Is The CIA Stealing The Colorado Senate Race?

No one can understand how such a weak sad sack candidate like Cory Gardner can be beating one of the Senate's true civil liberties champions. Colorado voters (and non-voters) are probably not seeing that Mark Udall is one of the only bastions left in the entire Congress standing in the way of a profound CIA takeover of the entire government. I know, I know... it sounds paranoid. That's how the CIA want it to sound. But if you don't think the CIA is willing and capable to move against Udall in Colorado, you don't know anything about the history of the CIA. This is one of the most venal-- and anti-democracy-- institutions to ever rise to power anywhere. The KGB, the Gestapo, the Mossad and Shin Bet, Pakistan's ISI, China's Ministry of State Security, and Egypt's General Intelligence Service don't have anything on the CIA.

The CIA assassinated several heads of state, worked with the Mafia, spied on American politicians, ran vicious campaigns against domestic groups from Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Urban League to anti-war groups and even experimented on innocent Americans with drugs, killing at least one. You think they wouldn't do everything in their power to replace a man like Udall with a worm like Gardner?

Yesterday, The Hill wondered aloud why the tech industry wasted so much money on 100% safe corporate whore Cory Booker while nearly ignoring Udall's race.

Critics of government surveillance say the tech industry made a major blunder in its midterm election giving.

While the industry showered cash on Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a candidate in no danger of losing in November, they provided nearly half as much financial backing to Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), one of the fiercest opponents of National Security Agency spying.

With Udall now fighting for his political life, some are questioning why the tech industry didn’t mount an all-hands-on-deck effort to help him.

“I would like to see the tech industry make more noise about this issue of surveillance, because they are losing money every day these programs are allowed to continue,” American Civil Liberties Union Washington office Director Laura Murphy told The Hill in a recent interview.

“If they don’t see fixing this problem as an emergency, I just don’t get it,” she added. “I would’ve thought that the tech industry would’ve been more involved with Udall’s race.”

Silicon Valley has warned that American surveillance programs are costing companies billions of dollars and eroding trust in their brands.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation-- an industry-associated think tank-- has estimated that the U.S. cloud computing industry could lose up to $35 billion over the next few years because of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency. Forrester Research, an advisory firm, pegged the number closer to $180 billion.

“The simplest outcome [of continued American spying] is we’re going to end up breaking the Internet,” Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt warned in a discussion with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in Silicon Valley earlier this month.

“The costs of that are huge.”

Along with Wyden, Udall has been the Senate’s strongest critic of those spying programs. He has pushed for strong rules to prohibit the NSA’s “back door” searches of Americans using a law meant to target foreigners, among other measures.

As a member of the Intelligence Committee, Udall is one of the privileged few lawmakers with access to secret details of spy agencies’ operations.

Yet he is in one of the toughest races for the Senate and might lose his seat in just over a week. His opponent, Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) has led by a small margin in every single poll this month.

Tech companies have not been a major force in that race, and it could cost them.

It could cost all of us... a lot.