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Source-Wayne Madsen Report
By Wayne Madsen
WMR's sources at the National Security Agency (NSA) have reported more high-level fraud at the agency that now combines signals intelligence and cyber-warfare functions under one officer, Army General Keith Alexander, the NSA director and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command.
When Alexander's predecessor at NSA, Air Force General Michael Hayden, was shopping for his own replacement, Alexander was the Deputy Chief of Staff for G-2 for the U.S. Army. Alexander would only take the job, according to our sources who were embedded in the Director of NSA's office, if Dr. James Heath became the senior science adviser to Alexander at NSA.
There was only one problem. Heath had his own company, Object Sciences Corporation, a firm which was intimately involved with tracking "Al Qaeda" operatives prior to the 9/11 attacks. Object Sciences provided deep data mining services to the Army's Land Information Warfare Agency's and Defense Intelligence Agency's ABLE DANGER and its affiliated DORHAWK GALLEY data mining programs.
At the same time, Hayden had shown favoritism to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in awarding the firm, as prime contractor, the over one billion dollar signals intelligence overhaul program known as TRAILBLAZER. Hayden hired William Black, a former NSA official who had retired and went to work for SAIC, as his Deputy Director at NSA. The issue with Heath was solved when SAIC purchased Object Sciences, providing a handsome profit to Heath prior to his taking the science adviser position under his friend Alexander. Black eventually returned to SAIC from his stint as NSA deputy director.
The following press release was issued on May 12, 2005:
"Science Applications International Corp. has completed its acquisition of Object Sciences Corp., the company announced today. Terms of the deal were not disclosed . . .
OSC's involvement in reshaping how intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance information is processed and analyzed has provided critical assistance to combat forces in specific theaters, such as Iraq and Korea, as well as the war on global terrorism in general, SAIC said."
Alexander took over as NSA director on August 1, 2005, a few months after the SAIC-OSC deal. Heath then became Alexander's chief science adviser.
Another former SAIC principal who, like Black, transitioned from SAIC to NSA and back again to SAIC was Sam Visner. After joining NSA from SAIC, Visner was the senior acquisition manager for NSA and was key to the award of the TRAILBLAZER contract to SAIC. A less expensive signals intelligence re-engineering solution code-named THIN THREAD, was rejected by NSA in favor of the TRAILBLAZER, which was later canceled after SAIC pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars.
Hayden went on to become the first deputy Director of National Intelligence and, ultimately, the CIA director. He now works with former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff at Chertoff Group. His pet project, TRAILBLAZER, was canceled due to cost overruns and failed deliveries and was replaced by another reported contractor boondoggle called TURBULENCE. A number of senior NSA, Justice Department, and congressional officials were harassed and one, Thomas Drake, prosecuted for revealing the corruption. Those coming under NSA and FBI scrutiny, all subjected to harassment and threat of prosecution, included, in addition to Drake, Justice Department prosecutor Thomas Tamm, House Intelligence Committee budget specialist Diane Roark, NSA officials William Binney, Kirk Wiebe, and Ed Loomis, and others, never mentioned in press accounts, who were interviewed by WMR.
One former NSA official who was terminated and then placed under NSA Security and FBI surveillance after reporting through proper channels fraud, waste, and abuse with TRAILBLAZER and associated contracts, told WMR, "we are not whistleblowers but witnesses to major crimes committed by NSA and contractors."
Among the spin-offs of TRAILBLAZER was the unconstitutional STELLAR WIND program that permitted NSA to engage in wholesale warrantless wiretapping of phone calls, emails, and faxes, particularly journalists and elected political leaders.
Hayden, who has become a national security adviser to Mitt Romney and would be assured a top-level job in a Romney administration, perhaps National Security Adviser, is also involved with a subscription web service called LIGNet, or "Langley Intelligence Group Network" as a "LIGNet adviser." WMR has been told by intelligence community insiders that LIGNet is an operational security (OPSEC) problem because a wealth of borderline classified information appears on the web site.
By Wayne Madsen
WMR's sources at the National Security Agency (NSA) have reported more high-level fraud at the agency that now combines signals intelligence and cyber-warfare functions under one officer, Army General Keith Alexander, the NSA director and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command.
When Alexander's predecessor at NSA, Air Force General Michael Hayden, was shopping for his own replacement, Alexander was the Deputy Chief of Staff for G-2 for the U.S. Army. Alexander would only take the job, according to our sources who were embedded in the Director of NSA's office, if Dr. James Heath became the senior science adviser to Alexander at NSA.
