Feinstein, Rogers & Snowden: Who's the Traitor?

Dear Senator Feinstein,

Your August 15 letter regarding the NSA XKeyscore surveillance program did not reassure me. “The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which I chair, is currently reviewing the allegations made by the Guardian,” but like all your committee’s proceedings, the review will be classified so we’ll never know. If not for Edward Snowden, the public—and most members of Congress—would still be in the dark about the extent of NSA’s malfeasance, for the House and Senate Intelligence committees no longer serve as watchdogs but as protectors and apologists. Since Snowden’s leaks began in June, you have not held a single open hearing on the surveillance programs and your counterpart in the House, Rep. Rogers’ single hearing had only pro-NSA witnesses. You apparently distributed a key document to senators prior to a vote on the Patriot Act but Rogers did not in order to guarantee reauthorization. You called Snowden’s leaking of classified documents an act of treason but the real act of treason is Rogers’ withholding information from members of Congress. It is, as the executive director of the Government Accountability Project says, “tantamount to subversion of the democratic process.” In your letter, you provided a link to the NSA press release of July 30 refuting the Guardian’s claims about XKeyscore. I read the press release; it is no different than any of the NSA’s previous denials which have been proven to be misleading or false. Thursday, the Washington Post reported more secret documents leaked by Snowden showed the NSA had violated their own internal restrictions on data collection 2,776 times in the previous year; an 80-page FISC report stated the NSA had violated the 4^th Amendment in 2011; and a training manual for NSA analysts states, “While we do want to provide our F.A.A. overseers with the information they need, we DO NOT want to give them any extraneous information.” Sen. Wyden says that what has been revealed so far is just the tip of the iceberg. Minor, technical and human errors, says the NSA and their defenders. But they have lied, misled, spun and twisted the truth again and again. Why should we believe them now? Or you? Without truth and transparency there is no basis for trust and no foundation for democracy. We are way overdue for information on these secret programs, their effectiveness and, indeed, why they are needed. You owe us that, Senator; anything less is dereliction of duty and subversion of the democratic process.