Let's play "remember when"
Oct. 26th, 2004 01:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asherisRemember way back in the late '80's, there was that whole Iran-Contra thing going on? The one where the testimony sounded like they were quoting Peter Gabriel: "I don't remember, I don't recall. I've got no memory of anything at all."
Have you by chance noticed that a lot of people in the Bush II administration were involved in the whole Iran-Contra mess back then? Or that some of them are basically back in the jobs they had in the "old days"?
Or they have new ones- take Navy Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter for example. Back then, he was Reagan's national security adviser. When Iran-Contra came out, he was tried and convicted in April 1990 of five felonies, including: one count of conspiring to obstruct official inquiries and proceedings, two counts of obstructing Congress, and two counts of false statements to Congress. (They were eventually overturned on appeal on technical grounds- some questions as to which deposition was given first to which organization.)
When Bush II came into office, Poindexter was made head of the Total Information Awareness project at DARPA. (Which, amazingly, no longer seems to exist on the DARPA site, hence the link to EPIC instead. Or, they maybe just changed the name of the project- again.) You may recall that TIA was to be a massive database of informaiton about- well, everyone, really. "TIA purports to capture the "information signature" of people so that the government can track potential terrorists and criminals involved in "low-intensity/low-density" forms of warfare and crime. The goal is to track individuals through collecting as much information about them as possible and using computer algorithms and human analysis to detect potential activity."
Hrm, a man convicted of lying to Congress (albeit overturned on technical issues, despite his admission that he lied) and who, as we later found out, was involved in covering up the illegal activities of those around him, is now the man in charge of a database that would be full of details about (eventually) the majority of citizens of the US.
Oh yes, I feel ever so secure.
Can you guess the name of one of the very few senators to stand up and demand those Iran-Contra investigations? If you said John Kerry, you'd be right. Pretty gutsy move for a freshman senator.
Have you by chance noticed that a lot of people in the Bush II administration were involved in the whole Iran-Contra mess back then? Or that some of them are basically back in the jobs they had in the "old days"?
Or they have new ones- take Navy Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter for example. Back then, he was Reagan's national security adviser. When Iran-Contra came out, he was tried and convicted in April 1990 of five felonies, including: one count of conspiring to obstruct official inquiries and proceedings, two counts of obstructing Congress, and two counts of false statements to Congress. (They were eventually overturned on appeal on technical grounds- some questions as to which deposition was given first to which organization.)
When Bush II came into office, Poindexter was made head of the Total Information Awareness project at DARPA. (Which, amazingly, no longer seems to exist on the DARPA site, hence the link to EPIC instead. Or, they maybe just changed the name of the project- again.) You may recall that TIA was to be a massive database of informaiton about- well, everyone, really. "TIA purports to capture the "information signature" of people so that the government can track potential terrorists and criminals involved in "low-intensity/low-density" forms of warfare and crime. The goal is to track individuals through collecting as much information about them as possible and using computer algorithms and human analysis to detect potential activity."
Hrm, a man convicted of lying to Congress (albeit overturned on technical issues, despite his admission that he lied) and who, as we later found out, was involved in covering up the illegal activities of those around him, is now the man in charge of a database that would be full of details about (eventually) the majority of citizens of the US.
Oh yes, I feel ever so secure.
Can you guess the name of one of the very few senators to stand up and demand those Iran-Contra investigations? If you said John Kerry, you'd be right. Pretty gutsy move for a freshman senator.
