Latest Display of American Cowardice Cinches Any Doubt - Thanks to the Preocons.
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: Latest Display of American Cowardice Cinches Any Doubt -
Thanks to the Preocons.
Date: Apr 16, 2010 11:46 AM
GREENWALD ARTICLE BELOW ON WHISTLEBLOWERS
====================================
Yes. That's why we know that whenever
anyone commits any kind of lie or deception,
the operant principle is cowardice.
While once the neocons and the preocons
(Kissinger, Strauss, Kristol Senior)
thought Americans were wussies, their
solution to the problem - all these illegal
spy games - made the concept concrete to
other nations.
Ohyeah, they get real mad at ya when ya
expose their lies. That's their sign. That's
who they're working for.
ALL of them. EVERY LAST LIAR; doesn't matter
if the liar is a pinhead like my sister
http://www.actionlyme.org/Hilarious.htm
or the head of DMHAS:
http://www.actionlyme.org/PHILLIPS_AND_MARCUS_PERJURY.htm
You know- the guy who said I was
"VERY INTELLIGENT, *DANGEROUSLY*!! INTELLIGENT!!"
Or these kinds of idiots:
http://www.actionlyme.org/STEPFORD_WIVES_CRITIQUE_LYME_DOT_ORG.htm
the evil ^^^ witches who give orders
to the Greenwich Stepford Wives.
Same look. Same expression. Same
response. Same etiology.
Now anyone who doubted America was a stinking,
lying, vile pile of wussery drapped in scarlet
and violent, well,... now this. A celebration
of American Cowardice.
Kathleen M. Dickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
==========================================
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/16-3
Published on Friday, April 16, 2010 by Salon.com
What the Whistleblower Prosecution Says About the Obama DOJ
by Glenn Greenwald
The more I think and read about the Obama DOJ's prosecution of NSA
whistleblower Thomas Drake, the more I think this might actually be
one of the worst steps the Obama administration has taken yet, if not
the single worst step -- and that's obviously saying a lot. During
the Bush years, in the wake of the NSA scandal, I used to write post
after post about how warped and dangerous it was that the Bush DOJ was
protecting the people who criminally spied on Americans (Bush, Cheney
Michael Hayden) while simultaneously threatening to prosecute the
whistle-blowers who exposed misconduct. But the Bush DOJ never
actually followed through on those menacing threats; no NSA whistle-
blowers were indicted during Bush's term (though several were
threatened). It took the election of Barack Obama for that to happen,
as his handpicked Assistant Attorney General publicly boasted
yesterday of the indictment against Drake.
Aside from the indefensible fact that only crimes committed by high-
level Bush officials -- but nobody else -- enjoy the benefits of
Obama's "Look Forward, Not Backward" decree, think about the interests
being served by this prosecution. Most discussions yesterday
suggested that Drake's leaks to The Baltimore Sun's Sibohan Gorman
were about waste and mismanagement in the "Trailblazer" project rather
than controversial NSA spying activities, but that's not entirely
accurate.
Just consider this May 18, 2006, article by Gorman, describing how and
why the NSA opted for the "Trailblazer" proposal over the privacy-
protecting "Thin Thread" program, in the process discarding key
privacy protections designed to ensure that the NSA would not
eavesdrop on the domestic calls of U.S. citizens (h/t ondelette). In
that article -- which really should be read to get a sense for the
whistle-blowing that is being punished by the DOJ -- Gorman described
at length how then-NSA head Michael Hayden rejected technologies that
could "rapidly separate and encrypt U.S.-related communications to
ensure privacy" and "that monitored potential abuse of the records."
As she put it: "Once President Bush gave the go-ahead for the NSA to
secretly gather and analyze domestic phone records -- an authorization
that carried no stipulations about identity protection -- agency
officials regarded the encryption as an unnecessary step and rejected
it."
It's not hyperbole to say that Bush's decision to use the NSA to spy
domestically on American citizens was one of the most significant
stories of this generation. It was long recognized that turning the
NSA inward was one of the greatest dangers to freedom, as Sen. Frank
Church warned back in 1975, after he investigated America's secret
surveillance apparatus: "That capability at any time could be turned
around on the American people and no American would have any privacy
left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone
conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place
to hide." It was, of course, the December 16, 2005, New York Times
article by Jim Risen and Eric Lichtblau which first disclosed that the
Bush NSA was illegally eavesdropping on American citizens inside the
U.S., but Gorman's articles regarding the Trailblazer program -- in
the time period covered by the indictment, using NSA sources (almost
certainly including Drake) -- provided crucial details about how and
why the Bush NSA dispensed with key safeguards to protect innocent
Americans from such invasive domestic surveillance.
And then there's the massive fraud and waste which Gorman also exposed
as a result of Drake's whistle-blowing. The primary focus of her
stories was that the Trailblazer project turned into a massive,
billion-dollar "boondoggle" which vastly exceeded its original
estimates, sucked up enormous amounts of the post-9/11 intelligence
budget explosion, and produced very little of value. But look at the
coalition of corporations which was contracted to develop this
Trailblazer project, the familiar cast of Surveillance State interests
who were the recipients of the "boondoggle" which Gorman and Drake
exposed:
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) today
announced a contract award from the National Security Agency to be the
provider of the technology demonstration platform phase of the
TRAILBLAZER program.
The TDP phase of the TRAILBLAZER program is currently estimated at
$280 million and will be performed over a period of 26 months.
The NSA selected the SAIC-led Digital Network Intelligence
Enterprise team that includes Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton,
The Boeing Company, Computer Sciences Corporation and SAIC wholly-
owned subsidiary Telcordia Technologies to contribute to the
modernization of the NSA's signals intelligence capabilities.
SAIC itself is, by its own description, an enormous defense contractor
devoted to "customers in the U.S. Department of Defense, the
intelligence community, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,
other U.S. Government civil agencies and selected commercial
markets." Just like its Trailblazer partners -- Boeing, Booz Allen
and Northrop Grumman -- SAIC feeds off the massive Pentagon and
intelligence budgets. In other words, Drake's leaks to Gorman exposed
serious wrongdoing on the part of (a) the NSA and its illegal domestic
spying activities and (b) the vast private intelligence and defense
industry that has all but formally merged with the CIA, NSA and
Pentagon to become the public-private National Security and
Surveillance State that exercises more power, by far, than any single
faction in the country.
Think about to whose interests the Obama DOJ is devoted given that --
while they protect the most profound Bush crimes based on the
Presidential decree of "Look Forward, Not Backward" -- they chose this
whistle-blower to prosecute (and Drake, incidentally, is apparently
impoverished, as he's been assigned a Public Defender to represent
him). In the process, of course, the Obama DOJ also intimidates and
deters future whistle-blowers from exposing what they know, thus
further suffocating one of the very few remaining mechanisms Americans
have to learn about what takes place behind the virtually impenetrable
Wall of Secrecy surrounding the Surveillance State -- a Wall of
Secrecy which the Obama administration, through its promiscuous use of
"state secrets" and immunity claims, has relentlessly fortified and
expanded. Anyone who doubts that whistle-blower prosecutions like
this are intended to prevent any further disclosures of wrongdoing
should simply review the 2008 Pentagon report which identified
WikiLeaks as a major threat to the U.S. and proposed that exposure and
prosecution of their sources would crush their ability to obtain
further leaks.
It's true that leaking classified information is a crime. That's what
makes whistleblowers like Drake so courageous. That's why Daniel
Ellsberg -- who literally risked his liberty in an effort to help end
the Vietnam War -- is one of the 20th Century's genuine American
heroes. And if political-related crimes were punished equally, one
could accept whistle-blower prosecutions even while questioning the
motives behind them and the priorities they reflect. But that's not
the situation that prevails.
Instead, here you have the Obama DOJ in all its glory: no
prosecutions (but rather full-scale immunity extended) for war crimes,
torture, and illegal spying. For those crimes, we must Look Forward,
Not Backward. But for those poor individuals who courageously blow
the whistle on oozing corruption, waste and illegal surveillance by
the omnipotent public-private Surveillance State: the full weight of
the "justice system" comes crashing down upon them with threats of
many years in prison.
UPDATE: John Cole, proving once again that one can be an enthusiastic
Obama admirer without reflexively excusing and justifying everything
he does, writes today:
The message is clear- you torture people and then destroy the
evidence, and you get off without so much as a sternly worded letter.
If you are a whistle blower outlining criminal behavior by the
government, [] you get prosecuted.
Cole is referring to the revelation today that, once he learned it was
done, then-CIA-Director Porter Goss approved of the destruction of CIA
interrogation videos (an act which the co-Chair of the 9/11
Commissions said constituted an obstruction of justice), and the
message Cole describes is exactly the one being sent by the Drake
prosecution.
Copyright ©2010 Salon Media Group, Inc.
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights
litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times
Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush
administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His
second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci