Whistle-Blowers and the State: Part 2

Last week I wrote part one of what will be a multi-part series about whistle-blowers, their revelations, and their treatment at the hands of the State. This part will focus on another original NSA whistle-blower, Russell Tice.

Well before we had the Edward Snowden revelations, we had original NSA whistle-blowers like Russell Tice, Thomas Drake, Bill Binney and Mark Klein. Tice is credited as being the at-the-time confidential source for the 2005 New York Times article which first alerted us to unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping under the Bush administration. Russ had been an intelligence analyst for the Air Force, the DIA, and the NSA for twenty years at the time of those revelations. Tice was fired from the NSA just days after publicly advocating for stronger whistle-blower protections but before the NYT article came out. With the recent Snowden leaks, Tice has once again started speaking out again against the NSA with new and even more scandalous proclamations about just how far NSA spying has gone.

 Since Edward Snowden leaked his story to The Guardian, there has been renewed interest in whistle-blowers who came before him to see how much of his information they can corroborate and to see if they can add any new insight to the situation. Here, Tice gives a BOMBSHELL interview to another government whistle-blower, Sibel Edmonds, who I featured in my last expose on whistle-blowers, where he reveals that in 2004-2005 he had his hands on the paperwork that gave the orders to target some of the government's most prominent figures in wiretapping operations. Some of the people singled out were members of the Congress Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, law firms and lawyers, multi-national corporations, military generals and more. He then went on to drop names, names like General Colin Powell, Senator John McCain, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. When he mentioned Alito, he also said that he had been told by his colleagues that all 9 justices were under surveillance but Tice only personally saw paperwork on Alito.

As if that weren't eye-opening enough, the biggest bombshell comes later when he drops the name of the biggest, most important person of all: an at the time somewhat unknown Chicago community organizer who was running for Senate office. He currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Any idea who that could be? Anyone? In case you couldn't figure it out, he was referring to none other than our current sitting president, Barack Obama. 

Hello?? Earth to society?? Are you registering what Russell Tice is saying here? He is saying that he had his hands on paperwork that directed that these very prominent and important government and national figures, including the current president, were to be illegally wiretapped and their communications recorded and stored for future use by unknown entities for unknown purposes. Needless to say, this is all highly illegal and very scandalous and yet we get nothing but complete silence from our media about this.

In addition to naming names about these targeted surveillances, Tice goes on to refute the official NSA/government line that they only wiretap foreigners and it's all done within the limits and scope of the Patriot Act. He warns that with the new center in Utah plus their existing Fort Meade compound, the NSA now has the power to vacuum up every piece of electronic communication in the US, content included, and that we should assume they are doing so. And just to add the cherry on top of this story, Tice goes on to say that these wiretap orders came all the way from the top, indicating that he believed the evil genius Dick Cheney to be the mastermind behind this whole operation.  

Wouldn't you expect announcements like this to garner significant media attention? Shouldn't it be a national news story that our sitting president was under NSA surveillance during his original Senate run until who knows when? While we're talking about NSA overreach, shouldn't the media be falling all over themselves to interview an insider who, not only can corroborate what Snowden's leaks have documented, but give additional information as to the true size and scope of the NSA spying machine?

No, of course not. This is America where investigative journalism is all but dead and most major news networks are nothing but stenographers for White House press releases. In the interview with Sibel, Tice reveals that he had had 4 or 5 TV interviews lined up with major networks where he was set to reveal all this info but they all backed out at the last minute often with no explanation given. He said in one instance that he was sitting in the chair with the earpiece in his ear all ready to go when he got the word that they were cancelling his interview. Essentially, the network's lawyers got involved and shut it down. Why would they do this? Obviously they must have gotten pressure from higher up the food chain to not allow this interview to go forward and our media, being good little lapdogs, subserviently obeyed.

Eventually, one network, MSNBC, did do a short segment with Mr. Tice but even that was censored. According to correspondence with Boiling Frogs Post immediately after the interview, here is what happened:

When they were placing the ear-phone in my ear with less than ten minutes left till my air time, the producer in New York said that their lawyers were discussing the material, and at this time, they did not want me to mention anything about the NSA wiretaps against all the people and organizations that I mentioned. That is how it went down. I did say on the air that I know it is much worse and would like to talk about that some time.” - See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/21/msnbc-censors-nsa-whistleblower-russ-tice-minutes-before-interview/#sthash.pyFtt0Pb.dpuf

 “When they were placing the ear-phone in my ear with less than ten minutes left till my air time, the producer in New York said that their lawyers were discussing the material, and at this time, they did not want me to mention anything about the NSA wiretaps against all the people and organizations that I mentioned. That is how it went down. I did say on the air that I know it is much worse and would like to talk about that some time.”

Some say it's small victory that Tice got on a MSM station like MSNBC at all, but the first indicator of what kind of interview it's going to be is the length, a mere 5 minutes. Contrast that to the initial interview I linked to earlier with Sibel Edmonds and Peter Collins and that's over an hour. You need at least that long to properly flesh out all of the myriad components of this story.

Furthermore, while MSNBC prevented Russ from speaking about some of the specific wiretaps he was privy to while at the NSA, he was allowed to reveal to the anchor that the NSA is collecting all of our communications including content. The anchor looked somewhat incredulous at this pronouncement and asked one quick follow-up question to verify his statement before casually moving on to other matters. That's it. Nothing more. Russell Tice makes an even bigger allegation against the NSA than Edward Snowden and the anchor barely even acknowledges it before casually moving on to other matters.

This is what you get when you've only allotted 5 minutes for an interview and the anchor has to move on to the next question. But this works another insidious angle, too, in that the reaction and tone of the anchor goes a long way in directing the viewer how to feel about a story. If the anchor would have acted more alarmed and pressed further on the issue, that conveys to the audience that this is something of importance (whether it is or isn't). Bill O'Reilly is a master at this, acting with indignation at every story or opinion that isn't consistent with his own worldview which, of course, is then picked up on by his viewers. In the MSNBC interview, the fairly nonchalant reaction to Tice's disclosure serves to non-verbally signal to the viewing audience that this unveiling is not a big deal and we don't need to devote any more time exploring this issue. Any initial spark of curiosity or surprise by the viewer will be immediately squashed by the matter-of-fact way in which the anchor brushes the matter aside and carries on with the interview. This is but one of many tactics the media uses to influence us.

“When they were placing the ear-phone in my ear with less than ten minutes left till my air time, the producer in New York said that their lawyers were discussing the material, and at this time, they did not want me to mention anything about the NSA wiretaps against all the people and organizations that I mentioned. That is how it went down. I did say on the air that I know it is much worse and would like to talk about that some time.” - See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/21/msnbc-censors-nsa-whistleblower-russ-tice-minutes-before-interview/#sthash.pyFtt0Pb.dpuf

“When they were placing the ear-phone in my ear with less than ten minutes left till my air time, the producer in New York said that their lawyers were discussing the material, and at this time, they did not want me to mention anything about the NSA wiretaps against all the people and organizations that I mentioned. That is how it went down. I did say on the air that I know it is much worse and would like to talk about that some time.” - See more at: http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/06/21/msnbc-censors-nsa-whistleblower-russ-tice-minutes-before-interview/#sthash.pyFtt0Pb.dpuf

Now that we've heard allegations of some very important and well-known government officials having been wiretapped what, if anything, does this all mean? Good question. The way Tice sees things, he believes that the NSA has turned itself into a "rogue agency". Think of the implications. Does anybody think our government or its various entities are above blackmail? Is it any surprise that Dianne Feinstein, one of the aforementioned wiretap targets, is one of the most ardent defenders of the NSA and its programs? Nobody is perfect, but for some reason we expect our politicians to have been. Since we tend to hold them to superhuman standards, politicians know that even the slightest transgression of theirs can be used against them. Perhaps The Powers That Be at the NSA and whoever they report to use some of the information gleaned from these wiretaps to control the various players in the game.

Remember the part where Russ alleged that all 9 Supreme Court justices were under surveillance? Imagine how the information gathered from those wiretaps could be used to sway one of those judges to tip the court one way or another on important cases. Recall how surprised everyone was that a "conservative" justice, Justice John Roberts, provided the crucial deciding vote to determine that Obamacare was, in fact, Constitutional, thereby giving the go ahead for its continued implementation? Maybe we have a clue as to why, now.

But now we've reached the land of speculation. I have no evidence of this, although it's not hard to imagine scenarios like this at play. I don't really put much past our government, present or past; they've certainly shown themselves time and again to be a gang of liars, thieves, and murderers who will stop at nothing to get their way.

