Obama's War on Truth and Transparency

Dear Mr. President,

“The American people don’t have a Big Brother who is snooping into their business…I’m confident of that. But I want to make sure everybody is confident of that.” (NYT today, “After Leaks, Obama Leads Damage Control Effort” p. A11) Your words last week in Senegal responding to a question about efforts to bring Snowden back to the U.S. (where he can be silenced and punished for exposing the NSA’s massive and unconstitutional surveillance of its own citizens and those of other countries). Really, Mr. President, why should we believe you when you have broken every promise, twisted the law to suit your own purposes, voided the Constitution and waged an unrelenting war on transparency for 4½ years? Why should we believe Clapper who bald-faced lied to Congress and admitted it? Or Gen. Alexander, the NSA director who claimed there was no massive spying on American citizens when documents leaked by Snowden quote him wanting to know why we couldn’t monitor everyone all the time? Why should we believe any statement made by a U.S. official when we have been lied to constantly, from Bush’s Weapons of Mass Destruction to your assurances that no one’s listening to our conversations in spite of evidence to the contrary? Why should we believe the 79-page report released yesterday by the military claiming the death of Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif in Guantanamo prison on September 8, 2012 was a suicide when there are so many implausibilities and unanswered questions surrounding the circumstances of his death? (NYT today, “Suicide by Pills Is Cited in Death of Guantánamo Detainee” p. A14) Your statement on the Charlie Rose show that the FISA court is transparent and Deputy Attorney General James Cole’s astonishing statement that metadata of phone and internet records are “outside the scope of the 4^th amendment’s protections” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/27/nsa-data-mining-authorised-obama) do not reassure We the People. What is clear is that we now live in a state close to the East Germans under the communist regime where the Stasi knows everything about everybody, where no one can resist the power of the state and where dissent is ruthlessly crushed. Thursday night, when asked what is the single most important thing to do to oppose the secrecy of government, Daniel Ellsberg thought for a long time before saying, “Honor the heroes: Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and all the others who put their lives on the line to expose the truth.” It’s a start.