Snowden and Manning or Clapper and Alexander: Who are the Real Traitors?

Dear Mr. President,

The NYT reported on the Bradley Manning trial today (“In Closing Argument, Prosecutor Casts Soldier as ‘Anarchist’ for Leaking Archives” p. A12). The Times calls it a “high-profile” trial even though their coverage is near zero. But today they dutifully repeated the the prosecution’s closing arguments: “Pfc. Manning was not a humanist; he was a hacker,” Major Fein said, adding: “He was not a whistle-blower. He was a traitor…” Fein called the WikiLeaks staff “information anarchists” and Manning an “anarchist.” He also claimed Manning turned over documents to WikiLeaks “in a bid for ‘notoriety, although in a clandestine form’” which seems an oxymoron, but when you have no case all you can do is call someone names and assassinate their character. Most fascinating, however, was this: “While Major Fein made his arguments, reporters watched the trial on a closed-circuit feed at the media center. Two military police officers in camouflage fatigues and armed with holstered handguns paced behind each row there, looking over the journalists’ shoulders, which had not happened during the trial. No explanation was given.” I know you view the press as the enemy but isn’t this a bit over the top? And speaking of your war on the press, Abdulelah Hider Shaye, the Yemeni journalist who exposed the U.S.’s missile attack on the village of al-Majalah and stayed in prison 2½ years due to your personal intervention, got released Tuesday. Maybe you don’t carry as much weight with President Hadi as you did with President Saleh or maybe you weren’t paying attention what with Snowden and Congress’s revolt over the NSA. Speaking of Snowden, the Guardian reported today that Holder sent a letter to his Russian counterpart assuring him that we wouldn’t seek the death penalty so Russia should send him back for prosecution. And Tuesday, Geoffrey Robertson’s article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/23/snowden-asylum-america-international-law) pointed out our history of forcing down commercial jets carrying a suspect so we can arrest them, which explains why Snowden didn’t take that flight to Havana last month and why he’s staying in Moscow for now, reading Crime and Punishment and learning Russian. Tell me again who’s the real traitor? Snowden and Manning or Clapper and Alexander? Snowden and Manning or the liars who “overreach, misleading the public and covering up abuse and mistakes.” (NYT “Spy Agencies Under Heaviest Scrutiny Since… the ‘70s” p. A13).

Billions for Kabul, Not a Dime for Detroit

Dear Mr. President,

Today’s NYT (“Taliban Seize Police Force In a Hamlet” p. A4) reports that yesterday the village of Kala Khel received “some of the best news they had heard all year”—the entire Afghan Local Police unit assigned to their hamlet had been kidnapped by the Taliban Wednesday night. The 14-man unit has been beating and stealing from villagers every day since they arrived 5 months ago. So much for the American strategy of local militias taking over as we leave; most Afghans see them as little more than thugs, criminals, village toughs and, many times, Taliban sympathizers. But train them we do—to operate just like their mentors, the Special Forces—and what do they do but act like a bunch of Afghan Rambos, stealing possessions (they especially like motorcycles) and extorting money from villagers, beating, sometimes torturing and killing them like the ones in Wardak Province earlier this year who tortured and killed 17 civilians—or maybe it was the U.S. Special Forces who did it. Or maybe a covert team of CIA assassins; it’s hard to tell one group from another, they all have big guns, facial hair and a mean look. How many billions have we spent on this program, Mr. President, and how many more billions did you commit to? It’s reported that we’ll be propping up the most corrupt government in the world—Afghanistan’s—for at least another decade and that means more billions a year to train, equip and pay their 350,000 man security force they can’t afford. Meanwhile, in a NYT Op-Ed today, “Come See Detroit, America’s Future” by Charlie LeDuff, we get a look at the future of America as seen through bankrupt Detroit—tens of thousands of abandoned homes, streets unlighted, cop cars with floorboards rusted through, no computers or air conditioning, firefighting rigs without maintenance, bodies lying in the open for 6½ hours before an understaffed morgue can send someone to pick them up, a 58-minute wait for a 911 call (the whole system down for 15 hours the other day) and cops taking gunshot victims to hospitals in their squad cars because there are no ambulances available (2/3 of the city’s fleet is broken on any given day). Detroit owes $18 billion and who’s going to pay? Not the banks or the fat cat bondholders, their loans secured by physical assets that will be sold off. It’s the pensioners, the poor, the civil servants. Billions for Kabul, not a dime for Detroit. The collateral damage of war. Jefferson County, Alabama, Stockton, Detroit… who’s next?

