View Full Version : NSA Whistleblower Confirms Snowden Allegations, and adds more!!!!

Peter Lemkin
07-04-2014, 10:47 AM
Second NSA Whistleblower Confirms Snowden Allegations, and adds more (Video Interview) By Scott Baker (http://www.opednews.com/ScottBaker)

Snowden was only the first whistleblower

In a series of 4 reports by Reporter/Monetary Reformer Bill Still, the NSA's highest ranking official to date, Bill Binney, who went by the title of "technical director of the world for G.O. political and military analysis andreporting group" has confirmed everything Edward Snowden has said so far, and added that the NSA has 2,000 transcribers whose job it is just to take down whatever the electronic data gathers cannot (due to background noise, he says). He quit on moral conscience grounds, just like Snowden.
Here is the first video:

In the second video, Bill Binney confirms that all content of all phone calls within the United States are recorded and one million a day are transcribed for permanent preservation. He concludes that this means the government NSA officials have perjured themselves by claiming otherwise.


In the last video, Binney everyone, even the Supreme Court, is spied upon. Further, the NSA will collect data and then, if they find something illegal, they will work backwards through legal channels to obtain the same information in a legal way. Still and Binney compare this to conducting an Easter Egg hunt while knowing where all the Easter Eggs are buried.
Binney concludes by saying Snowden would not get a fair trial in America, due to invocation of the State Secret's Act, that would suppress all evidence and effectively silence him.

**** UPDATE 7/3/14 ****
Binney talks about how the gov't has tried to go after him, but that his exculpatory evidence has protected him, and conferred immunity. This is the crack that will undo the fascist nature of the current Administration and Congress in general. When the police decide they cannot arrest everyone, including their own sons and daughters, the oppression ends.



It has now been over a year since Snowden's revelations, and several months since two independent panels found the NSA to be violating the constitution and to not even be engaged in productive snooping - that is, they have not uncovered any terrorist activity this way.

Yet, the NSA Utah data collection center remains. Protestors recently flew a blimp over it (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/27/us-usa-utah-nsa-idUSKBN0F22K520140627).

Just how long do we have to wait to shut this unconstitutional activity down? Hello NSA? Can you answer?


David Guyatt
07-05-2014, 07:40 AM
Well worth watching, I thought. He's a very smart and pragmatic man.

If I listened correctly, they began collecting all this information in February 2001, and then this stepped up greatly in October 2001, after 9/11. The February date suggests to me that pre-knowledge of 9/11?

Peter Lemkin
07-05-2014, 10:24 AM


After all, David, a complex [highly!!!] operation such as occurred on 9/11/01 takes months of careful planning!!!! They also wrote and PRINTED the un'Patriot Act' well before the event!....and there are many, many, many other indications of pre-knowledge and pre-planning.

Lauren Johnson
07-05-2014, 05:50 PM

Peter Lemkin
07-05-2014, 07:36 PM
Thanks for putting up Part 5 - I forgot...::pullhairout::

By the way, there are now indications that there are is 'another' hidden 'Snowden' out there now....

Is There a Second NSA Leaker Besides Edward Snowden? ::headexplode::

By Donn Marten (http://www.opednews.com/author/author5421.html)

http://www.opednews.com/populum/uploadphotos/s_300_upload_wikimedia_org_5421_XKeyscore_logo_315 .gif
XKeyscore logo

A very interesting question has come out regarding a story on the NSA's targeting (http://www.wired.com/2014/07/nsa-targets-users-of-privacy-services/) of those who utilize internet privacy tools, specifically the browser Tor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29)(The Onion Router) and portable Linux based operating system Tails (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tails_%28operating_system%29) (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) as potential "terrorists" and "extremists". The question being is that the copy of the XKeyscore code (http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/xkeyscorerules100.txt) published by German website Das Erste (http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/nsa230_page-1.html) apparently was not a part of the collection of NSA documents procured by whistleblower Edward Snowden but may actually have come from a second leaker (http://news.firedoglake.com/2014/07/04/xkeyscore-story-might-mean-there-is-second-nsa-leaker/). If true this would be a bombshell as well as a game-changer that could reverberate throughout the world and shake the US national surveillance state to its very roots.
The story, by Lena Kampf, Jacob Appelbaum and John Goetz originally broke in Germany's Tagesschau (http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/nsa-xkeyscore-100.html) (you will need Google Translate (https://translate.google.com/)) and cites the NSA targeting of a German student and internet privacy activist (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/report-nsa-targeted-german-privacy-activist-24414743) named Sebastian Hahn who is involved with the Tor Project. The NSA has clearly determined that anyone who even searches for information on internet encryption and privacy tools is deemed to be an "extremist". They are then flagged for a higher level of monitoring, data-mining and retention of content instead of the limited hangout of only the metadata. This goes far beyond what has been openly admitted to by the Obama administration and the array of national intelligence goons - even if they did manage to retroactively legalize their snooping as divulged (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/02/nsa-data-collection-legal-independent-board) in the report by that independent executive branch internal oversight office the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_and_Civil_Liberties_Oversight_Board).
This is where it begins to get really scary now that NSA has been outed for officially crossing over into thought crime. Internet privacy advocacy organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) (https://www.eff.org/) has called out NSA for infringing upon the First Amendment "Dear NSA, Privacy is a Fundamental Right, Not Reasonable Suspicion" (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/dear-nsa-privacy-fundamental-right-not-reasonable-suspicion):
Learning about Linux is not a crime--but don't tell the NSA that. A story published in German on Tagesschau, and followed up by an article in English on DasErste.de today, has revealed that the NSA is scrutinizing people who visit websites such as the Tor Project's home page and even Linux Journal. This is disturbing in a number of ways, but the bottom line is this: the procedures outlined in the articles show the NSA is adding "fingerprints"--like a scarlet letter for the information age--to activities that go hand in hand with First Amendment protected activities and freedom of expression across the globe.
The EFF also encourages the continued use of Tor and Tails:

