Showing posts with label Thomas Drake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Drake. Show all posts
20160516
The NSA’s stunning 9/11 failure: How big-money contractors made us more vulnerable to attack
On September 12, 2001, Bill Binney snuck back into work at the NSA dressed like cleaning staff so he could try to help understand who had attacked the United States. A top NSA mathematician, Binney had rolled out a sophisticated metadata analysis system called ThinThread, only to have it canceled less than a month before 9/11. Top executives at the agency had decided a clunky program called Trailblazer, contracted out to the intelligence contractor giant SAIC, would be NSA’s future, not the cheaper, more effective and privacy-protective ThinThread.
While NSA Director General Michael Hayden had sent most NSA staffers home on 9/11 and the day after —hence Binney’s disguise — the contractors were hard at work. As Binney describes in “A Good American“ — a documentary about Binney due for wider release in September — some contractors working in his unit had gotten a warning. “While I was in there trying to look at the material on my computer, the president of the contracting group that I had working on ThinThread came over to me and said that he’d just been in a contractor meeting” with a former top SAIC official who moved back to NSA, supporting Trailblazer. The contractors, it turns out, were warned not to embarrass companies like SAIC, which (the implication is) had just failed to warn about the biggest attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor. “Do not embarrass large companies,” the former SAIC manager, according to Binney, said to the other contractor. “You do your part, you’ll get your share, there’s plenty for everybody.” Stay quiet about the failures that led to 9/11, and you’ll be financially rewarded.
It turns out there was plenty for SAIC and the NSA executives who had backed them to be embarrassed about. Binney and a bunch of close associates quit NSA when the Administration rolled out a new, illegal wiretap program called Stellar Wind in the weeks after 9/11. But another senior NSA official, Thomas Drake — an ally of Binney’s — decided to run the data already in NSA’s possession against ThinThread some months later to see whether ThinThread could reveal anything about the attack. Let’s “find out if there’s any information of the 9/11 attack that we should have known about but didn’t,” in Drake’s words.
There was...
http://www.salon.com/2016/05/12/the_nsas_stunning_911_failure_how_big_money_contractors_made_us_more_vulnerable_to_attack/
While NSA Director General Michael Hayden had sent most NSA staffers home on 9/11 and the day after —hence Binney’s disguise — the contractors were hard at work. As Binney describes in “A Good American“ — a documentary about Binney due for wider release in September — some contractors working in his unit had gotten a warning. “While I was in there trying to look at the material on my computer, the president of the contracting group that I had working on ThinThread came over to me and said that he’d just been in a contractor meeting” with a former top SAIC official who moved back to NSA, supporting Trailblazer. The contractors, it turns out, were warned not to embarrass companies like SAIC, which (the implication is) had just failed to warn about the biggest attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor. “Do not embarrass large companies,” the former SAIC manager, according to Binney, said to the other contractor. “You do your part, you’ll get your share, there’s plenty for everybody.” Stay quiet about the failures that led to 9/11, and you’ll be financially rewarded.
It turns out there was plenty for SAIC and the NSA executives who had backed them to be embarrassed about. Binney and a bunch of close associates quit NSA when the Administration rolled out a new, illegal wiretap program called Stellar Wind in the weeks after 9/11. But another senior NSA official, Thomas Drake — an ally of Binney’s — decided to run the data already in NSA’s possession against ThinThread some months later to see whether ThinThread could reveal anything about the attack. Let’s “find out if there’s any information of the 9/11 attack that we should have known about but didn’t,” in Drake’s words.
There was...
http://www.salon.com/2016/05/12/the_nsas_stunning_911_failure_how_big_money_contractors_made_us_more_vulnerable_to_attack/
20140816
Senior NSA Executive: We’re In a Police State
-Meritorious Service Medal
-Air Medal
-Air Force Commendation Medal
-Ridenhour prize
-Sam Adams Award
Drake was a member of the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service.
With a strong technical background in surveillance and computers, Drake was also one of the top NSA executives, and was Senior Change Leader within the NSA.
To get a sense of who Drake is, watch this recent PBS interview.
Washington’s Blog asked Drake if America is drifting towards tyranny.
WASHINGTON’S BLOG: Senator Frank Church – who chaired the famous “Church Committee” on the unlawful FBI Cointel program, and who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – said in 1975:
“Th[e National Security Agency's] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.“
Is the NSA turning its capability around on the American people, as Senator Church warned?...
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/06/senior-nsa-manager-police-state-worse-stasi-east-germany.html
20130328
NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake: All Doubts Dispelled, Bradley Manning’s a Whistleblower
National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake reacts to Bradley Manning’s statement, which he read in court on February 28, “I’ve said for some time now that Bradley Manning is a whistleblower. I put myself in his shoes, but the question becomes, “What would you do?” He chose a path that was fraught with significant peril and he knew it. But he chose it anyway as an act of conscience and to get the word out. People argued things that became public both alleged and, even more recently in light of the statement, that …go get another avenues. Not his job to hold up the mirror. He did.”
The whistleblower, who exposed fraud, waste, abuse and illegality involving a warrantless wiretapping program at the NSA, finds what Manning did was an “extraordinarily brave and courageous act. And all that other stuff, all the personal, all the psycho-babble in terms of cause and what could have led to it, where his head was at, all that is just so much distraction.”
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/03/20/nsa-whistleblower-thomas-drake-all-doubts-dispelled-bradley-mannings-a-whistleblower/
The whistleblower, who exposed fraud, waste, abuse and illegality involving a warrantless wiretapping program at the NSA, finds what Manning did was an “extraordinarily brave and courageous act. And all that other stuff, all the personal, all the psycho-babble in terms of cause and what could have led to it, where his head was at, all that is just so much distraction.”
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/03/20/nsa-whistleblower-thomas-drake-all-doubts-dispelled-bradley-mannings-a-whistleblower/
20120105
Whistle Blower Threatened with 35 Years in Prison, Warns of Developing Tyranny
via youtube.com
"Thomas Drake blew the whistle on a massive domestic information gathering scheme and was called "an enemy of the state" (speech at Sam Adams Awards)"
20110729
Handling of Drake Leak Case was “Unconscionable,” Court Said
"The government’s treatment of former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake was abusive and akin to acts of British tyranny in pre-Revolutionary War days, said Judge Richard D. Bennett at the July 15 sentencing hearing which concluded the Drake case, one of the Obama Administration’s record number of anti-”leak” prosecutions. A transcript (pdf) of that hearing was prepared at the request of Secrecy News. Mr. Drake was originally suspected of leaking classified information to a reporter and had been charged with ten felony counts, all of which he denied. The prosecution was unable to sustain any of those charges, and the case was settled after Mr. Drake pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of exceeding authorized use of a government computer. He was sentenced (pdf) at the hearing to a year of probation and 240 hours of community service..." http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2011/07/drake_transcript.html
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