What Clinton Got Wrong About Snowden
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/what_clinton_got_wrong_about_snowden_201
51021/
Posted on Oct 21, 2015
By John Kiriakou, Other Words
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. (Charles Platiau / AP)
This piece originally appeared on OtherWords.
Hillary Clinton is wrong about Edward Snowden. Again.
The presidential candidate and former secretary of state insisted during the
recent Democratic debate that Snowden should have remained in the United
States to voice his concerns about government spying on U.S. citizens.
Instead, she claimed, he "endangered U.S. secrets by fleeing to Russia."
After accusing Snowden of stealing "very important information that has
fallen into the wrong hands," she added: "He should not be brought home
without facing the music."
Clinton should stop rooting for Snowden's incarceration and get her facts
straight.
First, Snowden is a whistleblower, not a leaker. Whistleblowing is the act
of bringing to light evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, law-breaking, or
dangers to public health or safety. Snowden did exactly that when he
divulged proof that the National Security Agency was illegally snooping on
all of us.
Second, Snowden knew it was impossible to report this wrongdoing through his
chain of command at the NSA, where he was working as a contractor employed
by the consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton.
I've written previously about whistleblower Tom Drake, who went through his
own chain of command to report an earlier illegal wiretapping scheme by the
NSA. Drake went to his bosses, his office's general counsel, the NSA's
inspector general, the Pentagon's inspector general, and congressional
oversight committees - only to be charged with 10 felonies, including five
counts of espionage.
CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling, who reported wrongdoing in a CIA
operation related to the Iranian nuclear program through his chain of
command, was similarly charged with multiple counts of espionage. Now he's
serving 42 months in prison.
The sad fact is that many national security chains of command are overtly
hostile to people who report wrongdoing. I learned this firsthand when I
spent nearly two years behind bars for denouncing the CIA's use of torture
years after I left the agency. And I didn't go to any country club. I went
to a real prison.
Indeed, one of my former supervisors at the CIA called whistleblowing
"institutionalized insubordination." In other words, employees should just
"follow orders," even if those orders are illegal.
Didn't Nazi war criminals say that they were just following orders, too? To
me, their compliance was criminal.
Third, Clinton claimed that Snowden would have enjoyed protection from the
Whistleblower Protection Act if he'd remained in the United States to make
his revelations.
I'm disappointed, frankly, that somebody running for president of the United
States doesn't know that the Whistleblower Protection Act exempts national
security whistleblowers. There are no protections for you if you work for
the CIA, NSA, or other federal intelligence agencies - or serve them as a
contractor. You take a grave personal risk if you decide to report
wrongdoing, and there's nobody who can protect you.
Even the federal body that's supposed to protect whistleblowers, the Merit
Systems Protection Board, got itself in trouble in October for suspending
and retaliating against its own whistleblower, who revealed that the agency
had a huge backlog of cases and was taking far too long to adjudicate them.
That certainly doesn't inspire confidence.
Finally, let's get this straight: Snowden didn't "flee to Russia." Snowden
stopped in Moscow on his way from Hong Kong to South America when Secretary
of State John Kerry revoked his U.S. passport. Snowden never intended to
move to Moscow. Kerry made that decision for him.
Of all people, Hillary Clinton - Kerry's predecessor at State - should know
that.
I get that Clinton doesn't like Snowden. I doubt he's too upset about that.
But Clinton should get her facts straight if she's going to take a stand
against those federal employees and contractors who take their oaths to
uphold the Constitution seriously enough to report crimes against it.
She should be celebrating whistleblowers, not vilifying them and suggesting
they waltz into the nearest penitentiary.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA analyst and whistleblower and now an associate
fellow for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. He worked
for the CIA from 1990 to 2004, including as chief of counterterrorist
operations in Pakistan. In an interview in 2009, he became the first former
government official to confirm the use of waterboarding against al-Qaida
suspects. From 2009 to 2011, he was a senior investigator for the U.S.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 2012, he was charged with leaking
classified information to journalists and served two years in prison.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
What Clinton Got Wrong About Snowden
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/what_clinton_got_wrong_about_snowden_201
51021/
Posted on Oct 21, 2015
By John Kiriakou, Other Words
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. (Charles Platiau / AP)
This piece originally appeared on OtherWords.
