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xtruss · 3 years

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Illustration By Alex Fine For Newsweek, Photo By Corbis/Getty

U.S. Russophobia

Will Putin's Hackers Launch a Cyber Pearl Harbor—and a Shooting War?

Experts and former intelligence and cyber-security officials tell Newsweek that hackers linked to Russia have launched cyber attacks on the U.S. that have come frighteningly close to the red line: a digital incursion that would prompt a deadly real-life response.

As cyber criminals linked to Russia increase their attacks on U.S. targets, there’s a rising risk the next big strike could trigger a war—and not the virtual kind, but one involving troops, tanks, missiles and, in the worst-case scenario, even nuclear weapons.

— By Tom O'Connor, Naveed Jamali and Fred Guterl | June 16, 2021 | Newsweek

Joe Biden took office in January in the wake of the SolarWinds attack, an unprecedented and potentially disastrous penetration of U.S. government computer systems by hackers believed to be directed by the Russian intelligence service, the SVR. The new American president promised to shore up the nation's cyber defenses against foreign foes. As if on cue, hackers struck with two major ransomware attacks, closing the Colonial Pipeline, which provides about 100 million gallons of gas a day to the southeastern U.S., and halting production at all U.S. facilities of the world's biggest beef producer, Brazil-based JBS. The events underscored the immense vulnerability of a trillion-dollar, internet-based economy for which security is an afterthought.

Most Americans seem to assume that a cyber attack, even by an avowed adversary like Russia or Iran, would be answered in kind—that the U.S. would cause an annoying power outage or a brief internet failure. But experts and former intelligence and cyber-security officials tell Newsweek that hackers linked to Russia have launched cyber attacks on the U.S. that have come frighteningly close to the red line: a digital incursion that would prompt a deadly real-life response.

As the U.S. continues to prove vulnerable to ransomware attacks from shadowy groups believed to be operating out of Russia or other former Soviet bloc countries, those with experience in advising the White House on challenges from the region urge Biden to take the opportunity to send a message.

"What I want is for Biden to very clearly explain what the risk is to Vladimir Putin, that we are not going to back down if we are attacked by Russia," says Evelyn Farkas, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, "and that we're going to be the ones that decide what a 'cyber Pearl Harbor' is, which means Russia doesn't control the escalation dynamic."

Game on: Russia's President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden meeting for the first time as presidents on June 16 in Geneva, Switzerland, where the recent escalation in cyber attacks was high on the agenda. — Sergei Bobylev/TASS/Getty Images

At least Japanese leaders knew that bombing Pearl Harbor would inevitably provoke a military response. It's not clear that Russia or the cyber-militants operating within its borders have that awareness now. A shooting war between Russia and the U.S., avoided for more than a half-century, would leave only losers. But cyber warfare is so new that there's no agreed upon, widely understood Rubicon, as was established during the Cold War with the use of traditional weapons of mass destruction. (Think: Cuban Missile Crisis. After that near-catastrophe, the two sides have played it safe.)

The lack of clarity—of a shared algorithm for escalation—is tinder that could easily turn into a deadly fire. In short, there's a growing danger of a response far more devastating than the temporary internet outage or compromised credit score or muddled train schedule that Americans might think would be the worst-case scenario.

Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn't directly run the hackers who've recently infiltrated high-level government networks and paralyzed critical infrastructure. U.S. intelligence believes the digital operatives behind those attacks work with the Russian president's blessing but stay at arm's length—the better to give Moscow plausible deniability. It's part of a familiar pattern: Russian-affiliated groups have long harassed U.S. companies and government agencies and even had a hand in swinging the 2016 election to Donald Trump. The Biden administration has not directly accused the Kremlin of sponsoring these attacks but blames the Russians allowing such activity to continue.

The recent attacks seem to mark an intensification. They tend to be more focused on physical infrastructure like food, oil and gas pipelines, and hospitals, upon which Americans rely every day for their health and economic well-being. The trend has national security analysts worried. It's one thing to make Americans wait in line at the pump or to hit hospitals with ransom bills that drive up the cost of health care. It's something else entirely to cause real economic harm and even loss of life. And yet, hackers seem to be flirting with crossing what national security experts say is a "red line."

The disruption in fuel supply due to the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline last month left drivers across the southeastern U.S. struggling to find gasoline and diesel. — MarK Kauzlarich/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The red line was high on the agenda in the June 16 talks between Biden and Putin. Biden handed the Russian president a list of no-go targets upon which a cyber attack presumably might be considered an act of war that demands retaliation. Although it's not clear where that red line is—the White House has not released the list—it's not hard to imagine how easy it would be for hackers acting with some degree of autonomy from Moscow, and not directly answerable to the consequences of their actions, to cross it. To take one example, it's become a truism in cyber-security circles that hackers working with the backing of the likes of Russia and China may have the ability to cause a shutdown of a large swath of the U.S. electrical grid, which could kill millions.

In other words, the next big cyber attack could trigger a war with Russia, and not the virtual kind, but one involving troops, tanks, missiles, aircraft carriers and possibly nuclear weapons. "If a nation-state adversary were to set foot on our homeland and physically destroy our infrastructure, we would view this as an act of war," Brian Harrell, former Assistant Director for Infrastructure Security at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told Newsweek.

Russian-affiliated hackers have not crossed the red line yet, of course. But they've come close enough to keep national security experts wondering where the escalating trail of destruction might be heading, and how much control the Kremlin truly has over the hackers that do its bidding.

Drawing the Line

Although the situation may seem relatively calm on the surface, hackers are testing the limits nearly every day. In February, a still-undisclosed group of hackers managed to take control of a water treatment center in Oldsmar, Florida. It increased levels of sodium hydroxide, a highly caustic chemical also known as lye, from a safe 100 parts per million to a dangerous 11,100 ppm. Operators noticed the change and acted quickly to lower the levels before any damage was done.

"The cyber red line—I think everybody is fairly clear on this—is loss of life," William Hurd, a former CIA clandestine officer who served in Congress as a Texas representative from 2015 to this January, told Newsweek. He said the incident in Florida could have elicited a "kinetic response"—in other words, military action—had U.S. lives been lost.

Conflicts are playing out with increasing velocity and viciousness inside some of the country's energy, water, banking and other essential infrastructure. The vast majority of such incidents are never publicized, cyber experts say. Private companies, which are notoriously reluctant to fess up to having been hacked, own and operate more than 85 percent of critical infrastructure, according to Harrell.

"Our critical infrastructure sectors are the modern day battlefield and cyberspace is the great equalizer," he says. "Hacker groups can essentially attack with little individual attribution and virtually no consequence. I anticipate more attacks focused on energy, water, and financial services happening in the future."

