Who's watching now?

Via Avedon Carol, this piece is over a year old and in light of current events, it's all the more frightening as the editorial's predictions are being realized. Here's one particularly disturbing point.

On March 17, 2003 Bush hired “the former head of the KGB (the secret police of the former Soviet Union), General Yevgeni Primakov,” as a consultant to the US Department of Homeland Security.

Primakov joined another Russian, Oleg Kalugin, KGB (Ret) with the Department of State Security, also as a part of Homeland Security. On January 1, 2005 Kalugin was replaced with the infamous and sinister 'Silver Fox' himself (his former CIA code name), Gen. Markus Wolf. “Wolf was the head of the international intelligence gathering arm (HVA) of East Germany's Ministry for State Security (MfS), or Stasi. Under Wolf (1958 to 1987), Stasi ran a network of about 4,000 agents outside East Germany, infiltrating NATO headquarters and the administration of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt.”

’Stasi and Wolf, were best known for their network of informants inside East Germany. There were spies on every block, who would report "suspicious" activities back to Stasi headquarters.’ These talents are now part of Homeland Security where they oversee spying on American citizens. Initially, this area was a province of the FBI, who introduced “Carnivore” to accomplish it. This controversial program gave the agency access to the online/e-mail activities of suspected criminals. But Carnivore was officially abandoned in January 2005, for a new software program, in tandem with the recent appointments to Homeland Security so that between computer-communications monitoring, and citizen spies, the current government might more easily accomplish their illegal goals. Does this sound like America or like an American intelligence agency?

If you read the whole editorial, it sounds a little tin hattish. For instance, I'm somewhat put off that he's attributing a secret FEMA plan to Nixon when it was Carter who signed that executive order but I'm posting it anyway because I trust Avedon not to post nutcases. In any event, he puts together a sobering scenario that's worth thinking about.