Shouldn't the title be "Espionage or Whistleblowing?" Journalism would just be reporting on the events.
For example, Daniel Ellsberg, leaking Pentagon Papers - basically everyone now agrees that was legitimate whistleblowing as it proved leading government figures were lying through their teeth to the American public about the reality on the ground in Vietnam. In contrast, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen were CIA and FBI employees who sold all kinds of secrets to the Soviet Union for several decades - pretty sure we can safely call that espionage.
So Edward Snowden... proved the likes of James Clapper were lying through their teeth to Congress about mass warrantless collection of the private communications of American citizens. Hmmm... is it whistleblowing or espionage? Gosh what a tough question.
> This claim that Clapper lied before Congress has an interesting mix of supporters—some people on the far left who view Clapper as some part of a nefarious intelligence state out to spy on all of us, and then Trump supporters who look for any way to discredit someone who’s been a critic of Trump.
> Jim Clapper has served the US with honor and distinction. The role of DNI has been much like that of the Spinal Tap drummer—no-one who has been in that role has been around much and seems to just disappear in a poof. Clapper is the exception. People who follow the IC will tell you that Clapper was outstanding.
> As for the claim that he “lied,” this requires a little explanation. In a closed session, he had briefed the Congressional committee about US monitoring of telecommunications. He was then asked in an open hearing if the US did this. This was a classified program. Anyone who says that he should have said “I’m not authorized to talk about that” is being naive—that would automatically say “we do indeed have a classified program in this area.” So Clapper did what anyone when asked a question about the existence of a specific classified program would do—gave an answer that didn’t hint that we did indeed have such a program. After the public testimony, he then contacted the committee and said what the correct answer was—and that it was classified.
> I have been asked questions before (including by co-workers in the IC) about programs they weren’t cleared for and when you’re not supposed to give hints that the program exists, you can’t say “I’m not authorized to comment on that” or “sorry but that’s classified” because those are answers, you’re saying “yes, we do have such a program.” So in those cases you maintain the security of the program and only reveal it in a setting and audience that is cleared for discussion.
> And that’s why he was never censured or reprimanded by Congress for “lying.”
Still strikes me as cowardly since the program was/is grossly unconstitutional.
And I think Snowden has proven the constitution can survive the disclosure that the government had an illegal, poorly overseen dragnet. Clapper is ultimately responsible for what is considered classified. Feels like circular logic to say he was forced to lie to the public and non-committee representatives about things he had authority to disclose.
It’s fair to criticize the whole US intelligence establishment (and their congressional overseers, and every president of both parties for the past 40+ years) without thinking that Clapper should be personally criminally liable for following standard practice here.
* * *
While we are talking about cowardly though, why has Edward Snowden, president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation (!), neither said anything publicly nor resigned after 2 months of Russian crackdown on journalists and dissidents (in Russia they are now arresting people holding up invisible signs based on the imagined anti-government messages on them, and arresting journalists for no reason at all), explicit orders to the Russian military to murder journalists in Ukraine, etc.?
I was generally a fan of Snowden (with some reservations) before the past 2 months, considering him a flawed but courageous man of principle, but wow is he letting us all down this time.
I think it's pretty obvious why. He's between a rock and a hard place. He was not beyond the reach of the US on allegations of spying releasing government secrets and a whole bunch of other laws he broke in order to become a whistleblower against the government's illicit programs --the only place which provided him refuge was Russia. No one else would take him. What do you expect, that he bite the cruel hand that feeds him? Be realistic.
PS. that's a very unwarranted swipe. Might as well request Obama to turn in his Nobel Peace Prize speaking of incongruencies.
What do you imagine Snowden is supposed to do? He has exactly zero control over any single detail of any of it. He is under the thumb of a murderous thug. Not speaking up says more than he ever could aloud.
For example, Daniel Ellsberg, leaking Pentagon Papers - basically everyone now agrees that was legitimate whistleblowing as it proved leading government figures were lying through their teeth to the American public about the reality on the ground in Vietnam. In contrast, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen were CIA and FBI employees who sold all kinds of secrets to the Soviet Union for several decades - pretty sure we can safely call that espionage.
I am surprised that Ellsberg was let off. I think Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen were punished because they betrayed their oaths and the material was more important or pertinent.