Snowden Stuck, Amash Fails, Mayorkas Under Investigation

Dear Mr. President,

Not a good day for justice or democracy. Edward Snowden’s still stuck in the transit terminal of the Moscow airport and the Amash amendment to strip the NSA of funds for illegally collecting phone call metadata was defeated, the USPS will no longer deliver mail to the front door of new homes and I write my representatives but it does no good—Feinstein is your spearchucker, a true believer on national security, Pelosi’s a faithful party hack waiting to get the Speaker’s seat back from Boehner and Boxer seems to have lost her way. But the vote today was close; it lost by only 12 votes and more Democrats voted for it than against it in spite of your intense lobbying to kill it. What’s discouraging though, is that no one (except for outsiders like ex-Sen. Humphrey) is defending Snowden’s act of moral courage that brought all this on. Like the Mexican woman living under the freeway that I wrote about yesterday, Snowden just doesn’t have the right connections and so, he’s left to twist in the wind. Having the right connections is what it’s all about; it gets you places. Like that SEC guy who took a $5 million a year job with a law firm representing Wall Street clients before the SEC. Or your pick for the #2 spot at DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas who, it turns out, is under investigation for helping a Chinese investor gain a special visa after the initial application had been denied and the appeal rejected. Turns out these special EB-5 visas are for rich people who invest $500,000 to $1 million in U.S. businesses. And this rich Chinese guy was investing his money not with just any U.S. company but with Gulf Coast Funds Management LLC whose CEO is none other than Anthony Rodham, your pal and former Secretary of State Hilary’s brother. And not only did Mayorkas cut a shady deal here, but also, as a U.S. Attorney, drew heat for lobbying Hilary’s hubby Bill while he was president to commute the prison sentence of the son of a heavy Democratic donor. The donor had also hired another of Hilary’s brothers, Hugh Rodham to lobby on his behalf. Mayorkas is now Director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, being bumped up by you either for his connections or his service to the country. In any case, what’s obvious from all this is that you folks back in D.C.-land have got everything wired while we out here on the hustings are still trying to connect the dots. But fissures keep appearing in the dykes, Mr. President, and stuff happens. Keep Hope Alive!

Living Under the Freeway

Dear Mr. President,

I took the wrong bus today and ended up some distance from my destination but rather than backtrack or take another bus, I decided to walk. My route took me under the freeway, an area of warehouses and big box stores, parking lots and storage yards. And homeless. The throwaways, the detritus, the druggies, the drunks, the mentally ill, the ones no one wants in their neighborhood or anywhere in sight; men—both black and white—with hard chipped faces laying, sitting or standing on the sidewalk with their ratty blankets and shopping carts, stuffed plastic bags tied to the sides. Mostly shopping carts, but there were a few wagons and garbage cans on wheels, anything that rolled so they could pack quickly when the cops came by to roust them and Move on! Move on! But there was one woman in her 40s, Mexican, her face not ravaged by drugs or drink or mental illness, sweeping with a broom her area, a small encampment of 4 carts neatly lined up with blankets folded and boxes and bags stacked, a picture of a young girl—maybe her daughter—fastened to one of the carts. Through the stench of urine and misery she was struggling to do more than just survive another day, she was trying to reclaim some part of a home she once had, a life she once had. I was reminded of Lolo telling you when you were a boy giving coins to beggars in Djakarta that you didn’t have enough coins to give all the beggars, to not be foolish and give all your money away lest you end up like them. In today’s NYT (p. A1) there’s an article about a top Wall Street regulator who worked 17 years at the SEC and left recently to take a job with a law firm representing Wall Street clients at SEC hearings. His starting salary? $5 million a year. On page A4, an article about the latest Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction report detailing failed reconstruction projects—unneeded military headquarters, unused schools, unfinished highways and electrical plants, a project to prevent roadside IEDs that was only partly done— graft, fraud, theft, missing records, mismanaged, no oversight, much of the $90 billion gone for naught. But no money to bail out Detroit or Stockton or Jefferson County, Alabama. $2 billion for the new NSA data center in Utah to store purloined data but no money for the Mexican woman sweeping garbage from her spot under the freeway who’s down on her luck and doesn’t have the right connections. The American dream is now part of the illusion of American justice.

Snowden, Manning, Abdulelah Hider Shaea and American Justice

Dear Mr. President,

Here’s still more news the NYT thinks not fit to print: on Friday, Col. Denise Lind permitted the prosecution to “rebut” the defense in the Bradley Manning trial and call back a witness who suddenly “remembered” Manning tell her the “flag means nothing to me.” A new rule you and Eric cooked up? If prosecutors blow the case against a whistleblower, even after they’ve rested, they get another shot? Even if the allegation is undocumented and no other witnesses? Here’s how my dictionary defines kangaroo court “1. A mock court set up in violation of established legal procedures. 2. A court characterized by dishonesty or incompetence.” Why not fly Manning directly to Guantanamo and put him with the other 166 indefinitely detained men you deem enemies of the state and stop the charade? CNN reported today that an NSA source (leaker?) said Edward Snowden didn’t get the “crown jewels.” Well, that’s reassuring. Also disconcerting. What else are they doing that we don’t know about? What other violations of law? What other criminal activity? And late today, one of Snowden’s Russian lawyers believes he’ll be able to leave the airport by Wednesday. I hope so. I hope he didn’t have to pay too high a price to the devil to get sprung. And I hope he finds safe refuge and stays out of the hands of America’s assassins and kidnappers, although the odds aren’t in his favor. As he said in that first interview, “If they want to get you they’ll get you.” And here’s something you said in Dreams from My Father: “But power was patient and knew what it wanted; power could outwait slogans and prayers and candlelight vigils.” That knowledge is useful now in your pursuit of Edward Snowden. Patience. Assure everyone that he didn’t get the “crown jewels” then, when everyone relaxes and the TV cameras no longer follow him, make him suddenly disappear, silence him forever; show all other would-be whistleblower what happens when you expose high crimes and misdemeanors. Kill them, imprison them, at the very least ruin their lives. Not only here but anywhere. I think of Abdulelah Haider Shaea, the Yemeni journalist who reported that the U.S. launched Tomahawk cruise missiles armed with cluster bombs against the village of al-Majalah in Yemen on Dec. 17, 2009, killing 21 women, 14 children and 7 men. He is still in prison because you personally called Saleh and threatened to cut off American counter-terrorism funds if he was released.* American Justice. A travesty. A tragedy.