There was only one problem. Heath had his own company, Object Sciences Corporation, a firm which was intimately involved with tracking "Al Qaeda" operatives prior to the 9/11 attacks. Object Sciences provided deep data mining services to the Army's Land Information Warfare Agency's and Defense Intelligence Agency's ABLE DANGER and its affiliated DORHAWK GALLEY data mining programs.
At the same time, Hayden had shown favoritism to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in awarding the firm, as prime contractor, the over one billion dollar signals intelligence overhaul program known as TRAILBLAZER. Hayden hired William Black, a former NSA official who had retired and went to work for SAIC, as his Deputy Director at NSA. The issue with Heath was solved when SAIC purchased Object Sciences, providing a handsome profit to Heath prior to his taking the science adviser position under his friend Alexander. Black eventually returned to SAIC from his stint as NSA deputy director.
The following press release was issued on May 12, 2005:
"Science Applications International Corp. has completed its acquisition of Object Sciences Corp., the company announced today. Terms of the deal were not disclosed . . .
OSC's involvement in reshaping how intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance information is processed and analyzed has provided critical assistance to combat forces in specific theaters, such as Iraq and Korea, as well as the war on global terrorism in general, SAIC said."
Alexander took over as NSA director on August 1, 2005, a few months after the SAIC-OSC deal. Heath then became Alexander's chief science adviser.
Another former SAIC principal who, like Black, transitioned from SAIC to NSA and back again to SAIC was Sam Visner. After joining NSA from SAIC, Visner was the senior acquisition manager for NSA and was key to the award of the TRAILBLAZER contract to SAIC. A less expensive signals intelligence re-engineering solution code-named THIN THREAD, was rejected by NSA in favor of the TRAILBLAZER, which was later canceled after SAIC pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars.
Hayden went on to become the first deputy Director of National Intelligence and, ultimately, the CIA director. He now works with former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff at Chertoff Group. His pet project, TRAILBLAZER, was canceled due to cost overruns and failed deliveries and was replaced by another reported contractor boondoggle called TURBULENCE. A number of senior NSA, Justice Department, and congressional officials were harassed and one, Thomas Drake, prosecuted for revealing the corruption. Those coming under NSA and FBI scrutiny, all subjected to harassment and threat of prosecution, included, in addition to Drake, Justice Department prosecutor Thomas Tamm, House Intelligence Committee budget specialist Diane Roark, NSA officials William Binney, Kirk Wiebe, and Ed Loomis, and others, never mentioned in press accounts, who were interviewed by WMR.
One former NSA official who was terminated and then placed under NSA Security and FBI surveillance after reporting through proper channels fraud, waste, and abuse with TRAILBLAZER and associated contracts, told WMR, "we are not whistleblowers but witnesses to major crimes committed by NSA and contractors."
Among the spin-offs of TRAILBLAZER was the unconstitutional STELLAR WIND program that permitted NSA to engage in wholesale warrantless wiretapping of phone calls, emails, and faxes, particularly journalists and elected political leaders.
Hayden, who has become a national security adviser to Mitt Romney and would be assured a top-level job in a Romney administration, perhaps National Security Adviser, is also involved with a subscription web service called LIGNet, or "Langley Intelligence Group Network" as a "LIGNet adviser." WMR has been told by intelligence community insiders that LIGNet is an operational security (OPSEC) problem because a wealth of borderline classified information appears on the web site.
Source-Public Intelligence.net Anonymous Hacks website
Public Intelligence
On January 16, 2012 an unauthorized party associated with the hacktivist collective Anonymous gained access to this site’s web server. The attacker gained root access and posted a number of versions of a photo of a naked man. These images were used to deface the front of the site in multiple locations and contained the message “WAS HERE WITH 0DAY, ONLY SHIT I FOUND BAD WAS U LOGGING IN FROM A DSL CONNECTION… THEN AGAIN U BOUGHT THIS SERVER WITH UR PERSONAL CARD SO U CAN BE DOX’D… LEFT U THESE COX AS A FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT YOUR BOX CAN BE PWNED AT ALL TIMES…” The attackers then manipulated configuration files for the server which caused an error message to appear to visitors of the site. This state persisted for approximately eight hours blocking access to the site before it was later fixed by the attacker, who left a longer explanation for the hack in the server’s root directory.
Though the hackers were fairly polite and we do not believe that there is any current threat to our users, we have disabled our submissions form and will not be accepting new information at the moment. We have also disabled some of the user features on the site, which were more a remnant of a previous phase of this site’s operation and served little practical value. If you, at any point, have had an account on this site with a password that is also used elsewhere, you should change it. The hackers claim that they did not look into our database to retrieve this information. However, you would be wise to protect against that possibility.
We feel that this action by Anonymous was misguided. While we understand their desire to demonstrate their ability to “penetrate” anything, their defacement of this platform was unnecessary. This site has functioned for several years now as a vital source of information that is concealed and restricted from the general public. Large amounts of people in all walks of life utilize its resources. At the time of the defacement, this site was serving several files as source material for articles in publications around the world, including information on the automated scanning of license plates and other forms of public surveillance in Germany, the Department of Defense’s Non-Lethal Weapons Reference Book which received a large amount of coverage in Russia and Eastern Europe after it was reported on by the BBC, and a particularly frank Marine Corps handbook that describes the CIA’s history of funding the Mujahideen via the Pakistani ISI. Because of the defacement, many people visiting the site were then confronted with pictures of naked men which may have dissuaded them from accessing the extremely important information contained in these documents.
We’ve never professed to be extremely adept technologically, nor have we ever claimed to be creating a massively secure system for the submission of high-profile leaks. In fact, we hate “leaks” in general and we try to avoid using the word as much as possible. Leaking implies an accident, like something that escaped through a crack or water passing through a sieve. How can you leak something that should never have been secret in the first place? We are simply average, humble people who are trying to inform ourselves and others about the world in which we live. Nearly every piece of information on this site is something that was obtained from a publicly-accessible source using means available to any member of the public. We have published this material using open-source software in an attempt to inform others and demonstrate the potential for public action in the sphere of intelligence and media.
And so, if we are to create anything lasting, we must work together towards a society where everyone can express themselves freely and share information openly. We must not attack one another, for this only undermines the legitimacy of our cause. If we are to live in a world where knowledge truly is free, we must act with the gravity that this freedom demands. Anarchy is not chaos, it is self-governance.
A message left by the hacker:
sorry for this but we consider u friendly so i just left a message and
wiped /var/log
there was nothing u could do against this breach, this was just to
remind you that we can breach anything and so can the enemy :)
be careful what u do, improve ur OPSEC
maybe buy the server/hosting with a temp card and access is via Tor
try and remove links from ur personal life from this service :)
keep up the good work and hope u enjoy the cox :D
cheers
#antisec
PS: i didnt steal any of ur credentials neither i even look into the mysql
db, i dont know any of ur passwords though u should change them of course.
this was a direct root via a 0day we have :) it was not ur fault... i just
thought that i should leave u this message apart from the cox so u get a feel
what penetration looks like... our enemies dont leave messages ;)
Public Intelligence
On January 16, 2012 an unauthorized party associated with the hacktivist collective Anonymous gained access to this site’s web server. The attacker gained root access and posted a number of versions of a photo of a naked man. These images were used to deface the front of the site in multiple locations and contained the message “WAS HERE WITH 0DAY, ONLY SHIT I FOUND BAD WAS U LOGGING IN FROM A DSL CONNECTION… THEN AGAIN U BOUGHT THIS SERVER WITH UR PERSONAL CARD SO U CAN BE DOX’D… LEFT U THESE COX AS A FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT YOUR BOX CAN BE PWNED AT ALL TIMES…” The attackers then manipulated configuration files for the server which caused an error message to appear to visitors of the site. This state persisted for approximately eight hours blocking access to the site before it was later fixed by the attacker, who left a longer explanation for the hack in the server’s root directory.
Though the hackers were fairly polite and we do not believe that there is any current threat to our users, we have disabled our submissions form and will not be accepting new information at the moment. We have also disabled some of the user features on the site, which were more a remnant of a previous phase of this site’s operation and served little practical value. If you, at any point, have had an account on this site with a password that is also used elsewhere, you should change it. The hackers claim that they did not look into our database to retrieve this information. However, you would be wise to protect against that possibility.
We feel that this action by Anonymous was misguided. While we understand their desire to demonstrate their ability to “penetrate” anything, their defacement of this platform was unnecessary. This site has functioned for several years now as a vital source of information that is concealed and restricted from the general public. Large amounts of people in all walks of life utilize its resources. At the time of the defacement, this site was serving several files as source material for articles in publications around the world, including information on the automated scanning of license plates and other forms of public surveillance in Germany, the Department of Defense’s Non-Lethal Weapons Reference Book which received a large amount of coverage in Russia and Eastern Europe after it was reported on by the BBC, and a particularly frank Marine Corps handbook that describes the CIA’s history of funding the Mujahideen via the Pakistani ISI. Because of the defacement, many people visiting the site were then confronted with pictures of naked men which may have dissuaded them from accessing the extremely important information contained in these documents.
We’ve never professed to be extremely adept technologically, nor have we ever claimed to be creating a massively secure system for the submission of high-profile leaks. In fact, we hate “leaks” in general and we try to avoid using the word as much as possible. Leaking implies an accident, like something that escaped through a crack or water passing through a sieve. How can you leak something that should never have been secret in the first place? We are simply average, humble people who are trying to inform ourselves and others about the world in which we live. Nearly every piece of information on this site is something that was obtained from a publicly-accessible source using means available to any member of the public. We have published this material using open-source software in an attempt to inform others and demonstrate the potential for public action in the sphere of intelligence and media.
And so, if we are to create anything lasting, we must work together towards a society where everyone can express themselves freely and share information openly. We must not attack one another, for this only undermines the legitimacy of our cause. If we are to live in a world where knowledge truly is free, we must act with the gravity that this freedom demands. Anarchy is not chaos, it is self-governance.
A message left by the hacker:
sorry for this but we consider u friendly so i just left a message and
wiped /var/log
there was nothing u could do against this breach, this was just to
remind you that we can breach anything and so can the enemy :)
be careful what u do, improve ur OPSEC
maybe buy the server/hosting with a temp card and access is via Tor
try and remove links from ur personal life from this service :)
keep up the good work and hope u enjoy the cox :D
cheers
#antisec
PS: i didnt steal any of ur credentials neither i even look into the mysql
db, i dont know any of ur passwords though u should change them of course.
this was a direct root via a 0day we have :) it was not ur fault... i just
thought that i should leave u this message apart from the cox so u get a feel
what penetration looks like... our enemies dont leave messages ;)
Source-Kick them all out Project
(WMR) -- National Security Agency (NSA) sources have reported to WMR that the signals intelligence agency's warrantless wiretapping program was more widespread than originally reported and that it began shortly after the 2001 inauguration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, some six months prior to the 9/11 attacks.
Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio reported that NSA requested that his firm take part in the warrantless wiretapping program in a February 27, 2001, meeting but that he told NSA that Qwest would refuse to participate. AT&T, BellSouth, SBC, Sprint, and Verizon all agreed to participate in the wiretapping program, which resulted in such a large database of intercepted calls, faxes, and e-mails, that NSA recently announced it was building a huge 1 million square feet data warehouse at a cost of $1.5 billion at Camp Williams in Utah, as well as another massive data warehouse in San Antonio. The cover story is that the warehouses are part of NSA's new Cyber Command responsibilities. NSA sources have told WMR that the warehouses are to store the massive amount of intercepts collected by the ongoing Terrorist Surveillance Program, an above top secret program once code named STELLAR WIND by the NSA.
Nacchio was later convicted on 19 counts of insider trading of Qwest stock and sentenced to six years in federal prison. Nacchio maintained that his prosecution and conviction was in retaliation for his refusal to participate in the illegal NSA surveillance program. NSA also canceled a major contract with Qwest over its refusal to wiretap calls without warrants.
President Obama ordered his Justice Department's attorneys to press U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker to toss out a lawsuit brought against the Bush administration's warrantless wiretap program, details of which were revealed by AT&T engineer Mark Klein. Our NSA sources revealed that Obama has asked the lawsuit to be dismissed because the warrantless wiretapping program is as robust in collecting massive amounts of intercepted communications without a warrant under Obama as it did during the Bush-Cheney administration. Obama also backs immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies participating in the illegal surveillance operations. The Justice Department is using the draconian State Secrets Privilege to battle against lawsuits against the telecommunication carriers.
NSA collects domestic communications by installing specialized eavesdropping equipment, including traffic analyzers, at over 25 telecommunications facilities around the United States, including where Klein worked at AT&T's central office in the SBC Building at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco and at major switching facilities in Bridgeton, Missouri; San Jose; San Diego; Seattle; Los Angeles (1150 South Olive Street, as well as the Beverly Hills central office that targets the area's rich and famous celebrities); Chicago (227 West Monroe Street); New York (Lower Manhattan at 33 Thomas Street, 375 Pearl Street, and 811 10th Avenue); Northern Virginia/Washington, DC; Miami; Atlanta (Midtown Center); Houston; Minneapolis; Detroit (1365 Cass Avenue); Jacksonville, Florida; Philadelphia; Kansas City; Dallas (One AT&T Plaza); Memphis; Pittsburgh; Bedminster, New Jersey; Boston; Nashville (333 Commerce Street); Baltimore; Cleveland (Huron Road Building); and Denver.
One of the first targets of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program in February 2001, a few weeks after Bush's inauguration, was Iraqi-Americans and other Arab-Americans, as well as resident aliens from Arab countries in the United States. The warrantless wiretapping of the Arab-American community coincided with "surge operations" directed by NSA against the communications of Saddam Hussein and his top government officials in Iraq and other countries.
The NSA warrantless wiretapping program soon grew to include millions of Americans, including elected and appointed government officials, federal judges, anti-Bush celebrities and clergy, and even intelligence and law enforcement officials. WMR previously reported that a joint NSA-CIA database code-named FIRST FRUITS maintained a database on the intercepted phone calls of U.S. journalists.
WMR previously reported that NSA "fishnet" surveillance was used in the take down of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, as well as political dirt gathering directed against New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and then-Senator Joe Biden. There is also every indication that NSA intercepted the phone calls and emails of the junior senator from Illinois -- one Barack Obama.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
The Salt Lake Tribune
First published Jan 04 2011 12:09PM
Updated Mar 22, 2011 11:04PM
A groundbreaking ceremony Thursday will formally kick off work on the Utah Data Center, a $1.2 billion project viewed as the salvation for the state’s beleaguered construction industry.
Nearly 10,000 people are expected to be employed over the next three years building the 1-million-square-foot facility at Camp Williams on the Salt Lake/Utah county line.
The National Security Agency will use the climate-controlled environment of its computerized core as a repository for information gathered by different branches of the country’s intelligence apparatus, hence the facility’s nickname, “The Spy Center.”
The 2 p.m. event may be one of the public’s last chances to take an open look at the project, technically known as the nation’s first Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative (CNCI) Data Center.
“We’ve been asked not to talk about the project,” said Rob Moore, president and chief operating officer of Big-D Construction. His company is part of a consortium of contractors that won the coveted construction contract from the National Security Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the building.
While he could not speak about the facility as a Big-D representative, Moore was able to comment briefly as president of the Utah Association of General Contractors.
“We’ve lost over 40,000 jobs in the construction market since 2008,” he said. “This will have a significant impact replacing some of those jobs and providing work for many, many small businesses.”
Since the project first was announced late in the fall of 2009, small businesses have been jockeying to be included as subcontractors for the big construction companies that won the bid, in this case Big-D and its national partners, Balfour Beatty and DPR.
Work will get under way at an ideal time for Utah trades people, ramping up just as construction of the City Creek Center in downtown Salt Lake City is winding down.
“We’ve been fortunate here in the state,” said Jim Judd of the Utah AFL-CIO labor unions. “The NSA project will pick up the commercial construction business. It will provide long-term employment help for the state until, hopefully, the economy recovers .”
An Army Corps of Engineers news release about the ground breaking said construction now is scheduled to be completed by October 2013. The initial timetable envisioned the facility being operational by June 2012.
mikeg@sltrib.com
NSA Corruption
(WMR) -- National Security Agency (NSA) sources have reported to WMR that the signals intelligence agency's warrantless wiretapping program was more widespread than originally reported and that it began shortly after the 2001 inauguration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, some six months prior to the 9/11 attacks.
Former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio reported that NSA requested that his firm take part in the warrantless wiretapping program in a February 27, 2001, meeting but that he told NSA that Qwest would refuse to participate. AT&T, BellSouth, SBC, Sprint, and Verizon all agreed to participate in the wiretapping program, which resulted in such a large database of intercepted calls, faxes, and e-mails, that NSA recently announced it was building a huge 1 million square feet data warehouse at a cost of $1.5 billion at Camp Williams in Utah, as well as another massive data warehouse in San Antonio. The cover story is that the warehouses are part of NSA's new Cyber Command responsibilities. NSA sources have told WMR that the warehouses are to store the massive amount of intercepts collected by the ongoing Terrorist Surveillance Program, an above top secret program once code named STELLAR WIND by the NSA.
Nacchio was later convicted on 19 counts of insider trading of Qwest stock and sentenced to six years in federal prison. Nacchio maintained that his prosecution and conviction was in retaliation for his refusal to participate in the illegal NSA surveillance program. NSA also canceled a major contract with Qwest over its refusal to wiretap calls without warrants.
President Obama ordered his Justice Department's attorneys to press U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker to toss out a lawsuit brought against the Bush administration's warrantless wiretap program, details of which were revealed by AT&T engineer Mark Klein. Our NSA sources revealed that Obama has asked the lawsuit to be dismissed because the warrantless wiretapping program is as robust in collecting massive amounts of intercepted communications without a warrant under Obama as it did during the Bush-Cheney administration. Obama also backs immunity from lawsuits for telecommunications companies participating in the illegal surveillance operations. The Justice Department is using the draconian State Secrets Privilege to battle against lawsuits against the telecommunication carriers.
NSA collects domestic communications by installing specialized eavesdropping equipment, including traffic analyzers, at over 25 telecommunications facilities around the United States, including where Klein worked at AT&T's central office in the SBC Building at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco and at major switching facilities in Bridgeton, Missouri; San Jose; San Diego; Seattle; Los Angeles (1150 South Olive Street, as well as the Beverly Hills central office that targets the area's rich and famous celebrities); Chicago (227 West Monroe Street); New York (Lower Manhattan at 33 Thomas Street, 375 Pearl Street, and 811 10th Avenue); Northern Virginia/Washington, DC; Miami; Atlanta (Midtown Center); Houston; Minneapolis; Detroit (1365 Cass Avenue); Jacksonville, Florida; Philadelphia; Kansas City; Dallas (One AT&T Plaza); Memphis; Pittsburgh; Bedminster, New Jersey; Boston; Nashville (333 Commerce Street); Baltimore; Cleveland (Huron Road Building); and Denver.
One of the first targets of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program in February 2001, a few weeks after Bush's inauguration, was Iraqi-Americans and other Arab-Americans, as well as resident aliens from Arab countries in the United States. The warrantless wiretapping of the Arab-American community coincided with "surge operations" directed by NSA against the communications of Saddam Hussein and his top government officials in Iraq and other countries.
The NSA warrantless wiretapping program soon grew to include millions of Americans, including elected and appointed government officials, federal judges, anti-Bush celebrities and clergy, and even intelligence and law enforcement officials. WMR previously reported that a joint NSA-CIA database code-named FIRST FRUITS maintained a database on the intercepted phone calls of U.S. journalists.
WMR previously reported that NSA "fishnet" surveillance was used in the take down of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, as well as political dirt gathering directed against New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and then-Senator Joe Biden. There is also every indication that NSA intercepted the phone calls and emails of the junior senator from Illinois -- one Barack Obama.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
The Salt Lake Tribune
First published Jan 04 2011 12:09PM
Updated Mar 22, 2011 11:04PM
A groundbreaking ceremony Thursday will formally kick off work on the Utah Data Center, a $1.2 billion project viewed as the salvation for the state’s beleaguered construction industry.
Nearly 10,000 people are expected to be employed over the next three years building the 1-million-square-foot facility at Camp Williams on the Salt Lake/Utah county line.
The National Security Agency will use the climate-controlled environment of its computerized core as a repository for information gathered by different branches of the country’s intelligence apparatus, hence the facility’s nickname, “The Spy Center.”
The 2 p.m. event may be one of the public’s last chances to take an open look at the project, technically known as the nation’s first Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative (CNCI) Data Center.
“We’ve been asked not to talk about the project,” said Rob Moore, president and chief operating officer of Big-D Construction. His company is part of a consortium of contractors that won the coveted construction contract from the National Security Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the building.
While he could not speak about the facility as a Big-D representative, Moore was able to comment briefly as president of the Utah Association of General Contractors.
“We’ve lost over 40,000 jobs in the construction market since 2008,” he said. “This will have a significant impact replacing some of those jobs and providing work for many, many small businesses.”
Since the project first was announced late in the fall of 2009, small businesses have been jockeying to be included as subcontractors for the big construction companies that won the bid, in this case Big-D and its national partners, Balfour Beatty and DPR.
Work will get under way at an ideal time for Utah trades people, ramping up just as construction of the City Creek Center in downtown Salt Lake City is winding down.
“We’ve been fortunate here in the state,” said Jim Judd of the Utah AFL-CIO labor unions. “The NSA project will pick up the commercial construction business. It will provide long-term employment help for the state until, hopefully, the economy recovers .”
An Army Corps of Engineers news release about the ground breaking said construction now is scheduled to be completed by October 2013. The initial timetable envisioned the facility being operational by June 2012.
mikeg@sltrib.com
NSA Corruption
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