Editor's Note: This article offers a highly critical, but thoroughly documented, analysis of President Obama's defense of the NSA surveillance program, as laid out in his August 9, 2013 press conference. It is being released in three parts on consecutive days, August 20-August 22.
Part 3: Obama's Proposed "Reforms" Are in Fact Aimed at Dampening a Growing Public Awareness That the Constitution Is Being Violated.
Obama's
bundle of four "steps" for reform of his surveillance program are
presumably the product of his desired "orderly and lawful process to...come
up with appropriate reforms." He patronizingly criticizes Snowden for
short-circuiting these reforms as a stereotypical activist, "in a very
passionate, but not always fully informed way." Of course Snowden has been
the very model of phlegmatic decorum, letting his extremely well-informed
documentation do most the talking through journalists with no arm-waving on his
part whatsoever. Central-casting could not have made a better assignment for
the role of foil to disarm Obama's annoying ploy of covering up his betrayal of
his base by asserting merely stylistic differentiation of himself from generic
activists, who his former Chief of Staff similarly, though more colorfully, called
"f--ing retarded." But Obama doesn't have much. So,
notwithstanding the obvious facts, he is sticking with his and his former
chief's stereotype of uninformed emotionalism to pin on Snowden and any other
Americans who would work effectively to support the Constitution.
Obama's
"orderly" developed, "appropriate reforms" do not come
close to the "thorough review" he falsely claims to have "called
for" on May 23, even after taking more than two additional months to
prepare his ineffective proposals. They are no more than a by-the-book
government propaganda initiative "designed to ensure that the American
people can trust that our efforts are in line with our interests and our
values," without actually doing anything that could risk so aligning them.
Obama's big lies about these "'steps' we're going to be taking very
shortly" are aimed at Snowden and at dampening the heightened public
consciousness of rampant constitutional violation that Snowden's revelations
ignited. This is driving down Obama's poll numbers.
These
proposals are designed not to change Obama's program but solely to deflect
demands for such change by winning the PR offensive, which turns--as do all
Obama's similar deceptions--on Mencken 's famous
gambling tip that "no one" has ever lost money by underestimating the
intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost
public office thereby."
Mencken
recorded no opinion whether a politician who consistently employed no other
betting tactic than routinely insulting the public's intelligence could
"fool all the people all the time," contrary to Lincoln's axiom.
Obama is in violation of the Constitution, he is telling transparent lies to
cover it up and postpone the day of reckoning, and the people are paying
greater attention to this than usual. The Snowden affair may be an occasion for
witnessing the Lincoln exception to the general rule that guides Obama.
Presidential
lawerly advice about the lawful path
Like
the pretense that he had already announced pre-Snowden his intention to make
reform proposals, Obama similarly suggests in cleverly deceptive language that
he had already signed an Executive Order, which Snowden should have employed,
to extend federal whistle-blower protection to the intelligence community.
Obama claims there "were other avenues available for somebody whose
conscience was stirred and thought that they needed to question government
actions." Obama intended us to believe that this indefinite
"somebody," if not referring explicitly to Snowden, at least included
Snowden. But again, the mandatory fact-checking reveals that Obama's
"somebody" refers to somebody else.
The
referenced "Presidential
Policy Directive 19, signed by Obama without much publicity on Oct. 10,
2012, has been criticized
both for lacking due process protection and because PPD-19 does not
cover contractor employees in any event. Even DoD's implementation of PPD-19
ordered on July 8, 2013, in its Directive-type Memorandum (DTM) 13-008 ,
excluded such employees after being urged
to include them . The respected
whistle-blower organization that did so later complained, on August 7,
2013, that the DoD "notably neglected to address intelligence community
contractors, like Edward Snowden, who may continue to turn to outside channels
if the DoD and other agencies do not extend PPD-19 protections to contractors
with access to classified information."
Another
whistle-blower advocate warned:
""We are concerned that national security employees may think
that this [ PPD-19] directive gives them some much-needed protections when it
does not," The new protection was solely for internal reports of fraud,
waste and abuse. The Pentagon itself had released
an assessment in 2012 criticizing the systematic denial of protection
of DoD whistle-blowers by the relevant internal office of the Inspector
General. The report criticized, among other problems, insufficient evidence to
support findings of non-reprisal against whistle-blowers and erroneous
definition as "harmless" of retaliatory actions against
whistle-blowers affecting most cases.
This
is the same system of sketchy protection that Obama invokes for that
"somebody" who might limit their whistle-blowing to accepted
channels. This system is in fact inadequate to predictably protect from the
high risk of internal reprisal anybody who might believe Obama and use it. It
would be naà ¯ve to think a secretive bureaucracy would work in any other way
than to protect itself by suppressing and sidelining dissent as fundamental as
Snowden's.
Since
the bureaucracy is mostly carrying out Obama's orders, the gist of Snowden's
concern is with Obama himself. Exposing a president in systematic violation of
long-understood constitutional rights is not a matter for internal bureaucratic
complaint processes, but rather a matter for the public to decide. Obama's
reference to his ineffective PPD-19 was a propaganda ploy to disguise another
truth -- which is also another essential element of Snowden's defense -- that
Snowden's only practical means to defend the Constitution from Obama was to
appeal over the head of the bureaucracy to the public.
Not
only did Obama falsely suggest that he had extended whistle-blower protections
that would have covered Snowden's revelations, protections that are highly
defective in any case, but they had not even been extended to cover contractor
employees like Snowden by the time of Obama's August 9 performance. The reader
can decide if this is just another mistake by Obama or the kind of calculated mendacity
that close observers have come to routinely expect from him.
Conclusion
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