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Obama: Snowden Is No Patriot

President_Barack_Obama228px-Picture_of_Edward_SnowdenPresident Barack Obama on Friday seemed to acknowledge that the determined effort by the White House and Congress to demonize Edward Snowden has not exactly worked. The White House has put pressure on many people in this town to make clear that Snowden is not to be praised in the media or by members of Congress. Various reporters and new organizations have held the line in mocking Snowden or refusing to call him a “whistleblower” rather than a “leaker.”  After all, the fear seems to be that Snowden has to be a traitor or Obama would look like a tyrant. Even high-ranking members have been frog walked back before cameras for uttering a work of praise for Snowden. The problem is that it has convinced few people, even with alteration of Wikipedia and other sites to maintain the party line. Now Obama has come forward to assure people that Snowden is no patriot. No, I guess that title belongs to Obama and others who have engaged in warrantless surveillance and continue to mislead the public on the erosion of privacy and civil liberties. Those patriotic souls include John Clapper who lie under oath to mislead the public about the programs. He is not a perjurer but a patriot in America’s New Animal Farm. Notably, however, not a single reporter asked Obama about the perjury by Clapper. Instead, Obama laid out another set of meaningless measures designed to lull the public back into a comfortably and controllable sleep.

Obama seems to be going through the stages of Kübler-Ross from denial to anger to bargaining to depression to acceptance. Last week, he was in denial and assuring the public that they are not being spied upon even as more stories appeared revealing even broader surveillance programs. He then attacked Snowden and now insists that he is no patriot for throwing away his life to disclose these massive surveillance programs. He ended the week with bargaining, telling the public that he would create a committee of hand-picked experts to review such surveillance — just like his committee ratifying his killing of citizens without charges or convictions.

Obama clearly wants to have unchecked power but not be thought of as authoritarian. He returned to the theme that he can create the due process and review within his own Administration that is obviously lacking in Congress or the courts. He went as far as to say that a simple committee of his making would have avoided the Snowden affair because the public would have accepted his word for the status of their rights and privacy. “There’s no doubt Mr. Snowden’s leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than if I had simply appointed this review board.” In other words, I messed up by not first creating a screen for the programs to give my allies cover.  In the meantime, his Administration is moving to remove the greatest danger to their warrantless surveillance programs: people.

What was particularly galling was Obama’s statement that “[g]iven the history of abuse by governments, it’s right to ask questions about surveillance, particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives.” However, his administration has been classifying even legal argument to prevent such questions from being asked and has pursued both reporters and their sources for any stories informing the public. His Administration is the most anti-whistleblower government in modern history and has abused national security laws in the pursuit of leakers to an extent that would make Richard Nixon blush.

Obama added as one of his great reforms on Friday that he would consider making the legal rationales for these programs more public despite the view that such classification was always ridiculous. So he will make legal arguments public and appoint his own committee to review his own policies.

Finally, he got away with telling the media that Snowden is not a whistleblower because he had “other avenues” to oppose the programs. Maintaining a straight face (and again without serious challenge from the press corp), Obama noted that “he can appear before a court with a lawyer and make his case.” First, by that definition, no one would be a whistleblower since they could all take the suicidal act of filing a public complaint or seeking judicial review. Second, if Snowden revealed the programs to an attorney, he would have been immediately charged. This is an Administration that put reporters under surveillance for speaking with leakers. It is also the Administration that has forced courts to dismiss dozens of public interest lawsuits by classifying the evidence needed to establish standing or the merits of the case. This includes the greatest victory of his Administration in killing the Clapper challenge (that’s right the same guy who lied to Congress recently). The Obama Administration succeeded in getting the Court to reject the standing of civil liberties groups and citizens to challenge the Obama Administration’s surveillance programs. President Obama has long been criticized for his opposition to such lawsuits and his Justice Department has continued a successful attack on the ability of citizens to challenge the unconstitutional actions of their government in the war on terror. The 5-4 opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. insulated such programs from judicial review in yet another narrowing of standing rules. (After claiming that such surveillance programs were too classified to be discussed in courts, they then a few months later discussed such programs in the public only after Snowden’s disclosures).

The level of disingenuous arguments coming out of the Administration now amounts nothing short of open contempt for the public and its intelligence. With both parties working to support the effort, it could well succeed. However, the degree to which Obama feels free to make such transparent arguments show how little he has to fear from contradiction in the media or in Congress. It is simply a problem of optics with a public that still feels uncomfortable with the expanding Imperial President established in the last decade. It is hard to get a public back to sleep when they wake up in a nightmare. That is when you have to tell them soothing stories.

Source: CNN

138 thoughts on “Obama: Snowden Is No Patriot”

  2. Senate Insider Speaks Out: Ex-Wyden Staffer on Secret Laws, Domestic Spying and Obama’s NSA Reforms
    Published on Aug 12, 2013
    http://www.democracynow.org – As President Obama proposed a series of changes to reform the government’s surveillance policies and programs, we speak to Jennifer Hoelzer, the former deputy chief of staff for Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, a longtime critic of the Obama administration for using a secret interpretation of the USA PATRIOT Act to allow the NSA to conduct domestic surveillance. “Unfortunately Edward Snowden was the only means by which we have been able to have this debate,” Hoelzer says. “We, working for Senator Wyden, did everything to try to encourage the administration to bring these facts to light. We’re not talking about sources and methods, we’re not talking about sensitive materials, we’re talking about what they believed the law allows them to do.” Meanwhile, The Guardian newspaper has revealed the National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases to search for email and phone calls of U.S. citizens without a warrant. According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, NSA operatives can hunt for individual Americans’ communications using their name or other identifying information.

    1. RE: Felix

      Hard to tell, Nixon would probably be just as bad if he had the tech that Obama does.

  4. Bob Wall,

    Sorry. Your comment got caught in the spam filter. I liberated it for you.

  5. Elaine – “US anti-war activist Normon Soloman, one of the organizers of the petition, gave the 5,000-page document to Nobel committee member Asle Toje on Monday.

    However, Toje said the annually awarded US$1 million prize is “not a popularity contest,” adding that such campaigns do not influence the Nobel Committee in its choice.”

    Mr. Toje – And Barack Obama got his NPP how and for what? That’s about as ludicrous as Hillary Clinton getting a medal from the ABA for killing an ambassador and three soldiers. Oh wait…. Nevermind.

  6. Elaine – “US anti-war activist Normon Soloman, one of the organizers of the petition, gave the 5,000-page document to Nobel committee member Asle Toje on Monday.

    However, Toje said the annually awarded US$1 million prize is “not a popularity contest,” adding that such campaigns do not influence the Nobel Committee in its choice.”

    Mr. Toje – And Barack Obama got his NPP how and for what? That’s about as ludicrous as Hillary Clinton getting a medal from the ABA for killing an ambassador and three soldiers.

  7. RE: Milord, with all of the “crap” that is occurring in our country you’re whining about grammar, syntax and spelling! If all of the above bothers you so much, go elsewhere. We will both be better for it.

  8. The Democrats will lose the 2016 Presidential Election because of the spying. The liberals, free thinkers, true patriots like Patrick Henry will not vote for a Hillary or Biden or stand-in. Many Dems will sit out or vote for Ron Paul or perhaps Ayn Rand’s son Ron Paul will win the RepubliCon Ticket. In any event, the liars like Clapper have put the Obama administration in the sewer and the metadata, metadata, mantra means take out the trash. The end of the Democratic Party as we knew it.

  9. I must have lost my power of writing a search string that returns relevant links but I can’t find the names of the people appointed to this NSA/Privacy commission, just endless links to the canned press release. Can someone help me out with a proper link? Who’s on the commission?

  10. Something about a little vignette from Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Breakfast of Champions seems relevant to the efforts of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowdon to alert the endangered American people. The moral comes in the form of a short story by the down-and-out science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout, Vonnegut’s alter ego.

    “As for the story itself, it was entitled “The Dancing Fool.” Like so many of Trout’s stories, it was about a tragic failure to communicate.
    Here was the plot: A flying saucer creature named Zog arrived on Earth to explain how wars could be prevented and how cancer could be cured. He brought the information from Margo, a planet where the natives conversed by farting and tap dancing.
    Zog landed in Connecticut. He had no sooner touched down than he saw a home on fire. He rushed into the house, farting and tap dancing, warning the people of the terrible danger they were in. The head of the household brained Zog with a golfclub.”

    For some reason, every time I see a picture of President Obama heading out for a game of golf I think of Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and Zog of Margo.

  11. Jameel Jaffer ‏(ACLU) countered with this:

    “Tomorrow’s press conference: John Yoo to lead independent inquiry into #CIA torture program.”

  13. Very well said Mr Turley. Keep up the rage on this one.

    Who would ever have thought that American patriots, fighters for the national interest and those who expose Government tyranny, domestic spying and the most blatant of lies would have to seek protection in Russia.

    Freedom and justice American style.

