Gen. Alexander Declares War on the First Amendment

Dear Mr. President,
Yesterday I watched a 30 minute interview with Gen. Keith Alexander, Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, NSA Director, and Chief of Central Security Service. He was interviewed by Jessica Tozer for the “Armed With Science” blog on the DoD website. (http://science.dodlive.mil/2013/10/24/i-spy-no-lie/) The purpose of the interview, Tozer says is to get the facts and find out if the NSA “is really capable of the… power madness that they’re accused of wielding? Or are internet rumors and misinformation painting our best cyber security defenders as bad guys?” I have to admit, since it was a DoD website, I was pretty sure I knew what her conclusions would be and they weren’t going to be the same as mine. But I suffered through 20 minutes of Alexander’s blather about missions and national security and protecting the American people and all the other saccharine bullshit and spin he’s been putting on it since 2005. Of course, he never mentioned any of the illegal stuff: the tapping of Merkel’s and Hollande’s and Rousseff’s phones or the bugging and hacking of the EU, the UN, the G-20, the embassies around the world. But in the 21st minute of the interview, he said something that shocked me and convinced me even more that this is a very dangerous man. In discussing the Snowden leaks, he asserted that newspapers and the media dispensing this information “is wrong… and we have to come up with a way of stopping it. I don’t know how to do that. That’s more [for] the courts and the policy makers, but from my perspective, that’s wrong.” He’s already done away with the 4th Amendment—the right to privacy is history—and now he’s declaring war on the 1st Amendment as well. Put a different uniform on this guy and he could be Goebbels or Goering or any of history’s monsters. This is a man who fashioned his command center an exact replica of the Starship Enterprise control room. This is a man who has done more damage to America’s credibility and trust than anyone in history. This is a man who has lied to Congress, who has misled both legislators and the American public, has shown incredibly bad judgment, has made our country less safe, has squandered hundreds of billions of dollars needed for public services and the good of the nation, has defied and violated the Constitution, and will continue to do so. Sack him! Immediately! You want to restore trust in America? Bring Edward Snowden home and put him in charge of the NSA. Better yet, do away with it completely.