In 2018, the Trump administration created CISA within the Department of Homeland Security. But even the cyber cops are hampered by a lack of information. Private operators are reluctant to report transgressions and often quietly pay ransom to get their systems back online with as little fuss—and publicity—as possible.

It's not entirely clear what an appropriate response to a cyber attack that crosses the red line would be. "It's ones and zeros and malware versus one-megaton warheads on Titans and on B-1's. How do you make that comparison so you can decide on proportional responses?" says Doug Wise, who served in the CIA as a member of the Senior Intelligence Service and was deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "That's the beauty of these cyber attacks, because we struggle at trying to compare the attack mechanism to the kinetic attack mechanism, particularly, strategic to strategic."

And then there's the question of whom to retaliate against. Although intelligence experts are pretty skilled at tracing the digital footprints of an attack to its source, the evidence is almost always highly technical and far less persuasive to military allies and the general public than, say, that of a bombing raid or an invading army. Any decision to retaliate risks looking to all the world like an unprovoked aggression. The Russians are skilled at confusing attribution, making it difficult to justify a proportional response, let alone an escalation.

The attribution problem complicates the question of where to draw the line. Some experts think it would make retaliation more difficult than it would be for a conventional strike. "It would take a significant cyber attack against the aviation infrastructure, power infrastructure, water distribution, and the transportation infrastructure," Wise said. "I think it would take probably two to three simultaneous attacks against these targets, along with clear attribution. The attribution issue is always the stumbling block."

Cyber Diplomacy

Still, it's a mistake to assume that the difficulty of attributing a cyber attack is insurance against a hasty retaliation. The element of uncertainty that the attribution problem adds to international affairs could also be destabilizing. Just as it's difficult to attribute an attack to an aggressor, it's also easy to mistakenly attribute an attack to an adversary—particularly one that, like Russia, is a constant thorn in the side of the U.S., and from which Americans are primed to expect aggression.

Given the heightened tensions between the U.S. and Russia, it's not far-fetched to think that a third party could launch a cyber attack against the U.S. and make it look like it came from Russia. Even if U.S. intelligence officials were smart enough to suss out such a ruse, the mere appearance of aggression could provide a convenient pretext for war. After all, Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks in 2001, but that didn't stop the George W. Bush administration from using them as justification for its disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Massive military strikes that start wars are baked into the American psyche. Japanese planes bombing the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, precipitated the U.S. entry into the Second World War. Hijacked passenger planes crashing into the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001, triggered a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that is only now ending. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis established a precedent for brinksmanship between the U.S. and Russia. "We almost went to nuclear war," as Raj Shah, chairman of the cybersecurity insurance firm Resilience, told Newsweek.

The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of war (here, a meeting of the United Nations Security Council during the crisis in 1962); could recent cyber attacks do the same—or worse? — Bettmann/Getty Images

The prospect of cyber attacks leading to a full-scale war is commonly accepted in diplomatic circles. NATO members, in a joint June 14 statement, agreed that "the impact of significant malicious cumulative cyber activities might, in certain circumstances, be considered as amounting to an armed attack." The statement also said that NATO would intensify its focus in the cyber realm, including "sharing concerns about malicious cyber activities, and exchanging national approaches and responses, as well as considering possible collective responses."

"If necessary, we will impose costs on those who harm us," the statement added. "Our response need not be restricted to the cyber domain."

The alliance also confirmed that it was open to considering cyber-attacks to be on a par with conventional military operations. "We reaffirm that a decision as to when a cyber attack would lead to the invocation of Article 5 would be taken by the North Atlantic Council on a case-by-case basis."

U.S.President Joe Biden and other NATO heads of the states and governments pose for a family photo during the NATO summit at the Alliance's headquarters, in Brussels, Belgium on June 14, 2021. — Kevin Lamarque/AFP/Getty Images

The prospect of a "physical" attack in response to cyberattacks already has a real-life precedent. The U.S. targeted the cyber capabilities of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) with an August 2015 airstrike that killed jihadi hacker Junaid Hussain in the de facto caliphate capital of Raqqa, Syria.

One of the first publicly acknowledged examples of an immediate, kinetic reaction came nearly four years later elsewhere in the Middle East. In May 2019, the Israel Defense Forces reported that they "thwarted an attempted Hamas cyber offensive against Israeli targets" by conducting an airstrike on an alleged headquarters in the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip. Israeli forces similarly targeted Hamas cyber stations during last month's 11-day confrontation with Hamas and allied Palestinian factions in Gaza. Although the fallout from both operations remained relatively contained, how such a response would play out on the state-versus-state level remains uncertain.

Playing Defense

The U.S. and its allies are already taking steps to head off cyber attacks from Russian-affiliated groups. The U.S. Cyber Command is collaborating with allies to pool insights and intelligence on the activities of Russia and other cyber-adversaries in what a spokesperson called hunt-forward operations. "These operations are one part of our 'defend forward' strategy—where we see what our adversaries are doing, and share with our partners in the homeland to bolster defense," the spokesperson told Newsweek.

In one such mission targeting Russia's alleged cyber activities, U.S. forces "discovered and disclosed new malware associated with the SolarWinds incident, and then provided key mitigation of the malware, attributed to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service," the U.S. Cyber Command spokesperson said. The department shares much of its intelligence with federal agencies and private companies in an effort to prevent successful attacks.

SolarWinds CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna (center), along with FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia (left) and and Microsoft President Brad Smith talk with each other before the start of a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on February 23, 2021 in Washington, DC. — Drew Angerer/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

Biden has alluded to retaliation against Russia for cyber attacks, but the U.S. is mum on what steps it is taking. As NATO's joint communique asserted, the Biden administration has considered a range of options in response to major cyberattacks.

"The way that I've consistently characterized our response when it came to SolarWinds and to other cyberattacks of that scope and scale is that we are prepared to take responsive actions that are seen and unseen," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Sunday, "and I'll leave it at that."

Even these vague statements have raised concern among Russian officials. "What people can be afraid of in America," Putin told NBC News, "the very same thing can be a danger to us. The U.S. is a high-tech country, NATO has declared cyberspace an area of combat. That means they are planning something; they are preparing something, so, obviously, this cannot but worry us."

After the summit, Putin asserted that the “majority” of cyber attacks originated from the U.S. and it’s allies.

Speaking of cyberattacks, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan recently said, "We are prepared to take responsive actions that are seen and unseen." Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Avoiding Unintended War

One reason cyber-security was on the agenda for Biden and Putin is to avoid an unintended war. Both the U.S. and Russia have asserted their right to wage cyber operations offensively and defensively. Without international agreements in place, it's not clear what behavior is acceptable and what isn't.

