October 4, 2019
House Democratic leader Nancy
Pelosi was quick to condemn NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden when he revealed
the U.S. government’s vast surveillance programs. “I think that he should be
prosecuted,” Pelosi told reporters,
just days after Snowden’s name became public in June 2013.
Later that month, speaking about
Snowden at a Netroots Nation conference, Pelosi rendered a quick summary
judgment: “He did violate the law in terms of releasing those documents.”
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” she reiterated that
Snowden “did break the law” — and added the flagrant lie that “he’s threatening
in any event to share information with Russia and China.”
Sticking to a basic script for
leaders of both major parties, Pelosi has vehemently denied the systematic
violations of the Fourth Amendment that Snowden exposed. Such denial is
routine, while sometimes going over-the-top to blame the messenger for the
accurate news. “Edward Snowden is a coward,” the Obama administration’s top
diplomat, Secretary of State John Kerry, said in
a TV interview one year after Snowden’s revelations. “He is a traitor. And he
has betrayed his country.”
Bottom of Form
Fast-forward to the present:
House Speaker Pelosi, now the most powerful Democrat in the U.S. government, is
suddenly voicing grave concern for the rights and safety of the whistleblower
who filed the complaint that has led to an impeachment inquiry against
President Trump. The intelligence agency insider, she declared, “must be provided
with every protection guaranteed by the law to defend the integrity of our
government and ensure accountability and trust.”
But leading Democrats and
Republicans have shown scant interest in ensuring genuine “accountability and
trust.” On many profound issues, whistleblowing is essential to fill the gap
left by powerful politicians who use soothing rhetoric to fog up their
dedicated service to corporate America and the military-industrial-surveillance
complex.
Congressional Democrats and
their Republican counterparts didn’t inform the public about a vast array of
war crimes by the U.S. military in Iraq. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning
did.
The bipartisan leadership in
Congress didn’t inform the public about the torture procedures of the George W.
Bush administration. CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou did.
Congressional leaders didn’t
inform the public about the wholesale shredding of the Fourth Amendment by the
Bush and Obama administrations. NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake and Edward
Snowden did.
The persecution of “national
security” whistleblowers is an ongoing effort to block the flow of crucial
information. The entire concept of democracy is based on the informed consent
of the governed. Without whistleblowers like Manning, Kiriakou, Drake and Snowden,
we’re left with the uninformed “consent” of the governed, which is not
meaningful consent at all.
With few exceptions, officials
running all three branches of the U.S. government are unwilling to disrupt
systems of secrecy that hide what cannot withstand the light of day. Those
systems protect multibillion-dollar industries profiting from huge military
budgets and surveillance operations. Without unauthorized disclosures, we would
know far less about the destructive effects of what’s done with our tax dollars
in our names.
Routinely, with its
fabrications and omissions in realms of “national security,” the official story
amounts to a lie. No wonder dissembling officials in high places are so eager
to intimidate would-be whistleblowers by ferreting out and punishing those who
reveal classified information.
Meanwhile, tacitly authorized
disclosures of classified information — self-serving stories leaked by the
powerful — are routine. The methods of such leaks are among the most pernicious
open secrets in Washington: hidden in plain sight, ever-present and constantly
useful to the powerful. One of the few lawmakers to publicly point out the
glaring contradiction was Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who wrote in a
September 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton that “leaking information to
the press in order to bring pressure to bear on a policy question” had become
“a routine aspect of government life.”
Moynihan added: “An evenhanded
prosecution of leakers could imperil an entire administration.” But even-handed
prosecution is nowhere in sight. Instead, selective
prosecutions — and selective expressions of outrage, based on
nationalistic fervor and partisan calculations — are standard operating
procedures.
At the same time, while often
eager to run with information provided by brave whistleblowers, the media
establishment rarely
stands up for them. Commonly — as in the cases of Manning, Kiriakou
and Jeffrey Sterling —
journalists get prizes while whistleblowers get prison. In a relay race for
truth, reporters and editors cross the finish line to accolades, while severe
punishment awaits the whistleblowers who handed them the baton.
Hypocrisy and double
standards, of course, are nothing new in the nation’s capital or from corporate
media outlets. But the current deluge of mainstream reverence for “national
security” whistleblowing shouldn’t be taken at face value.
To a significant extent,
similar problems exist among self-described liberal and progressive groups that
are now so enthusiastic about the whistleblower who has exposed Trump’s
indefensible efforts to manipulate the Ukrainian government for his political
advantage. Organizations should look at themselves in the mirror and assess
whether they’ve imitated the expedient double standards of the Democratic
Party’s approach to whistleblowers.
When the largest online
progressive group in the country, MoveOn.org, suddenly becomes a champion of a
whistleblower who has exposed Trump — after refusing
to support courageous whistleblowers like Manning, Snowden, Kiriakou,
Drake, Sterling and others who were persecuted by the Obama administration —
the corrosive effects of mimicking the Democratic leadership should be
apparent.
None of this changes the
reality that the Trump regime must be completely opposed and removed from
power. Nor should we fall into conflating the two major parties across the
board, when it’s clear that on numerous crucial issues — such as those often
determined by Supreme Court decisions — the stark differences have huge
consequences.
But Democratic Party leaders
as champions of whistleblowers? The idea is a ridiculous fraud.
No comments:
Post a Comment