State Crimes, Secrecy, Lies & Whistleblowers

ꕤ Article SOURCE https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/02/global-angst-over-us-secrecy-fetish/ Global Angst over US Secrecy Fetish December 2, 2015 With the reach of U.S. surveillance now global – and with the U.S. military deployed all over the world – anger at President Obama’s unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers who disclose the U.S. government’s abuses and crimes has gone international, as this Norwegian opinion piece by Victor Wallis shows. By Victor Wallis The more extreme the crimes of state, the more the state seeks to shroud them in secrecy. The greater the secrecy and the accompanying lies, the more vital becomes the role of whistleblowers – and the more vindictive becomes the state in its pursuit of them. Whistleblowers are people who start out as loyal servants of the state. Their illusions about the state’s supposed moral agenda – and the wholeheartedness of their own patriotic commitment – make them all the more shocked when they discover evidence of the state’s wrongdoing. Given the extreme concentration of weaponry (as well as surveillance capabilities) in the hands of the state, and given the disposition of the state to apply such resources even against nonviolent mass movements, the type of defection practiced by whistleblowers – an option available to military and intelligence operatives at all levels – is crucial to any eventual triumph of popular forces over the ruling class. Whistleblowers thus not only embarrass the government, disrupt its policies, and (assuming adequate diffusion) educate the citizenry; they also are harbingers of a broader crumbling of the capitalist state and the order it defends. Acting largely in isolation and at great risk to themselves, they embody the conviction – or at least the hope – that basic decency has a more universal grounding than does any possible scheme of oppression. Whistleblowing’s principal near-term function is educational. It demonstrates the undemocratic character of the regime whose secrets it lets out; it is thus an essential redient of investigative journalism. The documents it brings to light reach the public through those who practice such journalism, whom the government then threatens with prosecution unless they disclose their sources. The novelty of Wikileaks is that it provided a new form of protection for the anonymity of sources. This, together with the facility of electronic transmission, has made the potential for disclosure greater than ever before. It accounts for the extraordinary fact that the U.S. government has been pursuing draconian charges against someone who not merely is only the recipient rather than the “leaker” of sensitive information, but someone who is not even a citizen or resident of the United States – Julian Assange. Disclosure is particularly embarrassing when it documents the fact that government officials have lied. The Director of Central Intelligence lied under oath to the U.S. Congress – a felony for which he was never prosecuted – when he denied that the National Security Agency monitors the communications of the entire U.S. population. This lie was the culminating event in Edward Snowden’s decision to blow the whistle. As we all know, of course, it is Snowden who was then criminalized by the government. This parallels the experience of John Kiriakou, who publicly confirmed, on the basis of his first-hand knowledge, that the CIA practiced torture by waterboarding. Kiriakou then became the only government official to be prosecuted and imprisoned in connection with CIA and military practices of torture. The debate over whistleblowers reached tens of millions of viewers when the presidential candidates of the Democratic Party were asked (on Oct. 13) their views about Snowden. Hillary Clinton falsely asserted that he could have used established channels to transmit his disclosures of excessive surveillance, presumably at no risk to himself. This claim is refuted by the experience of previous whistleblowers who had taken just that approach. One of them, Thomas Drake, retold his story two days later, at a news conference ignored by most of the corporate media (video), which was organized on behalf of yet another whistleblower, Jeffrey Sterling, who recently began a 42-month prison term on a conviction of “espionage.” What Sterling had done was report to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about a counterproductive CIA attempt (in 2000) to feed misleading technological data to Iranian scientists. What he was prosecuted for was his subsequent conversations with New York Times journalist James Risen, although no evidence was available as to the content of those conversations, since Risen refused to testify. Sterling’s story is recounted in a letter from his wife, seeking presidential clemency from Obama. Sterling had been fired from the CIA in 2002 after filing a complaint against the agency for racial discrimination (an episode on which Risen wrote a news story). After Risen’s book State of War (2006) came out, the FBI raided Sterling’s home, but it was not until more than four years later – under President Obama – that he was arrested (2011). The latest whistleblower, who documents the “normalization of assassination” via drone warfare, is wisely seeking to remain anonymous. The U.S. government will surely take all possible steps to track him down. The work of whistleblowers, as well as their personal safety, is obviously an issue that cuts across national borders. Support for U.S. whistleblowers will need to be as global as the reach of the policies and the weapons that they expose. Victor Wallis is managing editor of the journal Socialism and Democracy. [This is the original text of a column (written on Oct. 20) posted on the Norwegian website radikalportal.no.] https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/02/global-angst-over-us-secrecy-fetish/ ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT A Canadian archive: http://www.cjfe.org/snowden contains published Snowden documents. Archive also contains US government published documents, as an aid to understanding the leaked documents. It's an archive of approximately 400 documents, which figure presumably also includes the accompanying USG documents, intended as explanatory information. That would be 400 released documents or less, out of an estimated 50,000 documents that were reportedly turned over by whistleblower Snowden. Sitting on almost 50,000 'freed' documents that ought to be in the public domain, seems more like minding an archive of protected (and closed to the public) information  than whistleblower publishing. The 'leaked' information middleman dole-out approach doesn't appeal to me at all. RT News Despite calls from Congress to fire Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for lying under oath, United States President Barack Obama says that the spy chief should have just been a little more careful with his words. Clapper, the 72-year-old retired Air Force lieutenant general in charge of the nation's intelligence departments, caused a commotion last year when he was caught lying during sworn testimony delivered to the Senate. ... Clapper claimed that the National Security Agency does “not wittingly” collect and store data on American people. When former contractor Edward Snowden proved him wrong through leaked NSA documents weeks later, though, Clapper was forced to take back his words. CONTINUED https://www.rt.com/usa/obama-dni-clapper-lie-485/ While on the subject of surveillance etc, I thought this commenter had a point: The Age Paradoxically, if governments weren't illegally monitoring law-abiding citizens then there'd probably be no serious market for encryption - why bother hiding when nobody's looking (at your personal data?) Other than those committing cyber crimes perhaps, who would therefore stand out like the proverbial canine testicles. 'mutt' December 02, 2015, 6:25AM TheAge - here ꕤ

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.