"We can't allow this to continue to escalate," says Shawn Henry, president and chief security officer of cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. "It's the exact reason we had nuclear arms talks, because we realize things couldn't continue to escalate, they couldn't spiral out of control. We couldn't worry about an adversary launching a weapon mistakenly because we know what the response would be."

Henry, a former FBI executive assistant director, says the dialogue is overdue. "It takes us back to that exact point in the conversation where nation-states need to sit down and define what the red lines are and what the responses are going to be, so there is no misunderstanding."

Prospects For a Treaty

Judging from his rhetoric, Putin seems amenable to an agreement to rein in the cyber warfare shenanigans. In September, he asserted that "one of today's major strategic challenges is the risk of a large-scale confrontation in the digital field," as conveyed to Newsweek by the Russian embassy in Washington.

Putin wants to establish high-level communication between Washington and Moscow on "international information security," using existing agencies that deal with nuclear and computer readiness. He is also in favor of establishing new rules along the lines of U.S.-Soviet agreements on avoiding maritime incidents and mutual "guarantees of non-intervention into internal affairs of each other."

In a reference to the nuclear weapons that dominated the Cold War discourse on arms control, Putin is also seeking a global agreement on "no-first-strike" rules regarding cyber attacks against communications systems, the embassy said.

A group cyber soldiers work together to defend their network during a training exercise in the art of cybersecurity design and maintenance at Camp Williams in Utah. — U.S. Army Reserve/SGT. Stephanie Ramirez

Sullivan told reporters that nuclear talks remained the "starting point" for bilateral discussions with Russia on cyber: "Whether additional elements get added to strategic stability talks in the realm of space or cyber or other areas, that's something to be determined as we go forward." Indeed, the joint statement on "strategic stability" released by both sides after the meeting stuck strictly to nuclear arms, with no references to cyber weapons.

Still, the talks made some progress on cyber warfare. While the Biden administration has drawn no direct link between the recent ransomware assault and the Kremlin, U.S. officials have called on Russia to hold hackers within its borders accountable for any attacks that originate there. Putin said during an interview with the Rossiya-1 outlet that he would agree to the extradition of those arrested in Russia if the U.S. does the same; Biden has vowed to reciprocate in the event such attacks were launched from U.S. soil.

In some ways, the Biden-Putin summit sends a signal that cyber warfare has taken its place alongside other military technologies as an accepted part of a nation's arsenal—and one that requires international agreements to keep in check. It also underscores the crucial importance of information technology to national defense.

"Domains of competition, it's not strictly military anymore," says Mike Madsen, director of strategic engagement for the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit. "It's economic, it's social, it's all these different things. We talked about air superiority and air supremacy, and there's a day when there's going to be concepts of cyber curiosity and cyber supremacy in a domain of competition."

"In this era of Great Power competition," he says, "the technology race is the most important front."

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gluupor · 5 years

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Andreil. A Knight and Day AU, please!

So, uh, I have no idea what this is. I’ve never seen Knight and Day and only have the vaguest idea what it’s about (spies, maybe???). Instead of doing the logical thing, and admitting that and turning down the request or looking into the movie, instead I wrote this: which is definitely not what you wanted or asked for. Oh, but @annawrites it has a fake relationship! But again, probably not what you wanted. Sorry anon! Enjoy anyway, I guess?

Whenever anyone asked Neil what he did for a living, he responded by saying he was a spy. This always was met with impressed faces and probing questions about his job. Was it like being James Bond? everyone always wanted to know. Was he out there, taking names and kicking ass? Neil always tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially and said that he couldn’t talk about it, that it was classified.

He wasn’t lying. He was a spy. What he didn’t mention was that he didn’t work for the CIA or the FBI or the NSA. No, he worked for the IRS. He was an accountant spy.

His job consisted of going undercover at suspect companies and looking for evidence that they were committing tax fraud or other white collar crime. He suspected that all the people who were so impressed with his profession would be less so if they knew the particulars.

Luckily, there weren’t all that many people who asked. He socialized mainly with his coworkers at the IRS (who, obviously, were aware of what he did for a living) or with his coworkers when he was undercover (and it’s not like he could tell them that he was spying on them).

In general, he liked his work. It brought together his two biggest talents: math and lying about his identity. He knew that some of his coworkers, like Dan and Matt, had lofty goals and ideals about making the world a better place by punishing the rich, but Neil was in it for the money.

As good as he was (and he was very good) every so often he made mistakes. Like today.

“Come on, pick up,” he muttered into his phone. “Pick up, pick up, pick up.”

“Foxes’ Dry Cleaning,” answered Dan’s cheerful voice. “We clean up your messes.”

“Hey, babe,” said Neil.

“‘Babe’?” repeated Dan. “Our relationship seems to have gotten a lot more serious without my knowledge.”

“How are you? Still free tonight?”

“I’m pretty sure that your current identity doesn’t have a significant other,” sighed Dan. “What happened?”

“Well, you know how I wasn’t planning on being out at work?” asked Neil.

“Neil,” groaned Dan.

“I know, but I was caught off guard, Chad,” said Neil, testily. “So I need to know if you’re free to come to the office party tonight?”

“Everyone’s busy.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” said Neil. “I know that, but I would really appreciate—”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Everyone wants to meet my husband.”

“You’re usually better at obfuscating,” grumbled Dan. “Someone will be there by five.”

“Great,” said Neil in relief. “It means a lot to me. Love you.”

“I’m going to tell Andrew you said that.”

“Okay, bye.” Neil hung up and rubbed a hand through his hair. Goddamn Barbara. This was all her fault.

She was one of those well-meaning busybody types with her nose in everyone’s business, telling them how to live their lives. Neil did not feel guilty at all that he was probably going to be arresting her for tax evasion in the near future.

He’d been doing pretty well at brushing her off when she asked about his personal life, sharing only little bits about his fake background. He’d also been successful so far at shutting down her attempts to set him up. All it had taken was one momentary lapse when he hadn’t had his guard up.

“I invited someone to the office party tonight that I really think you should meet,” Barbara had said.

“Mmm,” said Neil, completely noncommittally, focused on his calculations. He was missing something, somewhere. It wasn’t adding up properly.

“I really think you’ll like her, she’s super great.”

“No.”

“Oh, come on. You need someone to take care of you.”

“I’m married,” Neil had muttered, his mouth saying the words without permission from his brain. “Uh,” he said, catching himself and looking up. “I mean…”

Her eyes had narrowed at his left ring finger which was completely bare. She raised one eyebrow skeptically. “Really? How come you never mentioned it before?”

