathy. Still, he has done well in reducing globalist influence in those who advise him.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Mar 20, 2017 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
The power of the “deep state,” the intelligence community’s lock on the secrets of every citizen in the United States, information that used to be only in sensational magazines, is now public knowledge. The March 8, Wikileaks dump of over 9,000 emails, a dump reportedly far larger and worse than the Edward Snowden revelations in 2013. A dump disclosing potential spying of Americans by their own television sets, whether on or off, or by their automobiles. Sophisticated cyber technology “beyond what Snowden could have imagined,” capable of spying leaving the footprint of other countries so our government remains undetected. The power to blackmail the powerful of either political party is in the hands of the “Deep State.” And reportedly, the 9,000 documents are but 1% of what Wikileaks has received by whistle blowers within the National Security Agency (NSA).
No one is exempt, not even President Donald Trump. One warrant allowed the spying of Trump Tower during the latter part of the Trump campaign and a second the Trump server itself, the first reportedly authorized by the FISA Court—a largely secret court where intelligence organizations CIA, FBI and etc. request spying authority. Since 1979 only 12 requests were denied out of 38,169 made. The judges almost never turn down the intelligence community. The second, by the FBI authorized by someone higher, some have suggested President Barack Obama.
As serious as this is, it is not new. Some remember CIA spying on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee led by Democrat Committee Chairperson Dianne Feinstein just three years ago this month. In this scandal, the CIA acknowledged that it “had secretly searched Senate computer files related to an investigation of the agency’s Bush-era harsh interrogation program.” The Senate was investigating them and was about to release its incriminating findings. Their admission that they lied for several months when accused of having done this and their apology to the senators to whom they had spied, does not make such acceptable.
Nor did they disclose who directed them to spy on the Senate in the first place? This wasn’t just any group of U.S., it was the Senate Intelligence Committee, charged with overseeing all spying sponsored by our government. In effect, the CIA was spying on its congressional boss.
But Wikileaks dumps and spying on a presidential candidate or the US Senate are extreme examples of the power of the “Deep State.” What of its power to spy, and potentially blackmail our elected officials, or you?
We have known for years of the government’s secret surveillance network, code named “Stellar Wind,” that intercepts, deciphers, analyzes, and stores “vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks… Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases.” Stored are “all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter” (James Bamford, “The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center. Watch What You Say,” Wired, Mar. 15, 2012) Edward Snowden documentation revealed their “intercepting 200 million text messages every day worldwide through a program called Dishfire” (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, “The 10 Biggest Revelations from Edward Snowden’s Leaks,” Mashable, Jun. 05, 2014).
So where is your sensitive information stored? Launched in 2004 under the George W. Bush Administration, but vastly expanded under Barack Obama, the National Security Agency Bluffdale, Utah facility houses all electronic information in the world. It is designed to hold a Yottabyte of information. A yottabyte is 1,000 zettabytes (the number 1 followed by 24 zeros — 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). The philosophy is that the “more data, the more telephone calls, the more email, the more encrypted data that you have—the more patterns that you’re likely to discover.”
The NSA Oak Ridge facility houses the super computer, installed in 2006, capable of finding patterns and printing them out in milliseconds in a process code named “Brute Force.” The “goal was to advance computer speed a thousand fold, creating a machine that could execute a quadrillion operations a second, known as a Petaflop—the computer equivalent of breaking the land speed record.” With upgrades the computer, called “jaguar for its speed, it clocked in at 1.75 petaflops, officially becoming the world’s fastest computer in 2009,” is housed in Building 5300. There “318 scientists, computer engineers, and other staff work in secret on the cryptanalytic applications of high-speed computing and other classified projects” (Cryptome, “NSA Decryption Multipurpose Research Facility,” March 16, 2012).
Resistance to this invasion of privacy was massive resulting in the termination of the Patriot Act whose authority was used to justify bulk collections. It was replaced in 2015 by the USA Freedom Act, which required telephone companies to collect the metadata instead and store it at their expense. The NSA may still access (and does) the information with approval of the secret FISA Court if the government maintains there is a reasonable suspicion that the phone data of a target is relevant to a terror investigation. Reportedly this is why Trump Tower was under surveillance the closing weeks of the Trump presidential campaign.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
