Ronald Kessler Quotes
When I was doing interviews at the FBI, my tape recorder battery died. They gave me a new one, and I said, 'Of course, this is bugged?'
Kessler, Ronald. Interview by Brian Lamb. Q&A, C-SPAN, 7 Aug. 2011.
Douglas’ sarcastic dissent in the California Bankers Association case:
Responding to suggestions that with the demise of the Berlin Wall the spying business will come to a halt: John Moore Cornwell
The FBI director had become so powerful and unchecked by Congress or the President he used the FBI to assemble files on those whom he wanted including political figures. On many occasions he used these for various forms of blackmail, never for money, but to solicit compliance or support or obtain silence or cessation of opposition to positions he favored—especially the prerogatives of the FBI.
Jones constantly told King and other associates that the FBI was tapping their telephone conversations. Senator Joseph McCarthy was a right wing paranoid who imagined communists throughout the government. Jones turned out to be right. During that period, the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the FBI was listening, recording, and transcribing, every single phone call to or from King including the conference calls and calls with his attorney. FBI Director received frequent briefings on what King and his associates were doing. Although he ordered the wiretaps, it was Robert F. Kennedy, then the Attorney General, who had to approve them.
Major leaks made public the fact that the NSA was hacking into the European and other foreign servers of Google, Microsoft and other technology companies and vacuuming up 500 million internet communications every day. (It would be illegal for them to do this in the United States, but via the outside USA servers they capture the information of US Citizens sending E-mail within the United States. The reaction of many foreign government was outrage as their citizen’s private communications were being captured as well. They began to take steps to curtain their country’s high utilization of American company data storage and transmission and regulate the American firms much more extensively. So American company business and profits were damaged by the NSA surveillance programs which the companies did not know about.
Ronald Borek Kessler is an American journalist and author of 21 non-fiction books about the White House, U.S. Secret Service, FBI, and CIA.
