By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
During a conference held to award Journalist Glenn Greenwald the Siebenpfeiffer Prize for Journalism, Greenwald reported a conversation in which German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel. In this the Vice Chancellor commented to him that the United States threatened Germany with withholding vital intelligence of terrorist activity if the nation granted asylum to Edward Snowden or otherwise allowed him to travel to Germany.
The event shows the extreme measures the Administration is willing to take regarding whistleblowers and others labeled as threats.
The revelation began when Vice Chancellor Gabriel, speaking of the plight of Edward Snowden, was interrupted by an audience member who asked why Snowden was not offered asylum in Germany. Gabriel replied that Germany would be required to extradite Snowden to the United States.
Here is a video via Saarbrücker Zeitung containing excerpts of the Vice Chancellor’s and Mr. Greenwald’s speeches.
Later, when Greenwald had an opportunity to speak to the Vice Chancellor in person, he enquired about the asylum issue. Greenwald later revealed to the public this conversation via Greenwald’s news service.
In the article, Mr. Greenwald wrote of some truly troubling behavior on behalf of the Obama Administration:
Afterward [the ceremony], however, when I pressed the vice chancellor (who is also head of the Social Democratic Party, as well as the country’s economy and energy minister) as to why the German government could not and would not offer Snowden asylum — which, under international law, negates the asylee’s status as a fugitive — he told me that the U.S. government had aggressively threatened the Germans that if they did so, they would be “cut off” from all intelligence sharing. That would mean, if the threat were carried out, that the Americans would literally allow the German population to remain vulnerable to a brewing attack discovered by the Americans by withholding that information from their government.
This is not the first time the U.S. has purportedly threatened an allied government to withhold evidence of possible terror plots as punishment. In 2009, a British national, Binyam Mohamed, sued the U.K. government for complicity in his torture at Bagram and Guantánamo. The High Court ordered the U.K. government to provide Mohamed’s lawyers with notes and other documents reflecting what the CIA told British intelligence agents about Mohamed’s abuse.
In response, the U.K. government insisted that the High Court must reverse that ruling because the safety of British subjects would be endangered if the ruling stood. Their reasoning: the U.S. government had threatened the British that they would stop sharing intelligence, including evidence of terror plots, if they disclosed what the Americans had told them in confidence about Mohamed’s treatment — even if the disclosure were ordered by the High Court as part of a lawsuit brought by a torture victim. British government lawyers even produced a letter from an unnamed Obama official laying out that threat.
The full article may be read HERE.
Later, the Vice Chancellor’s office declined to comment to the German medium Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about the asylum issue and declared there was no legal basis to offer Edward Snowden asylum.
Deutsche Welle reported the Obama administration has denied the accusation of threatening to withhold information from Berlin, according to Washington newspaper The Hill, which quotes a statement from a senior official calling the suggestion that the US threatened to withhold intelligence “baseless.”
But the question of how “baseless” Glenn Greenwald’s or Vice Chancellor Gabriel’s assertions are is not certainly arguable considering the actions of the Obama Administration in the Snowden matter. All one has to do is look at the past actions of The Administration for guidance.
We have an Administration that declares that the accusations are baseless, yet the same administration’s NSA tapped into Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone, ordered the grounding and search of the aircraft of a head of state on mere suspicion that Edward Snowden might be aboard, and made a similar threat to another NATO ally, the United Kingdom.
The row comes down to a matter of credibility of either side in the Edward Snowden controversy. Who is the more trustworthy, The Obama Administration or Glenn Greenwald?
Sources:
The Intercept
Deutsche Welle
Saarbrücker Zeitung via YouTube
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Embrace our enemies and threaten our allies. Sounds about right for the clowns in the White House.
Squeeky:
“Well, if Snowden ever returns, and I get called up for jury duty, I will lie like a dog that I don’t have an opinion one way or the other about him, and then once I am on the jury, I will vote him innocent!”
************
We never expected any
lessmore from you, Squeek. Perjury from the self-proclaimed principled right-wing. Another Repub innovation.“. Perjury from the self-proclaimed principled right-wing. Another Repub innovation.”
Ummmm….”Perjury in the defense of liberty is no vice!
Ya’ know that’s kinda’ catchy… it has a ring to it.
It is amazing how liberals can cast white as black and black as white. They want sanctions against Israel which is the only functioning democracy in the Middle East. Obama is butt hurt because he didn’t get his way and now he is going to betray Israel in the UN and attempt to force a two state solution at the behest of the terrorists who attack Israel unceasingly with mortar attacks and the murder of ordinary citizens. Obama is casting his lot with the PLO, Hamas and Hezzbollah. Obama is scandalized that Bibi mentioned that the Arabs were voting in the last election and if you didn’t want their candidates to win then you should get out and vote to elect your candidates. How many Jews vote in Egyptian elections? Syrian elections? Iranian elections? What none you say? They were all expelled or murdered by the same groups that Obama is sucking up to every day and in every way.
I wonder if the Democrats in Congress are going to sign on to this? I wonder if Senator Schumer is going to think this is what being a “friend and supporter of Israel” would do.
Black is white and white is black.
@ trooperyork
“They want sanctions against Israel which is the only functioning democracy in the Middle East. Obama is butt hurt because he didn’t get his way and now he is going to betray Israel in the UN and attempt to force a two state solution at the behest of the terrorists who attack Israel unceasingly with mortar attacks and the murder of ordinary citizens.”
Yes, and thank God Bibi gave up his own terrorist support for a two-state solution.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/167201#.VQ3sz-FKnng
Did you have anything to do with that?
Speaking of the truthfulness of the Obama Administration, I had previously questioned former Secretary of State Clinton’s veracity regarding her email accounts until she said, “I. Did. Not. Have. Textual Relations. With. That. Server.”
Now, I believe her.
Well, if Snowden ever returns, and I get called up for jury duty, I will lie like a dog that I don’t have an opinion one way or the other about him, and then once I am on the jury, I will vote him innocent!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Don’t forget that Kerry came close to threatening war against Venezuela if they dared offer Snowden amnesty. That may also be one of the reasons that the State Department still finds lots of imagined human rights violations in Venezuela.
” By his own public statements, Snowden is a criminal and a traitor and MUST be brought back here for trial.”
Snowden is a whistle blower, a defender of the constitution and a true patriot.
Those of us who value the constitution and freedom owe Snowden a debt that can never be repaid.
@ Issac
“The US is at war, regardless of semantics it is a war.”
Unless you’re being ironic here, and I certainly hope you are, I see that you share Lord P HaW’s barbaric belief in the magical properties of the word “War,” whose invocation justifies the abrogation of the Magna Carta, the US Constitution, those “idealistic but unrealistic goals laid down hundreds of years before” and every other common standard of human decency.
You and Lord P HaW and any number of other horrifically misguided warmongers including the Obama Administration may be “at war,” but “we,” as in the people who would like to see the human race survive for at least a few more decades, are *not*.
SWM, looks like Greenwald’s stance on Netanyahu may not sit well with those who are looking to point the finger of blame only at the US. Seems Israel isn’t doing any better when it comes to human rights and civil liberties.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/21/netanyahus-telegenically-dead-comment-original/ Speaking of Germans,, Glen Greenwald compares Netanyahu’s statement about Palestinians to a statement made by Joseph Goebbels about Jews.
@ Darren Smith
“The row comes down to a matter of credibility of either side in the Edward Snowden controversy. Who is the more trustworthy, The Obama Administration or Glenn Greenwald?”
Gee, may I have a nanosecond to think about it? OK, even though the US government has never, ever lied, I’m going to go with Greenwald on this one.
So it is official. Obama wants to bully both the Germans and the Jews. This guy is really talented.
It is naive to think that any administration would lay open their classified stuff based on idealistic but unrealistic goals laid down hundreds of years before. The US is at war, regardless of semantics it is a war. The spying that goes on is going to go on and the whistle blowers like Snowden will help keep the agencies from getting sloppy. The spying will never stop.
Blaming it on one administration or another is nothing more than cheap political hay.
Not “extreme” enough. By his own public statements, Snowden is a criminal and a traitor and MUST be brought back here for trial.
“Who is the more trustworthy, The Obama Administration or Glenn Greenwald?”
Glenn Greenwald, hands down.
The real weak link in the system is the U.S. Supreme Court. The other two branches will never voluntarily protect our constitutional rights, only the high court can do that. The U.S. Supreme Court has essentially stated that defenseless citizens must “prove” they have been spied upon by the most powerful agencies on Earth.
Domestic spying has never been passive or harmless in American history or the history of the world. American agencies (federal, state, local) use domestic spying to punish or squelch legal freedom of speech exercises – clear violation of the First Amendment.
Unlike overt law enforcement where the citizen is confronted, what makes domestic spying so dangerous is most of the targets harmed never know they were harmed by these lawless programs. Most victims are never arrested or confronted in any way.
For example: If you (unknowingly) lost your job from an FBI Cointelpro type operation, state fusion center blacklist or the DOJ abusing the Material Witness Statute – you also can never file a police report or contact a watchdog agency. It’s really the perfect “color of law” crime perpetrated by government agencies. Voters also can’t self-govern since it’s all done in secret.
Par for the course for the least “most transparent” administration.
Mr. Snowden did Americans a great service; I am sorry that the administration is treating an American hero so badly.
Countries (or at least their governments) are amoral – politicians frequently misrepresent their desires as being in the country’s interest.
Pres. Obama is one of the biggest serial violators of the Bill of Rights (along with Bush 2); his extreme aggression towards Mr. Snowden is a direct reaction to being challenged.
Americans have not been well served by Pres. Obama.
Nothing like a transparent administration and a double standard. Petraeus keeps his pension and his stars. What a travesty.
Glen Greenwald has no reason to mislead anyone. Governments do. While most public officials try to do the right thing, that sometimes includes misrepresenting facts, misleading the public, undermining colleagues’ efforts, etc. They make many deadly mistakes because of lack of complete information, poor communications, ambitious career-ladder climbing, social status and greed.