TheAgitator.com
Abuse of Power Gets a Pass, Reporting It Gets Jail Time
Saturday, April 17th, 2010Here’s Glenn Greenwald on the Obama administration’s prosecution of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, and it’s outrageous triumphalism after winning an indictment.
As Greenwald writes, it’s now clear that Obama’s “Look Forward, Not Backward” philosophy applies only to high-ranking Bush administration officials who abused their power and position. The people who risked their careers and freedom to come forward to report on those abuses won’t be getting the same consideration. Or put another way: If you break the law to expand the power of government at the expense of the people, you get a pass. But if you break the law to make government more transparent and accountable, expect them to throw the book at you.
It’s really an unfortunate outcome particularly when you look at what the leaks exposed. The NSA Trailblazer program turned out to be a boondoggle of epic proportions. Over a billion dollars was paid to private defense companies with utterly insufficient oversight and the monitoring technology they were supposed to be building turned out not to even work. That isn’t even getting into the controversial uses for which the technology was intended. Without getting into the civil liberties issues you’d think helping to uncover a massive waste of tax payer dollars would be something society would commend rather than punish.
He gave up some of America’s most highly classified secrets. He should get the death penalty.
The State protects the State. If your gun is big enough, you make AND enforce the laws.
Government behaves like this because it is afraid of us. Obama is now just an element of the government which is an organism unto itself. Right now, because of the internet, the people have infinitely more power than the government. Under the right circumstances a single event could make the population instantly unmanageable.
They say they’re worried about terrorists, but to them anyone and everyone is a potential enemy. They aren’t stupid. Arab extremists don’t threaten their power. Iran doesn’t threaten their power. If anything, a terrorist strike would permit them to enhance their power even further as it did after 9/11.
The biggest threat to government is, and always has been, the population it governs. Everything government does is solely to ensure its own survival. People make the mistake of thinking the Antichrist is a person, but it’s not. It’s an institution.
The U.S. government is supposed to be “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, but the government is really just the dinner date that whispers sweet nothings in your ear all the while pointing a loaded gun at you under the table should you prove to be too resistant to its demands.
Can’t say I’m at all surprised.
He gave up some of America’s most highly classified secrets. He should get the death penalty.
I know you aren’t supposed to feed the trolls but sometimes they’re just hungry. Maybe their bellies would be less empty if fed on a steady diet of bloody chiclets.
This doesn’t surprise me at all. In a former life I was a defense contractor and my wife is still employed in that industry (which makes me something of a hypocrite but I’m working on her).
In contract-speak, the term “prime” is generally accepted to mean whomever gets the lion’s share of the bid as well as nominal control of the contract. “Fortunately” by law a percentage is spun off to other subcontractors. These can be huge megacorps, small shops (20-200 employees), or independents (self-employed). This way everyone gets to eat at the same table and at the end of the day they make a ton of money. So any time you see that Lockheed is wrestling with Boeing or Northrup or SAIC over a contract bid, don’t worry… they’re all going to get a chunk of it.
The last contract I worked on was a 15-year, $5billion contract that was awarded to a major defense company. That contract was abruptly taken from Major DefenseCo and handed to a small, native Alaskan-owned corp that just happened to have been founded by ex-senior managers from the very same agency that put the bid out in the first place and also was alleged to have a former Alaskan congressperson who headed the HPSCI (House Subcommittee on Intelligence Activities) on its board. That is, a huge, 15-year, $5billion contract was handed to a company with absolutely ZERO experience but with big time connections. Major DefenseCo retained a sizable share of the contract, but lost their status as prime. Immediately after the handoff there were serious financial issues… invoices went months without getting paid, but those former agency managers all got 7-figure bonuses.
I’ve often said that an enterprising investigative journalist could get a best-selling book out of how this ONE SINGLE CONTRACT was handled. But I also said I’d be damned if I’d ever in a million years approach the inspector general of the agency in question about it…. because I would be damned.
The good news is that when I accepted that the entire industry is just plain fucking corrupt and loathsome I chose to do something useful with my life and get a degree in the medical field. Which means when I graduate I’ll get to work for the government. Again.
I guess I should watch what I say. According to CNN, Bill Clinton says we should stop demonizing the government and comparing them to, you know, gangsters. I kind of agree with him about the gangster thing. I mean, what has organized crime ever done to deserve being compared with government? About government, Clinton says, “They were elected. They are not doing anything they were not elected to do.”
So, fellow agitators, no more bad-mouthing government. Talking like that does nothing but incite more people to get pissed off at the government, transforming them from good compliant citizens into nut cases.
Dave, I like Clinton’s comment it perfectly illustrates the cognitive dissonance, or outright lies (varies from individual to individual) government representatives and enablers go through to maintain the legitimacy of their rule.
His argument about being elected could apply equally well to China, all of their party officials are chosen internally and elected by the various party members. The only difference is that the American system gives the people the illusion of choice. After the two parties have chosen their candidates and all the backroom deals have been made, the American people are given the proud honor of flipping a coin. It wouldn’t matter if 90% of the population didn’t vote, you could still argue that all of those officials are “elected”.
What he fails to see is that a sizable population of Americans interpret the system as something other than “my side got more votes so no one can complain about what we do”. There are minimal expectations of following American and International law, of not shilling out public money to massive private contracts based on crooked dealings, and on some level at least trying to represent the 300 million people in this country instead of the 10 or 20 corporations that all your friends run.
I guess he believes it doesn’t matter what the government actually does, just so long as they can claim that they got in power fairly.
You can’t have people biting the establishment, even if it’s for outing the establishment for biting people.
Because the establishment bites!
Here all week, folks, tip your waitress bla bla.
The political class protects its own.
Whistleblowers are not in the political class.
Agency heads, their deputies and most of all their superiors (cabinet members) are.
Further inquiries should be directed to Charles Rangel, William Jefferson and Nancy Pelosi.
“If the President does it, then it’s not illegal.” — Richard Nixon
Poor Dick, he was 40 years ahead of his time.
[...] Radley Balko [...]
This guy was simply stupid. Not being prosecuted for leaking as Glenn would have you believe, but for obstruction. He lied to the FBI and shredded Classified documents to try and hide his crimes after becoming suspect. It’s always the cover-up that gets criminals.