by Scott Creighton
UPDATE: Steve Watson of the Prison Planet Watson Di$info Twins, has written an uncritical review of Mr. “Limited Hangout Baby” Bamford’s propaganda. Go figure. Remember, you can always tell a psyop by the company it keeps.
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Unlike before with The Puzzle Palace, this time the NSA cooperated with Bamford. Alarmed by Hollywood films like Enemy of the State that portrayed his agency as a ruthless cadre of assassins, the director of the NSA, Lt. Gen Michael V. Hayden, wanted the American public to have a more accurate picture of how the NSA functioned. In order to encourage better communication between the NSA and the press, Hayden granted Bamford unprecedented access to Crypto City (the NSA campus in Ft. Meade, MD), senior NSA officials, and thousands of NSA documents while he researched Body of Secrets. The NSA even hosted a book signing for Bamford on the grounds of Crypto City. It lasted more than four hours as hundreds of NSA employees lined up to have their copies of Body of Secrets autographed. (Ibid., Bamford’s profile from Random House)
James “limited-hangout baby” Bamford is a fraud as is the manufactured hero Edward Snowden.
It was only a matter of time before the NSA’s first manufactured whistle-blower was assigned the task of passing the proverbial torch to “Snowden” which is exactly what he has done in a new Wired magazine interview and accompanying Conde Nast promotional video.
“I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word, in that I lived and worked undercover, overseas — pretending to work in a job that I’m not — and even being assigned a name that was not mine... What they are trying to do is that they are trying to use one position to distract from the totality of my experience, which is: I’ve worked for the Central Intelligence Agency – undercover, overseas, I’ve worked for the National Security Agency – undercover, overseas, and I’ve worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency as a lecturer at the joint counter-intelligence training,” “Edward Snowden” from RT
The charmed life of manufactured whistle-blower James Bamford
James Bamford is a limited hangout asset belonging to the NSA who’s job it is to present his audience with a seemingly caustic expose on the inner workings of the agency while simultaneously reinforcing key aspects of various psychological operations and official truths. A perfect example of his handiwork found in a 2005 interview published on another limited hangout site, AntiWar:
“Ironically, at the same time the CIA was unwilling to penetrate al-Qaeda, during the summer of 2001 about seven or eight Americans joined up with little difficulty, including John Walker Lindh, a college dropout from northern California. He did what the CIA should have done – went to Yemen and studied the Koran and Arabic, then went to study at a religious school in Pakistan, joined a guerilla training camp, and then went to Afghanistan where he easily joined al-Qaeda. The group then sent him to their premier terrorist training camp where he had a number of one-on-one meetings with bin Laden and picked up bits and pieces of the 9/11 plot.” James Bamford in an interview in 2005
The CIA created al-Qaeda and ran it from day one. Notice his support for the official story of 9/11. His phony “deep state” analysis is nothing more than a less than cleverly disguised affirmation of the official “intelligence failures” story of 9/11. To make my point clearer:
He is visiting Berkeley in the School of Public Policy, and gave a talk entitled “Intelligence Failures that Led to the September 11th Attacks.”
Bamford is said to have lived a rather charmed life. Especially for someone supposedly leaking dark secrets about the NSA.
He spent 3 years in the Navy as an “intelligence analyst” then the government paid for his schooling and upon graduating as Juris Doctor, International Law from Suffolk University Law School he suddenly decided to become a writer rather than a lawyer and immediately set to work on exposing the NSA.
His first book, The Puzzle Palace, was the first ever written about the secretive NSA and it immediately became a best seller. He cobbled his limited hangout story together, he claims, from declassified NSA documents garnered by FOIA requests. No one really knows how he got them through so quickly or how the NSA failed to notice someone making all of those requests.
The NSA tried to prosecute Bamford, but that only served to give James more and more publicity for his limited hangout book. In the end, they dropped the prosecution.
The NSA has never pulled one of his “exposes” into their secretive inner workings and his “whistle-blowing” books remain top sellers to this day.
The NSA “eventually decided to use The Puzzle Palace as a core textbook in its Defense Intelligence College“
Bamford spent a decade as a Mockingbird producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.
Bamford credits himself for the disclosure of the Operation Northwoods documents which featured prominently in his 2001 book, Body of Secrets. However, like the manufactured hero Edward Snowden, Bamford was simply “exposing” something that had already been in the public domain for years (Nov. 19, 1997).
“The Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved plans for what may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the US government.” James Bamford on ABC news report May 2001
Remember, it was director of the NSA, Lt. Gen Michael V. Hayden himself who tasked James Bamford with his “whistle-blowing” book, Body of Secrets, the purpose of which was to craft a new image for the agency. The same Michael Hayden pictured below at an event with “Edward Snowden”.