“Look,” said Neil, checking around to make sure no one was close enough to eavesdrop. “I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure how people here would react to… him.”

“Oh!” said Barbara, suddenly flustered. “I didn’t know you were— not that there’s anything wrong with that,” she hastily tacked on.

“If you could keep it to yourself?” he asked. “I’m not ready to be, you know, out here.”

“Of course,” she said, nodding a lot and watching him with newfound interest. “Of course I won’t tell anybody.”

Neil had not had high hopes and his lack of trust in her discretion had been proven correct less than an hour later when Evelyn, a very professional HR rep, had stiffly stood next to his desk.

“I am sorry,” she’d said, “Mr. Jacobs, that you have felt the need to hide your sexuality.”

“Oh, please don’t—” started Neil.

“This company is very accepting of a variety of different lifestyles and I want to ensure you that we will swiftly deal with any person that is making you feel uncomfortable.”

“Uh,” said Neil, stupidly.

“As such, we request that you invite your… partner to the office party tonight. He will be welcomed with open arms.”

“I don’t—”

“Oh, Neil, you have to,” said Barbara, popping up from god-knew-where. “We feel simply horrible that you’ve felt the need to keep this from us!”

Neil opened his mouth and closed it, feeling like a fish. He turned back to Evelyn. “This whole conversation is making me feel uncomfortable,” he tried.

“We look forward to meeting your partner tonight,” Evelyn replied.

“Husband,” Neil said grumpily. He hated the term ‘partner’.

“I can’t wait!” said Barbara.

Which was when Neil had given up arguing and decided to call Dan for help. There was only one thing that could solve this problem: a fake husband.

He’d teamed up with several of his co-workers before, pretending to be married. It was easier to work with a supporting partner and having a spouse that came to visit him at work was a good cover. But he didn’t need a normal husband for this. He needed Chad.

It was originally Erik who had made up the persona. He’d been working with Dan at the time and she needed him to pretend to be her boyfriend at a party at the company she was investigating. She told him to be as distracting as possible but to remain above suspicion.

Erik had taken these directions and created Chad: a golden retriever of a human being. He was a personal trainer/masseur/underwear model, who had a smile like sunshine and absolutely nothing going on below the surface. He was so pretty and dumb that everyone instantly understood that he was arm candy. He’d smiled beguilingly and let Dan’s middle aged female coworkers pinch his biceps. He’d been so distracting that Dan had successfully planted several bugs in executives’ offices while everyone was looking at her perfect boyfriend. After that, Chad had been a tool that all of them used from time to time.

Nicky, Jeremy, and Matt were all very good at being Chad (Erik was still the master), Kevin and Neil were passable, and no one asked the twins to do it after Andrew had tried once and made everyone incredibly uncomfortable with his wide grin.

There was also a female version of Chad, called Candi (with an i) that Allison always had too much fun pretending to be, although she was better at being a bored, bitter trophy wife.

Neil knew that they were swamped right now; there was a reason that he didn’t already have a backup fake significant other. He felt bad for his slip up, but having a Chad at the party tonight would be useful. He’d found quite a few irregularities in his accounting and he wanted to bug his boss’ office to get an idea of how widespread and intentional the tax fraud was. He hoped that Matt was available to come, although Kevin would be fine, too. Those were the two he worked with most often.

He spent the rest of the afternoon half-focused on his work and half-worrying about the party that evening.

It wasn’t until Barbara was standing by his desk, rocking excitedly on the balls of her feet that Neil was made aware of the time.

“Jameson,” she said, addressing him by his undercover name. He was pretending to be a trust fund douchebag and he had a name to match. “Is he on his way?” Her excitement was palpable, although Neil had no idea why.

“I’m sure he is,” answered Neil. He actually had no clue who was coming or how to contact them, but he trusted Dan not to let him down.

“What’s he like?”

“Uh,” stuttered Neil, desperately trying to come up with the most generic description ever that didn’t include any hints to Chad’s physical appearance. “Nice.”

Barbara gave him an unimpressed look, but he was saved by his office phone ringing. He pointed at it and she sighed happily.

“Mr. Jacobs?” said the gruff voice of the building’s security guard. “I have a Chad Jacobs here to see you.”

“I’ll be right down,” said Neil, heading to the elevators. Barbara was still watching him with heart eyes as the elevator doors closed between them.

He spent the trip down wordlessly thanking Dan for sending someone to save him. Once he arrived, he smiled in relief at the familiar blond head. He always felt best with Andrew at his back, even though Andrew made a poor Chad. It wasn’t until he’d taken a couple steps out of the elevator that he realized his mistake.

Aaron looked like he was on the way to the executioner’s block as opposed to an office party where he’d have to pretend to be his real-life brother-in-law’s fake husband for the evening. Although, Neil was in agreement that there wasn’t a lot of difference between the two.

“Babe,” he made himself say, reaching out a hand. “Come upstairs.”

Aaron pushed past him into the elevator without acknowledging him.

“Ground rules,” he said as soon as they were alone. “I’ve decided that Chad is uncomfortable with PDA.”

“Remember that Chad is gay and shouldn’t be caught staring at women’s breasts,” Neil said snippily in return.

“Maybe Chad is bisexual and is considering leaving you.”

“You’re here to back me up, not to make this harder,” grumbled Neil. “Could you try to pretend to like me?”

“It’s not like you like me.”

“You are not even in the top three people who I hate most in the world right now.”

“Really?” said Aaron with interest. “I thought I was usually number one. Who’s beating me?”

“Well, Dan, obviously, for sending you.” Aaron nodded in agreement. “Andrew, for not being available to come himself. And Kevin.”

“Kevin? Kevin didn’t do anything.”

“Everything is at least partially Kevin’s fault.”

“Fair,” Aaron paused. “What do they know about me?”

“That your name is Chad, that we are married, and that you’re nice.”

Aaron glared. “Fine,” he muttered, and took Neil’s hand. His palm with warm and clammy and Neil resisted the urge to snatch his hand away and wipe it on his pants.

“I’m going to murder Dan,” he muttered, as the elevator arrived at his floor. “Smile!” he added. “We’re in love.”

“Great,” sighed Aaron, pasting an unconvincing smile on his face.

As soon as they got back to headquarters, a raucous cheer greeted them. Matt popped the cork out of a bottle of champagne.

“Mazel tov to the happy couple!” he shouted.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re hilarious,” muttered Aaron. “Give me some of that so I can forget this ever happened.”

“Aw, did your husband not treat you well?” chortled Nicky.

Aaron set his jaw and didn’t answer.

“Did you get the bugs placed?” Dan asked.

“Yes,” said Neil, giving a full-body shudder.

