I'm vexed by what I hear so far coming from the new guy at the NSA.
I feel he is playing to the Snowdenista lobby and not realizing that they are a fraction of ordinary Americans -- or even realizing there are anti-Snowdenista lobbies, too, he should cater to more.
I'm glad to hear he's locking the barn door after the horse has bolted. That's a start.
But I'm honestly not impressed with palaver about transparency because I don't need transparency in the superficial, PR way that it might be given -- or for that matter, even in some deeper way (and I can't imagine how you do that at a mass, public level).
The vote on whether to reform the NSA by Congressional legislation was already had, General. The Snowdenistas lost. To be sure, Obama's executive reform committee pushed some things through, but that wasn't democratic and some of the people in the group had radical agendas (Cass Sunstein, for example). These people do not represent anything but extreme constituents -- they shouldn't get to suck all the oxygen out of the room.
We have Congress, we have the courts, we have all kinds of internal procedures. What I'd much rather hear about is why Snowden isn't indicted, and what the plan is to either return him (likely futile) or limit his damage. A frank admission that there IS damage is in order, given that one of the chief propaganda points of the Snowdenistas is that "there is no damage."
Well, at least Gen. Rogers said this:
Rogers said some NSA staff were "confused" by the onslaught of criticism because a series of official reviews found that the agency had for the most part abided by U.S. law.
But he acknowledged that the NSA's internal security, which allowed Snowden to remove thousands of secret documents, had been too lax.
"Clearly we should not have allowed this to happen," Rogers said.
I'll say.
And they're right to be "confused" because they haven't done anything wrong.
I really mean it about the smallness of the Snowden lobby -- way, way outsized by its voice in social media in particular.
There aren't "lots" of Congressmen who push the Snowden agenda. There's...Ron Wyden of Oregon. And a few others. It's nothing like Benghazi. In fact, why isn't there a Benghazi-type GOP backlash on Snowden? In part, it's because the Ron Paul right that backs Snowden has paralyzed that quarter. It's hard to get people in the middle or at the center to become activists. But that's what is needed.
It's not as if "all" the press is up and arms about Snowden, either. There are about...six regular "adversarial journalists" on this -- Greenwald, Gelman and the rest. A few tech press regulars. And the rest have lost interest and moved on to Ukraine, you know, that victim of Russia, the dictatorship to which Snowden fled?
Or the kidnapped girls in Nigeria -- in a setting where fighting terrorism for everybody got harder due to Snowden. Thanks.
What I'd rather see from the NSA guy is a frank and full judgement of Snowden. We're not really getting that. At least are getting the basics of knowing right from wrong because he says Snowden shouldn't have taken these documents and people who have issues should go to their superiors, not the media.
It's exasperating. Because there is no point person on the Hill or anywhere who can keep pushing the Snowden critique, who can keep saying, every day, as this former cabinet member at least said once for Edward Jay Epstein -- there are three options here -- Snowden is either a Russian agent, a Chinese agent, or a Sino-Russian agent. Not some fourth thing.
All of this may just have gotten a lot harder with this:
This may be the end of my blog and tweets. #WINNING http://t.co/EzPy2OH12x
— John Schindler (@20committee) May 9, 2014
Just awful. I can't imagine life without @20committee.His blog is really the political home of liberal centrality that is missing anywhere else -- see the excellent piece he did on Benghazi for example.
What is so needed in the Snowden affair -- precisely because nobody on the Hill or at the White House or State or the intelligence agencies supply it! -- is a steady stream of "No, that's not what it means" and "no, that's not what it says" and "no, you don't get the context."
On each Snowden leak, Schindler is able to comment with that kind of wisdom and knowledge. Yes, there are others like Tom Nichols but he has a particular expertise on Russia and tradecraft. I just wonder how this civic job will get done that Schindler has voluntarily filled -- and with nothing but harassment from trolls and creeps much of the time, not to mention wannabee intellectual has-beens and never-wills in the progressive set.
It really is vital to be able to comment on leaks to frame them properly and provide the counter-narrative given the huge propensity for Greenwald and co. to distract, obfuscate, confuse, and try to bring into being realities through virtual language manipulation -- also known as "lying."
Indeed, if any "transparency" is needed from the new general of the NSA, it's not about "why we do what we do" -- which is fine in my book -- but "why these adversarial journalists are misleading the public when they make the claims they do based on Snowden."
I'd like daily counter-propaganda -- counter-intelligence -- not Kumbayah sessions where we try to be more open with our feelings about things.
I realize why the government has to do this muffle -- although it's ridiculous to do it a year after the leaks and they shouldn't cast such a wide net with it and I hope they'll reconsider or restrict it or write some important exceptions.
They want to be able legally, so their lawyers explain to them, to claim that this remains secret material that should have stayed classified and shouldn't be leaked. If they become casual on that point and speak about leaked materials as if it were "normal" that they were leaked, then they lose their claim to stolen property, so to speak. That seems to be what it's about, as it was for CableGate.
To which I can only say, come on guys, finish up with the indictment, and then this issue will become to diminish.
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