Obama's War on Whistleblowers: Redefining Espionage

Dear Mr. President,

Last night Daniel Ellsberg spoke about whistle blowers, secrecy and the state of democracy in America. It was not encouraging. He talked about his own experience as a whistle blower in the ‘70s and the moral imperative he felt to reveal the truth and expose the lies of his government, the same moral imperative which drove Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning to do the same. In Ellsberg’s case, he understood that Nixon planned to slowly decrease the ground war in Vietnam to reduce American casualties while stepping up the air war which would continue the horrific toll on the Vietnamese. When he shared this with Sen. Charles Goodell (R-NY), one of the strongest anti-war voices in the Senate, Goodell replied, “What’s so bad about that? Our casualties decrease, the cost of the war decreases.” “But not the Vietnamese casualties,” Ellsberg said. “I hate to tell you this Dan,” Goodell responded, “but the American people don’t care about Vietnamese casualties.” Right there’s the key to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and your drone wars—the further away they are, the less people care. It’s the old “us” vs. “them” syndrome. As long as our casualties aren’t too high, it doesn’t matter how many of “them” we kill. Bradley Manning revealed war crimes by the military because he did not distinguish between “us” and “them.” Manning, Ellsberg said, believes we are all members of the human family and every life has value. For his sin of exposing the truth he was labeled traitor and has paid a terrible price. Snowden too, revealed the truth, the lies of his government and the flagrant disregard of law and the Constitution; like Ellsberg and Manning, he is also labeled a traitor and will pay a terrible price. Both Manning and Snowden are charged with espionage which the press points out you have invoked more than all other presidents combined. Ellsberg put this in perspective by telling of a recent meeting in the Oval office where someone had the temerity to suggest that your use of the Espionage Act to charge leakers would leave a bad legacy at which point you practically leaped out of your chair and said, “Leaking classified information is espionage.” Mr. President, what was leaked were the lies and abuses of the government, the crimes against its own citizens and against humanity. You protect criminals and punish the defenders of justice and morality but you cannot redefine espionage or truth or the Constitution. They will remain long after you are gone.

Obama: "Hypocrite of the Century"

Dear Mr. President,

Last week, Clare Daly, an Irish Member of Parliament, called you “the hypocrite of the century” and “a war criminal.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko5W_1Y47O8). She noted that you told Irish school kids during your visit that you would be “the wind at their back” if they worked for peace but at the same time you wage wars and arm militants in Syria. She’s only an obscure MP in Ireland so her comments didn’t appear in the U.S. media. But with the Snowden affair, Julian Assange is back in the news and his comments did: “In a written statement on Saturday, Mr. Assange suggested that President Obama was the real ‘traitor’ for betraying the hopes of a generation of idealists represented by both Private Manning and Mr. Snowden….Mr. Assange added a warning to the government: ‘By trying to crush these young whistle-blowers with espionage charges, the U.S. government is taking on a generation, and that is a battle it is going to lose.’” (NY Times, “WikiLeaks Steps In As a Comrade in Arms”, June 24, p. A8) I would add that you betrayed not only the generation of Snowden and Manning, but all generations everywhere. In 2008 your called whistleblowers essential for democracy and you’ve waged an unprecedented war on them and the press. You vowed the most transparent administration in history and instead have the most opaque. You call for new Shield Laws “to protect journalists” but the legislation you propose makes “national security” an exception and innovative media sites—like WikiLeaks—that believe in transparency are specifically excluded in the definition of news organizations. (NY Times, “Even Before Case of NSA Leaker, Assange Remained on U.S. Radar”, June 25, p. A9) You’ve bureaucratized war and made it standard foreign policy, called cold-blooded murder “justice” and have no qualms about ordering extrajudicial assassinations, even of U.S. citizens, in spite of your vow to return to the rule of law. The baying of the wolves in Congress and your administration for Snowden’s head, his “damage to America’s security” reveals the final hypocrisy; that the true enemy of the State is not the terrorists—they already knew they were being spied on—but the citizenry of the U.S. and our allies. Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning betrayed only the corruption of an out-of-control enterprise; rather than traitors they are true heroes of democracy who should be honored. And you, Mr. President, can add another award to your resume: Hypocrite of the Century.

Obama Dreams While Snowden Flees

Dear Mr. President,

The horse has bolted! Snowden in Moscow, headed to Equador, no extradition and relative safety. So much for our “good partners” in Hong Kong—the unintended consequences of spying and hacking allies and enemies alike with arrogance and disdain. So much for the divine right of the all mighty and all powerful Security State. And so much for your claims of transparency and civil liberties. I keep wondering if you really believe the lies and obfuscations you mouth in public, if you’ve come to believe your own stories of justice and truth, of legality and law, if you don’t sometimes have qualms about the distance between what you say and what you do. There’s a story in Dreams From My Father, chapter 3, where you father is coming back to Hawaii to visit and you tell your Punahou school chums about how he is a prince of his tribe in Kenya and your grandfather is the king and “…a part of me really began to believe the story but another part of me knew what I was telling them was a lie…” You described that conflict in yourself so vividly, something I think we can all relate to and I wonder if you feel that same conflict now as President or if it no longer bothers you to lie and dissemble, to slide around truth and justice. In the introduction to the 2004 2^nd edition of Dreams From My Father, you wrote this: “I know, I have seen the desperation and disorder of the powerless…how narrow the path is…between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder—alternating as it does between dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware—is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.” These words written by you in 2004 are nothing less than astonishing when compared to your actions as president. I have pondered for days since reading that passage, how a man who can write those words with such wisdom and insight can order the assassination of perceived enemies without a qualm, can ignore the Constitution and the laws of the land with the arrogance and hubris of a demigod or tyrant, can persecute those who would protect freedom and democracy and bask in the temporary glow false power. Who are you, Mr. President? What happened to the man who wrote those words?

PRISM and The Divine Right of Kings

Dear Mr. President,

Your assurances that the NSA snooping is no big deal and essential for “national security” rings as hollow as your 2008 campaign promises. Your statement on the Charlie Rose show about the FISA court being “transparent” shows how out of touch with reality you are—today’s revelation about how the FISA court warrants authorized by rubber-stamp judges are not specific but broad and general with few restriction show that the FISA court is nothing more than a thin mask for the abuse of power by our government. Snowden’s leaks show the scope of NSA spying, the big brotherism of the U.S. government, the hypocrisy and lies of our leaders, but what upset me most this morning was a line buried in a short article (“Obama to Pick Bush-Era Justice Dept. Official to Lead F.B.I.”, p. A15) in today’s NY Times: “…the F.B.I. has been transforming into a domestic intelligence agency bent on detecting plots and preventing terrorist attacks rather than just solving crimes.” Even the Untouchables have been corrupted to serve the Secret State. The greatest threats to national security, it turns out, is not the Taliban or Al Qaeda or “militants” in the mountains of Waziristan or Yemen, but NSA snoops, CIA assassins and the FBI, for they operate under a cloak of secrecy and secrecy is the antithesis of freedom and democracy. This week’s New Yorker, has an insightful article on the history of secrecy (mystery) and spying versus transparency (publicity) and privacy (“The Prism” by Jill Lepore), which traces the evolution of these terms from the inscrutability of God to the mystery and divine right of kings to the concept of an open and democratic republic based on transparency where there are no secrets of state, no secret deals and no secret laws made by leaders, a fundamental tenet of democracy. The U.S., Lepore points out, was founded as a “republic whose politics would be open to scrutiny, its mysteries of state discabineted. The Constitution was meant to mark the end of an age of political mystery.” But you, Mr. Nobel-Peace-Prize Winner, are leading us back to the dark days of mystery surrounding the king and his court “…where people are too ignorant to judge their rulers,” where “Secrecy is but another word for fear” and where “…cloaking a secret in mystery is a very good way to hide the exercise of power.” We are fast returning to that age of the divine right of kings where fear and secrecy rule the land and democracy and freedom are quaint anachronisms.

Why We the People No Longer Trust Obama

Dear Mr. President,

An editorial in today NY Times (“Details on Spying, Not More Assurances”) is about your “reassurance offensive” in the wake of the NSA surveillance scandal. Monday night you were on the Charlie Rose show: “His promises lacked specificity and some of his descriptions of domestic spying work verged on the misleading… Asked whether the process should be more transparent, Mr. Obama responded with this astonishing statement: ‘It is transparent, that’s why we set up the FISA court.’ ” As the editorial points out, it may be transparent to you but not the public—everything about the FISA court is top secret. Either you’re so cocooned in your delusional world of secrecy that you actually believe this or you’re a blatant liar, neither of which is reassuring. Your credibility is shot, Mr. President, and so is the credibility of your administration. Clapper openly lies to Congress and nothing happens. General Keith Alexander (NSA) and Sean Joyce (FBI) give examples of terrorist plots foiled by the NSA surveillance program and those examples prove nothing (today’s Times, p. A18). The NYC subway plot has been proved over and over to have been the result of Scotland Yard police work, not NSA surveillance. And Joyce had the audacity to claim that a plot to blow up the NY Stock Exchange was foiled due to NSA data, yet no defendants were ever charged with that plot. When Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) asked Gen. Alexander why the FBI couldn’t just get the information they needed through the normal process, he said he “was open to doing it that way,” and when Rep. Jim Hines (D-CT) asked how many attacks were actually stopped by the NSA database, Joyce replied that it was “an almost impossible question…” Right. Meanwhile, in a Senate hearing, Mueller admitted that the FBI has used drones for surveillance in the U.S.; even Feinstein was alarmed at that revelation. And in another article on page 1 of the Times, the FBI’s internal investigation process, over the past 20 years and 150 shootings, has never found an FBI agent to have wrongfully shot anyone in spite of the fact that the FBI paid one victim $1.3 million. Do you wonder why We the People no longer trust you or the government? Do you wonder why foreigners no longer trust you? Easy answer, Mr. President: lack of transparency and abuse of power. Secret spying, secret hacking, secret laws, secret wars, secret deals, all lead to loss of faith, loss of hope, loss of belief. Your words are as hollow as your soul.