“What?” said Dan, noting his reaction. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” replied Neil. Dan was not impressed, her expression demanding. “I almost got caught. It’s okay, it worked out.”

“How did it work out?” asked Allison, sounding completely delighted.

“Give me the alcohol,” said Aaron sharply.

“Come on, tell us!” cajoled Erik.

“I hate all of you,” said Aaron.

“It’s all in good fun,” said Renee.

“Yes,” said Neil dryly. “Hopefully one day we’ll find it just as funny as the rest of you already do.”

“Tell us! Tell us what you’re hiding!” said Katelyn.

Aaron sighed heavily. “He dragged me into a closet and got on his knees. Then I had to make fake sex noises until one of his coworkers caught us. It was the worst moment of my life. I would appreciate the oblivion of alcohol now.”

Everybody laughed heartily and looked to Andrew for his reaction.

He shook his head at Neil. “I don’t answer your call once and you elope with my brother?”

“Serves you right,” replied Neil.

Andrew stepped closer to him, lips twitching.

Neil glared at him. “Not you, too.”

“I always wanted the two of you to get along better, but this is not what I meant.”

“You’re going to regret making jokes when I leave you for him.”

“You’re not going to do that,” said Andrew seriously, although his hazel eyes were still amused.

“You know how petty I can be.”

“You won’t,” reiterated Andrew with confidence. “You only swing for me.” He pulled Neil into a kiss and he immediately melted. He didn’t know how Andrew could affect him like this, after seven years of marriage and over a decade together.

Still. He wasn’t going to let this go that easily. “Mmm,” he moaned. “Aaron.”

Andrew pinched his waist in retaliation.

Nearby, Aaron whimpered unhappily into his champagne.

#aftg #tfc #andreil #neil josten #andrew minyard #aaron minyard #fake relationship #spies!#my fic #bits #long #asks #anon

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leavetheplantation · 4 years

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The Military-Intelligence Complex

LTP News Sharing:

By Victor Davis Hanson

Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan

Many retired high-ranking military officers have gone beyond legitimately articulating why President Trump may be wrong on foreign policy, and now feel free to smear him personally or speak openly of removing their commander-in-chief from office. And the media and the bipartisan foreign-policy establishment are with them every step of the way.

Much has been written about the so-called Resistance of disgruntled Clinton, Obama, and progressive activists who have pledged to stop Donald Trump’s agenda. The choice of the noun “Resistance,” of course, conjures up not mere “opposition,” but is meant to evoke the French “resistance” of World War II—in the melodramatic sense of current loyal progressive patriots doing their best to thwart by almost any means necessary the Nazi-like Trump.

We know from a variety of disinterested watchdog institutions and foundations that the media has offered 90 percent negative coverage of the Trump Administration. CNN in its anti-Trump zeal has ruined its brand by serial fabrications and firings of its marquee biased reporters.

An entire array of CNN journalists and analysts either has resigned, been fired, retired, forced to offer retractions, or been disgraced either for peddling ad hominem crude attacks on Trump, displaying unprofessional behavior, concocting or repeating false stories, engaging in obscene commentary, or being refuted.

Including are: Reza Aslan, Carl Bernstein, Donna Brazile, James Clapper, Marshall Cohen, Candy Crowley, Kathy Griffin, Julie Joffe, Michael Hayden, Suzanne Malveaux, Manu Raju, Jim Sciutto, Julian Zelizer, and teams such as Thomas Frank, Eric Lichtblau, and Lex Harris, and Gloria Borger, Jake Tapper, and Brian Rokus.

About every month or so, a Hollywood or entertainment personage offers a new assassination scenario of shooting, torching, stabbing, beating, blowing up, caging, or lynching the elected president.

Likewise, the country witnesses about every six weeks a new “turning point,” “bombshell,” “walls are closing in” effort to subvert the Trump presidency.

And the list of such futile and fabricated attempts to abort Trump is indeed now quite monotonous: the efforts to sue three states on false charges of tampered voting machines, the attempt to subvert the voting of the Electoral College, the invocation of the ossified Logan Act, the melodramas concerning the emoluments clause and 25th Amendment, the Mueller’s Dream Team and all-star 22-month failed effort to find collusion and obstruction, the personal psychodramas of Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, Michael Avenatti, and the Trump tax returns, the desperate efforts to tar Trump as a “white supremacist,” followed by cries of “Recession! Recession!,” and now, of course, “Ukraine! Ukraine!”

Perhaps these efforts were best summed up by an anonymous New York Times op-ed writer who on September 5, 2018, outlined how officials within the Trump Administration took it upon themselves in the midst of the Mueller investigation to obstruct and impede the workings of the seemingly oblivious cuckold Trump: “The dilemma—which he [Trump] does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations . . . I would know. I am one of them.”

The Normalization of the Coup?

Yet far more disturbing have been the furor of lame-duck and retired intelligence and military officers.

In unprecedented fashion, some have not just disagreed with the commander in chief, but have declared that he is unfit for office and by implication thus should be obstructed and perhaps even removed. Efforts such as these were recently praised by former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin, who announced to a gathering of former intelligence bureaucrats, “Thank God for the deep state.”

Donald Trump had been in office less than a month when the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. intelligence agencies had decided on their own to withhold information from the recently inaugurated president of the United States: “In some of these cases of withheld information, officials have decided not to show Mr. Trump the sources and methods that the intelligence agencies use to collect information, the current and former officials said.”

What would one call that? Obstruction? A coup? A conspiracy?

Most of the major intelligence heads in the Obama Administration—James Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper—either leaked classified information aimed at harming candidate and then President Trump, later declared him a veritable traitor and Russian asset, or earlier took measures to monitor his campaign or administration’s communications.

In the coming months, the investigations of Michael Horowitz, the inspector general at the Justice Department, and the department’s own criminal investigations by U.S. Attorney John Durham, may well detail one of the most extensive efforts in our history by the American intelligence agencies and their enablers in the executive branch to subvert a campaign, disrupt a presidential transition, and to abort a presidency.

Just 10 days after Trump was inaugurated, Washington insider lawyer Rosa Brooks—a former adviser in the Obama Administration to Assistant Secretary of State Harold Koh and a former special counsel to the president at George Soros’s Open Society Institute—in Foreign Policy offered formal advice about removing Trump in an article titled, “3 Ways to Get Rid of President Trump Before 2020.”

Brooks needed just over a week to conclude that the elected president had to go by means other than an election. After rejecting the first option of the usual constitutional remedy of waiting until the 2020 election (“But after such a catastrophic first week, four years seems like a long time to wait.”), Brooks offered her three fallback strategies to depose Trump:

1) Immediate impeachment. “If impeachment seems like a fine solution to you, the good news is that Congress doesn’t need evidence of actual treason or murder to move forward with an impeachment,” she wrote. “Practically anything can be considered a ‘high crime or misdemeanor.’”). Brooks did not elaborate on what “anything” might be.

2) Declaring Trump mentally unfit under the 25th Amendment. “In these dark days, some around the globe are finding solace in the 25th Amendment to the Constitution,” she wrote. Brooks did not mention that what non-U.S. citizens abroad may feel about removing Trump as mentally unfit is of no constitutional importance. Yet she was also prescient—given the later McCabe-Rosenstein comical aborted palace coup of ridding the country of a supposedly “sick” Trump.

3) A military coup, which Brooks wrote, “is one that until recently I would have said was unthinkable in the United States of America.” If not a “coup,” then “at least a refusal by military leaders to obey certain orders.” Notice the cheap praeteritio: claim that such an idea should have been previously “unthinkable” as a means to demonstrate just how thinkable it now should be.

In the months and years that followed, Brooks again proved either vatic or had foreknowledge of the sort of “resistance” that would follow.

So it is now the decision of many ex-intelligence heads and flag officers to change the rules of the game. They will live to rue the ensuing harm to the reputations both of the intelligence services and the military at large.

In early March 2017, Evelyn Farkas, an outgoing Obama-appointed deputy assistant secretary of defense, detailed in a weird revelation on MSNBC how departing Obama Administration officials scrambled to leak and undermine the six-week-old Trump Administration. “I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill . . .‘Get as much information as you can. Get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration . . . The Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff’s dealing with Russians, [they] would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence . . . That’s why you have the leaking.”

In other words, a Pentagon official was illegally leaking documents, apparently classified, in order both to defame the president as a Russian asset and to thwart any investigation of such internal and likely illegal resistance.

The New Retired Military

At various times, an entire pantheon of retired generals and intelligence directors has gone to Twitter or progressive cable channels like CNN and MSNBC to declare the president of the United States either a Russian asset and thus a traitor, or unfit for office, or in some other way to call for his removal before the election of 2020—for some, seemingly in violation of the code of military conduct that forbids even retired officers from defaming the commander-in-chief. None cited any felonious conduct on Trump’s part; all were infuriated either by presidential comportment and tone or policies with which they disagreed.

Retired four-star general Barry McCaffrey for the past three years has leveled a number of ad hominem charges against the elected president. He essentially called the president a threat to American national security on grounds that his loyalties were more to Vladimir Putin than to his own country. McCaffrey later called the president “stupid” and “cruel” for recalibrating the presence of trip-wire troops in-between Kurdish and Turkish forces. He recently equated Trump’s cancellation of the White House subscriptions of the New York Times and the Washington Post to the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (“This is Mussolini”).

When a retired military officer decides and announces that the current president is the equivalent of a fascist, mass-murdering dictator who seized power and defied constitutional norms, then what is the signal conveyed to other military officers?

Retired General Stanley McChrystal—removed from command by the Obama Administration for inter alia allegedly referring to the vice president as “Bite Me”—called the president “immoral and dishonest.”

Former CIA director Michael Hayden—a four-star Air Force general formerly smeared by the Left for defending supposed “torture” at Guantanamo—compared Trump’s policies to Nazism, when he tweeted a picture of Birkenau to illustrate the administration’s use of detention facilities at the border—a plan inaugurated by the Obama Administration—to deal with tens of thousands of illegal entrants.

One can disagree with Trump’s decision to pull a small contingent of tripwire troops back from the frontlines in Syria as Kurds (our current friends, but not our long-standing legal allies) and Turks (our long-standing legal allies, but not our current friends) fight each other, or see the logic of not putting even small numbers of U.S. troops in the middle of a Syrian quagmire.

The choice is a bad/worse dilemma, one that involves the likelihood either of not defending de facto allies or getting into a shooting scenario against de jure allies. So why would retired General John Allen instead attack the commander-in-chief in moral terms rather than merely criticize the president’s strategic or operational judgment: “There is blood on Trump’s hands for abandoning our Kurdish allies”?

Again, when our best and brightest former generals and admirals inform the nation that the current elected president, with whom they disagree on both Middle East and border security policies, is “immoral” and “cruel” or deserves bloodguilt, or is the equivalent of a fascist dictator or similar to those who set up Nazi death camps, is not the obvious inference that someone must put an end to the supposed fascistic/Nazi takeover of the government?

Apparently so.

In the eeriest series of comments, retired Admiral William McRaven has all but declared Trump a subversive traitor. Apparently in reference to fellow military also working in resistance to the president, Raven remarked, “The America that they believed in was under attack, not from without, but from within.”

In a New York Times op-ed, the decorated retired admiral went further, mostly due to his own disagreements with Trump’s foreign policy, especially toward the Turkish-Kurd standoff in Syria, and his dislike of the president’s style and behavior. Indeed, McRaven seemed to call for Trump to be removed before the 2020 election, “[I]t is time for a new person in the Oval Office—Republican, Democrat or independent—the sooner, the better. The fate of our Republic depends upon it.” (Emphasis added.)

Let us be clear about what McRaven wrote. We are just one year away from a constitutionally mandated election. Yet McRaven now wants a “new person” in the Oval Office and he wants it “the sooner, the better.” And he insists our collective fate as a constitutional republic depends on Trump’s preferable “sooner” removal.

What exactly is the admiral referring to? Impeachment? Invocation of the 25th Amendment? Or the last of Rosa Brooks’ proposals: a forced removal by the military?

Note again, the common thread in all these complaints is not demonstrable high crimes and misdemeanors but rather sharp policy disagreements with the president about the Middle East, or the president’s own retaliatory and sometimes crass pushbacks, usually against prior ad hominem attacks both from serving and retired military officers, or false claims that Trump was a veritable asset, something refuted by Robert Mueller’s 22-month, $35-million-dollar investigation of “collusion.”

Mondadori via Getty Images

An Honorable “Seven Days in May”?

Note that the Left seems either amused or supportive of the current furor of our retired officers and intelligence heads (in a way they were not with General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor)—a phenomenon that began during the Iraq War when an array of retired officers was canonized by the media and past Pentagon critics for declaring the Bush Iraq War variously stupid, immoral, or doomed to failure.

Apparently, an ascendant progressive view is that our armed forces, CIA, FBI, and NSA are protectors of civil liberties and progressive values, and therefore are to be lauded for almost any rhetorical attacks on the president deemed necessary to remind the country of the danger that Trump supposedly poses.

