House Democrats Call for Investigation

Now, thanks to the activists of anonymous, tens of thousands of emails, were leaked from H.B. Gary Federal that disclosed the work of team Themis. The Washington law firm, Hunt and Williams, working with three contractors to launch a disinformation campaign against enemies of the Chamber of Commerce. And then a separate project on behalf of Bank of America to hurt friends of WikiLeaks. Now, we report to that story when it first broke here on the show. But now, there's a group of House Democrats that have released a letter calling on Republican leaders to investigate the actions. The lawmakers say that it's deeply troubling. The tactics developed for use against terrorists may have been unleashed against American citizens. And now, I couldn't agree with them more, but considering that the Chamber of Commerce has been the largest spender in the country for lobbying specifically for Republican causes, what are the chances that we'll actually see an investigation come to light? Joining me is Jane Hampshire, founder of FiredogLake.com. Jane, thanks so much for joining us. First of all, are you surprised? I mean, can you believe the fact that some members of Congress out there actually calling for an investigation here? Quite frankly, I was shocked. Well, I was too, but I'm happy that they are. You know, if this is happening to progressives outside of Congress, that's probably happening to progressives inside of Congress too. What do you think the chances are that Republicans are going to go after something that their beloved Chamber of Commerce may have been involved in? I don't expect anybody will. I mean, you have to remember that the Justice Department says supposedly contacted Bank of America and told them to hire hunting and Williams to act as a buffer between them and these defense contractors. And that defense content, and that Justice Department is run by, you know, Eric Holder. So it probably isn't just a Republican thing. It's probably an institutional player thing. Everybody's battling for the Chamber's love in 2012. And I don't really think that anybody is going to be investigating this. But I'm glad that somebody's calling for it anyway. Now, I think that it's a good thing that we finally are hearing some calls for an investigation. Do you find it a little odd, though, that we're only hearing calls for an investigation when it comes to the Chamber of Commerce plot, and yet not the Bank of America plot, where they were going after supporters of WikiLeaks, or perhaps even journalists, people like Glenn Greenwald that were individually targeted? Absolutely. They were coming out basically in defense of the unions, and the charity targeting have changed to win SIEU. Think progress, and the institutional players and the Democratic side. But you know, they do bring up several things, and that are very interesting, that there were potentially laws broken here by hunting in Williams. Forgery, mail, and wire fraud, fraud related activities and connection with computers, the letter from Representative Hank Johnson said today lists several things that are very much worthy of investigation. And so, you know, that the interesting part about this is that hunting in Williams, if they are investigated, cannot claim attorney client privilege, because all of the people in all the companies involved have said they weren't representative by hunting in Williams. But so does that mean that they will have to talk about, you know, the other project too as well. And so, I'm saying the project with Bank of America to go after WikiLeaks, or only the Chamber of Commerce story here. Well, I don't think they're going to be investigated here. I mean, who's going to investigate? You know, in the 70s, we had the church commission, because Frank Church saw everything that happened, you know, with Richard Nixon and said, we need to look into this, and was, you know, mortified, and the strongest laws, some of the strongest laws we've had past came in the wake of that. There is no church commission today. There is no equivalent. There's nobody who would do that. Angela, Angela, these commission was supposed to study the financial meltdown on, and today, as we've heard on the Oscars, if no place else, you know, no financial big wigs have gone to jail. And Angela, these have said, well, we did our job, the Justice Department should do theirs. And that's not happening. So I don't see, you know, I'm frankly skeptical that the Justice Department will do anything here. But at a certain point, you reach critical mass. You know, these, these revelations keep happening. And it was done so casually in this presentation. the use of you know Department of Defense tactics that are used against terrorists we're planning they're planning to use against American citizens that you assume in the information age these things will keep coming out and at a certain point probably the public will demand that it be investigated yeah definitely are a lot of revelations coming out lately not only are you know the same tactics that are used against terrorist used against American people and American journalists now we have side-up teams using their tactics to perhaps manipulate American senators so nice to know what they're really up to I know that you and your team have been pouring through these tens of thousands of emails that came out from it to be Gary so what else have you found out there that we should know about it's a strange set of documents it's really a cross section it's like somebody took a frozen section from a finger and is trying to extrapolate what the rest of the body looks like but it's a it's a world that we never see the sort of conversations that members of the defense industrial complex have amongst themselves and they all sort of seem like a bunch of adequate children with just too much money at their disposal they're you know plotting and planning all of the spivers is spy stuff amongst themselves and it's just it's kind of remarkable at Aaron Bar at the head of HP Gary federal resigned yesterday I believe in order to try and salvage the rest of the company but I don't think that anybody who reaps through them will ever look at these guys again they're not master spies these guys were the people who you know are in charge of national security and you know protecting computers I think believe they had some of their software and solid least for test purposes on the White House system and they were hacked by a 16 year old girl who just you know got them to admit to give up their what their password is so I think we should be looking all very skeptically at the way the defense department is running through money and and nothing else be extremely skeptical of the claim that we need to solve because of the threat of terror. All right, Dana I want to thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much.