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Another NSA leaker emerges

It turns out that there is another NSA whistleblower in addition to Edward Snowden. Cory Doctorow writes that an anonymous leaker has revealed to a German publication Bild am Sonntag that the NSA has been spying on senior German government officials as well as the chancellor Angela Merkel, something that Snowden hinted at in his interview with the German TV station ARD.

As Doctorow says:

The NSA is out of control. The president of the United States, the man who has the final say over NSA policy, directly ordered them to stop spying on Angela Merkel. NSA spooks then cooked up a way of continuing to spy on Chancellor Merkel anyway, using a flimsy pretense unworthy of four-year-old. (This is assuming that Obama himself didn’t wink-nudge them and say, “Actually, go ahead and keep spying on her but not personally, OK?”)

Actually, I think the latter is true. The NSA would not directly defy the president. The nudge-and-wink strategy is what American presidents always indulge in in order to make it look as if their hands are clean.

It is encouraging to see another NSA leaker emerge but I worry for him/her. So far this person is anonymous but you can bet that that NSA is going all out to make sure that he or she does not escape their clutches the way Snowden did and they will dish out harsh punishment.

Reflections on Russia and the winter Olympics » « Money talks in Arizona

Comments

  1. says

    The nudge-and-wink strategy is what American presidents always indulge in in order to make it look as if their hands are clean.

    That’s exactly what Bush and his gang of war criminals did. When the CIA’s first reports on Iraq didn’t justify the illegal invasion, they said, “Do it again,” not “Make it fit the argument.” The CIA kept fudging the numbers until BushCo got the made up answer it wanted.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/clarkes-take-on-terror/

    “The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, ‘I want you to find whether Iraq did this.’ Now he never said, ‘Make it up.’ But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

    “I said, ‘Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.’

    “He came back at me and said, “Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a connection.’ And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report.”

    Clarke continued, “It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, ‘Will you sign this report?’ They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, ‘Wrong answer. … Do it again.‘

    See also: http://alturl.com/vzpvk

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