Now let’s take a look at “Mr. Snowden”
A Limited Hangout “Whistle-blower” Vouches for a Manufactured Hero
It was only a matter of time before the NSA’s first manufactured hero gave Snowden his limited hangout seal of approval.
Today there is a new interview published on the super-slick looking Wired website. It’s the James Bamford story of his meeting with “the most wanted man in the world“
You might think that the Wired interview itself would be enough to get the message across, that Snowden is a hero and the NSA needs to be privatized, but of course, this is a multi-million dollar psyop and they need to hit all the media outlets they can, so they produced a slick promotional video and photo shoot to go with it.
The video (produced by Conde Nast’s Scott Dadich – “His ability to blend digital and print aesthetics over the past 15 years has made Dadich a magazine world star.” SFgate) is a sickeningly melodramatic accounting of “the meeting” with Bamford and the photographer “Platon” literally gushing about “the ultimate whistle-blower” as they refer to Snowden.
“And then, there was this light tap on the door and then this small frame just elegantly sweeps through the door, shakes our hand (sic) and says “Hi. I’m Ed”… he’s gentle… he’s quiet.. and yet, there’s a weird power to this guy” “Platon”
While Bamford and the photographer slather platitudes all over the newest NSA product “Snowden”, the music in the background is this oddly Orwellian dirge-like hypnotic string quartet.
Combined with the overly dramatic black and white photos of “Snowden” in his hotel room (window shades drawn so you can make out the shape of a skyline in the background without really telling what town he’s in. Considering the fact that Bamford openly states which hotel they were in and even which floor they were on in his article on the meeting, clearly they weren’t trying to hide his location… for that reason) you almost get the sense of watching an over the top tribute to Big Brother.
Like the article it’s designed to promote, one can hardly call the promotional video “journalism” in any sense of the word.
It’s hero-crafting in it’s basest form: a sophomoric melodrama made to elicit awe and respect from the Pepsi generation for their manufactured hero “Edward Snowden”
At the same time, it is clearly intended to anger those in the audience who view “Snowden” as a traitor. Here is the main photo from the publicity shoot featured prominently in every article written about this psyop and also plastered on the cover of Wired magazine.
The image works on multiple levels. At once it garners both animosity from his detractors as well as reverence from his supporters. Big Brother couldn’t have done it any better.
Either way you chose to look at it, Conde Nast’s Scott Dadich uses the flag as a prop in a deliberate manner to incite strong feelings in the viewer and thus plenty of page views for his print/video psyop effort. In his own words, Dadich wrote of the “spontaneous” decision to use the flag:
“We returned to the prop table, and Snowden picked up the flag. Platon asked him what he’d do with it in a picture. Snowden held the flag in his hands and delicately unfolded it. You could see the gears turning as he weighed his year in exile against the love of country that motivated him in the first place. He said he was nervous that posing with the flag might anger people but that it meant a lot to him. He said that he loved his country. He cradled the flag and held it close to his heart. Nobody said a word, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.” Scott Dadich, Conde Nast’s star propagandist
It’s the same prop flag Pamela Anderson draped over her naked ass in a George magazine cover picture, also crafted by Scott Dadich. Dadich admitted as much. I wonder if he had it washed since then or if it still smelled like Pam’s rear end. Clearly he staged the photo for shock value and page views. I seriously doubt any hairs on the back of his neck stood up when “Snowden” cradled Pam’s patriotic diaper. Dadich’s melodramatic comment is a dead giveaway to the ridiculous propaganda this video represents.
Here is the video. Notice at no time can you make out the city in the background through the window.
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James Bamford’s article is just as one sided and sickeningly sycophantic as the promotional video crafted by Dadich.
It’s not journalism, it’s sales.
And coming from a guy who is known for working on BEHALF of Clapper and the NSA, it’s hard to miss the implicit meaning of such an infomercial.
“But in all my work, I’ve never run across anyone quite like Snowden. He is a uniquely postmodern breed of whistle-blower. Physically, very few people have seen him since he disappeared into Moscow’s airport complex last June. But he has nevertheless maintained a presence on the world stage—not only as a man without a country but as a man without a body. When being interviewed at the South by Southwest conference or receiving humanitarian awards, his disembodied image smiles down from jumbotron screens. For an interview at the TED conference in March, he went a step further—a small screen bearing a live image of his face was placed on two leg-like poles attached vertically to remotely controlled wheels, giving him the ability to “walk” around the event, talk to people, and even pose for selfies with them. The spectacle suggests a sort of Big Brother in reverse: Orwell’s Winston Smith, the low-ranking party functionary, suddenly dominating telescreens throughout Oceania with messages promoting encryption and denouncing encroachments on privacy.” James Bamford
In the article, Bamford starts out by trying to fix some of the more glaring problems with the “Edward Snowden” psyop. First he tackles the issue of “the 1.7 million files VS the 58,000 files” fiasco by claiming the larger number represents the files “Snowden” “touched” while looking for the ones he took.
“He says that he actually intended the government to have a good idea about what exactly he stole. Before he made off with the documents, he tried to leave a trail of digital bread crumbs so investigators could determine which documents he copied and took and which he just “touched.” That way, he hoped, the agency would see that his motive was whistle-blowing and not spying for a foreign government. It would also give the government time to prepare for leaks in the future, allowing it to change code words, revise operational plans, and take other steps to mitigate damage. But he believes the NSA’s audit missed those clues and simply reported the total number of documents he touched—1.7 million.” James Bamford
Then he moves on to cover the issue of several pieces of intel that were leaked after “Snowden” left the agency and also created after such time. These “leaks” were originally credited to “Snowden” until intrepid investigators figured out he had already left the agency before the “leaks” were created. This posed a problem for the Snowden psyop and so they had to create the mythology of “another leaker” who has yet to be named.
Curiously, while he is reworking the official story of the Snowden psyop to manage damage control on this aspect of the manufactured hero story, Bamford may in fact be exposing another collaboration of his with the NSA on behalf of the NSA and Clapper, just as he did back in 2001.
“And there’s another prospect that further complicates matters: Some of the revelations attributed to Snowden may not in fact have come from him but from another leaker spilling secrets under Snowden’s name. Snowden himself adamantly refuses to address this possibility on the record. But independent of my visit to Snowden, I was given unrestricted access to his cache of documents in various locations. And going through this archive using a sophisticated digital search tool, I could not find some of the documents that have made their way into public view, leading me to conclude that there must be a second leaker somewhere. I’m not alone in reaching that conclusion. Both Greenwald and security expert Bruce Schneier—who have had extensive access to the cache—have publicly stated that they believe another whistle-blower is releasing secret documents to the media.” James Bamford
Bamford rehashes the old “high school dropout turned CIA lead spook” story for the readers, carefully omitting the “pole dancing super-hero” girlfriend of his as well as this little quote from “Snowden” himself (which explains why I put his name (reference to a Catch 22 character who literally “spills his guts” to teach the main character “The spirit gone, man is garbage.”) in quotation marks):
“I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word, in that I lived and worked undercover, overseas — pretending to work in a job that I’m not — and even being assigned a name that was not mine... What they are trying to do is that they are trying to use one position to distract from the totality of my experience, which is: I’ve worked for the Central Intelligence Agency – undercover, overseas, I’ve worked for the National Security Agency – undercover, overseas, and I’ve worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency as a lecturer at the joint counter-intelligence training,” “Edward Snowden” from RT
The article itself is not impressive. There are no new revelations from “Snowden” aside from his penchant for being filmed with a stanky Pam Anderson flag in various poses as artificial as any late night infomercial.
All Bamford is doing is trying to turn “Snowden” into either a bigger heel for those who wish to see him that way, or a bigger hero for the others.
The story is about “Snowden” doing exactly what he often claims he wants none of: being the center of attention.
Identity politics is a powerful weapon in the hands of skilled manipulators working for the masters of the universe. Just Google Obama’s approval ratings and you will see there are still a rather large number of pretend leftists who still swoon at the mere mention of his name while busily blaming republican law-makers for everything his administration has done to bring this country closer to all out fascism.
“Snowden” is a similar product designed to grease the skids in anticipation for the new CISPA looming around the corner and the complete privatization of the national security state.
This article is nothing more than a sappy sales pitch from Wired (Don’t Hate CISPA – Fix It) written by the NSA’s first manufactured whistle-blower James Bamford and produced in less than subtle fashion by Conde Nast’s premiere spin doctor. It is propaganda of the first order featuring a long time servant to the needs of the intelligence community.
You have to ask yourself “why now?” and with the new CISPA waiting in the wings to be approved for public consumption, the answer is painfully obvious.
I have been writing on this topic since day one and long ago came to the conclusion that “Edward Snowden” was a manufactured hero. I was one of the first to be labeled a “Snowden Truther” by Salon magazine.
Today, I rest my case, once again. You can tell a psyop by the company it keeps and by the ringing endorsements it garners along the way. We have duly exposed Glenn Greenwald as the “billionaire’s bitch” he is. And Ray McGovern flip-flopped on 9/11 Truth before supposedly going to Moscow to meet with “Snowden” and pose in pictures with him while giving him some kind of bullshit “whistle-blower” award.
Today we can add James “limited-hangout baby” Bamford to the “Snowden” psyop sideshow. I can’t wait til Jon Gold and Cindy Sheehan get in on the act.
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