James John Bell writes:

"Emblazoned within a circle, the words "Scientia Est Potentia"—knowledge is power—are inscribed underneath the familiar all-seeing-eye pyramid that dwarfs a round Earth, while bathing it in fiery light from its eyeball.No, this isn’t some rendition of the lidless eye of Sauron from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It is the logo for the government’s new Information Awareness Office (IAO). The IAO is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is probably best known for creating the infrastructure that became the Internet.

Historic Reruns

Within a month of the nation being attacked by terrorists, legislation that combated terrorism by suspending constitutional guarantees of free speech was championed by a popular leader. It was called the "Decree on the Protection of People and State," and it passed despite the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians. A new national agency was formed within a year that coordinated police and federal security. It consolidated unprecedented power under one leader. No, this is not President Bush’s newly won Department of Homeland Security—it was Hitler’s Office of Fatherland Security, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and Schutzstaffel, better known simply as the SS.

When a national emergency was provoked by a terrorist attack on the Reichstag building, Hitler used the ensuing public outcry to secure total power. Author Thom Hartmann writes, "And, perhaps most important, Hitler invited his supporters in industry into the halls of government to help build his new detention camps, his new military and his new empire, which was to herald a thousand years of peace. Industry and government worked hand-in-glove, in a new type of pseudo-democracy first proposed by Mussolini and sustained by war."

Big Brother’s ThinkPol

The newly formed Department of Homeland Security consolidates nearly two dozen federal agencies into one cabinet-level department with 170,000 employees and a $38 billion budget, making it the third largest after the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Republicans and Democrats championed the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (HR 5710), passing it in both the House of Representatives and Senate in mid November. It was signed by Bush on November 25 and now requires only 2003 budget approval for it to become fully operational.

The 484-page bill is the largest reorganization of the US government in more than half a century. Reading the White House documents explaining it is like peeling back the layers of an onion: "As this information is assembled, it is crucial to compile, simultaneously, information about the information so that homeland security officials understand what is available and where it can be found. This complements the effort to analyze the information with advanced ‘data-mining’ techniques to reveal patterns of criminal behavior and detain suspects before they act." The goal of the new department is to achieve what the US government terms "Total Information Awareness."

A Great Eye, Lidless

"Concealed within his fortress,
the Lord of Mordor sees all...
His gaze pierces clouds, shadow, Earth and flesh.
You know of what I speak, Gandalf.
A great eye, lidless."


"The eye of Sauron....."

Emblazoned within a circle, the words "Scientia Est Potentia"—knowledge is power—are inscribed underneath the familiar all-seeing-eye pyramid that dwarfs a round Earth, while bathing it in fiery light from its eyeball. No, this isn’t some rendition of the lidless eye of Sauron from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It is the logo for the government’s new Information Awareness Office (IAO). The IAO is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is probably best known for creating the infrastructure that became the Internet. (Editors note - the IAO logo was removed from the military site, no reasons given...)

The IAO’s mission is to "imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness useful for preemption, national security warning, and national security decision making." In plain language, the IAO is what makes that $38 billion eyeball all-seeing—"a virtual, centralized grand database."

Your subscription to Clamor, that Ed Abbey book you borrowed from the library, the class you audited on setting up computer firewalls, your 18-cent savings account, airfare to Tucson, food stamps, email, phone calls, website visits—these all can be monitored by the IAO under certain conditions as part of the new Department of Homeland Security.

The IAO is headed by John Poindexter, the national security adviser under President Reagan, who was embroiled in scandal for secretly selling missiles to Iran and illegally supporting contras in Nicaragua. In 1990, a jury convicted Poindexter on five felony counts of misleading Congress and making false statements. Congress ultimately gave him immunity.

Poindexter will be responsible for spending millions of dollars to compile a dossier on just about every American and foreign visitor. His IAO will be one part of a scientific research labyrinth: "Under the President’s proposal, the Department of Homeland Security will establish a laboratory—actually a network of laboratories—modeled on the National Nuclear Security Administration laboratories that provided expertise in nuclear weapon design throughout the Cold War." The IAO will utilize advanced technology to create information files about everything it can gather in its ultimate quest to search the past, monitor the present and predict the future.

IAO: Present, Past, Future

This is not the first appearance of the IAO. It has been estimated that, at one time, the ancient Library of Alexandria held more than half a million documents from Assyria, Greece, Persia, Egypt, India and many other nations. The librarian Hypatia was a master of all fields. She combined science, theology and mysticism into one body of work, whose purpose was the elucidation and understanding of all existence. Hypatia was instrumental in the development of the concept of IAO, the gnostic term for a formula that would explain all things. The IAO consisted of three words—a constantly mutable series of interactions between Iota, symbolizing the eternal present, Alpha, which represented the past creation of all things, and Omega, which was of course the end.

The 21st century’s version of the IAO will detect, identify, classify and track potential anti-government targets through advanced technological surveillance. The lidless eye in the IAO’s logo is always watching, listening and tracking the entire globe.

Two millennia ago, legend has it that Hypatia never achieved the IAO’s master formula—she was killed and the Library of Alexandria was burned by Muslim conquerors. Could today’s pyramid-adorned IAO be another attempt at this battle lost in the sands of the Middle East so long ago? It is the stuff of conspiracy—and there have been many, ever since the all-seeing-eye was printed on the dollar bill for the first time back in 1935. It’s interesting to note that around this same time, J.R.R. Tolkien began writing The Lord of the Rings and adorned Mordor with a similar all-seeing-eye.

So what should we make of this new behemoth of government snooping? Is it Hitler’s SS resurrected? Poindexter’s spy network? Secret societies at work through the ages? A manifestation of the eye of Sauron? The CIA and FBI’s wet dream? No.

In essence, the Bush administration has created a smokescreen to protect its past blunders and to cover future plans with unending levels of confusion and bureaucracy. One Pentagon insider recently said it best when he related a quote that has popped up on cubicle walls in Washington, DC:

"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."


From Petronii Arbitri Satyricon AD 66,
Attributed to Gaius Petronius, a Roman General who later committed suicide

Resources:

White House Office of Homeland Security


Homeland Security Act of 2002 (pdf download)

Information Awareness Office

James John Bell writes for the Earth First! Journal, Clamor, California Technology, Z Magazine, Earth Island Journal, and others. He is the editor of LastWizards.com. He is currently authoring the foreword for a reprinting of John Brunner’s classic industrial-apocalyptic science fiction novel, The Sheep Look Up.

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