NSA demo/letter sent to NSA

Friends,

 

Members of the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore will make their annual trek to the National Security Agency on Saturday, July 4.  We plan to arrive at 10 AM, and will stay for one hour.  Afterwards, we will enjoy a potluck picnic.  Let me know if you want to join us.  Kagiso, Max

 

 

Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore

325 East 25th Street

Baltimore, MD  21218

 

July 1, 2009

 

Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander

Director, National Security Agency

Chief, Central Security Service

National Security Agency

Fort George G. Meade, MD  20755

 

Dear General Alexander:

 

As members of a peace and justice group with grave concern for the National Security Agency’s role in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, we are writing again to request a meeting. In light of the alarming revelations regarding the illegal wiretapping and wholesale collection of Americans’ phone records, infiltration of peace groups opposed to the policies of this government and the NSA’s surveillance of our group, we request that you meet with us to discuss these issues.  We believe that the NSA, which has conducted covert and illegal operations against U.S. citizens, may be involved in other illegal practices.

 

You never responded to last year’s letter.  So we are renewing our request for a meeting.

 

While there is a new administration in Washington, it seems the NSA continues its methodical and purposeful destruction of our civil liberties and infringements on Constitutionally-protected dissent.  In an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was asked whether he thought the White House has the legal authority to monitor domestic phone and email traffic without a warrant.  He replied, “I wouldn’t rule it out.”  In his confirmation hearings to become the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, General Michael Hayden, the former head of the NSA, declared that only “reasonableness” and not a warrant was necessary to conduct warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens.

 

As you are aware, the NSA sees our group as a security threat and is wasting time and taxpayers’ money monitoring us. Actually, though, the Pledge of Resistance engages in nonviolent action, and its members are citizen activists who want to hold government officials accountable for illegal activities.   

 

Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating the latest revelation of your misconduct.  The NSA is involved in the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq, a country which was no threat to the USA.  The NSA, along with the CIA and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, betrayed everything this country is supposed to represent when it played along with Mr. Bush in his ever-shifting quest for plausible reasons to invade Iraq.  Rather than refuse to provide the cover Mr. Bush needed for his illegal invasion, the NSA and the CIA twisted the intelligence.   

 

General Hayden played a key role in crafting Colin Powell’s February, 2003 speech before the UN.  In response to Sen. Carl Levin's question about the legal standard for declassifying information in the public interest, Hayden said, "We used that in Powell's speech. George [Tenet] had to call me for three tapes."  General Hayden was instrumental in providing false information to Colin Powell, at Mr. Bush’s request, so that the invasion of Iraq could proceed.  Of course, no weapons of mass destruction were found. And as the peace movement predicted – civil war, the breakup of the country and the destruction of Iraqi society – did happen.  So the NSA is complicit in possibly the worst foreign policy debacle in our history.

 

The NSA was involved in the wiretapping of the UN Security Council in 2003.  The NSA asked British intelligence to tap the phones of the UN Security Council members’ offices so the US would know how each country would vote on the resolution to invade Iraq.  Luckily, Katherine Gunn, a courageous British intelligence linguist, alerted the world to that illegal operation.

We are sure that you have read THE SHADOW FACTORY, James Bamford’s third book on the NSA.  Again he writes that Big Brother is still watching, but unfortunately he often listens in on the wrong people and sometimes fails to recognize critical information, like the fact that terrorists are gathering and plotting an attack. One of the great failures of all time was the attack on 9/11.  The agency was eavesdropping on the hijackers for 18 months without sharing the intelligence with the FBI or CIA. Yet one cell was not far away in Laurel.

General Alexander, we wish to discuss these critically important matters with you.  Also we would appreciate the NSA turning over all files on Baltimore-area peace and justice organizations.

 

Our system of government, based on laws and checks and balances, hangs by a thread.  As concerned citizens, we will continue our efforts to challenge government agencies which show a disdain for the Constitution.  We are available at your convenience and look forward to hearing from you about a meeting.

 

In peace,

 

Max Obuszewski, for the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs