17 Comments

One of the biggest motifs of Russiagate, and the earlier Obama domestic spy scandals is that the massive domestic surveillance state that has been built with accelerating speed during this century is increasingly getting out over its skies. It lacks the in house technical support and know how to manage all of its surveillance tools and incoming data, and it lacks the desire to develop it, when it has the ability to just hire contractors from the telecom industry. The added bonus, certainly the main selling point to the "my ops are blacker than your ops" type of people, is that it is a lot harder to maintain Congressional oversight over contractors, or require contractors to comply with FOIA and other open records laws, then it is with career GS, FSO, and military officers. You combine that with the revolving door of senior government employees leaving government service for contract work, while still maintaining their access to security clearances, recent colleagues, and (thanks to the Sussmann case we know) physical access to the premises and computer work stations of their former employers and you have the perfect recipe for an unaccountable shadow government of nominally private employees exercising the powers of government agents.

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Claiming that the Perkins Coie SCIF was a necessary convenience sounds like "long" Covid to me.

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Yes, I'm sure the FIB is on great terms with many criminals. So was Jeffrey Epstein.

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Is Perkins Coie the only law firm in the country where such an arrangement exists?

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The amount of egg, if any is minimal. Once in awhile you get a black eye in a fight. Keep punching.

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Only 10 years? we ARE ON SOLID GROUND TO BE HIGHLY DUBIOUS HERE, THEIR PERFORMANCE IS NOT BEEN EXTRAORDINARY TOP SAY THE LEAST AND IS MORE OF A partisan nature, sorry for the caps, damn cap lock!

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Back in the day (if such a time actually ever existed), a state actor with even an *appearance* of a conflict of interest or an *appearance* of impropriety would disclose it and/or recuse himself, lest confidence in the impartiality of the actor be compromised. Because there was consensus that maintaining confidence in the fair and impartial enforcement of laws and dispensation of justice is critical to the well-being...and survival...of the state.

No longer.

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Jun 3, 2022·edited Jun 3, 2022

Wow, Mark. You really have egg on your face for assuming impropriety in the intimacy of FBI-Perkins Coie relationship. How many other highly-politicized law firms have such SCIF's located on premise? I'm going to guess that the number hovers somewhere in the range of the square root of -1. Your scrupulous honesty is duly noted--and any improper jump to conclusions is forgiven. Personally, I think the FBI has proved to be fatally corrupt and in need of dissolution. Parcel out their various elements of the organization's portfolio to the US Marshals, DIA, wherever (except the CIA). Every current agent and manager could choose to remain employed only after agreeing to submit to a semi-annual polygraph test that specifically asks whether they have participated in, or witnessed, any prohibited or illegal activity. If the polygraph is equivocal--they're fired. The fact that we've seen six years of evil out of the FBI attests that it is not simply the management level. Where are the whistleblower agents? "All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

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Design and construction contractors who design SCIFs and related facilities must have SCIFs in their offices in order to process classified documents and transmit them to their government contract representatives.

I wasn't sure whether to be bothered by the PC-RA for this reason. I suppose other agencies could have similar contrast needs.

But PC is a hyper-partisan firm. In the current environment their participation in such arrangements stinks.

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I guess the national security letters go along with the Patriot Act and with the huge amount of increased government we've seen since Sept 11. I guess that those people who said that the Patriot Act would be used against the People (basically patriots) were right. These national security letters also go along with the FBI investigating Trump. It's very clear that Trump was a squeaky clean president, seeing how he was investigated before, during and (now) after his Presidency. Too bad all this security apparatus couldn't be aimed at (IMO) the most corrupt President* in history. Since the people in True the Vote recently announced that they had a LOT more than individuals involved in the vote rigging, I think it's clear that the Intelligence Community was/is also involved in ousting Trump. The IC involvement says to me, that foreign countries are involved (which was known back when Australia's diplomat helped coordinate the beginning of what turned into the FBI scandal. I wonder how much China is involved. China had at LEAST as much motive in ousting Trump (most people would say more since the tarriffs were hurting China where it lived) as the security state. I wonder, and it seems very possible, that our security state has joined forces with China, period. We know spies have been corrupted by foreign countries before, could China corrupted our entire security state? I think we had better be aware of this possibility/probability.

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I’m sure the fbi statement is 100% correct.

The question, is what does the fbi statement omit?

You still may be 100% correct.

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Removed (Banned)Jun 3, 2022·edited Jun 3, 2022
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