The story the Washington Post won’t print

Jon Rappoport

In the world of spying and social engineering, the punch line you see coming isn’t always the real one. It’s just a setup for something else.

In many of my articles over the past 13 years, I’ve been explaining how this works in various covert theaters of operation.  

Here’s another one.

To set the stage, read these three quotes from a March 18 Washington Post story, “NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve and replay phone calls”:

“The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording ’100 percent’ of a foreign country’s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place.”

“The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for ‘retrospective retrieval,’ and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere.”

“At the request of US officials, the Washington Post is withholding details that could be used to identify the country where the system is being employed or other countries where its use was envisioned.”

Okay. This last quote reveals that the Post won’t print the name of the country the NSA has completely blanketed. The Post knows which country it is, but it won’t say.

So that’s the apparent punch line.

That sets up an argument about how much secrecy the NSA should have in its work, and whether the press should go along with the government and conceal certain facts.

The Post story, and the Post’s refusal to “name the country” is very much like a film teaser or trailer: “We know what country it is but we aren’t saying at this time. Stay tuned. More exciting revelations to follow…and who knows? We might break our code of silence and tell you the name of that blanketed nation! Is it Afghanistan? Iraq? France? England?”

So what’s the real bottom-line op here?

It’s all about keeping the NSA story alive, in order that people know they’re being spied on 24/7. That’s the social engineering aspect. That’s the game.

And in that regard, the slow-drip method of releasing Snowden files is quite useful. It appears to be a smart journalistic strategy, to “keep the issue before the public so that a true debate about government secrecy and spying can take place.”

But the debate isn’t effective. The NSA isn’t being curbed. If one of its channels of snooping is cut back, another one will emerge.

No, the actual op is: keep reminding people they’re being spied on; that will make them more cautious; that will make make them conform in action, speech, and thought.

That’s the goal. And in that sense, it doesn’t really matter whether the NSA is blanketing the populace with its programs. It only matters that people believe it’s happening.

This op is as old as the hills. For example, a famous manual for the Catholic Inquisition, the Directorium Inquisitorium, reprinted in Rome in 1578, contained the following:

“…punishment does not take place primarily for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evil they would commit.”

The Inquisition was a traveling circus for Church sadists and control freaks. It held show trials, torture sessions, and public executions.

Today, in less overt terms, the op is still all about weaning the population away from the “evil they would commit.”

Today, as in the past, every person is considered a potential threat. So he must be monitored and spied on. More than that, every person must believe he’s being spied on.

All this “media and public debate”about the NSA keeps the pot percolating and boiling—so that people are put on notice every few days that the NSA is looking over their shoulder.

People at the Washington Post may actually believe they’re engaged in a moral struggle to define where national security ends and the public’s right to know begins. But they’re dupes in a larger op.

Whether you believe Ed Snowden is a hero for our times or a Trojan Horse wheeled into our midst, the deep op is the same: release his files via the slow-drip method, keeping them in the hands of “responsible journalists,” provoke an ongoing “debate about the public good and the right to privacy,” and thus:

Prove to everyone everywhere that they’re under surveillance, and therefore should tailor and reduce their behavior to more extreme forms of conformity and assent.

That’s the actual punch line.

You’ve heard the term “metadata”? It basically means data about data. Well, this is a meta-op. It piggybacks on the “debate about spying,” and it does its work with relative invisibility.

Major intelligence ops are always layered. They use “honorable concerns in a free democracy” as fronts, behind which they hide.

Mass spying on the public is an honorable concern. That’s why the meta-op works. It preys on and uses evidence of real crimes to achieve its own crimes.

Jon Rappoport

The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/the-story-the-washington-post-wont-print/