Gone are the old days when Hollywood’s “Dr. Strangelove” warned us of supposed Curtis LeMay-reactionaries, or the 1964 political melodrama, “Seven Days in May,” that envisioned a future right-wing military coup against an idealistic president in the mold of Adlai Stevenson.

Instead, the military in the present age—or at least its Beltway incarnation—has been recalibrated by the Left as a kindred progressive Washington institution, perhaps because of its necessary ability to enact change by fiat, whether in regard to issues regarding diversity, feminism, global warming, or transgenderism—all without the mess, delay, and acrimony of legislative and executive bickering.

In the past, when retired generals rarely and inappropriately weighed in on the allegedly improper, stupid, or immoral drift of a contemporary progressive president, they were met by a progressive firestorm as potential insurrectionaries. General Douglas MacArthur was roundly hated by the Left for his often boisterous and improper attacks on President Truman’s decision not to expand the war in Korea.

Again, today there has arisen a quite different—and far more dangerous—calculus in which the media canonizes rather than audits retired officers who compare the commander-in-chief to a fascist, declare him unfit, or dream of his “sooner the better” removal.

Had any of the current generals said anything similar about President Obama in the fashion they now routinely attack Trump, their public careers would have been ruined. There would have been Adam Schiff-like progressive congressional inquiries about the current status of the code of military conduct as it pertains, not to quite legitimate political editorialization, but rather to “contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State . . . ”

Attacking Trump in “contemptuous” fashion is not speaking truth to power but a confirmation of the existing status quo of the media, progressive orthodoxy, and the general Washington bipartisan bureaucracy.

The result is that many retired high-ranking officers have made the necessary adjustments. Many have gone well beyond legitimately articulating why Trump may be wrong on foreign policy, and now feel free to malign, insult, and even dream of removing their commander-in-chief, on the grounds that Trump is sui generis, that the media will applaud their efforts, and that the bipartisan foreign-policy establishment will canonize their deep-state bravery.

Perhaps.

But the danger is that half the country will conclude that too many retired generals and admirals are going the way of past CIA and FBI directors—no longer just esteemed professionals, op-ed writers, and astute analysts, but political activists who feel entitled to challenge the very legitimacy of an elected president—a development that is ruinous both for the reputation of a hallowed military and of the country in general.

So it is now the decision of many ex-intelligence heads and flag officers, as retirees, analysts, and businesspeople, to change the rules of the game. Again fine. But they will live to rue the ensuing harm to the reputations both of the intelligence services and the military at large.

Indeed, the damage is well underway.

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Go to Source Author: Frances Rice

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thewebofslime · 5 years

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N APRIL 10, 1953, ALLEN DULLES, THE NEWLY APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF THE CIA, delivered a speech to a gathering of Princeton alumni. Though the event was mundane, global tensions were running high. The Korean War was coming to an end, and earlier that week, The New York Times had published a startling story asserting that American POWs returning from the country may have been “converted” by “Communist brain-washers.” Some GI’s were confessing to war crimes, like carrying out germ warfare against the Communists–a charge the U.S. categorically denied. Others were reportedly so brainwashed that they had refused to return to the United States at all. As if that weren’t enough, the U.S. was weeks away from secretly sponsoring the overthrow of a democratically elected leader in Iran. Dulles had just become the first civilian director of an agency growing more powerful by the day, and the speech provided an early glimpse into his priorities for the CIA. “In the past few years we have become accustomed to hearing much about the battle for men’s minds–the war of ideologies,” he told the attendees. “I wonder, however, whether we clearly perceive the magnitude of the problem, whether we realize how sinister the battle for men’s minds has become in Soviet hands,” he continued. “We might call it, in its new form, ‘brain warfare.’” Dulles proceeded to describe the “Soviet brain perversion techniques” as effective, but “abhorrent” and “nefarious.” He gestured to the American POWs returning from Korea, shells of the men they once were, parroting the Communist propaganda they had heard cycled for weeks on end. He expressed fears and uncertainty–were they using chemical agents? Hypnosis? Something else entirely? “We in the West,” the CIA Director conceded, “are somewhat handicapped in brain warfare.” This sort of non-consensual experiment, even on one’s enemies, was antithetical to American values, Dulles insisted, as well as antithetical to what should be human values. Allen W.Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency at an executive session of the Joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee. (Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images) Fear of brainwashing and a new breed of “brain warfare” terrified and fascinated the American public throughout the 1950s, spurred both by the words of the CIA and the stories of “brainwashed” G.I.’s returning from China, Korea, and the Soviet Union. Newspaper headlines like “New Evils Seen in Brainwashing” and “Brainwashing vs. Western Psychiatry” offered sensational accounts of new mind-control techniques and technologies that no man could fully resist. The paranoia began to drift into American culture, with books like The Manchurian Candidate and The Naked Lunch playing on themes of unhinged scientists and vast political conspiracies. The idea of brainwashing also provided many Americans with a compelling, almost comforting, explanation for communism’s swift rise–that Soviets used the tools of brainwashing not just on enemy combatants, but on their own people. Why else would so many countries be embracing such an obviously backward ideology? American freedom of the mind versus Soviet “mind control” became a dividing line as stark as the Iron Curtain. How did a secret government mind control program inadvertently fuel the use of psychedelic drugs in the 1960s? MK-ULTRA Three days after his speech decrying Soviet tactics, Dulles approved the beginning of MK-Ultra, a top-secret CIA program for “covert use of biological and chemical materials.” “American values” made for good rhetoric, but Dulles had far grander plans for the agency’s Cold War agenda. MK-Ultra’s “mind control” experiments generally centered around behavior modification via electro-shock therapy, hypnosis, polygraphs, radiation, and a variety of drugs, toxins, and chemicals. These experiments relied on a range of test subjects: some who freely volunteered, some who volunteered under coercion, and some who had absolutely no idea they were involved in a sweeping defense research program. From mentally-impaired boys at a state school, to American soldiers, to “sexual psychopaths” at a state hospital, MK-Ultra’s programs often preyed on the most vulnerable members of society. The CIA considered prisoners especially good subjects, as they were willing to give consent in exchange for extra recreation time or commuted sentences. Whitey Bulger, a former organized crime boss, wrote of his experience as an inmate test subject in MK-Ultra. “Eight convicts in a panic and paranoid state,” Bulger said of the 1957 tests at the Atlanta penitentiary where he was serving time. “Total loss of appetite. Hallucinating. The room would change shape. Hours of paranoia and feeling violent. We experienced horrible periods of living nightmares and even blood coming out of the walls. Guys turning to skeletons in front of me. I saw a camera change into the head of a dog. I felt like I was going insane.” Gangster James "Whitey" Bulger's 1959 mugshot. (Credit: Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) Bulger claimed he had been injected with LSD. Lysergic acid diethylamide, or acid, had become one of the CIA’s key interests for its “brain warfare” program, as the agency theorized it could be useful in interrogations. In the late 1940s, the CIA received reports that the Soviet Union had engaged in “intensive efforts to produce LSD,” and that the Soviets had attempted to purchase the world’s supply of the chemical. One CIA officer described the agency as “literally terrified” of the Soviets’ LSD program, largely because of the lack of knowledge about the drug in the United States. “[This] was the one material that we had ever been able to locate that really had potential fantastic possibilities if used wrongly,” the officer testified. With the advent of MK-Ultra, the government’s interest in LSD shifted from a defensive to an offensive orientation. Agency officials noted that LSD could be potentially useful in “[gaining] control of bodies whether they were willing or not.” The CIA envisioned applications that ranged from removing people from Europe in the case of a Soviet attack to enabling assassinations of enemy leaders. On November 18, 1953, a group of ten scientists met at a cabin located deep in the forests of Maryland. After extended discussions, the participants agreed that to truly understand the value of the drug, “an unwitting experiment would be desirable.” Doctors Harry Williams and Carl Pfeiffer conducting an LSD Experiment. (Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images) RELATED FEATURES History of the War on Drugs History of LSD The CIA remained keenly aware of how the public would react to any discovery of MK-Ultra; even if they believed these programs to be essential to national security, they must remain a tightly guarded secret. How would the CIA possibly explain dosing unassuming Americans with LSD? “Precautions must be taken not only to protect operations from exposure to enemy forces but also to conceal these activities from the American public in general,” wrote the CIA’s Inspector General in 1957. “The knowledge that the Agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles and would be detrimental to the accomplishment of its mission.” OPERATION MIDNIGHT CLIMAX The CIA’s initial experiments with LSD were fairly simple, if shockingly unethical. The agency generally dosed single targets, finding volunteers when they could, sometimes slipping the drug into the drinks of fellow CIA employees. Over time these LSD experiments grew increasingly elaborate. Perhaps the most notorious of these projects was Operation Midnight Climax. A view of the old CIA building. (Credit: Ed Clark/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) In 1955, on 225 Chestnut Street, San Francisco, the CIA was devoting substantial attention to decorating a bedroom. George White oversaw the interior renovations. Not much of a decorator, White had a storied career in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. When the CIA moved into drug experiments, bringing White on board became a top priority. White hung up pictures of French can-can dancers and flowers. He draped lush red bedroom curtains over the windows. He framed a series of Toulouse-Lautrec posters with black silk mats. For a middle-aged drug bureaucrat, each item evoked sex and glamour. George White wasn’t building a normal bedroom, he was building a trap. White then hired a Berkeley engineering student to install bugging equipment and a two-way mirror. White sat behind the mirror, martini in hand, and waited for the action to begin. Prostitutes would lure unsuspecting johns to the bedroom, where the men would be dosed with LSD and their actions observed by White from beyond the mirror. As payment for their services the sex workers receive small amounts of cash, as well as a guarantee from White that he’d intercede when the women inevitably had run-ins with law enforcement in the future. George Hunter White, supervisor for the New England area of the Federal Narcotics Bureau. (Credit: Evelyn Straus/NY Daily News via Getty Images) Though the CIA piloted these safe houses as a stage for testing the effects of LSD, White’s interest shifted to another element of his observations: the sex. The San Francisco house became the center of what one writer called “the CIA carnal operations,” as officials began asking new questions about how to work with prostitutes, how they could be trained, and how they would handle state secrets. The agency also analyzed when in the course of a sexual encounter information could best be extracted from a source, eventually concluding that it was immediately after sex. But perhaps unsurprisingly, much of White’s actions were driven by pure voyeurism: “I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun,” White later said. “Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?" THE DEMISE OF MK-ULTRA The CIA’s experiments with LSD persisted until 1963 before coming to a fairly anticlimactic end. In the spring of 1963, John Vance, a member of the CIA Inspector General’s staff, learned about the project’s “surreptitious administration to unwitting nonvoluntary human subjects.” Though the MK-Ultra directors tried to convince the CIA’s independent audit board that the research should continue, the Inspector General insisted the agency follow new research ethics guidelines and bring all the programs on non-consenting volunteers to an end. President Gerald Ford meeting with the family of Dr. Frank Olson in 1975. (Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images) In 1977, Senator Edward Kennedy oversaw congressional hearings investigating the effects of MK-Ultra. Congress brought in a roster of ex-CIA employees for questioning, interrogating them about who oversaw these programs, how participants were identified, and if any of these programs had been continued. The Hearings turned over a number of disturbing details, particularly about the 1953 suicide of Dr. Frank Olson, an Army scientist who jumped out of a hotel window several days after unwittingly consuming a drink spiked with LSD. Amid growing criminalization of drug users, and just a few years after President Nixon declared drug abuse as “public enemy number one,” the ironies of the U.S.’s troubling experimentation with drugs appeared in sharp relief. But throughout the hearings, Congress kept hitting roadblocks: CIA staffers claimed they “couldn’t remember” details about many of the human experimentation projects, or even the number of people involved. The obvious next step would be to consult the records, but that presented a small problem: in 1973, amid mounting inquiries, the director of MK-Ultra told workers “it would be a good idea if [the MK-Ultra] files were destroyed.” Citing vague concerns about the privacy and “embarrassment” of participants, the men who crafted MK-Ultra effectively eradicated the paper record for one of the United States’ most obviously illegal undertakings. A program born in secrecy would hold onto many of its secrets forever.

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leavetheplantation · 4 years

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The Military-Intelligence Complex

LTP News Sharing:

By Victor Davis Hanson

Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Brennan

About every month or so, a Hollywood or entertainment personage offers a new assassination scenario of shooting, torching, stabbing, beating, blowing up, caging, or lynching the elected president.

Likewise, the country witnesses about every six weeks a new “turning point,” “bombshell,” “walls are closing in” effort to subvert the Trump presidency.

The Normalization of the Coup?

Yet far more disturbing have been the furor of lame-duck and retired intelligence and military officers.

What would one call that? Obstruction? A coup? A conspiracy?

In the months and years that followed, Brooks again proved either vatic or had foreknowledge of the sort of “resistance” that would follow.

The New Retired Military

Apparently so.

What exactly is the admiral referring to? Impeachment? Invocation of the 25th Amendment? Or the last of Rosa Brooks’ proposals: a forced removal by the military?

Mondadori via Getty Images

An Honorable “Seven Days in May”?

Perhaps.

Indeed, the damage is well underway.

https://ift.tt/2JMtCyE

Go to Source Author: Frances Rice

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