72 percent of Americans believe NSA is blackmailing judges and members of Congress

Sunday, July 07, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: NSA spying, blackmail, Congress

(NaturalNews) Shortly after reports surfaced in early June that the NSA has been spying on Americans at home, President Obama attempted to put us at ease, telling us that the government "is not listening to your phone calls."

That, of course, has turned out to be a blatant lie, but one in which the president, inadvertently, gave away himself. In nearly the same breath he trying to convince us that his NSA isn't monitoring our phone calls (and other forms of electronic communication), the president defended the agency, saying his administration needed to "strike a balance" between protecting our constitutional rights to privacy and protecting the country.

Based on what we now know, "balance" to this president and a number of lawmakers who see no issues with the NSA's massive surveillance of Americans is a complete gutting of the Fourth Amendment.

In any case, most Americans weren't fooled by the BS doublespeak or the attempt at getting us to sign off on serial violations of the Fourth Amendment for the most flimsy of reasons. What's more, according to a new Rasmussen survey, nearly three quarters of Americans believe the NSA has been turned loose on government itself, using information it has gathered on judges, members of Congress and other high-ranking officials to blackmail them.

Americans aren't buying what our elected leaders and the bureaucrats are selling

"The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 72 percent of Likely U.S. Voters think it is at least somewhat likely that the NSA has monitored the private communications of Congress, military leaders and judges," said the survey. "That includes 45 percent who believe it is Very Likely."

That perception is bipartisan, Rasmussen noted. "Most Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters all think the NSA is likely to have monitored those in the other branches of the government. Most unaffiliated voters (56 percent) and those in the GOP (50 percent) consider it Very Likely. Thirty-two percent (32 percent) of those in President Obama's party (32 percent) share that view."

Granted, just because most Americans believe the NSA has done this doesn't make it true, but the way our elected leaders, as well as the unelected bureaucrats whose decisions directly affect our lives (and our freedoms), lie to us on a regular basis, any denials by Obama, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, or any other high-ranking administration official would fall on deaf ears.

We're just not buying what our leaders are selling anymore, as evidenced by other aspects of the Rasmussen survey.

"Just 30 percent 'trust the president, the Executive branch, Congress and federal judges to make sure the [surveillance] program is abiding by the Constitution,'" Rasumussen said. "Despite the president's assurance that 'nobody is listening to your telephone calls,' 68 percent believe it is likely that 'government agencies are listening in on private conversations of American citizens.'"

Says Rasmussen himself in his weekly newspaper column: "None of the public players comes off looking great in the NSA story. But there is now an opportunity for a healthy debate on the issue. It's not partisan. President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney are on the same side. The nation needs a serious discussion about what kind of oversight and protection is needed to honor the Constitution while still effectively fighting the terrorists who want to end our way of life."

Monitoring...Barack Obama?

Even more damning evidence came from former Bush Administration intelligence analyst Russ Tice, who turned whistleblower recently to claim in no uncertain terms that the NSA indeed has spied on some of the government's most powerful people, and has done so for years. That includes Barack Obama:

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... 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.

In an interview with Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI staffer and National Security Whistleblowers Coalition founder, Tice called the NSA a "rogue agency that has J. Edgar Hoover capabilities at a monstrous scale on steroids."

From the looks of the latest surveys, most Americans believe Tice.

See the article on NSA blackmail by NaturalNews founder Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, here: http://www.naturalnews.com

Sources for this article include:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://reason.com/blog/2013/06/21/did-the-nsa-spy-on-obama