Category Archives: CIA
Tale of Two Pulitzers
ABC News president Ben Sherwood had the bad form to complain about being denied a Pulitzer Prize. Television isn’t even eligible for the prizes. They’re awarded to newspapers and digital outlets. Is a TV network’s digital site eligible? Beats me.
Anyway, Sherwood sent a 4 page letter to the Center For Public integrity demanding that ABC reporter Brian Ross be cut in for a share of CPI‘s prize. The reporting was about a doctor/lawyer conspiracy to deprive black lung victims of medical benefits.
Last I heard from Brian Ross he was busy mis-identifying James Holmes, the Denver theater psycho killer, as a Tea Party member.
Two Pulitzers
Meanwhile, Ed Snowden and Vlad Putin were overlooked by the Pulitzer Committee for an award shared by The Washington Post and The Guardian. The two papers were honored for stories detailing NSA spying. The snubbed Snowden, hero or traitor, depending on your point of view, did the basic reporting by stealing information from the NSA. Putin, a renowned New York Times columnist and famous Russian hockey player, is Snowden’s patron.
Supine Senate Spying
Senators are no different from you and me, and Angela Merkel. They get spied on too.
Senate Spying
The supine Senate hasn’t done much to protect its turf from an overreaching executive. The president has taken one bone after another from the legislative watch dog while rewriting the Afordable Care Act.
The CIA finally got Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Diane Feinstein into a lather when documents she was using to investigate the agency turned up missing – from a supposedly secure computer in the basement of CIA headquarters.
Peyton Manning Code Cracker
Richard Sherman cracked the Peyton Manning code. He says he and his teammates figured out Manning’s hand signals based on the situation and knew what play was coming in a advance.
NSA Radio Waves
Feeling safe by going offline? NYT says NSA can now access your computer through radio waves – even when it’s not connected to the internet.
Bystander President
The NYT has called President Obama the bystander president because he’s deluged by events that seem to have nothing to do with him – unless they’re good. Like the U.S. oil boom which he fought against tooth and nail and now takes credit for.
Here’s a Dana Milbank Washington Post column pondering the problem.
Bystander Protector
Obama is fond of Czars. Could Valerie Jarrett be his protective Rasputin? John Fund thinks so. He quotes her appraisal of the president:
“I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”
Says Fund, “As a court flatterer of that caliber it’s no surprise that Jarrett has outlasted almost everyone who was in Obama’s original White House team”
