Spy at White House. Plame indictment soon. Wait....something stinks here

[LynneSin]

Come on, there is major computer technology available that can track what people are downloading and prevent you from getting into restricted areas. I know we have it at work and I would suspect whatever we use, the government probably has 200% better (And I work in the Credit Card Industry).

I'm reading all over the front page of DU about how Rove is being distanced from Bush and how indictments will soon come out. And suddently right before the 6:30 evening news BAM!!! spy found in the White House.

I'm not buying it. Code Oranges threats aren't affecting the news anymore so we need a new story. This is it - this is the "CRY WOLF" story to distract the mainstream media from the fact that something major is going to come out about the Plame incident.

[seemslikeadream]

1. Why not the Franklin story?

HE'S AN AMERICAN SPY!!!!

HE PLEAD GUILITY TODAY

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4981345

[H2O Man]

16. Right.

This is part of the Plame case, though being investigated by McNulty. This case has been explained in great detail on Plame threads for over a year.

[KoKo]

20. It's kind of "old news." Did the Cables have a big story tonight about

Franklin? So far he seems to be only and "internet" story amonst the more Left Wing Blogs. :shrug: What did I miss? Who had headline about "Spy in the White House" today?

[bloom]

2. It does sound very Rovian... eom

[Moochy]

3. How can this be good for them?

You know how can this be good for the WH.
I dont buy that its some "distraction."

[Parche]

4. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME

You may be right, you may be crazy, but it just might be a lunatic
(In the WhiteHouse) you are looking for.

[tlsmith1963]

28. Billy Joel Lyric?

"You may be right, I may be crazy" is from a Billy Joel song. Caught your reference! :)

Tammy

[WritingIsMyReligion]

29. Yup, that's Joel...

From, well, "You May Be Right," I do think... ;)

"Friday night I crashed your party
Saturday I said I'm sorry
Sunday came and did it all again..."

I love Billy Joel!

[flowomo]

5. "whatever we use, the government probably has 200% better"

nah. Four years after 9/11 and the CIA still doesn't have a top-notch computer system. Forget the James Bond stuff -- think bureaucracy.

[LynneSin]

6. Even if they have 200% less than what we have it's still good

Something is really fishy. And if this guy was doing it for 3 years that puts him back to the start of the war. Now this comment might be a tight :tinfoilhat: but what if the spy leaked Plame's name?

[Moochy]

7. agreed, from personal experience

Having worked on software for goverment clients, I can say that there are some staggeringly old components still being used in the IT infrastructure of the bureacracy of these United States.

Also, I cant determine if the spy downloaded the documents from inside the WH. But yes, well designed firewalls, proxys, and logs should all be able to catch most of this kind of thing, the amatueruish email-using spy.

[McKenzie]

11. can't agree flowomo

For example, there is a proggie known as "PROMIS" that uses artificial intelligence to track stock market trading in real time by comparing, and integrating, various databases in different languages. It's an incredibly sophisticated proggie.

It seems quite likely, therefore, that the software they run for other applications is equally powerful stuff. Even a simple packet sniffer can be run by ANY sysadmin on a network to suss if any given work station is running in "promiscuous mode", for example, and hack attempts such as log/pass anomalies can be flagged up immediately if the failed attempts are set to 1-3 before the sysadmin is alerted. If we can run simple packet sniffers, key loggers and so on you can bet govt networks have better software...there are proggies that even log simple data transfers to removeable media/print-outs on a database.

Don't want to say much more but computer use is easy to monitor with the right software.

[Kingofalldems]

8. Lame attempt at distraction

Must be some HUGH indictments coming.

[stillcool]

9. and from the Phillipines?....

stinky, stinky. Me no go.

[pecwae]

10. He was arrested last month

but doesn't say 'when' last month. Nice to have a misdirection in your pocket when you really need it.

