Hoover to Hussein Obama, another contemporary exposes a piece

1920s-2013 and counting

When will we end the carnage?

Edited excerpt, commentary by Carolyn Bennett

High Crimes uncorrected become corrosive “normal” severing the heart of a nation.

I

t is important to distinguish between corrupt human beings and the country, one’s homeland, the land that we love, the land whose promise and potential we have barely realized.

Snowden (top)
Manning (lower left)
Ellsberg (lower right)

Snowden seems to capture this distinction that no school in America teaches in its classrooms. In America, “achievers” (the getters, those who get) must clone themselves, imitate, plagiarize entrenched power: an incestuous, nepotistic, corrupt, amoral mind.

Snowden now being hunted by this ruthless power seems to have evolved and, in a sense, escaped. Here’s some of what he said in an interview with Glenn Greenwald before the full-on hunt began. For me, these personal words of a true patriot resonate and compel.

The United States government had invaded Iraq riding on a wave of daily dusk-to-dawn propaganda and falsehoods. Snowden was a true believer. He said he had enlisted in the U.S. Army shortly after that invasion “out of a belief in ‘the goodness of what we were doing.’” He believed, he told Greenwald, “‘in the nobility of our intentions to free oppressed people overseas.’” A people, mind you, who had lived thousands of years in Mesopotamia: a cradle of civilization amidst the great Tigris and Euphrates rivers. 

Ah, the young and impressionable.

U.S. in Libya
What happened?

In this, Snowden was like many other Americans, soldiers and not, young and not, who had been deliberately duped, who were and are victims of U.S. politicians’ propaganda, and U.S. inferior systems of education ─ Kindergarten to Harvard.

Over the course of his career and in watching programming masquerading as hard “news,” Snowden finally recognized that what he was watching was the SHOW: “propaganda, not truth.” Snowden continues:

We (comparing what he saw in the course of his work with what he saw on the show) were actually involved in misleading the public and misleading all the publics (plural, of course there is only one public, global and domestic inclusive), not just the American public ─ in order to create a certain mindset in the global consciousness

…I was actually a victim of that.

High CRIMEs: insidious, endless, with impunity

As a young lover, he wanted to believe in his government. Snowden said he had “continued with his job while waiting for political leaders to rein in ‘government excesses.’”

But they never quit.

“‘As I’ve watched I’ve seen (no end to government excesses),’” he said; “‘and, in fact, we’re compounding the excesses of prior governments and making it (the situation) worse and more invasive; and no one is really standing to stop it.’”

Uncorrected abuse of power

High crimes 1920s-2013 -

Notorious FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (1924-1972): appointed, reappointed, a lifer, allowed to hold office until death from natural causes

1950s, 1960s: COINTELPRO (counterintelligence programs) the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation used covert means to disrupt activities of groups it considered “subversive” and to discredit their leaders. Officially discontinued in 1971

"Subversive" then, "terrorist" now?

37th U.S. president Richard Milhous Nixon (1969–1974)

Nixon 1970-1973: Supported Dictator Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean general who overthrew Chile’s President Salvador Allende (elected 1970). [Consider contemporary Washington’s insidious wars on Latin America’s leaders South and Central as well as Libya’s and Syria’s leaders; Bahrain’s, Yemen’s, Somalia’s, Egypt's, Palestine’s, Iraq’s, Iran’s, North Korea’s and others’ people; wars on Afghanistan and Pakistan Sovereignty and peoples].

Richard Nixon
J. Edgar Hoover

Secret war: The Nixon administration (1970-73) ─ after President Allende nationalized American-owned mining companies ─ restricted Chile’s access to international economic assistance and discouraged private investment, increased aid to the Chilean military, cultivated secret contacts with anti-Allende police and military officials, and undertook various other destabilizing measures, including funneling millions of dollars in covert payments to Chilean opposition groups. In September 1973, Allende was overthrown in a military coup led by army commander in chief Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

Nixon 1972: Illegal activities by President Nixon and his aides concerning a burglary and wiretapping of the national headquarters of the Democratic Party at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.; allegations of other loosely related crimes committed both before and after the break-in; and the cover-up brought Nixon almost to prison. Nixon had secretly directed his White House counsel, John Dean, to oversee a cover-up to conceal his government’s involvement in Watergate. He had also obstructed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in its inquiry and authorized secret cash payments to the Watergate burglars in an effort to prevent them from implicating his administration. Faced with almost-certain impeachment, Nixon was allowed to resign the office of the presidency (1974).

 

40th U.S. president Ronald Wilson Reagan (1981–1989)

 

Reagan 1980s: Another U.S. political scandal in which the National Security Council (NSC) was involved in secret weapons transactions and other activities that either were prohibited by the U.S. Congress or violated stated public policy of the government.

Reagan 1984: his popularity riding high, he proclaims “Morning in America”, “America is back” and reelection sloganeers about “economic prosperity” and a renewed U.S. leadership role in world affairs.