    Now with all this in your bag go lecture the rest of the world about freedom and democracy Mr Obama.

  14. If President Obama would only move to Texas, then I wouldn’t have to rewrite so much verse just to change the name of the chicken-hawk liar in the White House. Otherwise, we seem to keep sinking ever deeper into:

    The Gelded Age
    (From The Triumph of Strife: an homage to Dante Alighieri and Percy Shelley)

    The tiny Texas tyro’s tantrums taint
    What once our country held in wise reserve
    Into a corner he proceeds to paint

    The nation’s laws he idly swore to serve
    Which leaves them less than merely empty noise
    Precocious playthings pious pimps preserve

    To feather friendly nests requires such ploys
    As ex-post-facto, one-time-only laws
    What Gelded Age has known such jaded joys?

    Like signing statutes stuffed with special flaws
    Designed by thieves to make theft less a chore
    Posterity our politician paws

    Removing risk from crimes that heretofore
    Contained at least enough as not to bore.

    Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2006-2010

  15. Intelligence committee withheld key file before critical NSA vote, Amash claims

    Republican who led Congress revolt against surveillance insists members did not see document before 2011 Patriot Act vote

    Spencer Ackerman in Washington
    Monday 12 August 2013 17.37 EDT

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/12/intelligence-committee-nsa-vote-justin-amash

    Excerpt:

    “I can now confirm that the House permanent select committee on intelligence did not, in fact, make the 2011 document available to representatives in Congress,” Amash wrote late Sunday, “meaning that the large class of representatives elected in 2010 did not receive either of the now declassified documents detailing these programs.”

    A spokeswoman for the House intelligence committee, Susan Phelan, did not return a message from the Guardian on Monday. The committee staff said only Phelan was authorized to address the press.

    But one of Amash’s Democratic colleagues, a former member of the House intelligence committee, backed Amash’s claim.

    “I was not aware of the document,” Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat, told the Guardian.

    “This is another example of the difficulty in Congress exerting any oversight of the intelligence community, because the information is frequently not made available to all members.”

    The intelligence committees in Congress receive access to classified information that non-members rarely receive. Legislators not on the secretive panels often look to their colleagues who serve on them as barometers of opinion about the appropriateness of intelligence activities.

    Amash said that he had no reason to believe that a similar summary document about the bulk phone records collection, prepared for release in 2009, was similarly withheld.

    That raised the specter of the intelligence committee, which is charged with overseeing the NSA, withholding information from members elected in the 2010 election, when many libertarian and Tea Party Republicans uncomfortable with government power – like Amash – won office.

    “Nobody I’ve spoken to in my legislative class remembers seeing any such document,” Amash told the Guardian. “We checked back with the committee, and it was not offered to members.”

    Amash speculated that congressional leaders and intelligence committee leaders were “concerned the Patriot Act would not pass” if the newer class of legislators knew about the NSA’s bulk phone records collection. “In fact, the first time it was brought up, it was brought up under suspension, and it did not pass,” Amash said.

    The accusation represents an escalation between Amash and the intelligence leadership, which fiercely fought his late-July effort to end the NSA’s bulk collection of American phone records. The panel chairman, Amash’s fellow Michigan Republican Mike Rogers, swiped at the younger congressman during a raucous July 24 floor debate: “Are we so small that we can only look at our Facebook “likes” today in this chamber?”

    Rogers has pledged to introduce greater privacy protections over the bulk phone records program when his committee takes up the annual intelligence funding bill after the August congressional recess. Amash, meanwhile, has pledged to renew his efforts to vastly restrict the NSA’s ability to collect phone data on Americans without individual suspicion of wrongdoing.

    Asked if it would be possible to work with the Rogers and the House intelligence committee leadership after learning the committee withheld the document, Amash replied: “I don’t know.”

  17. Another good piece by Tim Cushing at TechDirt:

    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130806/12154724080/former-nsa-director-calls-snowdens-supporters-internet-shut-ins-equates-transparency-activists-with-al-qaida-terrorists.shtml

    It seems the dirty f*-ing hippies have got the generals and their commander-in-brief running scared — again.

    No doubt about it, fellow Crimestoppers, the notorious Five O’Clock Follies have returned from 1960s Saigon with a vengeance. Next thing you know, Generals Hayden and Alexander will blame the pajama-wearing basement Internet kids for the epidemic of rapes and suicides that make service in the U.S. military such an attractive option for so many middle-and-upper class Americans today.

  19. If international justice was done, Manning, Assange, and Snowden would share the Nobel Peace Prize.

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