One question that is sure to come up is whether this means people desiring anonymity should stop using Tor or Tails. Here's the bottom line: If you're using Tor or Tails, there is a possibility that you will be subject to greater NSA scrutiny. But we believe that the benefits outweigh the burdens.
In fact, the more people use Tor, the safer you are. That's why we're continuing to run the Tor Challenge (https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/). The ubiquitous use of privacy and security tools is our best hope for protecting the people who really need those tools--people for whom the consequences of being caught speaking out against their government can be imprisonment or death. The more ordinary people use Tor and Tails, the harder it is for the NSA to make the case that reading about or using these tools is de facto suspicious.
My personal take on this is that if you are currently using these tools or otherwise engaged in fighting the surveillance state then you are already on their list so just f*ck the NSA. At this point activists and those who challenge the system still have a relative degree of freedom to do exactly that so why retreat into the sheep pack when you have a vested interest in challenging the bastards - especially when that vested interest is in saving one's own skin. If someone is already on the pickup list, the primary objective is to do everything possible to keep the black vans from rolling on that day when it becomes politically acceptable to give the order - such as the next "terrorist" attack like the one that Dick Cheney has promised (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/06/25/dick-cheney-predicts-attack-this-decade-far-deadlier-than-911/).
The key aspect of this story - anyone who gets it has understood for a long time that the NSA is lying their asses off and has been using their surveillance systems to build electronic dossiers on journalists, activists, bloggers, political dissidents and anyone who may one day pose a threat to the gangster state - is that the code apparently did not come from Mr. Snowden. According to a piece at the blog Boing Boing, written by Cory Doctorow and entitled "If you read Boing Boing, the NSA considers you a target for deep surveillance" (http://boingboing.net/2014/07/03/if-you-read-boing-boing-the-n.html) I except the following:
Doctorow then cites security expert Bruce Schneier (who has worked with Glenn Greenwald (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/03/bruce-schneier-glenn-greenwald-encryption-104705.html#.U7gI2fldXTo)) who writes at the blog Schneier on Security (https://www.schneier.com/) who has stated in his recent post "NSA Targets the Privacy-Conscious for Surveillance" (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/07/nsa_targets_pri.html) that "And, since Cory said it, I do not believe that this came from the Snowden documents. I also don't believe the TAO catalog (http://leaksource.info/2013/12/30/nsas-ant-division-catalog-of-exploits-for-nearly-every-major-software-hardware-firmware/) came from the Snowden documents. I think there's a second leaker out there." Greenwald himself seems to acknowledge this possibility in a Tweet (https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/485081861119832064).
That would be huge - particularly now that Greenwald's big story -that promised (http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201406/glenn-greenwald-edward-snowden-no-place-to-hide) "fireworks show" - has been shut down by the US government (https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/483800358893150209) which has gotten to either the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist himself or to the decision makers at the abysmal (at least to this point) Pierre Omidyar backed venture The Intercept. The prospect of a second NSA leaker - who if he/she is smart, will avoid outing themselves and then being subjected to the concerted campaigns of media and establishment demonization and vilification - must send cold chills up the spines of the American Stasi high command over at Ft. Meade and the rotten to the core political class that protects it from any form of oversight.
It would be even better if there were even more than two and with the website Cryptome having alluded (http://rt.com/usa/169700-cryptome-war-snowden-docs/) to the coming release of all the Snowden material nothing could make for a bigger and better party than a couple of wild cards floating around out there with more seriously explosive evidence like the set of XKeyscore instructions (http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/xkeyscorerules100.txt) that shows the lengths to which this monstrous surveillance colossus is prepared to go in order to lock down its gains.

Magda Hassan
07-06-2014, 12:30 AM
XKeyscore logo

All those billions of dollars, probably trillions actually, spent on state of the art technology, storage, creme de la creme of the mathematicians and computer gurus and they can't afford one decent graphic artist? It looks like Clapper is giving that job to his 9 year old grand child to save some $$$s.

Lauren Johnson
07-06-2014, 02:20 AM
Peter, you didn't miss 5. It went up yesterday. Six went up today.


Peter Lemkin
07-06-2014, 03:27 AM

Peter Lemkin
07-06-2014, 02:37 PM

Peter Lemkin
05-24-2016, 09:29 AM
AMY GOODMAN: Today, a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive: A former senior Pentagon official speaks out for the first time about how his superiors broke the law to punish a key National Security Agency whistleblower. By now, everyone knows how Edward Snowden revealed the government spying on hundreds of millions of people around the world. But if you want to know why Snowden did it, and the way he did it, you need to know the story of John Crane, who worked 25 years for the Department of Defense Inspector General’s Office, which helps federal employees expose abuse and corruption. He now says whistleblowers have little choice but to go outside the system.
Crane is coming forward to speak about what happened to NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who revealed the existence of a widespread illegal program of domestic surveillance. Drake’s house was raided by the FBI in 2007. He was charged in 2010 under the Espionage Act. In 2011, he pled guilty to a minor misdemeanor of unauthorized use of a government computer. He did not serve jail time.
John Crane and Edward Snowden’s stories are told in the new book, Bravehearts: Whistle-Blowing in the Age of Snowden. In dozens of hours of interviews with reporter Mark Hertsgaard, Crane described how in December 2010 Drake’s lawyers filed a complaint with the inspector general alleging he had been punished in retaliation for his whistleblowing, and that the crimes Drake had been charged with were, quote, "based in part, or entirely," unquote, on information that Drake provided to the Pentagon inspector general during its investigation of the NSA whistleblowers. In other words, the indictment had unmistakable similarities to the confidential testimony Drake had given to Crane’s staff at the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s office. This suggests investigators had not simply given Drake’s name to the FBI, but shared his entire testimony.
Mark Hertsgaard recounts this and much more of Crane’s story publicly in his book, Bravehearts. In it, Hertsgaard tells how Drake’s arrest, indictment and persecution sent an unmistakable message to Snowden: Raising concerns within the system meant he would be targeted next. Edward Snowden has responded to Crane’s revelations by calling for a complete overhaul of the U.S. whistleblower protections. Snowden told The Guardian, quote, "We need iron-clad, enforceable protections for whistleblowers, and we need a public record of success stories. Protect the people who go to members of Congress with oversight roles, and if their efforts lead to a positive change in policy—recognize them for their efforts. There are no incentives for people to stand up against an agency on the wrong side of the law today, and that’s got to change," Snowden said. He continued, "The sad reality of today’s policies is that going to the inspector general with evidence of truly serious wrongdoing is often a mistake. Going to the press involves serious risks, but at least you’ve got a chance," he says.
Well, for more, we’re joined here for the first time by John Crane, formerly with the Department of Defense Inspector General’s Office, which helps federal employees expose abuse and corruption. And we’re joined by Mark Hertsgaard, who is the correspondent at Nation magazine, author of the newly published book, Bravehearts: Whistle-Blowing in the Age of Snowden.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
JOHN CRANE: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: So, John Crane, talk about why you are coming out publicly for the first time.
JOHN CRANE: I’m coming out publicly for the first time because what Edward Snowden did is it was the largest, most massive classified leak in this country’s history. And so we have two separate issues here, that one is we, I think, need to make sure that there won’t be any more massive disclosures like that, but we can only assure that, should we have a whistleblower protection system in place that will make sure, one, whistleblowers have the confidence to step forward without having their own individual identities compromised, and when they step forward, that they’re not subject to multiyear retaliation.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about where you worked—people may not even realize the Pentagon has an Inspector General’s Office—and what you were in charge of.
JOHN CRANE: Yes. I was with the Inspector General’s Office. I worked there for 25 years. I was a senior executive there. I was one of the founding generations there. I had an office that was largely responsible for transparency and for accountability. Transparency meant that I dealt with the media, Congress. Accountability meant that I was responsible for the overall whistleblowing process. DOD is a huge agency. We have 1.2 million military. We have almost 700,000 civilians. We have half of the federal workforce. I was charged to make sure that within the Pentagon, that there could be principled dissent that would help to inform senior management regarding the way senior management made their own decisions, and—and that that system guaranteed that those people stepping forward would not be destroyed.
AMY GOODMAN: And that included, you oversaw the NSA, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: So when did you start to get nervous? When did you start to get alarmed?
JOHN CRANE: I got alarmed fairly early on, because since I was responsible for working with the Hill, when we received the first whistleblowing complaints, the so-called four plus one—Drake was called "plus one" because he wanted to have confidentiality maintained—that I then went up to the House and Senate Intel Committees, and they were making complaints about a large multibillion-dollar program that was responsible to gather huge amounts of information from U.S. citizens also. And it was simply behind schedule, over cost. It wasn’t meeting acquisition milestones. So we, of course, met with the Congress, and then we started a 18-month audit effort to see whether or not the various allegations brought to us were actually valid, that we found that most of their concerns were valid, and then we had the audit report issued in December of 2004.
One of the very important points of that audit report was—was that this is our audit report, IG DOD audit report, talked about a climate within the NSA regarding management reprisal. As the inspector general DOD, by statute, it is our responsibility making sure management reprisal does not take place. When I saw that, I said, "Look, we now have a civilian reprisal investigator on staff, Daniel Meyer, and he is now the whistleblower ombudsman for the larger intelligence community." And I wanted him to have the matter investigated, because we had made a finding. And I was subsequently told that we could not have the matter investigated, and that was the first warning flag to me that there was a problem.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to go to National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake in his own words. He was initially charged under the Espionage Act for leaking information about waste management at the agency, but the case against him later collapsed. We talked to Thomas Drake in 2012 (http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/21/in_unprecedented_obama_admin_crackdown_nsa) about his case.

THOMAS DRAKE: I was charged under the Espionage Act as part of an indictment that was handed down on me in April of 2010. There was five counts under the Espionage Act for retaining—not leaking, retaining—national defense information, although the government alleged that I was doing so for the purpose of disclosure to those unauthorized to receive it. I was also charged with obstruction of justice, as well as making false statements to FBI agents. ...

AMY GOODMAN: What happened to both Thomas Drake and Bill Binney and other NSA officials was frightening. We had a chance in April of 2012 to interview (http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_security_agency_whistleblower_w illiam) NSA whistleblower William Binney. He was appearing on Democracy Now! in his first-ever television interview, and he described what happened when FBI agents raided his home after he became a whistleblower. This was right before they raided Tom Drake’s house, but this was Bill Binney’s description of what happened to him.

WILLIAM BINNEY: I live in Maryland, actually four miles from NSA.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened?

WILLIAM BINNEY: They came busting in.

AMY GOODMAN: Who’s "they"?


AMY GOODMAN: Where were you?


AMY GOODMAN: Pointed a gun at your head?


JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what did they—what did they do at that point? Did they begin questioning you? Or they just took you to headquarters? Or—

WILLIAM BINNEY: No, no. Yeah, they basically separated us from—I was separated from my family. Took me on the back porch, and they started asking me questions about it. They were basically wanting me to tell them something that would implicate someone in a crime. And so, I told them that I didn’t really know—they wanted to know about certain people, that was—they were the ones that were being raided at the same time, people who—we all signed—those who were raided that day, all of us signed the DOD IG complaint. We were the ones who filed that complaint.

AMY GOODMAN: The Pentagon—

WILLIAM BINNEY: The Pentagon DOD IG, against—

AMY GOODMAN: —inspector general complaint.

WILLIAM BINNEY: Against NSA, yes, talking about fraud—basically corruption, fraud, waste and abuse. And then—

AMY GOODMAN: Tom Drake was raided at the same time?

WILLIAM BINNEY: No, he was raided in November of that year. We were just the ones who signed it, were raided.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, and who were the other people that were raided that same day?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Diane Roark, Kirk Wiebe and Ed Loomis.

AMY GOODMAN: Diane Roark worked for the Senate committee?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Diane was the senior staffer. She had the NSA account on the HPSCI side, on the House side.
AMY GOODMAN: So, they were the four, and plus one was Drake. His house would be raided soon after. John Crane, if you could explain—Bill Binney ultimately would not be charged. Bill Binney, by the way, is a double amputee.
JOHN CRANE: Correct.
AMY GOODMAN: But Tom Drake was charged, and you noticed something very similar about the charges against him and what he revealed to your office.
JOHN CRANE: Yes. I was very concerned, because when there was a 10-count indictment returned, that three of the counts involved him housing information at his home. I was concerned that—well, first, he was a confidential whistleblower. And under the Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended, that their confidentialities are not revealed, and they can only be revealed under two separate circumstances, that, one, you have to ask the whistleblower whether they can have their identities revealed, and, two, only if there is no other alternative. This is a case where this was not a threat to health, safety—immediate threat. And my concern was—and this was actually raised through the Government Accountability Project, because they represented him—was that three of the charges could have related to whether or not he was following advice from the inspector general DOD. And I was concerned that should he have had housed material at his home, based upon IG DOD advice, he was then being on trial—put on trial under the Espionage Act because he was a confidential informant working with the IG, inspector general.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, but I have to ask: What happened to you when you started raising these concerns? You’re there supposed to be protecting whistleblowers—
AMY GOODMAN: —in the Pentagon and the NSA.
AMY GOODMAN: And you are now becoming a whistleblower.
JOHN CRANE: Right. I was shut down, that I was the IG DOD FOIA appellate authority also. And—
AMY GOODMAN: Meaning when people asked you, under the Freedom of Information Act, for information.
JOHN CRANE: Absolutely. So, when his attorneys came to us, they wanted to see whether—in the 2004 audit, that whether in those work papers that there was exculpatory information regarding why Drake acted the way he did. As the FOIA appellate authority, I was in charge of simply gathering all of the information in the agency, that—those are documents that should have been retained, that they should have been permanent record. Some of them were also secret documents, top-secret documents, sensitive intelligence documents. There’s a very strict protocol regarding how those are handled, where they are, and if and when they are destroyed, and, of course, by whom. Those were answers I could not receive, and that was highly unusual.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to continue this discussion in a moment. John Crane, former senior official at the Pentagon, has revealed major privacy and security lapses within the government’s whistleblower program. For a quarter of a century, he worked with the Department of Defense Inspector General’s Office, which is supposed to help federal employees expose abuse and corruption. This is a secret chapter that even Edward Snowden did not know about but is now coming to understand, what was happening within the government. And we’re going to speak with Mark Hertsgaard, as well, when we come back, to get a full picture of how this all fits together. His new book is out; it’s called Bravehearts: Whistle-Blowing in the Age of Snowden. Stay with us.

I guess he had two choices. He could have remained silent about the NSA surveillance and then continued to leave the public in the dark about the fact that the United States government was conducting mass, warrantless surveillance, illegal surveillance. He could have done that, but Snowden decided, for reasons of conscience, he could not remain silent. He could have gone Tom Drake’s direction and ended up destroyed like Tom Drake. So, instead, Snowden went out and went public. And he did kind of what Daniel Ellsberg did 40 years ago with the Pentagon Papers, which is to say, "I’m going to take these documents. I’m going to give them to the press." And as you said in that quote at the top of the hour, from The Guardian report yesterday, Snowden says, "Look, going to the press is not without its risks"—you know, Snowden is now living in exile—"but at least you have a chance—at least you have a chance to get the news out."
And so I think that’s what’s important about John Crane’s story, is it puts the lie to what Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are saying and have been saying about Edward Snowden from the beginning. "He broke the law, bring him home. He should face the music," is what Hillary Clinton said. "Face the music. He could have been a whistleblower," Hillary Clinton added, "and he would have gotten a very good reception, I think." Well, I would just like to invite Secretary Clinton, tell that to Thomas Drake, tell that to John Crane, that you would have gotten a good reception by following the whistleblower law inside of the Pentagon.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to go to part of what Edward Snowden responded to Crane’s revelations in The Guardian. He said, "We need iron-clad, enforceable protections for whistleblowers, and we need a public record of success stories. Protect the people who go to members of Congress with oversight roles, and if their efforts lead to a positive change in policy—recognize them for their efforts. There are no incentives for people to stand up against an agency on the wrong side of the law today, and that’s got to change." I also want to go to President Obama and Hillary Clinton. In a 2014—during a press conference in 2013, President Obama was asked about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. This is what he said.

[B]PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The fact is, is that Mr. Snowden has been charged with three felonies. If, in fact, he believes that what he did was right, then, like every American citizen, he can come here, appear before the court with a lawyer and make his case. If the concern was that somehow this was the only way to get this information out to the public, I signed an executive order, well before Mr. Snowden leaked this information, that provided whistleblower protection to the intelligence community, for the first time. So there were other avenues available for somebody whose conscience was stirred and thought that they needed to question government actions.
AMY GOODMAN: OK, the president says he signed an executive order that would protect whistleblowers. John Crane, you were a top official in the Pentagon in the Inspector General’s Office. You were there within the whistleblowers protection unit.
AMY GOODMAN: Is what President Obama’s saying true?
JOHN CRANE: There are fact patterns that he was of course not aware of. The General Accountability Office, which is the investigative arm of the Congress, that they have issued two separate reports on the IG DOD whistleblower program. In one of the reports, they say that one-quarter of all IG employees fear reprisal. In a federal employee climate survey, one-third of all reprisal investigators fear reprisal. So, we have a situation here, based—based upon Capitol Hill taking in trust, showing that those investigators trying to actually prove reprisal are themselves retaliated against when they try to make findings substantiating reprisal. So, that’s a dynamic that no one within the White House would have understood.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go from the president to the person who wants to be president, Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state. This is a 2014 interview she did with The Guardian, where she said NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden should return to the U.S. if he’s serious in engaging in debate about privacy and security.

HILLARY CLINTON: Well, I would say, first of all, that Edward Snowden broke our laws, and that cannot be ignored or brushed aside. Secondly, I believe that if his primary concern was stirring a debate in our country over the tension between privacy and security, there were other ways of doing it, instead of stealing an enormous amount of information that had nothing to do with the U.S. or American citizens. I would say, thirdly, that there are many people in our history who have raised serious questions about government behavior. They’ve done it either with or without whistleblower protection, and they have stood and faced whatever the reaction was to make their case in public. ...

I don’t know what he’s been charged with. Those are sealed indictments. I have no idea what he’s been charged with. I’m not sure he knows what he’s been charged with. But even in any case that I’m aware of, as a former lawyer, he has the right to mount a defense. And he certainly has a right to mount both a legal defense and a public defense, which of course can affect the legal defense.
AMY GOODMAN: I remember this interview very well that Hillary Clinton did with The Guardian in 2014, because I learned about it just as I was walking up the steps of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London to interview Julian Assange, who is holed up there, and June 19th will be his fourth year in captivity. He’s gotten asylum in Ecuador, but he fears if he steps outside, he will be arrested and ultimately extradited to the United States, fears he could be charged with treason. But what Hillary Clinton said, John Crane, about him coming back to this country, and he could launch a vigorous legal and public defense, John Snowden—I mean, Edward Snowden?
AMY GOODMAN: You allege documents were destroyed.
AMY GOODMAN: It had existed.
MARK HERTSGAARD: Yeah, they made sure it didn’t exist.
AMY GOODMAN: Mark Hertsgaard?
MARK HERTSGAARD: They made sure it didn’t exist. I think John is being, perhaps, very diplomatic about his former colleagues. You know, he asked for those documents, and they said, "Oh, we can’t give them to you." "Why not?" "Well, because they don’t exist anymore." "Well, why not?" Because somebody"—expletived—"somebody screwed up, and they were destroyed," in a supposedly routine purge of documents. And, you know, they were, obviously, lying about that. And then, to make it worse, these two individuals, who were then the acting inspector general of the Pentagon and the general counsel, the top lawyer there, they lied—
AMY GOODMAN: Explain who they are.
MARK HERTSGAARD: Yeah. Well, their names are Lynne Halbrooks—she was the acting inspector general—and Henry Shelley, who was the general counsel. And he was the one who said, "We screwed up"—since this is a family program. And he said that they had been destroyed in a routine purge. Of course, governments, they do have to purge a lot of information, but you don’t purge top-secret documents lightly. And then, to make it worse, they then lied to the federal judge in this case about that, assuring the judge that it was—that the documents had been lost in a routine purge. Well, that, of course, is a felony. You cannot lie to a judge in a federal case. You cannot destroy documents. That is called obstruction of justice. And that is really why these two individuals now are in legal jeopardy.
And the Office of Special Counsel, which is an agency inside the United States government that investigates all of the whistleblower issues throughout the government, they looked into the allegations of John Crane. And in March, they issued their report, and they said that there is a, quote, "substantial likelihood" that Mr. Crane’s allegations are correct. What that means—that’s the highest threshold of proof that they could have asserted. And that means that now Henry Shelley, the general counsel, still at the Pentagon’s IG Office, and Lynne Halbrooks, the former assistant inspector general, they are now facing a new investigation. As the OSC finding required, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has now had to authorize a new investigation into all this. And these are the kinds of crimes—lying to a judge, destroying documents, obstructing justice—if you or I did them, we would be going to jail. We’ll see if these high-ranking Pentagon officials end up going to jail.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, and when we come back, I want to ask you, John Crane, what gave you the courage to speak out. You have quite a remarkable family history. We are talking with John Crane, former senior official at the Pentagon, and we’re talking with Mark Hertsgaard, who has written the story of John Crane and Thomas Drake in a new book called Bravehearts: Whistle-Blowing in the Age of Snowden. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: "Obama," Anohni, here on Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Today, a former Pentagon official is speaking out for the first time in this broadcast exclusive—John Crane, former senior official at the Pentagon, who’s revealed major privacy and security lapses within the government’s whistleblower program. He worked for a quarter of a century at the Department of Defense Inspector General’s Office, which helps expose—which helps federal employees expose abuse and corruption, both at the Pentagon and the NSA. And we’re joined by Mark Hertsgaard, who tells Crane’s story in Bravehearts: Whistle-Blowing in the Age of Snowden, a new book. What happened to you, John Crane? So you worked there for 25 years; you’re not working there anymore.
JOHN CRANE: Yes. I was summoned into Ms. Halbrooks’ office, and I was simply walked out of the building.
AMY GOODMAN: The Pentagon inspector general at the time.
JOHN CRANE: Pentagon inspector general building. It was not a surprising occurrence.
AMY GOODMAN: When was this?
JOHN CRANE: This was in February 2013, that since I was responsible for the overall whistleblowing program, that within the Inspector General’s Office we had various whistleblowers stepping forward. And they had concerns regarding the audit function. They had concerns the way that we investigated reprisal investigations. And they had contacted Congress. And as the agency head, she asked me to actually identify to her IG employees who were whistleblowers, so that she could have the congressional oversight shut down, because she did not want to have her Senate nomination endangered by them, that she was the acting inspector general, that she wanted to be the permanent inspector general, and she could not afford to have whistleblowers contacting Congress, because that would create questions regarding whether she was qualified for the job that she wanted to have.
AMY GOODMAN: So you were walked out.
JOHN CRANE: I was walked out.
AMY GOODMAN: You were fired.
JOHN CRANE: Physically walked out.
AMY GOODMAN: What gave you the courage to speak out? Talk about your family.
JOHN CRANE: Civil society is very important. And in any large society, that there is a compact between the governed and those who govern them, and there needs to be transparency, and that there needs to be accountability. And should you have the wrong balance, should you have an executive out of control, that can simply compromise everyone’s rights. And in the Germany after World War I, when you have lots of unemployed soldiers with a grievance following very talented sociopaths, you can have a really explosive combination, and that was Nazi Germany. My father [sic] served under the Weimar Republic, and that was the liberal German republic after—
MARK HERTSGAARD: Your grandfather.
JOHN CRANE: Grandfather, after the First World War, that he was actually based down in Munich. He was in charge to—charged to monitor radical elements. And when Hitler tried to seize power for the first time, Hitler tried to use force. And then, in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler tried to seize the whole Bavarian government. Hitler walked into the beer hall and fired a gun into the ceiling, saying that he was taking control. My grandfather stepped in front of him, saying, "Mr. Hitler, this way he will never control Germany." And then Hitler simply put his gun down, went to the front, captured the whole senior leadership. My grandfather then helped to have the actual countercoup established, put down Hitler’s uprising, and then he was to trial—then he was a witness at the trial for the government that, of course, put him in jail.
AMY GOODMAN: And what happened to your grandfather?
JOHN CRANE: My grandfather, of course, wasn’t a fascist, that in 1933, when Mr. Hitler seized power, that he resigned, but he wasn’t allowed to resign. He was very active with the antifascist resistance, that my uncle was killed in Poland in 1939. And one of his friends was a young officer called Graf Claus Schenk von [Stauffenberg]. He was the man who actually put the suitcase beside Hitler in 1944 to have Hitler killed. And so, he was a family friend. And the issue is: Within any society, how does a person channel simply principled civil dissent within a Nazi dictatorship that accords violence? Within the system we have here, because it is a constitutional democracy, principled dissent needs to be channeled through the whistleblower system, because that will help senior management also seeing levels down.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you want your old job back within the Pentagon’s Inspector General Office, being in charge of protection of whistleblowers?
JOHN CRANE: When I was in charge, outside civil society organizations said that my programs were the federal gold standard. That is not the case anymore. That should the new acting inspector general want to return his office to the gold standard, I am willing to help.
AMY GOODMAN: Mark Hertsgaard, as we begin to wrap up, how you came to investigate this story, and what the government’s response has been? You have interviewed Michael Hayden several times.
MARK HERTSGAARD: I did. The reason I got this story is because of the work of the Government Accountability Project, and they deserve a shout-out here. For 37 years, they have been defending whistleblowers, advocating for whistleblowers, both in individual cases like this and helping to write things like the whistleblower protection law and push it through Congress. They represented legally Edward Snowden, John Crane, Tom Drake and a whole range of other whistleblowers. And one of the things I say in the book is that while this is a very dramatic story, we need to understand as citizens—and this is what John Crane is saying here—we absolutely depend, as a democracy, on whistleblowers. We’ve got to know that they can come forward, because when whistleblowers come forward, whether it’s Daniel Ellsberg or John Crane or Edward Snowden or, you know, Jeffrey Wigand, who blew the whistle on how Big Tobacco was lying about nicotine in our cigarettes, you know, whistleblowers can make wars end, they can take deadly products off the market, and a whole range of other things. And I think whistleblowers do not get the respect that they deserve. And so that was what I was trying to do in this book. And the Government Accountability Project let me do that.
AMY GOODMAN: And the institutions you decided to release this with, this information—
AMY GOODMAN: —where you went, and where you didn’t go?
MARK HERTSGAARD: I went to—I went in February to Europe to meet face to face with the editors especially at The Guardian, because they broke the Snowden story originally. And very proud to say that they saw the value of this story right away, the same with Der Spiegel in Germany. And I chose them precisely because they’re outside of the United States. Too often the mainstream media in this country, as you well know, Amy, tend to, by default almost, reflect and channel the government’s views of this. You asked, did I go to the government? Of course I went to the government. I asked them about this. I asked Henry Shelley, I asked Lynne Halbrooks—the people who offed John Crane. They said they wouldn’t comment. And I think that they are assuming that this is going to blow over, because, in general, the American media has not held their feet to the fire.
Michael Hayden, the NSA director, he basically says that he wanted to put Edward Snowden on a government kill list. He said that was a joke. But he’s not quite as bloodthirsty as James Woolsey, the former CIA director, who said last November, after the Paris terrorist attacks, that Mr. Snowden, quote, "should suffer death by hanging. Electrocution is too good for him." So, when you’ve got a government like that, who has that kind of antipathy to whistleblowers, it’s all the more important that, as Snowden said yesterday reacting to John’s story in The Guardian, Snowden said we need to recognize whistleblowers and basically lift them up in the public debate, because without that, without the press doing that, the government will—by either active or de facto hostility, they will take people like John Crane down. And our democracy will be lessened. We would not know that the NSA is spying on all of us, had not Edward Snowden decided to go outside of this broken whistleblower system and become an act of conscience.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who was speaking on CNN last year. He called NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden a traitor.

[B]DONALD TRUMP: I think he’s a total traitor. And I would deal with him harshly. And if I were president, Putin would give him over. I would get along with Putin. I’ve dealt with Russia. Putin hates—

ANDERSON COOPER: You think you’d get along with Putin?

DONALD TRUMP: I think I’d get along with him fine. I think he’d be absolutely fine. He would never keep somebody like Snowden in Russia. He hates Obama. He doesn’t respect Obama. Obama doesn’t not like him, either. But he has no respect for Obama, has a hatred for Obama. And Snowden is living the life. Look, if that—if I’m president, Putin says, "Hey, boom, you’re gone." I guarantee you that.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Donald Trump talking about Edward Snowden. John Crane, in these last 30 seconds, your final comment?
JOHN CRANE: Regarding whistleblowing, that civil society, the Office of the Special Counsel and the Congress, in the most recent defense authorization bill under Chairman McCain, independently have all reached the same conclusion regarding the whistleblowing system within the IG. And their message to Secretary Ashton Carter is: Houston, we have a problem.

Drew Phipps
05-31-2016, 04:00 AM
Eric Holder admits Edward Snowden's leaks were a 'public service'
Claire Landsbaum
May 30th 2016 4:49PM


Former Attorney General Eric Holder is having a change of heart when it comes to Edward Snowden. Back in 2013, Holder told (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/05/holder-snowden-leaks-surveillance-nsa/3447733/) USA Today that Snowden's intelligence leaks led to a "healthy conversation" about the nation's intelligence-gathering activities but held that there was absolutely "no basis" for letting him off the hook. But on David Axelrod's podcast, The Axe Files, Monday morning, Holder showed even more leniency toward Snowden, saying he "performed a public service."

Holder told Axelrod that even he had second-guessed the efficacy of the government's intelligence-gathering programs. "We had a capacity to do all sorts of things under these listening programs," he said. "But after a while I remember sending memos to the President asking, 'Do we really need to do this given the way in which we are focusing on people's lives and given the return that we were getting, which was not I think in any way substantial?' And so I think that we can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and the changes that we made."

However, Holder said, just because Snowden sparked a necessary conversation doesn't mean what he did was right. "I would say that doing what he did — and the way he did it — was inappropriate and illegal," he told Axelrod, adding that it put agents at risk as well as America's relationship with other countries. "I think there has to be a consequence for what he has done" he said. "But, I think in deciding what an appropriate sentence should be, I think a judge could take into account the usefulness of having had that national debate."

Earlier this year Snowden said (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/21/edward-snowden-willing-to-return-to-us-fair-trial) he'd be willing to return to the U.S. if officials would grant him a fair trial. But he also told the audience at a University of Chicago event that the whole "usefulness of having had a national debate" argument won't count for much with a judge. "As I think you're quite familiar, the Espionage Act does not permit a public interest defense," he said (http://gawker.com/eric-holder-finally-admits-that-the-snowden-leaks-were-1779503840?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_twitter&utm_source=gawker_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow). But Snowden did seem to appreciate Holder's comments — this morning he tweeted (https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/737306876120076288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) a clip from the podcast in which Holder calls his actions a public service.