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More than ever under Obama, we live in a secret society, in which whistleblowers and journalists are targeted for doing their job - why Helen Thomas, unfairly pilloried by the pro-Israeli chorus, last July said his administration was "controlling the press," during a White House Robert Gibbs briefing, then afterward added:
"It's shocking. It's really shocking....What the hell do they think we are, puppets? They're supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them."
In a July 1, 2009 interview with CNSNews.com, she said even Nixon didn't exert press control like Obama, saying: "Nixon didn't try to do that. They couldn't control (the media). They didn't try....I'm not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to (a) fare-thee-well for town halls, the press conferences. It's blatant. They don't give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame."
In February 2009, the Free Flow of Information Act was introduced in the House and Senate. In March, the lower body passed it overwhelmingly, after which it stalled in Senate Committee.
At the time, the Obama administration weakened it in opposition to strong congressional support - on the pretext of national security considerations over the public's right to know, to let prosecutors judicially force reporters and whistleblowers to reveal their sources. Though the bill never passed, the administration uses it to prevent exposure of information it wants suppressed, more aggressively than any of his predecessors, another measure of a man promising change.
Thomas Drake was an Obama administration target, a former National Security Agency (NSA) "senior executive," indicted on April 15, 2010, on multiple charges of "willful retention of classified information, obstruction of justice and making false statements," according to Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division.
The 10-count indictment alleges he gave Baltimore Sun reporter Sibohan Gorman classified NSA documents about the agency. In fact, she wrote about waste and mismanagement in its "Trailblazer" project (a program analyzing data on computer networks), and illegal spying activities, saying on May 18, 2006 in her article headlined, "NSA Killed System That Sifted Phone Data Legally" that:
"Once President Bush gave the go-ahead for the NSA to secretly gather and analyze domestic phone records - an authorization that carried no stipulations about identity protection - agency officials regarded the encryption as an unnecessary step and rejected it."
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