Reagan 1985-1986: the president authorizes a secret and illegal initiative to sell antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Iran in exchange for that country’s help in securing the release of Americans held hostage by “terrorist” groups in Lebanon. Monetary transfers were undertaken by National Security Council (NSC) staff member Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North with the approval of NSC head Rear Admiral John M. Poindexter (succeeding William McFarlane who had recommended the arms sales).  NSC’s illegal activities came to light in November; Poindexter and North lost their jobs and were prosecuted; the United States suffered serious but seemingly temporary loss of credibility as an opponent of “terrorism”; Reagan was unpunished and in later years highly praised.  [Nixon also was resurrected before death]

43rd U.S. president George Walker Bush (2001-2009)

Bush 2002-2005: Bush W’s administration secretly and illegally authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens and others in the United States without first obtaining an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

When the program was revealed in news reports in December 2005, the administration insisted that it was justified by a September 2001 joint Congressional resolution that authorized the president to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks. (Gloves off ─ anything goes)

Post-September 11, 2001, FBI powers to surveil U.S. citizens and foreign residents were significantly expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act (formally the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001).

In 2003 the FBI established an Office of Intelligence to manage its intelligence-gathering activities and to coordinate its efforts with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Bush and Congress 2008: The U.S. Congress in 2008 legislation granted immunity (illegal becomes legal) and expanded the NSA’s surveillance powers; Bush signed.  Congress also passed the Military Commissions Act giving the commissions foundation in law and prohibiting recourse in law: non-U.S. citizen “enemy combatants” were barred from challenging their detentions in U.S. federal courts.

Bush’s CIA: abduction, rendition, torture: under another Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-run program dozens of individuals suspected of involvement in “terrorism” were abducted outside the United States and held in secret prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere or transferred for interrogation to countries that routinely practiced torture.

44th U.S. president Barack Hussein Obama II (2009 - )

Obama 2008: a campaign for the U.S. presidency promising positive “change”, a “reset” in foreign relations; and reminiscent of actor-Reagan’s rhetorical flourish, it died post-election; and words turned into the bloodiest U.S. foreign relations policies and practices in American history.

The country under current Washington governance emanating from all branches has shown itself to be astoundingly hostile ─ in its invasions and occupation, its extrajudicial killings, its destabilization and provocation of regions and peoples, its funding of oppressive regimes (authoritarian, dictatorial and military), its malevolent intrusiveness, secrecy and surveillance, in its near-destruction of the United Nations, and its misleading rhetoric and blatant falsehoods ─ to all nations and

peoples of the world including the American people.

T

here is an ethos here, a sinister connectedness running through the character of U.S. “leadership” that others, now Snowden has exposed a piece. Snowden continued the contemporary saga related to which I wonder as he has wondered about Americans’ penchant for forgetfulness.

“The partnership between the intelligence agencies and the corporate sector was a ‘dangerous collaboration’ ─ especially for an organization like the NSA (National Security Agency) that time and again has demonstrated: ‘it works to shield itself from oversight.’

“‘The NSA (that is, people heading this agency) lied … to Congress and to specific (members of the U.S. Congress in response to previous inquiries about NSA’s surveillance activities)’ and ‘about the existence’ of a particular surveillance system called “Boundless Informant,” which “allowed the NSA to track data it was accumulating.” Snowden said,

‘They are getting everyone’s calls; everyone’s call records; everyone’s Internet traffic.’

Tunneling through pageantry and propaganda and fake patriotism (undeterred by those who wrap themselves in the same stars and stripes that flap from their car windows, ring their used car dealerships) and trying to salvage the nation’s promise takes insight and uncommon courage.

Snowden concludes

“‘America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing but the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.’ And ─

‘I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded.

‘That’s not something I’m willing to support; it’s not something I’m willing to build and it’s not something I’m willing to live under.’

 

P

atriots do not ask how can I use or abuse this nation (or any nation); how can I cash in or what can I take from her; what can I do to her or against her. How can I destroy her principled potential and promise?

“Patriots,” I wrote a few days ago, “are … people who love their country and support its interests” (not the propaganda of politicians, their paymasters, allies and or cronies). Patriots ask what I can do not for this or that party or politician, foundation, corporation or nonprofit; but what can I do for my country.

I’d say Edward Joseph Snowden qualifies as a “patriot.”  

One day, before having to leave this land, we the people who love it will gather the courage to vote out the real traitors, clean house; and welcome true patriots and true progressives ─ 

…in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the Common defense (this does not mean wage domestic or foreign wars), promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity….

Sources and notes

“Edward Snowden: U.S. surveillance ‘not something I’m willing to live under’ ─ In second part of Glenn Greenwald interview, NSA whistleblower insists he is a patriot who regards the U.S. as fundamentally good,” Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, Monday 8 July 2013 14.22 EDT, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/08/edward-snowden-surveillance-excess-interview

Excerpt from the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America

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