Karzai's Slush Fund Drains Philadelphia School Budget

Dear Mr. President,

Kill List Tuesday again. Also the day when we officially turn over security responsibility for all of Afghanistan to the Afghans—from now on, they operate without American air support, medevac helicopters and partnered combat units (today’s NYT, p. A6, “Afghan Forces Struggle as U.S. Weans Them Off Support”). The article describes the toll on 2 Afghan soldiers grievously wounded in a battle with the Taliban; one lost both legs and an arm, the other both legs and an eye. No medevacs for them. “Tough love” the military calls it. Tough luck is more accurate. The annual attrition rate in the Afghan army due to low re-enlistment, desertion and casualties was 33% last year; they no longer report that figure since it’s “bad for morale.” Right next to that article is another, “Top Senator On Panel Blocks Aid to Afghanistan,” which reports that Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) is refusing to release $75 million to help organize elections in Afghanistan until he’s assured that “the bags of cash being delivered to Mr. Karzai by the CIA [are] not fueling the corruption that pervades the Afghan government.” Corker says he’s written 4 letters to you and received no response. A spokeswoman, Caitlin Hayden, however, says the White House has been “in close touch with Senator Corker’s staff since he first demanded an explanation in early May…and they look forward to continuing to work with him…” Regardless of who’s telling the truth, the CIA is still delivering bags of cash to Karzai to pay off “warlords, politicians, lawmakers and other powerful Afghans…some of whom have ties to the Taliban… [or] are involved in opium trafficking,” Meanwhile, in yesterday’s Times, a front page article reports on the dire plight of Philadelphia schools which had to cut “19% of the school-based work force, including all 127 assistant principals, 646 teachers and more than 1,200 aides.” Next year there will be no money for books, paper, school nurses, counselors, librarians, sports or bands. Our priorities are seriously screwed up, Mr. President. The CIA delivers bags of cash to Karzai to pay off Afghan drug lords and war lords while we starve our school budgets so kids don’t have books? What is wrong with this picture? And how ironic that just an hour ago, I received an email from the White House listing all the great things your administration has done and is doing to promote higher education. The truth is, billions for war, nothing for education. We are destroying our own future.

“All the News That’s Fit to Print.”

Dear Mr. President,

The masthead of the NYT says “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Apparently, the news on Afghanistan, where we still have 66,000 troops killing and being killed, Guantanamo, where they’ve thought up new ways to brutalize prisoners and the Bradley Manning show trial isn’t fit to print since there’s not a word on any of them for days. The front page did have an account of Erdogan’s crackdown on protests at Taksim Square; it sounds much like the NYPD and Oakland PD crackdown on the Occupy protests in 2011, although Erdogan also took direct aim at the foreign press, medics who treat protesters and businesses—including luxury hotels in the area—who shelter them. Then the story on p. A7 about the latest revelation that the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand tapped the phones and computers of G20 participants in 2009. So much for friends and allies; everyone’s now an enemy or a potential enemy. The Times article is curious though; nothing about the crimes committed by the government and all about Snowden’s “shocking” breach of security, Clapper’s letter to Congress assuring them that “dozens” of terrorist plots have been thwarted by the NSA surveillance systems and Cheney’s latest proclamation that Snowden is a “criminal and a traitor.” I guess it’s not fit to print that Cheney should be hauled before the ICC for war crimes or that Clapper should be charged with contempt of Congress for lying. But in typical topsy-turvy Obamajustice, they go free while the Injustice Department trumps up charges to get Snowden in their clutches and silence him permanently, maybe even a cell in Guantanamo where the latest twist in cruelty is a change from using soft plastic feeding tubes for force-feeding hunger-strikers to stiff blue and green plastic tubes with  metal inserts that cause internal bleeding along with a new regime of loud noise and banging cell doors all night to prevent prisoners from sleeping, all designed to break the hunger strike. You may think force-feeding is humanitarian, that suppressing whistle-blowers is necessary for national security and that drone strikes protect the U.S., but I call them all crimes against humanity. Steve Coll, in his current New Yorker article on press leaks, says, “press leaks offend [your aides’] aesthetics of power.” I think that applies to you too, Mr. President. So does this: “…the self-evident truth that secrecy and concentrated power are inherently corrupting.” And it’s only going to get worse.