[truebrit71]

12. Unfortunately for them I think this will backfire on them..

...all of the D.C. buzz is about impending indictments, a 30-day old arrest announced the week when the administration is about to get castrated smells to holy hell....

[Straight Shooter]

13. I'm trying to recall the last time they held onto something until needed.

It was sort of this same situation, where the proverbial sh*t was just about ready to hit the fan and then -- poof! -- out of nowhere came news of the "Look, something shiny" variety. Then we found out that the incident and arrest had occurred at least a month before. Made all of us DU'ers suspicious about the timing, just like in this case.

Damn, damn, what was it? Anybody remember?

[LynneSin]

17. Previously they'd do a Code Orange or release some fake terrorist video

remember that one video the released looked like some white kid with a scarf wrapped around him. ANd we all know that Code Orange means "WOLF WOLF WOLF WOLF WOLF.........nah just kidding"

[Straight Shooter]

19. Right, that was a definite pattern of response when they felt threatened.

But I know there was a very specific incident similar to this. I just can't remember the details and who was involved.

I suppose we have to bomb the Phillipines now :sarcasm:

[Check12]

24. Perhaps the infamous OBL video 2 weeks before

the election? They could have easily held on to that one. Have you noticed, no more videos since? by the way did they ever catch the anthrax perpetrators? These guys are going down in history as americas most despicable traitors. Don't bend over to pick up the soap Karl

Haa!

[tanyev]

25. Didn't the Dan Rather/TANG documents story

break right before something else big, but not as easily grasped?

[Straight Shooter]

26. The Rather incident prevented CBS from airing something else.

I think it had to do with Abu Ghraib, but I'm not sure. There has been so much crap out of this administration with their bob and weave techniques. I was just thinking the other day that since the election we haven't heard from Osama and the beheadings against foreigners in Iraq seem to have stopped.

The incident I'm thinking of, however, closely parallels this one. I dunno. Like I said, there's just been soooo many distractions whenever it starts to hit the fan.

[brettdale]

14. The spy thing seems to be dying

On the web, it hasnt gotton much coverage by the MSM.

[donkeyotay]

15. Anything bad coming out of Cheney's office

was this fellow. Not Libby or Dick or Rove or any other. Just this fellow... and it's Gore's fault.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

18. You never heard of the FBI's failed "Carnivore" internet tracker?

I suspect that's one of a whole line of broken monitoring stuff used by the government. They typically pay a company a gazillion bucks to develop the stuff, then find out it's so badly built that it's useless.

The White House's computer system is probably in the same shape- remember how they had the repubs and democrats putting their stuff on the same server, only to find out the repubs were reading all the democrat's stuff? Happened about a year or so ago, and I doubt if things have improved.

[CabalPowered]

23. I would actually argue the opposite of broken systems..

I play the role of top geek at our company and I think that if secrets were being passed to the Philippines, SOMEBODY knew it was happening.

When we migrated to a more robust email platform, the first thing I did was setup two catch-all accounts. Think of them as a global Inbox and Outbox. I have access to every email being sent and received on our system. Immediately. I also spend a good portion of my day spot-checking emails, both for compliance and information gathering.

We can reasonably assume that the WH has at least this same functionality. We should also consider that this WH has made secrecy a top priority. It then should not to be a stretch to assume that the WH has a person or team directed at monitoring every piece of communication, in and out of their email system. Or in addition, the NSA doing some type of caching of emails.

One workaround the WH system would be a free email account. I would surely hope that the WH has Yahoo, GMail, Hotmail, etc all blocked at the router level. If they don't then they should be charged with dereliction of duty.

[Kadie]

21. The spy is the leak!

Yeh, That's the ticket...


:sarcasm:


Wonder how they plan on using this to their advantage.

[Kablooie]

22. This was news back in SEPTEMBER!

http://www.newsflash.org/2004/02/hl/hl102815.htm

[wishlist]

27. I don't see any mention of him spying in White House in newsflash article

The arrest was reported back in Sept but apparently a White House connection was not revealed then?