“TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS”
by Thierry Meyssan
The US Congress refused to pass a global scale social control project: the TIA program (Total Information Awareness). The army has not welcomed this, and American admiral John M. Poindexter’s reaction has been well known. However, this program, which will not respect borders or private lives, has been delegated to the Pentagon and its various defense departments for its implementation.
VOLTAIRE NETWORK | 18 NOVEMBER 2002 ![]()
Since several years ago, this agency changed its name and has become the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - DARPA On February 2002, Donald Rumsfeld allocated 200 million dollars additional to the initial budget to create two new offices: Information Exploitation Office - IEO and Information Awareness Office - IAO.IEO is aimed at identifying the armed forces’ targets and program rocket engines and smart munitions to destroy them. This agency currently programs all kinds of weapons to strike 15 000 targets in Iraq in two weeks.
IAO is an investigation agency that improves software packages to observe individuals’ behavior all over the world, identify suspects, analyze them and locate potential terrorists. However, such programs include an experimental phase. So this office is meant to become an intelligence agency, maybe the most powerful in the world.Since IAO is not a branch, the appointment of its director is not subjected to Congress. That is why Donald Rumsfeld appointed Admiral John Poindexter IAO director.
John Poindexter, an outstanding officer, graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958, and was ranked major upon completion of the studies. President Ronald Reagan made him vice admiral and was appointed later as National Security Adviser (1983 - 1986). He introduced new technologies to the White House, especially safe videoconferences, and extended powers to the Pentagon in terms of electronic surveillance (National Security Decision Directive 145).
He was exceptionally disloyal to his country and the main architect of Irangate, a huge international movement of firearms that violated the Congress laws and had no approval by the President. To free 7 hostages detained by Hezbollah, Admiral Poindexter and his deputy lieutenant colonel Oliver North, sold weapons to Iran through Israel. This operation was funded by another organization involved in arms dealing, but this time the weapons were for the Nicaraguan right wing, the Contras.
A great part of it was paid with cocaine. On June 11, 1990, after many years of investigation, Poindexter was found guilty of«conspiracy, obstruction of the course of justice and destruction of evidence» and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. The sentence was overruled by a higher jurisdiction due to technicalities in statements from witnesses, but the Supreme Court declined to review the process.
In addition to his trials in the United States, in 1989, the Costa Rican government filed a lawsuit against him for being the main cocaine dealer in the country, but he was never tried in Costa Rica. During the last few years, John Poindexter has been the vice-president of Syntek Technologies Company, near the Pentagon, and led the design of the Genoa software, which is to explore illegally the most important computer databases.
IAO, whose slogan is “Science is Power”, designed his symbol based on the American bill. The entity is made up by 8 main groups:
• Genysis - makes compatible all the information gathered from all public databases around the world, regardless of software support.
• Genoa II - continues developing the program Genoa I to illegally explore computer databases.
• TIDES - performs automatic translations into English from all languages of the world. Director: Charles Wayne. • Evidence extraction and links discovery - EELD - to go through the information gathered based on the improved data-mining methods. Director: Ted Senator.
• EARS - turns intercepted voice communications into written text. Director: Charles Wayne.
• Biovigilance - gathers information that might indicate dispersion of biological agents. Director: Ted Senator.
• Human Identification at Distance - HID - develops biometric procedures, especially identification of suspects in a crowd through smart cameras.
• War Gaming the Asymmetric Environment - WAE - Director: Larry Wills.
These 8 agencies have come together to create the greatest social control system ever imagined -Total Information Awareness: the Pentagon plans to gather information, legal or illegally, from all possible computer databases, public or private, American or foreigner.It is aimed at putting together all gathered information through interception, mainly ECHELON, and to process them as per the methods derived from commercial marketing to identify suspects, potential terrorists and strike them timely. Admiral Poindexter feels that the program will be operational within 3 or 5 years, but many experts doubt that all technical problems can be solved in such a short period of time.
IAO has already hired Syntek engineers to speed up the investigations and signed subcontracting agreements with SAIC and Raytheon.TIA is already operational and its legalization was submitted to Congress when passing the bill on the Homeland Security. For the first time, the US Congress should comment on a global intelligence system, at world level, that monitors either the US territory or the rest of the world, Americans and foreigners, but also, and above all, «private life», which has already no sense.
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Source : “The Eye of the Pentagon”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 18 November 2002, www.voltairenet.org/article30069.html