The Noble Lie

In 2007, some of the most frightening testimony I've ever seen given to Congress was given by James Comey, who was a longtime veteran of the Justice Department and acting Attorney General when John Ashcroft was hospitalized. His testimony involves an incident in 2004, when he refused to certify the legality of a top-secret spy program, a race through DC to pressure the hospitalized and heavily-medicated Ashcroft (who was recovering from surgery) to get him to certify the spy program, and a tense, frightening confrontation with Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card in Ashcroft's hospital room. Though it didn't receive the necessary legal certification, the program continued anyway, so Comey resigned from the Justice Department.

One of the likely candidates for the program which Comey refers to is the Continuity of Government program code-named Main Core (read Cryptogon write-up), which is an illegal, unconstitutional database of intelligence and financial data on at least 8 million Americans (~2.6 in 100), collected and accessed without warrant or court order which has been in operation since at least the 1980s. Main Core is based on an incredibly powerful database-integration package, PROMIS, which I first read about in Michael Ruppert's "From the Wilderness."