from an
article by Robert Scheer
What a
disgrace. The U.S. government, cheered on by much of the media, launches an
international manhunt to capture a young American whose crime is that he dared
challenge the excess of state power. Read the Fourth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution and tell me that Edward Snowden is not a hero in the mold of those
who founded this republic. Check out the Nuremberg war crime trials and ponder
our current contempt for the importance of individual conscience as a civic
obligation.
Yes, Snowden
has admitted that he violated the terms of his employment at Booz Allen
Hamilton, which has the power to grant security clearances as well as profiting
mightily from spying on the American taxpayers who pay to be spied on without
ever being told that is where their tax dollars are going. Snowden violated the
law in the same way that Daniel Ellsberg did when, as a RAND Corporation
employee, he leaked the damning Pentagon Papers study of the Vietnam War that
the taxpayers had paid for but were not allowed to read.
In both instances,
violating a government order was mandated by the principle that the United
States trumpeted before the world in the Nuremberg war crime trials of German
officers and officials. As Principle IV of what came to be known as the
Nuremberg Code states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his
government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under
international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
That is a
heavy obligation, and the question we should be asking is not why do folks like
Ellsberg, Snowden and Bradley Manning do the right thing, but rather why aren’t
we bringing charges against the many others with access to such damning data of
government malfeasance who remain silent?
Is there an
international manhunt being organized to bring to justice Dick Cheney, the
then-vice president who seized upon the pain and fear of 9/11 to make lying to
the public the bedrock of American foreign policy? This traitor to the central
integrity of a representative democracy dares condemn Snowden as a “traitor”
and suggest that he is a spy for China because he took temporary refuge in Hong
Kong.
The Chinese
government, which incidentally does much to finance our massive military
budget, was embarrassed by the example of Snowden and was quick to send him on
his way. Not so ordinary folk in Hong Kong, who clearly demonstrated their
support of the man as an exponent of individual conscience.
So too did
Albert Ho, who volunteered his considerable legal skills in support of Snowden,
risking the ire of Hong Kong officials. Ho, whom The New York Times describes
as “a longtime campaigner for full democracy [in Hong Kong], to the irritation
of government leaders of the territory,” is an example of the true democrats
around the world who support Snowden, contradicting Cheney’s smear.
But U.S.
Democrats have also been quick to join the shoot-the-messenger craze, ignoring
the immense significance of Snowden’s revelations. Take Sen. Dianne Feinstein
of California. [...] After years of covering up for the intelligence
bureaucracy, Feinstein is now chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
and clearly for some time has been in a position to know the inconvenient
truths that Snowden and others before him have revealed.
Did she know
that the NSA had granted Booz Allen Hamilton such extensive access to our
telephone and Internet records? Did she grasp that the revolving door between
Booz Allen and the NSA meant that this was a double-dealing process involving
high officials swapping out between the government and the war profiteers? Did
she know that the security system administered by Booz Allen was so lax that
young Snowden was given vast access to what she now feels was very sensitive
data? Or that private companies like Booz Allen were able to hand out “top
security” clearances to their employees, and that there now are 1.4 million
Americans with that status?
As with her
past cover-ups of government lying going back to the phony weapons of mass
destruction claims made to justify the Iraq War, Feinstein, like so many in the
government, specializes in plausible deniability.
She smugly assumes the stance
of the all-knowing expert on claimed intelligence success while pretending to
be shocked at the egregious failures. She claims not to have known of the
extent of the invasion of our privacy and at the same time says she is assured
that the information gained “has disrupted plots, prevented terrorist attacks.
...” If so, why did she not come clean with the American public and say this is
what we are doing to you and why?
Instead,
Feinstein failed horribly in the central obligation of a public servant to
inform the public and now serves as prosecutor, judge and jury in convicting
Snowden hours after his name was in the news: “He violated the oath, he
violated the law. It’s treason,” she said.
Treason is a
word that dictators love to hurl at dissidents, and when both Cheney and
Feinstein bring it back into favor, you know that courageous whistle-blowers
like Snowden are not the enemy.
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