April 21st 2009
As Spies Attack Us, Dems Go After Spymasters
“There’s never been anything like this,” a former Pentagon official told the WSJ about spy attacks on computers holding top secret weapons development information, along with national infrastructure control systems. “[They've attacking] everything that keeps this country going.”
The most recent revelation reveals spy hackers going after F-35 fighter secrets, says the WSJ:
Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project — the Defense Department’s costliest weapons program ever — according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.
Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force’s air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft.
The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up between the U.S. and potential adversaries over the data networks that tie the world together.
Someone is after us, big time. So what are the Dems doing? Attacking Bushl Natch.
Obama stepped up the campaign against foreign spies the Bush admin this week by releasing memos detailing torture harsh but fitting interrogation techniques, which is sure to offend the Spanish, who, BTW, have never gotten around to ratifying the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the UN Committee Against Torture. It certainly has incensed the Dems:
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote Mr. Obama asking him not to rule out prosecutions until her panel completed an investigation over the next six to eight months. (NYT)
Meanwhile, Obama did one of his classic “go talk to the people you just screwed” stints, reminiscent of his chat with USS Cole families, to the CIA, telling them to ignore the folks from his admin who are intent on knocking the agency down, and reassuring them that they’re all his good friends in Obama Happy Land. All the while, the president’s staff was refusing to rule out legal sanctions against the lawyers who developed the legal basis for the use of the interrogation methods.
And to ice this particularly untasty cake, we learned from Dick Cheney last night that memos exist detailing in explicit detail the intelligence gained from the interrogations – memos that so far the Obama admin has refused to release, despite the president’s CIA-directed hyperbole:
“Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks,” he told employees. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be president of the United States and that’s why you should be proud to be members of the C.I.A.” (NYT)
The NYT buried the Cheney demands deep in its story, after detailing all the yahoos that want to get their hands on the Bushies.
If the president didn’t want them to be discouraged, if he’s really interested in learning from the past, if he wants to acknowledge history, he will give us history, not just one side of it.
Posted in Bush, Cheney, CIA, Intelligence, Obama | 1 Comment » | |
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April 21st, 2009 at 5:58 am
Good stuff, Laer. Thank you for following this story, and tying threads together as well as you do.