* See my letter of April 11, 2011

Edward Snowden and Sen. Gordon Humphrey Speak

Dear Mr. President,

Here’s more news the NYT apparently thought not fit to print: an email exchange last Monday between former Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-NH) and Edward Snowden. I found it on Glenn Greenwald’s Guardian blog (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/16/gordon-humphrey-email-edward-snowden). “Mr. Snowden, Provided you have not leaked information that would put in harms way any intelligence agent, I believe you have done the right thing in exposing what I regard as massive violation of the United States Constitution. Having served in the United States Senate for twelve years as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Armed Services Committee and the Judiciary Committee, I think I have a good grounding to reach my conclusion. I wish you well in your efforts to secure asylum and encourage you to persevere. Kindly acknowledge this message, so that I will know it reached you. Regards, Gordon J. Humphrey.” Greenwald emailed Sen. Humphrey to verify the email was his and here is part of Humphrey’s reply: “To my knowledge, Mr. Snowden has disclosed only the existence of a program and not details that would place any person in harm's way. I regard him as a courageous whistle-blower. I object to the monumentally disproportionate campaign being waged by the U.S. Government against Edward Snowden, while no effort is being made to identify, remove from office and bring to justice those officials who have abused power, seriously and repeatedly violating the Constitution of the United States and the rights of millions of unsuspecting citizens.” Here is Ed Snowden’s response (in part) to Sen. Humphrey: “Thank you for your words of support. I only wish more of our lawmakers shared your principles - the actions I've taken would not have been necessary. The media has distorted my actions and intentions to distract from the substance of Constitutional violations and instead focus on personalities… Perhaps, in such times, loving one's country means being hated by its government. If history proves that be so, I will not shy from that hatred. I will not hesitate to wear those charges of villainy for the rest of my life as a civic duty…” There’s not much I can add except urge you to reflect on their exchange and the course you have chosen for yourself, for our country, for the world. It is not the path to peace or security but rather, the path to tyranny and injustice. You surely know this, Mr. President. You also know history will not treat you kindly.

Obama's New Rule: You've Got Rights But You Can't Enforce Them

Dear Mr. President,

Yesterday in Federal District Court in Washington, Judge Rosemary Collyer heard a government request to dismiss a suit charging violation of the constitutional rights of Anwar and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, all American citizens and all killed in drone strikes in Yemen in 2011 without charges, evidence or a trial. The DoJ lawyer, Brian Hauck, argued that the Executive “could kill American citizens it designated as dangerous, with no role for courts to review the decision.” (Today’s NYT, “Judge Challenges White House Claims on Authority in Drone Killings” p. A8) Judge Collyer asked if the government believed “that a U.S. citizen targeted by the United States in a foreign country has no constitutional rights… Hauck acknowledged that Americans targeted overseas do have rights, but he said they could not be enforced in court either before or after the Americans were killed.” Whoa! We have rights, we just can’t enforce them? Astounding! This argument could apply to all constitutional right—we have them but we can’t enforce them. Further, he argued, “Judges… have neither the expertise nor the tools necessary to assess the danger posed by terrorists, the feasibility of capturing them or when and how they should be killed” and besides, he said, targeted assassinations have adequate oversight and checks within the Executive. That’s when Judge Collyer, a G.W. appointee and FISA court judge got testy: “No, no, no… The executive is not an effective check on the executive.” This exchange illustrates how far we’ve strayed from the rule of law, how laws and justice have been distorted beyond recognition, where government is no longer accountable to anyone, where plaintiffs have “no standing” and where the Judiciary is dismissed as incapable of judging the Executive. In your warped vision of America, no one has a right to privacy, whistleblowers are traitors, assassins are heroes, the law is whatever you say it is and every government act is necessary for national security. The President of the United States is neither above the law nor is he or she, The Law. The Constitution is the basic law of the land, a document you took a sacred oath—twice—to uphold. You violated that oath—and the Constitution—in the most blatant and profound ways imaginable. We are no longer a democracy nor are we truly free. We have become a rogue state wreaking violence, terror and injustice on the world. You should be stripped of your Nobel Peace Prize and impeached.