As an aside, I do have a friend who opined that any potential blackmail that might occur as a result of these wiretaps would result in our politicians being more honest, not less, as if those pulling the strings are standing over these politicians with a copy of the Constitution in one hand and bully stick in the other threatening them that if they don't honor their oath they'll tell the world that they were bed-wetters until the age of 11. Dear me. Bless his soul, he obviously puts such naive faith in the goodness of our government it never occurs to him to think that they would act in any other way, despite the Everest-sized mountain of evidence that proves otherwise. Oh wait, no, according to him Democrats would never act in such an untoward manner. It's just those evil Republicans we have to look out for. Or so I'm told. Riiight. 

In the two exposes I've written so far about whistle-blowers, we've clearly seen a pattern of marginalization that these courageous individuals experienced as a result of their actions. Thomas Drake and Sibel Edmonds directly lost their job for their efforts while Russell Tice curiously lost his job for urging stronger whistle-blower protections months before it was revealed that he was the source for the controversial New York Times story about the Bush wiretaps. He was then subjected to psychiatric evaluations, ones he'd taken numerous times as a high clearance intelligence officer, where all of a sudden he was found to be suffering from "psychotic paranoia" despite, according to his examiner, not showcasing any of the classic symptoms. This predictably allowed the conservative media to smear and discredit any of his allegations as coming from a mentally unbalanced ex-employee with an ax to grind.

You might have noticed in the last article about whistle-blowers that I put the phrase "proper channels" in quotations numerous times. "Proper channels", as in the predetermined channels a whistle-blower is supposed to go through in their particular agency when they uncover wrongdoing. It's in quotations because when you listen to all these people talk about their cases, they snicker at the mention of these so-called "proper channels"; it's all a big joke. They get smeared in the Establishment-serving media as if these whistle-blowers hadn't already tried to go to their superiors with their information or hadn't already taken it further up the chain of command at their agency or hadn't tried to talk to various Congress members in charge of these matters. They don't want to hear it, they don't want to ruffle any feathers, and so it goes nowhere. The talking heads on TV and mainstream print sources sneer at them as though it was each of their first inclinations to go straight to the media with their stories to reveal classified information to the public in defiance of the outlined protocol.

NO. A thousand times, NO. What has been verifiably and unequivocally demonstrated is that these truth-tellers did everything they could to report their findings through all the proper channels and were dismayed that nothing ever was done. When people's livelihoods and safety were on the line, they weren't just content to have made one mention to their immediate superior where it got filed away into oblivion and nothing changed. No, they saw wrongdoing, injustice, and unconstitutional actions and were adamant something be done about it. The only way to do so, once it became clear that nobody within the "proper channels" was going to act, was to shine a public light on it via the media. Or perhaps the media never even picked up on it until it became a court case worthy of attention. What we can see is that because of their actions they were retaliated against by the State, being fired and/or prosecuted even while some of the individuals they were accusing of wrongdoing actually got promoted.

I think it's important to highlight these stories because people have a very misguided view of how our government operates (see, once again, my friend from above who thinks the government will blackmail people to make them more honest). It's because we've been fed a fairy tale since we were young about how great and exceptional our government is because we have checks and balances and were founded upon the rule of law. We've had this drilled into our heads so long and so often that people can't even begin to fathom the degrees of deception our government routinely and systematically engages in. We've been told that these are behaviors that only other governments engage in. The U.S. government is wholly well-intentioned and our checks and balances ensures that the criminality found in other governments doesn't happen here.

The incredibly eye-opening stories of all these whistle-blowers should rip the mask off that facade once and for all. We need to start seeing through the lies and smoke screens our government puts up on a daily basis from administrations on both sides of the aisle. Only then can we start viewing their actions through the appropriate lens, with extreme skepticism and with the knowledge that their sole intent, like virtually every other government in the world, is to consolidate power. While there might be a few honest actors in government, these people do not make it to the top. They are not the shot-callers. "Because government has tremendous power, it attracts people who are eager to game the system, obtaining by force of law what they could never achieve through consensus." The people at the top are exactly those types of people. And our beloved whistle-blowers, through their audacity to tell the truth, threaten their power. Through them we can clearly see that it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.


Join me next time when we delve into the story of another whistle-blower and connect the dots even further. We'll continue trying to break through the glossy facade those in power and their media lapdogs would have us believe so we can start regarding government as our Founders intended: as a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

Here is the audio from the first interview with Russell Tice, Sibel Edmonds, and Peter Collins:


Here is the audio from the follow-up interview Tice gave to Collins shortly after: