If a democratic society creates a hypersecret government intelligence agency, how long will it take before large sectors of its unmonitored activity will turn wasteful, incompetent and even subversive of constitutional valuesand how ferocious will its reaction be when a conscientious employee tries to call corrective attention to its deviations?
Jessalyn Radack reports that the apalling answers to these questions are found in this week's issue of America's premier practitioner of investigative reporting.
Former National Security Agency (NSA) official Thomas Drake faces trial under the Espionage Act for allegedly "retaining" classified information. Thankfully, The New Yorker has put this case under a miscroscope and revealed this criminalization of whistleblowing to be the government covering up for its own sins of secret domestic surveillance.
The article details domestic datamining, former NSA director Michael Hayden projecting votes by the Supreme Court if it eventually weighed in on NSA lawbreaking, and NSA proclaiming itself to be the executive agent for the White House. It explains how NSA used the Trailblazer program, "a 1.2-billion flop," as a funding vehicle, despite an inexpensibe, effective, legal alternative (Thin Thread) that could have picked up actionable intelligence such as 9/11 hijackers renting a hotel room miles from NSA's headquarters.
Six times government officials declined to comment on specifics, or anything at all. Tom Drake, who goes on trial June 13th, gave his first public interview on the case, explaining:
This was a violation of everything I knew and believed as an American. We were making the Nixon Administration look like pikers.
