Lawmakers clamor to prosecute Snowden, but what about prosecuting Holder & Clapper?
By Danny Weil on June 13, 2013 6:00 pm / no comments
Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden publicly acknowledged that he was responsible for disclosing the information about the NSA phone surveillance and Prism programs. He claimed his motive was exposing unlawful conduct by the government and its private contractors. Snowden likely “outed” himself because the NSA would have used the very programs he exposed to track Glenn Greenwald’s communications and find him and then perhaps assassinate him.
Multiple members of Congress, including Diane Feinstein & Lindsay Graham wasted no time going on the record stating Snowden violated the law and should be prosecuted. But these same members of Congress have been notably silent on prosecuting Eric Holder and James Clapper for lying to Congress and committing perjury. And both Feinstein and Graham have known about the spying for years. They are complicit in representing the military, corporations and the intelligence agencies, not the people of the US.
James Clapper, Director of National Security
As the Huffington Post recently reported:
“During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on March 12, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the intelligence czar if the NSA gathers “any type of data at all on millions of Americans.”
“No, sir,” Clapper responded. “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly.”
After his testimony Senator Widen gave Clapper the opportunity to amend his testimony, but he declined to do so (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/james-clapper-nsa-surveillance_n_3424620.html).
We now know based upon Edward Snowden’s disclosure of the secret warrant to obtain AT&T’s and Verizon’s records of domestic and international phone calls of tens of millions of Americans that the NSA was intentionally targeting Americans and that Clapper boldly and with intent, lied to Congress. Clapper recently admitted so, telling Andrea Mitchell that his answer was the “least untruthful” answer possible. Nixon said similar things forty years ago when he admitted that he “mis-spoke”. The mendacity of the NSA is not surprising; it is the doublespeak of a corporate-military government.
Eric Holder, Attorney General
On May 15th Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying under oath before a house committee stated:
“With regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that is not something that I have ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be a wise policy” (http://www.christianpost.com/news/did-attorney-general-eric-holder-lie-to-congress-96938/).
Later that week the DOJ disclosed that Holder had been involved with approving a request to obtain a search warrant for Fox News DC Bureau Chief’s James Rosen’s e mails, phone records and his parents’ phone records — claiming Rosen was a potential criminal co-conspirator in a leak investigation (http://www.dailycensored.com/eric-holders-war-on-whistleblowers-political-activists-journalists-is-antithetical-to-democracy-and-freedom/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Dailycensored+%28Daily+Censored%29). Holder is a bold faced liar as well.
On June 4 2013 UPI.com reported:
“U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t lie to Congress about a leak probe because probing a reporter isn’t prosecuting one, a Justice Department deputy said”.http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/06/04/Justice-Department-Holder-didnt-lie-to-Congress/UPI-61941370331000/
The corporate press has a sordid history of covering up scandals by the political class. Clearly Holder lied to Congress; a probe is a potential prosecution. Anyone who has been a target of a ‘probe’ or follows the law knows this. The motion filed for warrants against James Rosen and his parents were based upon ‘probable cause’ for a potential criminal prosecution. The DOJ’s statement was at best, little more than the legal gibberish of a guilty party or at worst, pernicious mendacity used to cover-up the truth from the American people. One can only conclude the latter.
ANALYSIS
A bevy of lawmakers are clamoring for the prosecution of Snowden because he “broke the law”. Rep Peter King, himself once tied to what the US has called a “terrorist group”, the Irish Republican Army(http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/us/politics/09king.html?_r=0) even suggested that reporters such as Glenn Greenwald, should be prosecuted for publishing classified information (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/peter-king-reporters-prosecuted_n_3424541.html). Clearly, the founders of this country are turning in their grave over the bellows emanating from the US political class for prosecution of journalism and the public’s right to know, beholden as they are to the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned us against more than 54 years ago.
Yet the same lawmakers who are clamoring for the prosecution of Snowden and the conviction of Bradley Manning for what they call ‘breaking the law’ are silent on prosecuting James Clapper and Eric Holder for perjury — for lying to Congress. The cronyism of the political class and the ‘state’ in covering up illegal spying and repression is the hallmark of the current and past US coin-operated politicians. Never has it been more obvious that American politicians of both corporate parties have colluded to not only countenance repression against the American people, but to work to silent whistleblowers and journalists. This is Orwell on steroids.
As in Orwell’s 1984 there appear to be two sets of rules; one for the “inner party”, another for everyone else. There has been a complete breakdown of the checks and balances between the branches of government necessary for a functioning democracy. The American people are now the enemy of their representatives. Like Winston Smith in 1984, they are being lined up to visit Room 101.
The DOJ prosecuted baseball player Roger Clemens twice for lying to Congress. The first trial ended in a mistrial and in the second he was found not guilty. If lying to Congress is such a serious offense that Clemens was tried twice, citizens should expect no less for Mr. Holder and Clapper (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/sports/baseball/roger-clemens-is-found-not-guilty-in-perjury-trial.html) who say they are he harbingers of justice? Yet don’t hold your breath, the justice system is also in collusion with the ‘state’ in assuring that no prosecutions of Holder or anyone else for the matter, other than those telling the American people the truth, will be held legally accountable. Why? The people who sit on the courts also represent the corporate-military complex. It’s all a gaggle of cronyism.
Edward Snowden’s greatest contribution is perhaps revealing how deeply for-profit corporations and the secretive military are embedded in every aspect of our government, our lives and how this all corrupts the integrity of our democracy, or what little is left of it if any. Rather than calls for Snowden’s prosecution, there should be parades that hoist him on the shoulders of patriotic Americans as a hero. Alas, the lessons of history seem lost for most Americans.
Just like for-profit prison companies lobby for harsh sentencing laws because it is good for business, it is likely that for-profit national security companies and their military counterparts are lobbying for policies which promote a perpetual state of war because this is good for their business. Eternal war, like in 1984, is now the business of the American government and Obama is simply the civilian face of a harsh, despotic military-corporate government.
Like an organized crime syndicate, the Obama Administration is now hunting down Snowden to send a message to other would be whistle blowers that they too will come under the lash of corporate America and the tyrannical state if they try to tell the American people what the government they are paying for is up to. It is a sad irony that in a Democratic Senate coupled with a Democratic president who was a Constitutional law professor, the American political class and their paymasters, the CIA, military industrial complex and corporations have legitimized doing away with Constitutional protections and the rule of law. But then again, the Constitution and the rule of law are little more than a hindrance to those who rule by fiat on behalf of corporate and military power. America is now a tyranny ruled not by the ‘rule of law’, but by the rule of men. All of this, to keep the corporate-military structure intact.
Revisiting Orwell and his dystopian novel is a necessity now for it sheds so much light on what is occurring within the American ‘state’:
“The war, therefore if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that the hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word “war,” therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that is exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and has been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This–although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense–is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE” (http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/386688-the-war-therefore-if-we-judge-it-by-the-standards).
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