Hillary Clinton is wrong about Edward Snowden. Again.
The presidential candidate and former secretary of state insisted during the
recent Democratic debate that Snowden should have remained in the United
States to voice his concerns about government spying on U.S. citizens.
Instead, she claimed, he "endangered U.S. secrets by fleeing to Russia."
After accusing Snowden of stealing "very important information that has
fallen into the wrong hands," she added: "He should not be brought home
without facing the music."
Clinton should stop rooting for Snowden's incarceration and get her facts
straight.
First, Snowden is a whistleblower, not a leaker. Whistleblowing is the act
of bringing to light evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, law-breaking, or
dangers to public health or safety. Snowden did exactly that when he
divulged proof that the National Security Agency was illegally snooping on
all of us.
Second, Snowden knew it was impossible to report this wrongdoing through his
chain of command at the NSA, where he was working as a contractor employed
by the consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton.
I've written previously about whistleblower Tom Drake, who went through his
own chain of command to report an earlier illegal wiretapping scheme by the
NSA. Drake went to his bosses, his office's general counsel, the NSA's
inspector general, the Pentagon's inspector general, and congressional
oversight committees - only to be charged with 10 felonies, including five
counts of espionage.
CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling, who reported wrongdoing in a CIA
operation related to the Iranian nuclear program through his chain of
command, was similarly charged with multiple counts of espionage. Now he's
serving 42 months in prison.
The sad fact is that many national security chains of command are overtly
hostile to people who report wrongdoing. I learned this firsthand when I
spent nearly two years behind bars for denouncing the CIA's use of torture
years after I left the agency. And I didn't go to any country club. I went
to a real prison.
Indeed, one of my former supervisors at the CIA called whistleblowing
"institutionalized insubordination." In other words, employees should just
"follow orders," even if those orders are illegal.
Didn't Nazi war criminals say that they were just following orders, too? To
me, their compliance was criminal.
Third, Clinton claimed that Snowden would have enjoyed protection from the
Whistleblower Protection Act if he'd remained in the United States to make
his revelations.
I'm disappointed, frankly, that somebody running for president of the United
States doesn't know that the Whistleblower Protection Act exempts national
security whistleblowers. There are no protections for you if you work for
the CIA, NSA, or other federal intelligence agencies - or serve them as a
contractor. You take a grave personal risk if you decide to report
wrongdoing, and there's nobody who can protect you.
Even the federal body that's supposed to protect whistleblowers, the Merit
Systems Protection Board, got itself in trouble in October for suspending
and retaliating against its own whistleblower, who revealed that the agency
had a huge backlog of cases and was taking far too long to adjudicate them.
That certainly doesn't inspire confidence.
Finally, let's get this straight: Snowden didn't "flee to Russia." Snowden
stopped in Moscow on his way from Hong Kong to South America when Secretary
of State John Kerry revoked his U.S. passport. Snowden never intended to
move to Moscow. Kerry made that decision for him.
Of all people, Hillary Clinton - Kerry's predecessor at State - should know
that.
I get that Clinton doesn't like Snowden. I doubt he's too upset about that.
But Clinton should get her facts straight if she's going to take a stand
against those federal employees and contractors who take their oaths to
uphold the Constitution seriously enough to report crimes against it.
She should be celebrating whistleblowers, not vilifying them and suggesting
they waltz into the nearest penitentiary.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA analyst and whistleblower and now an associate
fellow for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. He worked
for the CIA from 1990 to 2004, including as chief of counterterrorist
operations in Pakistan. In an interview in 2009, he became the first former
government official to confirm the use of waterboarding against al-Qaida
suspects. From 2009 to 2011, he was a senior investigator for the U.S.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 2012, he was charged with leaking
classified information to journalists and served two years in prison.
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