We explore the extent of surveillance by the United States. Why is there so much surveillance and is the increasing surveillance of people in the United States justified? We discuss which is more harmful to our society, leaks or the policies that are leaked. Our first guest is Thomas Drake who was prosecuted for allegedly disclosing National Security Agency secrets years before Edward Snowden surfaced. Drake says the U.S. government has an “industrial-scale” surveillance system that “the Stasi in East Germany would have drooled over.” Then Fred Branfman, who recently wrote “America’s Most Anti-Democratic Institution: How the Imperial Presidency Threatens U.S. National Security,” is our guest. He argues, “And today’s U.S. executive branch policies pose an even greater long-term threat to U.S. strategic interests, not only abroad but at home. The evidence is overwhelming, including the statements by several dozen U.S. national security experts cited at the end of my recent piece, that U.S. leaders are not protecting national security but rather weakening it as never before.”
Listen here:
NSA, Spying and the Myth of National Security with Thomas Drake and Fred Branfman by Clearingthefog on Mixcloud
Watch here:
Relevant articles, books and websites:
Confronting the Growing National (In)Security State by Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese
NSA Spying: Whistleblowers Claim Vindication on Surveillance State Warning by Gerry Smith and Ryan J. Reilly
Three NSA Veterans Speak Out on Whistleblower: We Told You So by USA Today
GAP Statement on Edward Snowden and NSA Domestic Surveillance
America’s Most Anti-Democratic Institution: How the Imperial Presidency Threatens U.S. National Security by Fred Branfman
Mass Assassinations Lie at the Heart of America’s Military Strategy in the Muslim World by Fred Branfman
Voices From the Plain of Jars by Fred Branfman
Government Accountability Project
Guests:
Thomas Drake – is a former senior executive of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran. He has experience with computer software, linguistics, management, and leadership. He is also a whistleblower. In 2010 the government alleged that Drake ‘mishandled’ documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. Drake’s defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project.[4][5][6][7][8][9] He is the 2011 recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award.
On June 9, 2011, all 10 original charges against him were dropped. Drake rejected several deals because he refused to “plea bargain with the truth”. He eventually pled to one misdemeanor count for exceeding authorized use of a computer; Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, who helped represent him, called it an act of “civil disobedience.”
In 2000 he was hired as a software systems quality specialist and management and information technology consultant for Columbia, Maryland, based Costal Research & Technology Inc. (CRTI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Alexandria, Virginia, based Computer Systems Management, Inc. (CSMI). In late 2001 he went to work at the NSA as a full-time employee at the Signals Intelligence Directorate at Fort Meade, Maryland, with his actual first day on the job as an NSA employee being September 11, 2001. In 2002, he became a Technical Director for Software Engineering Implementation within the Cryptologic Systems and Professional Health Office. In 2003, Drake became a Process Portfolio Manager within NSA’s newly formed Directorate of Engineering. He held a Top Secret security clearance. During the congressional investigations into 9/11, he testified about NSA failures. In 2006 he was reassigned to the National Defense University,[15] where he became the NSA Chair and an Assistant Professor of Behavioral Sciences within the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF). Drake was forced to leave the NDU in 2007 when his security clearance was suspended, and he resigned from the NSA the next year. Drake then went to work at Strayer University but was forced from that job after his indictment of April 2010. He found work at an Apple store. He then founded Knowpari Systems, a consulting firm.
In 2011, Drake was awarded the Ridenhour Prize for Truth Telling and was co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award. Accepting the SAAII award he said, with references to an 1857 speech of Frederick Douglass:
“Power and those in control concede nothing … without a demand. They never have and they never will. …each and every one of us must keep demanding, must keep fighting, must keep thundering, must keep plowing, must keep on keeping things struggling, must speak out and must speak up until justice is served because where there is no justice there can be no peace.”
Fred Branfman – has been studying U.S. Secret War since he brought the secret U.S. bombing of Laos to world attention in 1969. He has also published over a dozen articles on present U.S. secret warmaking in the Muslim World, calling it “the greatest strategic catastrophe in American history, one that is not only immoral but endangering us all.” His book Voices From The Plain of Jars, the only book of the Indochina war written by the peasants who suffered most and were heard from least, has just been republished by the University of Wisconsin Press.
Lives in Santa Barbara, California and Budapest, Hungary; Developing the www.trulyalive.org website, and writing a book entitled Facing Death At Any Age: The Most Important Decision You Will Ever Make.