Thomas Drake Interview - Transcripts - Series of Five (5)

Espionage Act Case USA (One of Few) Thomas Drake US Air Force / short stint CIA  /  US Navy veteran ex NSA / computers / whistleblower   "I flew in RC-135s, listening in on the Warsaw Pact. I became--the target country in which I became an expert as a crypto linguist was East Germany." " ... says he was targeted by the NSA because he exposed that the agency had intel that could have prevented the 9/11 attacks and because he blew the whistle on a massive secret surveillance program aimed at Americans -   August 2, 2015" "In 2010 the government alleged that he 'mishandled' documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. His defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project."  [therealnews] Transcript Interview #1 - http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14393 Transcript Interview #2 - http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14395 Transcript Interview #3 - http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14399 Transcript Interview #4 - http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14405 Transcript Interview #5 - http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14423 ---------------------- ꕤ  ---------------------- SUMMARY Part 1 NSA Key stakeholder = Congress, particularly the intelligence committees   Raised objections to NSA having knowledge re  9/11 & not making use of that knowledge to prevent 9/11 Objections internal - then public. Waste of multibillion-dollar mass surveillance program / he thought violated the Fourth Amendment USA - dragnet electronic surveillance indicted whistleblower  /  no prison NSA - had 9/11 knowledge  / at issue what NSA actually knew what they should have known what they didn't share what they kept hidden info they never even discovered until later   "I consider NSA quite culpable.  ... extraordinarily culpable. And they've been covering up their culpability ever since" *NSA did not not share intel properly with national command authorities massive multibillion-dollar fraud   mass surveillance regime put into place in the deepest of secrecy NSA didn't like Drake 'speaking truth to power" - witness various investigations. 2007 FBI raid of house and office (National Defence University). Indictment   "I was very publicly indicted on a ten felony count indictment, five under the Espionage Act, facing 35 years in prison." April 2010 was an exciting month: April 5th, 2010 - here WikiLeaks releases Collateral Murder video April 15, 2010 - here Thomas Drake indicted "DRAKE:  My eyes were wide open coming into NSA. Some people have this idea that somehow I was naive coming into NSA. In fact, I was actually--my sanity was questioned as to whether or not I really wanted to join NSA. JAY: And your first day of the NSA is actually 9/11. DRAKE: First day I reported. I actually took the oath prior. It was all in processing. But the first day that I reported to my new job was the morning of 9/11." Post 9/11 US govt operating in equivalent of secret marital law "verbal authority from the White House, authorizing NSA to start spying on the U.S. on an extraordinary scale, starting with phone numbers and special arrangements of certain telephone companies, starting with AT&T" " ... eyewitness to the subversion of the Constitution. " Oath to defend "Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic." [NSA] "... had what they call cast-iron coverage on the Yemeni switchboard, the safe house. They'd been monitoring that safe house since at least 1996. It's an absolute lie of the U.S. government to say that we didn't know about the two hijackers in San Diego, for example. Absolute lie." "... when confronted with the prospect of fessing up, NSA chose instead to obstruct the 9/11 congressional investigation, play dumb, and keep the truth buried, including the fact that it knew about all inbound and outbound calls to the safe house switchboard in Yemen. " ---------------------- ꕤ  ---------------------- COMMENT That's it for my lame summary. I'm not really into the 9/11 stuff and I'm not up for the summary of another 4 parts of the interview. Thought it was good to post here for anybody who might be more interested than I am. Might just quickly skim a few more bits of the interviews to see if there's anything earth-shattering in them that I might otherwise miss.  lol ꕤ

USA - National Security - Intelligence Agencies - Carte Blanche

CIA spying on its own “internal channels” for whistleblowers Posted on July 28, 2014 McClatchy reports that the Central Intelligence Agency may be “intercepting the communications of officials who handle whistleblower cases.” The Senate Intelligence Committee’s classified 6,000-page report into the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation programme is still yet to be published and the Committee has already accused the agency of illegally spying on that probe. Now it has emerged that the CIA retaliated against an official who cooperated with the Senate investigation, and Senate members emailed one another to accuse the agency’s inspector general of failing to investigate that retaliation – and the CIA has obtained at least one of those emails. As McClatchy writes, “The email controversy points to holes in the intelligence community’s whistleblower protection systems and raises fresh questions about the extent to which intelligence agencies can elude congressional oversight.” If the Senate cannot investigate the CIA independently and free of retaliation fears, who can? How can intelligence agencies be held accountable if they even intercept communications into their own operations? ... Thomas Drake’s criticisms of US warrantless wiretapping Drake subsequently blew the whistle to the media, and before the government’s case collapsed just days ahead of trial, he was facing an Espionage Act charge that could have imprisoned him for decades. Similarly, Edward Snowden made enquiries within the NSA about the legality and morality of that agency’s mass, unchecked surveillance. He spoke up at least ten separate times — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has in fact released one of Snowden’s emails. When he was ignored, Snowden was compelled to give documents detailing the NSA’s spying programs to investigative journalists. Insufficient security or insufficient democracy? The Insider Threat programme and the stated attitudes of the very officials responsible for facilitating internal channels draw a picture of a US administration that is deeply hostile, not only to disclosure of government information, but to internal criticism of its activities from those charged to carry them out. Famously, President Obama has overseen the prosecution of more Espionage Act cases than all previous presidents combined. The majority of those cases concern individuals trying to blow the whistle on wrongdoing. Within their number include cases, like that of Thomas Drake, where employees have tried to make their case within the ‘official channels’ ostensibly created to facilitate internal whistleblowing. It is ironic that the United States has responded to disclosures of illegality and abuse, not by subjecting its programmes to democratic input or ensuring that future whistleblowers have better options, but by cracking down on those who speak up and the journalism they enable. The US administration has treated whistleblowers as an issue of insufficient security rather than insufficient democracy. ...EXTRACTS ONLY...full article @... https://couragefound.org/2014/07/cia-spying-on-its-own-internal-channels/

Doesn't sound too good when agencies under the US government appear to be able to do whatever they want.