I figured something was seriously wrong when the U.S. Government tried so hard and so fast to get out in front of the Snowden situation. By that I mean, they were right there, out front and center, condemning this guy in unequivocal terms. It was too much and too fast for my liking. I am a very much a let’s wait and see what all the facts tell us.
The government knew exactly what Snowden had access to and
what he could possibly release well before he released it. They had to do whatever was necessary to
discredit him, immediately, if not sooner.
For the government it was initially pure damage control. Edward Snowden was a traitor, thousands of
lives were placed in jeopardy and the Cardinal sin of intelligence, revealing sources
and methods, would destroy us. Terrorists
would launch attacks, nuclear weapons would be required, millions would be
killed and other such tripe was issued forth.
They had to poison the well, so to speak, and make Snowden the single
least credible person on the planet.
They had to make sure the people did not believe anything he said and
trust them, in spite of the disclosures.
I have personally had access to secret materials, the
content of which I will not reveal, but I can assure you that the single most
often used reason for classifying material, at whatever level, is to prevent
some moron who did something stupid from being exposed. It rarely has anything to do with revealing
sources and methods or keeping national secrets nor maintaining national
security. It usually has everything to
do with someone in power or position, in the military or the government, who
has done something illegal, immoral, unethical or just stupid or fattening and
might be embarrassed if anyone finds out.
Poof, it becomes classified and no one is the wiser, problem solved.
The problem with this is that it makes for an incredibly
non-responsive government. How do you
complain if you have no idea who did it?
Hell, how do you even know to complain if you don’t even know that something
went wrong? That is the problem with secrecy;
it limits and often eliminates accountability.
We live in a country based on a system of checks and balances. This system, as implemented by our Founding
Fathers, in my humble opinion, is divinely inspired. I am not a religious fanatic, but I do not
believe that human beings are that smart, and God, Allah, Yahweh or whoever you
happen to believe in, helped us out. Of
course, in keeping with the religious concepts, we have free will, and we are
screwing it up, or more accurately, our leaders are leading us down the
primrose path to Hell. We are following
the leaders as they tell us over and over again, “Trust us; we’ll take care of
everything.” The problem is they are
lying to us, either actively by just making statements that are not true, or
passively by just not telling us anything at all and doing everything behind
our backs in the name of protecting us.
There is something to be said for the leaking of information
by Edward Snowden. We are now engaged in
a national discussion as to whether the NSA should be doing what it is
doing. There are a very significant
number of people, myself included, that are asking, “Exactly why do you need to
know who I call, who calls me, how long we talk and where I am when I am
talking to them? This is, among other
things, exactly what the government is gathering when it collects so-called “metadata.” In law enforcement, we used this information
to discover the organization of drug dealers in the county in which I lived and
it worked. We developed a chart of circles
and arrows that would have made Amway proud.
We got this information on specific individuals through the use of a “pen
register,” and you could tell a whole lot about a person with just this
information. It was actually scary.
Now we have the NSA collecting the same class of data on
every American in the world. Ya, I know
they have said they only get it for foreign contacts, but we are just now learning
that they gathered this information on residents of Washington, DC and New York
City, “by accident.” In their net, the NSA says they inadvertently
captured “inappropriate data” on not hundreds, not thousands, but tens of
thousands of American Citizens in our nation’s capital and our most populace
city. Accident my ass! I am not a big believer in conspiratorial
thinking, but you do not have to have to be Michael Moore to turn this into a
conspiracy worthy of a movie. If I were
a betting man, I would bet that Edward Snowden had access to this information
and the NSA figured, before he leaks it, we need to get out in front of the disclosure
ourselves. The NSA thinks they become
the white knights because they ratted themselves out. See, you can trust us. BULSHIT!!
We have another reason for asking whether we want to view
Edward Snowden as a hero or a traitor.
The disclosure of information has opened a discussion the likes of which
we have not seen since Nixon’s Watergate Affair. Remember, the scandal that eventually brought
down a President? August 9, 2014 will be
the 40th anniversary of Big Dick’s resignation, by the way. People all along the political continuum in
this country are starting to ask the same questions about the NSA’s various
programs. Conservatives, Liberals and
everyone in between are asking questions, and the NSA does not like it. They should not like it and aren’t supposed
to like it; it is the nature of a system of checks and balances. They want to do something and another branch
of government says, “No you can’t do that.”
In this case, the
people themselves are starting to ask the questions. The politicians, who ostensibly represent us,
in spite of their best efforts to convince We
the People that we have nothing to worry about are seeing the political
winds shift. As a result, the politicians
are beginning to see the convergence of doing their jobs and keeping their jobs. Usually they consider these events not to be
cause and effect as they should, but as nearly mutually exclusive. The result is an inertia that is nearly
impossible to overcome. The ball cannot
be moved, or once it begins to roll, it cannot be stopped and the direction cannot be changed.
Allow me to describe the idiocy of some of the bureaucrats
in the intelligence field in this country, the people we entrust with our
national security. While in a government
position, I received a memorandum and a bunch of attachments from the chain of
command above me. I reviewed the material and with the
scrunched-up-nose look you get when you don’t get it, I asked, why the Hell
would this get sent to me? I signed off
that I had received and reviewed the materials as indicated on the memorandum
and shrugged it off.
A couple of days go by and another memo comes in. This is about the previous memo and
materials. Someone screwed up and sent
the stuff to the wrong distribution list.
I was requested to sign the memo telling me I had reviewed the memo sent
in error, had made no copies, and had received and reviewed the memo telling me
about it having been sent in error.
Okay, I get it; if they could have used an MIB “Nuerolyzer” (You know
the “flashy thing” that ‘K’ and ‘J' used to erase the memories of people.),
they would have. Okay, so I sign the new
memo and send it down the chain of command.
Problem solved….but wait, there’s more.
A couple of days later, I get another memo. Attached to this memo is the memo with my
signature on it saying I reviewed it and the previous memo. They want me to initial my signature. WTF?
Okay, I initial my signature on the previous memo as instructed by the
most recent memo. The people that put
this system of memos in place and had people initialing their original
signatures are the people we entrust with our national security, God Help
us!! Otherwise, we are truly doomed.
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