Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Nose of the Camel

In WW2 planes flew over Germany streaming aluminum strips to clutter the radar. This same approach is used in the information war for much the same purpose. The idea is that with more distractions, time and distance, Benghazi will fade and become just another one of those issues never fully explained.

This incident involving Snowdon is a case in point. Whether it is intentional or not the result is a misdirection play. After listening carefully to everything Mr. Snowdon says I can only yawn. Perhaps he knows things he has yet to reveal that might raise a few eyebrows but for now he has shown knowledge of only two things. First is how telephone records can be used to identify suspects in a terrorist network. Second, that the NSA has a capability to enter someone’s computer and read and write things on the CRT. With regard to capability number 1, it's been around forever.

Let me quote some passages from the book Operation Dark Heart, chapter 10 Improvised raid, page 119.

“Can you come over to my office and take a look at it?”
“The phone had been captured off a bad guy killed in Khowst.” (Afganistan)
“It was a blue Nokia, fairly typical for the era, but contained some sort of code that wouldn’t let us unlock it…. We get a signal but I can’t even make a call.”
“…I think it’s part of an older GSM system run by the Afghanistan Telephone and Telegraph Company.”
“That’s where I think we would find the help to break into this phone. Plus, … we might be able to download 100 percent of the entire country’s phone infrastructure---all of the technical data and all of the phone numbers in the system. That would include the database containing the names and addresses of the phone users.”

The chapter continues to describe a successful mission to enter the Telephone Company and secure the information they were seeking.

While the timeline for this operation is not clear it took place after February on Shaffer’s return tour. This would have been about ten years ago. At that point it is clear that using telephone billing records to help identify terror networks was a well established process.

Regarding revelation number 2, five years ago I was having trouble with my internet connection and I was asked to let a distant technician, enter my computer, diagnose and fix the problem. I sat at my desk and watched him move from screen to screen and change values. Is revealing this capability a compromise to National Security? Get real!

What is happening with the continuing scandals is that the public is paying less attention to what happened in Libya. This is unfortunate because most of what has followed, except perhaps the IRS fiasco, spun off events that took place that infamous night.

There is more hinted at and revealed in the book, Operation Dark Heart, than Snowdon could ever begin to compromise. The DIA in their petty treatment of LTC Shaffer, unwittingly allowed the camel’s nose under the tent. If a reader looks carefully at what is not redacted, it is possible to envision revelations that are potentially many times more damaging.