x-posted at Kos & Eurotrib
I posted this as a comment on both “Did NSA Spy on Me? Anyone Else Have This Happen?” and “The Bastard’s Scared” but then thought that perhaps it would make a somewhat decent diary.
Jeffersonian Democrat’s diary :: ::
Yep, I have an NSA file.
I graduated from UMich in ’95 in Russian and Eastern European Studies. I studied in Moscow for three semesters at the Moscow Institute for Social and Political Studies. While in Moscow, not only did I have some great job offers but that is where I met my ex-wife.
I was stupid and turned down the offers because I wanted to graduate then become a Naval intelligence officer. So I did, but it was only after I was in the the Navy had an issue with my wife’s nationality regarding my security clearance. So after due process they revoked my clearance in the name of national security and without a minimal clearance, one cannot be an officer. So while they were processing me out, I started to think about those great job offers in Moscow. I called the Russian embassy and asked about visas (the conversation was in Russian) and told them up front that I was soon to be a former intelligence officer. They had no problem with that.
Six months later, before I was about to go on terminal leave, NCIS showed up and interviewed me about that conversation. They then searched my briefcase, car, and home. I asked the agent to please be sensitive about my wife because if this happened in her country, I would not be going home at the end of the day. Boy was she pissed when they searched the house, she had more balls than I when she told the agent that she didn’t see any difference between him and the KGB. The guilty look on his face was priceless.
I went on terminal leave and had been hired by Eli Lilly as a pharma-salesman. A week before sales training graduation I had an aggressive phone message from NCIS stating that they wanted another interview. The only way they could’ve gotten my number was from my manager and on the day of graduation I was fired for “business reasons”.
I returned to Virginia Beach and called NCIS. They asked me nicely for a voluntary polygraph. This time I grew some balls and replied “F*k you, you fked my military career and now my civilian job too, fk off!” The agent then asked me for the courtesy of letting them know if I would seek legal representation for a law suit and I hung up on him.
So I am sure I have a file. I watched Will Smith in “Enemy of the State” and laughed throughout this thriller because I said to myself “I’ve seen this movie before, I starred in it!”.
This is why now I believe people are really innocent, like the guy who was accused of the anthrax attacks without evidence, they really fked his life up. Or the professor from Florida who was recently acquitted. These govt. people are nasty. My ex-wife told me that she was happy that I didn’t become an intel officer because people get “funny, strange” when they get into that world, they change.
My ex and I are best friends and more intimate now than when we were married. But that situation threw me into depression and despair. I withdrew emotionally and lost my normally healthy sex drive and libido. We lived as brother and sister for four years after that until we divorced. Not only did they f*k up my career(s) but also my mental health and marraige. See, I was always a patriot and a combat veteran and I could never concieve of the thought of betraying my country nevermind being a security risk. I was a true-blue American. Now I am not so naive.
BTW Kossacks, this is why I am know as a Tin-Foil Hat person. I would have never believed that this could happen and this was in ’98. So after writing this, the next person who slams me for tin-foil hat posts, well, the reply will be similar to my response to NCIS. God I hate that show! JAG too! All NCIS is a bunch of people who couldn’t cut it with the FBI, they couldn’t investigate their way out of a wet paper bag! Am I bitter or what?!?!?
If it’s any consolation at least you’re still alive and we’re happy for that. Others have not been so lucky.
Thanks! Just thanks, that’s all.
Damn. Just…damn.
You have a perfect right to be bitter, no question. But I think opportunity for redress went by your car window on the way to Virginia Beach:
. . . if I would seek legal representation . . .
Lacking a Plaintiff, the lawsuit was never filed. Having never filed an individual or class action lawsuit, those involved in “domestic intelligence gathering” were given a free pass in exchange for Congressional action. Having passed and enacted “new” protections for the American people, the public memory of COINTELPRO faded.
Joe Turner: Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth? [Three Days of the Condor, Redford, 1975]
I seriously doubt this latest forced admission that the Executive crossed the Constitutional line will obtain justice any more than the prior activities of COINTELPRO.
You know, you are absolutely right. But at the time, I had fought them for two years and I was so emotionally drained that I couldn’t do a law suit. At the time, I just wanted to move on, but I regret it now, I could’ve done some good. That’s the technique, just weaqr down the individual until they have no desire to fight further, I am sorry to say that it worked.
I’m sorry you had to go through all of that hatred these people have been able to perpetuate. All things happen for a reason and if that time then was the right time, I think you would have known it.
I’ve been learning more about what’s happening on a daily basis for the last 3+ years now and I think we’re still at an early stage of a major transformation. We are also some of the leaders in that transformation and the ‘Tin Foil Brigade’ serve as the scouts.
I just wanted to say that’s it never too late, especially now and your chance to take them to task will still be coming up. I don’t know you very well yet but I could always sense you’re one of the really good people hanging out here.
I didn’t mean to sound flip in my first comment. Given the area, political-business influences and especially the volatility in the career you were pursuing, being here might be a direct result of not having been there.