They had all those things for Ellsberg, he was barred from presenting a defense and the judge admitted the administration attempted to bribe him.
His charges were dropped because the prosecution's gross misconduct and illegal evidence collection had become national news. Without Watergate, Ellsberg would have spent years in prison.
The story is about whether Gellman was a spy like many in the intelligence community including Clapper claim he is. It's about his works with Snowden's documents, not Snowden himself.
> What I don’t understand is why Clapper wasn’t at the very least charged with perjury for lying to Congress under oath.
What I don’t understand is why Clapper has to settle with merely “not being charged with perjury” while Brett Kavanaugh not only wasn’t charged with perjury, and continued in government service (in a position he got through his perjury) when his lies were established, but got promoted to the Supreme Court (note, I’m referring to his blatant lies about his involvement with the Bush-era torture program during his Court of Appeals confirmation hearing, not any perjury he may have committed during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.)
Kavanaugh spent literally his entire career as a GOP partisan activist. That was and is his chief qualification for the Court.
He started his career clerking for conservative judges including Judge Kozinski and Justice Kennedy. Then in the late 90s he worked for Ken Starr doing trumped up anti-Clinton “investigations”, and authored the Starr Report. In 2000 he was part of George W. Bush’s legal team that worked with the GOP-majority Supreme Court to prevent Florida from counting all of the votes from the 2000 election, blatantly unconstitutionally (and against all precedent) stomping on the Florida Supreme Court. For his services he was hired by Alberto Gonzalez at the Bush DOJ. Then later during the Bush administration he was at the Federalist Society, in charge of choosing which judicial activists the GOP should promote to federal courts (he also perjured himself answering Senate questions about his work there, FWIW).
Who would do the charging? The executive branch for whom it was most convenient for him to <pick euphemism for lie>? The legislative branch, many of who see taking on the "intelligence community" as something for which they would get branded as non-patriotic? You need a critical mass to pursue any form of actual accountability - lone brave senators or congresspersons won't have enough momentum to get past the activation energy barrier.
"The legislative branch, many of who see taking on the "intelligence community" as something for which they would get branded as non-patriotic?"
I've never gotten the impression that Americans have very much love for the intelligence community. The military, yes, the intelligence community, no.
Congress has slapped the intelligence committee before (in the aftermath of the Church Committee[1]).
It's just that post-9/11 the powers of America's intelligence agencies were tremendously increased and they were given a much longer leash.
Now that 9/11 is more than 20 years in the past they might get slapped again, but it'll probably take a bigger scandal than Snowden's revelations to do it.. and such a scandal has to happen in peace time if it's to have any effect.
Nobody lost their job, or suffered any particular inconvenience over anything the Church Committee did. They all continued on to retirement unbothered, with full pensions, then mostly cycled quietly into military contractors' management at a big markup, billed to us.
The COINTELPRO revelations were promoted as ending the program, but there is no public evidence anything changed. The stories about attempts at spying via ESP were themselves successful disinformation campaigns conducted against the American public. Most people who have heard of them believe them, wholesale.
The lack of any accountability for the actions taken by the IC both prior to and in the wake of September 11, or any real accountability stemming from the Snowden revelations, should be taken as proof that the statement/sentiment "they are keeping us safe" sufficiently moderates public outcry. Again, not to mention Snowden-level stuff is typically signed-off at the White House level, so not just overzealous IC people operating autonomously.
If you get caught in one of these scandals, you just have to wait out the news cycles in the shadows where you typically are anyway. Or you "take one for the team" like Clapper did - no doubt with a lot of legal advice from civil servant lawyers. It doesn't really matter whether or not the public tells intelligence officers/operatives "Thank you for your service!" You can also see the retroactive immunity congress granted these organizations and impassioned defenses they offered.
There is no stomach (or understanding) to demand better of the IC in any way reminiscent of the Church or Pike committee times.
I can't really fathom the magnitude of wrongdoing that would now be needed to change how these organizations think and work, or have key staff actually slapped with enduring punishments.
While I agree, that's not very relevant to the subject of this article, which is more about how Clapper labeled Greenwald, Poitras and Gellman as "accomplices" of Snowden.
Huh? The article discusses his conversations with several high ranking members of the intelligence community. And their programs monitoring the press and their lengthy classified dossier on the author. For example
>Mueller cross-examined me: Were the NSA documents not lawfully classified? Were they not stolen? Did I not publish them anyway?
The "Snowden Associate" in the title is Bart Gellman, a long time Washington Post reporter who's covered national security issues in some detail for years and years. Just looking at his Wikipedia entry, he's been a thorn in the side of the DoD and other authorities forever.
This is not to make light or, or poo-poo his concerns or the counter-measures he takes, but rather to note that he should be watching his back after a career like that. Like Ben Franklin once said, "Never charge someone more money than it costs to kill you."
> "Never charge someone more money than it costs to kill you."
This is so clever, while being completely impractical when dealing with governing entities. Depending on where you live, pricing a service for your local police could become a very difficult exercise.
Context: “ In 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) identified Hampton as a radical threat. It tried to subvert his activities in Chicago, sowing disinformation among black progressive groups and placing a counterintelligence operative in the local Panthers organization. In December 1969, Hampton was drugged, shot and killed in his bed during a predawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, who received aid from the Chicago Police Department and the FBI leading up to the attack.”
I suspect there are many more that we'll never hear about. The three letter agencies have the expertise and manpower to make anyone's death appear accidental or from natural causes.
Not that I’m expecting this kind of situation in my life, but I wonder if there would be any workaround in this situation? Could you shift out of gear? Turn the car off? Deploy a large cartoon parachute?
Of course if an agency like this wanted me dead I’m sure evading one attempt would only prolong my life shortly.
That's a local PD killing someone, we know they do that a lot. People also get swatted, the FBI is not the only group of people who sends out local PDs in a way that gets citizens killed.
I had never heard the bin Laden satellite phone claim, but it stinks so much of intelligence agency bullshit. It blames the press for what is unquestionably their failure in the run up to 9/11, and it's central claim isn't even true. Yet it's become a staple of their rhetoric.
He appears to have went off the grid over the last 2 months. I imagine it's a very tumultuous time for him. Russia knows the US really wants to extradite him, and there will inevitably be rounds of negotiations as time moves forward. He may be a potential negotiating piece if the Russians are looking for concessions from Ukraine/NATO. (this is all speculation, but he has went dark)
> he went off the grid because he had to choose between his safety or his public image/career.
It is kind of weird that you suggest that (not, on its own, an implausible guess) and link to the tweet where he rather angrily denies exactly that characterization as support.
> He appears to have went off the grid over the last 2 months.
He really blew his credibility pushing the “Russia isn’t going to attack” propaganda line (ostensibly, as his own independent analysis of the situation), and his last tweet (3 days after the attack, his prior being 3 days before) was:
“I’m not suspended from the ceiling above a barrel of acid by a rope that burns a little faster every time I tweet, you concern-trolling ghouls. I’ve just lost any confidence I had that sharing my thinking on this particular topic continues to be useful, because I called it wrong.”
I'm biased but I think Russia's invasion and the way they are slaughtering civilians is a lot worse than the missteps that caused Snowden to disclose American secrets. Russia is also spiraling into an incredibly authoritarian police state that is much worse than what he was trying to prevent in America.
Years later Richard Ledgett, who oversaw the NSA’s media-leaks task force and went on to become the agency’s deputy director, told me matter-of-factly to assume that my defenses had been breached. “My take is, whatever you guys had was pretty immediately in the hands of any foreign intelligence service that wanted it,” he said, “whether it was Russians, Chinese, French, the Israelis, the Brits. Between you, Poitras, and Greenwald, pretty sure you guys can’t stand up to a full-fledged nation-state attempt to exploit your IT. To include not just remote stuff, but hands-on, sneak-into-your-house-at-night kind of stuff. That’s my guess.” Because I’d been one of Snowden’s principal interlocutors, Ledgett told me he was sure there was “a nice dossier” on me in both Russia and China.
It comes off to me as fear mongering and an attempt to dissuade any future involvement with such sensitive materials. An understandable approach from someone with the specified role. However, it just sounds so defeatist given how much of the article up to that point had detailed the layers of effort that had gone into avoiding exactly that.
It also means that the NSA is capable of that as well: they've got it before you even realise what it is that you've got.
Any of James Clapper's words must be filtered through his laser-focused tunnel vision; black and white, good and bad, scorched earth for middle ground. ie. discard it, but be aware that's how those people view the world, and therefore that's what you'll be up against if you step into the ring. Zealots. Cattle to be protected by the Dogs from the Wolves, and into those three categories fit all.
I don't like it much, and find it difficult to relate to, but they couldn't do the important stuff that they do if they didn't have that attitude. But that's exactly why "congress", or whoever the appropriate leash-holders are, need to yoink on the leash every now and then, rather than letting it out for two straight decades.
As much as I think it was important to get out what they published, he is right on that detail: Greenwald and Poitras, at least, were and remain wholly unqualified to keep anything under wraps. They surely did their best, as well as they understood what they were even trying to do.
He divulged some stuff that was of little consequence except giving Greenwald a career. The government simply responded by changing things up. So now you have a bunch of leaked stuff that is dated. Whistleblowers never seem that effective. either they are too late, or the stuff revealed is not that important, or nothing happens/changes. IF a whistleblower reveals a corporate fraud, for example, the revelation of the fraud will hurt shareholders. The ideal solution is to tell the shareholders before the info is public without impacting the stock price, so investors do not lose money, which is not possible. Someone has to lose. Justice may be served but shareholders still lose.
"SINCE I MET EDWARD SNOWDEN, I’VE NEVER STOPPED WATCHING MY BACK"
That is the title of the article when I click the link. (Caps and all came through in copy-paste). Where is this "Espionage or Journalism" coming from? Are there different titles shown to different viewers?
Any country sooner or later needs some black ops, reveling them in such cases is more espionage than journalism BUT when those ops are against country principles AND Citizens interests for the sake of a small élite than it's not espionage, it's journalism and those who try cover and crush such activities are guilty of high treason, embezzlement, in the Snowden cases also crimes against humanity, torture, massacres etc.
That happen tough only if the government is from an establish Democracy, if the democracy is just formal, not substantial, if citizens accept that instead of impose their sovereignty, that it does not happen.
If Snowden's and Greenwald's twitter accounts during the lead up (and since) to Russia's invasion of Ukraine hasn't answered that question for you, what proof could possibly exist that would convince you that they're puppets for Putin?
For non-Americans who don't know, accusing someone who wants something you don't of being a puppet for the Kremlin has been a popular activity for the past century?
Support the fourth amendment to the US constitution? Puppet for the Kremlin.
Don't want to get into a nuclear arms race? Puppet for the Kremlin.
Support the civil rights movement?
Puppet for the Kremlin.
Don't want to pick up France's colonial subjugations in Indochina? Puppet for the Kremlin.
And so on. The social security act of 1935 was called a Russian plot. Those who wanted to wind down involvement in WWI a few months into US involvement were called Bolshevik supporters.
I'm not even sure what 'puppets for Putin' means? Or puppets for anything would really mean.
Are they having zoom chats with Putin, and he's telling them what to tweet/say, and then they are doing exactly as he directs? Or is there a different arrangement?
I'm assuming that being critical of the US military & security complex is your evidence of being a puppet for Putin? Since Putin also is critical of the US military & security complex, therefore criticizing the US = puppeting for Putin?
Yes, that would be, as that would align with my fuzzy idea of someone being a 'puppet' for someone else.
To repeat my question one last time of how you determine the 'Putin puppetness' of someone:
> I'm assuming that being critical of the US military & security complex is your evidence of being a puppet for Putin? Since Putin also is critical of the US military & security complex, therefore criticizing the US = puppeting for Putin?
For example, Daniel Ellsberg, leaking Pentagon Papers - basically everyone now agrees that was legitimate whistleblowing as it proved leading government figures were lying through their teeth to the American public about the reality on the ground in Vietnam. In contrast, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen were CIA and FBI employees who sold all kinds of secrets to the Soviet Union for several decades - pretty sure we can safely call that espionage.
So Edward Snowden... proved the likes of James Clapper were lying through their teeth to Congress about mass warrantless collection of the private communications of American citizens. Hmmm... is it whistleblowing or espionage? Gosh what a tough question.