Barton Gellman

I have a lot of interest in this topic. I have nothing to hide, but really find it offensive that the govt thinks they can spy on us. Book started off strong. loved the background of how Gellman first got involved with Snowden. The precautions he took to communicate were fascinating, as were the spy programs that were uncovered. However, in the second half of the book, I thought the author started wandering around a bit with some trivial things, like what the NSA program names were. Would have liked to hear about any harms that could be attributed to Americans about the spying. But the NSA - sheesh - they can spy on anything!… (más)

This was an excellent book, based on Barton Gellman's Pulitzer Prize winning 2008 investigations and writings on National politics. As a Washington Post writer, Mr. Gellman had access to many in Cheney's inner circle and the Bush White House to put together this informative description of the Vice President's role in setting the tone and direction of the Administration. We've seen political cartoons over the past eight years with Dick Cheney as the ventriloquist, pulling the strings and putting words into the mouth of the Bush puppet sitting on his knee. A harsh depiction, perhaps, but as this book shows, there were some reasons for how that view became popular. How much of that stereotype was true, and how much was false was hard to know, until this book became available. This book answers a lot of those questions. It truly filled in a lot of gaps in the my understanding of the inner workings of the Bush Administration. Cheney had widely been reported to be the most powerful Vice President in American history. Few, if any, recent books explore the dynamics between the President and Vice President. Gellman does, and paints a clear picture of Cheney and his power, consistent with everything we've heard and read over these past eight years. The book also talks of other key members of Cheney's team, like David Addington, who was so central to many of the more unpopular and controversial initiatives of the Bush years. Gellman also points out some of the few in the Administration who were able to stand up to the powerful Cheney / Addington team such as Deputy Attorney General James Comey. (Comey was acting Attorney General who did not give in to the pressure from the White House to sign off on "illegal" spying when Ashcroft was hospitalized). If you're interested in understanding how Bush, who entered the Office as a Candidate envisioning policies such as "compassionate Conservatism", limiting global-warming, being a Uniter, championing Education reform and limited government, and then seemed to evolve into one of the Nation's most unpopular chief executives, should find this book very interesting. As Steve Clemons in the American Conservative stated, this is "an indispensable volume without which the Bush Presidency can't be understood".

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The story of Edward Snowden and the information he revealed is fascinating on so many levels. I'm a big journalism junkie and I really enjoyed this look at the story from former Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman. I found Gellman to be very even handed, in the way real journalism needs to be, but not falling prey to false equivalencies. He gives a great tick-tock of the days after he is initially contacted by an anonymous source all the way through the beginnings of the publication of the leaked material. I found his portrayal of personalities to ring true, both with what I already know about all of them and just intuitively. Mr. Gellman is a veteran of this type of reporting and it shows. He is careful, meticulous, and exact in his wording. He also talks a lot of spying and security in the modern age and here again he gives both sides and refuses to fall into either the "ALL information must be free" or "Snowden is a traitor" camps. It is a very complex issue that cannot be reduced to a binary on or off analysis. I think this book is at its best when he is going through the timeline of receipt, analysis, and publication of the documents, that part reads like a very intelligent thriller. And it is real. There are important issues in this book and Mr. Gellman does a great job of presenting them in an interesting and understandable way. I know that nuance and considered thought is dead in our current society (see the freeDUMB protesters trying to open things up too fast) but Mr. Gellman delivers it wonderfully here.… (más)

Not just anyone could do it, but it doesn’t take super villain levels of capability to make it happen. All it would take is paying attention to how the system works, which is your job”



Edward Snowden to Barton Gellman in “Dark Mirror” by Barton Gellman



“The defining feature of Snowden’s young adulthood was a knack for breaking down problems, unpacking the parts, discerning how the innards worked, and shaping them to his will. He had an eye for hidden openings. It was a hacker’s frame of mind, in the classic sense, applicable as much to daily life as to machines. [...] automate a tedious task or substitute a more efficient one. Rewrite or repurpose any product, any process, if you can turn it yo your own ends. Share the recipe.”



In “Dark Mirror” by Barton Gellman





Me: “Anything to keep us safe. Anything. Please, feel free to trawl through my rubbish, to bug my bedroom, to tail me to work, to eavesdrop on my phone conversations, to peruse my emails. I have no idea what liberty is or whether I even deserve it but I know that my beautiful government only wants the best in this best of all possible worlds. My soul, my intellect, my integrity is nothing compared to the greater good. I am completely expendable and exist only to make life easier for the government who will do everything to protect me from threats left, right and center. I want them to scan me when I leave the house, when I get on the bus, when I enter the office, when I go to a sports match, when I go to a restaurant. I have neither the judgment nor the ability to know whether I am a threat to the general public. My thoughts, my words, my deeds must be recorded, registered, interpreted, sanctioned, filed, stored and preserved in the name of a liberty I am too ignorant to understand. The evil we face is simply beyond my limited immagination and I will accept any humiliation because I have learned that CIVIL LIBERTIES ARE WHAT MAKES TERRORISM POSSIBLE! and anyone who refuses to spy on his neighbours or sleep with one eye open IS A TRAITOR!!!!!”

NSA: “Indeed does your grammar needs constant attention and correction by the secret intelligence services. The word is not ‘immagination’ but ‘imagination’. Clearly a threat to the integrity of English literary heritage.”

Me: “I take my hat off to you, sir. You are just the sort of vigilant anti-terrorist that makes me proud to hand over my civil liberties without asking for anything in return. In fact, the double "m" was part of an encrypted message that I thought I had manage to pass on to the terrorists without the dozy on-line community noticing but I clearly hadn't reckoned upon the likes of you. I trust this will earn you the promotion you so richly reserve and if there is anything else I need to confess too, rest assured that I remain available for waterboarding at a moment's notice.”

Me: “That's it for me. I'm not using Google anymore, or the Internet. I've had enough of this vacuous nonsense. No more shall I sit in front of a laptop for hours wondering: what a load of bollocks I've been looking at. This will be the last post on here or anywhere for that matter. Have a nice day. Where the hell are my Signet classics?”

A few moments later.

Me: “Oh shit, I've just realised they will find my hamster video that I put online years ago to test this internet lark out. This is not going to go well for me when I'm acting totally bad ass in the interrogation room with the CIA and they put Fluffy on the projector.”… (más)