You’ve done an incredible amount of good by writing this story. I truly believe that this time around, people in like circumstances have a tool you didn’t: this place, and others like it. Simply by posting your diary on three little blogs-in-space, there are now literally thousands of people aware of how bad actors play the game.
like to think they are! Why couldn’t I just want to be a florist and marry a florist? You have come a long way friend and had a grueling journey, you deserve to reap every reward that comes your way due to the wealth of your experiences and your ability to deal with realities that cause others to fall into a self induced Coma.
Sometimes it’s hard. Thanks Tracy. I never told you that I consider you my best friend here in the pond. Well, I’m telling you now. And I also think about you and your family even off-line during the day.
Just wanted to say thanks.
There is something so familiar in your words, you carry yourself very much like my spouse carrys himself. It is odd also that both of you have a history in M.I. My husband started his military career there and didn’t stay, didn’t seem to want to and doesn’t talk much about why or where for or how.
Maybe because people get “funny”. Ask him, youe spouse, about it and while you’re at it, send him my regards. As a helicopter aviator, he should know about us grunts, hey – his efforts save our asses! So I have the greatest respect for him! My best regards, and to spite O’Rielly, Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Hi JD, the truth is always stranger than fiction and more heartrending. And today’s tinfoil hat theory becomes tomorrows truth…very glad you are doing better.
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Thanks for sharing your knowledge and personal experience with us about MI. Too bad the bas—s got you down. Very true there is no difference with a totalitarian state like the Soviet Union, once they have you targeted. We now have a Prez that enjoys and smiles telling us of 30,000 civilian deaths for his mistake.
In a next breath, he tells us we are all suckers, he is breaking the Constitutional Laws and tells us he has the preposition to continue his ways of evil with impunity. He smiles again as he leaves sticking up his middle finger to We The People. Congress is too busy with their own corporations to really care …
It’s the people like you who need to speak up and tell your story of the Lies & Deceit of criminal organizations within our Federal System of Government.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY
did anyone elso hear the debate between Feingold and Spector on Wolf Blitzer this morning?
One of the issues debated was Feingold wanting a seven day notice, after your home has been searched (?), and Spector supporting the administration’s wanting a 30 day notice. To me, seven or 30, in that case, there’s no difference between the numbers.
I think Sen Feingold learned an important lesson in that exchange. I’m an amateur spectator of politics but I saw Specter move in for a kill after Feigold gave his legislation a compliment. Feigold came back to fend off a few later digs by Specter and did alright.
I see a difference in that I’ve had runarounds with govt agencies where good answers are hard to come by. People will be driving themselves nuts in 30 days.
My question would be, if an officer/agent is injured or killed in a sneek ‘n peek, is the homeowner liable? If a normal search is done with an owner’s consent then the owner assumes responsibility for the presence of LE on their property.
Wow! After reading that piece, all I could think is, “Has JeffDem written the book?” It would be a best seller.
If that was your experience in — what I take was — the Clinton administration, one can only wonder (and shudder to think) what other folks with similar circumstances must be experiencing these days while King George sits on the throne during our current Reign of Terror.
several people have told me that I could write a best-seller thriller based off of my experiences. Instead I wrote a play based off of the Baader-Meinhof gang that I am trying to produce on stage. Is there a forum here on Booman to post my script? I’d like to but it is aq WORD.doc.
I’ll bite; you can “post” it via an email attachment to my address in sig line
Thank you for sharing this
“BTW Kossacks, this is why I am know as a Tin-Foil Hat person.”
I have experienced many ‘out of the normal realm’ events also in my life which I won’t go into here, but because of them, I know the government (or others) are capable of many unbelievable things.
As my mom told me ‘the more people you know, the more one travels, etc., the more things will happen to you.’ If someone never moves out of their hometown their experiences will be so tame compared to those of us who take risks and ‘experience life.’
I get really pissed off at people who ‘doubt’ me because I have no reason to lie or make things up.
The world is a curious place and many people in it are doing scary things.
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NSA assets were spent on industrial spying, not on terrorism risks during the nineties. We’re a nation running corporate business, not concerned with damage control or collateral damage.
We just spread the Wings of the Eagle for some Lebensraum in the ME near recognizable landmarks.
So What’s New? – Electronic Spies
In 1946, Soviet school children presented a two foot wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States to Ambassador Averell Harriman.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
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But in fact, the NSA had been monitoring private domestic telephone conversations on a much larger scale throughout the 1990s – all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks.
In February 2000, for instance, CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft introduced a report on the Clinton-era spy program by noting:
“If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there’s a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country’s largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it’s run by the National Security Agency.” NSA computers, said Kroft, “capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.”
Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency, told “60 Minutes” that the agency was monitoring “everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs.” NSA agency operators “can listen in to just about anything” – while Echelon computers screen phone calls for key words that might indicate a terrorist threat.
The “60 Minutes” report also spotlighted Echelon critic, Rep. Bob Barr, who complained that the project as it was being implemented under Clinton “engages in the interception of literally millions of communications involving United States citizens.”
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY