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A Former NSA Executive Blows The Whistle On A Secret Deal Made With The White House After 9/11

Gayane Chichakyan of RT interviews Thomas Andrews Drake. Drake was a senior executive of one of America’s biggest intelligence agencies at the beginning of the 2000’s.

He was an expert on electronic eavesdropping and had top secret security clearance. He was also a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, computer software expert, linguist, management and leadership specialist. Then Mr Drake essentially sacrificed his career to blow the whistle on his agency’s wrongdoings, as he saw them.

He was then charged under the Espionage Act, and only last year the charges were dropped.

In 2010, the U.S. government alleged that he ‘mishandled’ documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. His defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project. 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. He rejected several deals because he refused to “plea bargain with the truth”. He eventually pleaded 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.” The interview makes for very interesting listening, as they discuss the fact that the NSA (National Security Agency had a secret deal with the White House after 9/11, that made the NSA responsible for a secret surveillance program. They also discuss the current situation with whistleblowers and also with the Flame and Stuxnet viruses, created by the U.S. government.

“You go after the messenger because the last thing you want to do is deal with the message. You’re talking about all the activities, the secret surveillance, the warrantless wiretapping, torture, rendition, drone strikes, and a whole host of other measures that I would assert are extra-constitutional. Not only do they violate our own law, but they also violate a number of international laws.

Go after the messenger and not the message because to actually discuss or address the message becomes very uncomfortable. Essentially, what’s happened is that law—and we’re a nation of law—if we start to part (which we have in a very significant way), moving away from being a nation of laws and simply leaving it up to policy as a substitute, we’re going down a very slippery slope in the United States of America.”

(via queerencia-deactivated20130103)