NSA Leaks Army Public Affairs Took on Hot Shows

Army Docs Show Interest in 'American Idol,' 'X Factor': 'Good Possibility It Will Be a Ratings Hit'
Billboard.com
By Marc Schneider
July 31, 2015

It doesn’t exactly rise to the level of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks, but a new batch of Pentagon documents showing the military’s keen interest in Hollywood has still raised a few eyeballs. A recent FOIA request by SpyCulture.com’s Tom Secker produced about 1,400 pages of documents from the U.S. Army’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs (OCPA-West) -- which acts as a liaison between the entertainment industry and the Army.

Unsurprisingly, the documents show highly organized efforts by the military to cultivate positive relationships with Hollywood studios in the making of films and television. Some of the data is essentially a spreadsheet of ongoing projects, like a request to allow Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe to shoot footage at Fort Hood, or noting that several non-commissioned officers had just appeared on Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen.

In another document, the Army seemed genuinely bummed at the ouster of a season 10 American Idol contestant who was also a PSYOP (psychological operations) specialist based out of Fort Bragg. “Unfortunately she was voted off the show late last week during filming in Hollywood,” the entry said. The singer-soldier’s name is redacted and the Army goes on to list several positives of the show, such as ratings and international reach. Idol even visited Fort Bragg to “tape her participating in an airborne operation and to shoot interviews with her.”
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From Spyculture

This is only one branch of the US military, the Army. The Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard and National Guard all have their own Entertainment Liaison Offices. While the Army is perhaps the busiest in terms of involvement in the entertainment industry, we can be confident that the scale of the overall DOD involvement is at least double the size of what these Army documents reveal. I have filed requests with the Navy and the Marine Corps for similar reports but so far no luck.

Today the Daily Mirror (technically their Sunday paper the Sunday People) published an article mentioning these documents but failing to mention my name. To be clear, I submitted the request as the result of conversations with academic Matt Alford, who pressed the Mirror into publishing the article. As per usual, you can’t trust the mainstream media to get a story straight.

Fort Meade NSA Police Officer Hospitalized After Strange Event

One shot dead at Fort Meade after trying to enter NSA gate 
CNN
By Jim Sciutto, Evan Perez and Ashley Fantz
March 31, 2015

Story highlights Two people tried to enter the main gate to enter the headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade. One died at the scene, and another was wounded, the NSA says.

(CNN)The FBI publicly identified Tuesday the man who died Monday while trying to use an unauthorized vehicle tried to gain access to the National Security Agency campus in Fort Meade, Maryland, as Ricky Shawatza Hall.

His passenger who remained hospitalized Tuesday has not been publicly identified. On Monday morning, Hall attempted to gain entry at the National Security Agency headquarters, Jonathan Freed, NSA director of strategic communications, said in a statement.

"The driver failed to obey an NSA Police officer's routine instructions for safely exiting the secure campus. The vehicle failed to stop and barriers were deployed." NSA police on the scene fired on the vehicle when it accelerated toward a police car, blocking its way, according to the NSA.

An NSA police officer was also hospitalized but not identified.

The two men who officials say tried to ram the main gate at NSA headquarters were dressed as women, according to a federal law enforcement official.

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NSA wiretapped Obama in 2004, proves congress is grandstanding again

Russ Tice, Bush-Era Whistleblower, Claims NSA Ordered Wiretap Of Barack Obama In 2004
The Huffington Post
By Nick Wing
Posted: 06/20/2013

Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst who in 2005 blew the whistle on what he alleged was massive unconstitutional domestic spying across multiple agencies, claimed Wednesday that the NSA had ordered wiretaps on phones connected to then-Senate candidate Barack Obama in 2004.

Speaking on "The Boiling Frogs Show," Tice claimed the intelligence community had ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats.

"Here's the big one ... this was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois," he said. "You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It's a big white house in Washington, D.C. That's who they went after, and that's the president of the United States now."
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