In his run up to the presidency, Obama ceaselessly spoke about and promised that his presidency would be the most transparent in history. He promised panels to share information, he promised C-SPAN would be on hand to televise discussions on legislation, he promised whistle-blowers would enjoy unfettered protection from abuse and/or prosecution. He promised to set in place safeguards that would encourage them to step forward.
But, like everything else he promised that has turned out to be a lie – everything except his promise to “fundamentally change America.” Obama has fought transparency at every turn. Just ask the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Herald newspapers, whose reporters were threatened and turned away from events after they broke stories. Ask the reporter who was locked in a closet.
It is an oft repeated statement of fact that needs to be repeated yet again, and that is if George W. Bush or any Republican president behaved toward reporters and the public, as this person has, there would be hell to pay. The cries of contempt would be deafening and they would be daily.
But instead, with Obama we have unprecedented secrecy surrounding his unprecedented secrecy and abuse of power. The media, that itself is suffering from denial to access is not only complicit but compliant. And more egregious, Congress is more silent and more passive than a stone in the forest. We the public are denied access to information in a way that would make Lenin proud.
While I tip my hat to Jack Tapper for the following column, I’m also forced to ask what took him so long? And I want to know if this will be his last piece on Obama’s abusive treatment and prosecution of whistle-blowers. Obama is governing like the Communist he is and it is time he is challenged pursuant to same everytime he steps out in public. He deserves our wrath for his narcissistic arrogance and the unmitigated hubris of Michelle Obama, as she flaunts herself spending our money as if it were her birth right.
As mentioned following is a New York Times article by David Carr, who references Jack Tapper’s questioning of Jay Carney during a White House briefing. (Blurred Line Between Espionage and Truth; 2/26/12) Here’s hoping that others in the press follow Tapper’s lead and start to do their due diligence in exposing the lies and double standards of the Leninst-in-chief.
BLURRED LINE BETWEEN ESPIONAGE AND TRUTH:
Last Wednesday in the White House briefing room, the administration’s press secretary, Jay Carney, opened on a somber note, citing the deaths of Marie Colvin and Anthony Shadid, two reporters who had died “in order to bring truth” while reporting in Syria.
Jake Tapper of ABC News questioned the Obama administration’s efforts to prosecute officials.
Thomas A. Drake, a former employee of the National Security Agency, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act last year.
Jake Tapper, the White House correspondent for ABC News, pointed out that the administration had lauded brave reporting in distant lands more than once and then asked, “How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistle-blowers to court?”
He then suggested that the administration seemed to believe that “the truth should come out abroad; it shouldn’t come out here.”
Fair point. The Obama administration, which promised during its transition to power that it would enhance “whistle-blower laws to protect federal workers,” has been more prone than any administration in history in trying to silence and prosecute federal workers.
The Espionage Act, enacted back in 1917 to punish those who gave aid to our enemies, was used three times in all the prior administrations to bring cases against government officials accused of providing classified information to the media. It has been used six times since the current president took office.
Setting aside the case of Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst who is accused of stealing thousands of secret documents, the majority of the recent prosecutions seem to have everything to do with administrative secrecy and very little to do with national security.
In case after case, the Espionage Act has been deployed as a kind of ad hoc Official Secrets Act, which is not a law that has ever found traction in America, a place where the people’s right to know is viewed as superseding the government’s right to hide its business.
In the most recent case, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who became a Democratic staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was charged under the Espionage Act with leaking information to journalists about other C.I.A. officers, some of whom were involved in the agency’s interrogation program, which included waterboarding.
For those of you keeping score, none of the individuals who engaged in or authorized the waterboarding of terror suspects have been prosecuted, but Mr. Kiriakou is in federal cross hairs, accused of talking to journalists and news organizations, including The New York Times.
Mr. Tapper said that he had not planned on raising the issue, but hearing Mr. Carney echo the praise for reporters who dug deep to bring out the truth elsewhere got his attention.
“I have been following all of these case, and it’s not like they are instances of government employees leaking the location of secret nuclear sites,” Mr. Tapper said. “These are classic whistle-blower cases that dealt with questionable behavior by government officials or its agents acting in the name of protecting America.”
Mr. Carney said in the briefing that he felt it was appropriate “to honor and praise the bravery” of Ms. Colvin and Mr. Shadid, but he did not really engage Mr. Tapper’s broader question, saying he could not go into information about specific cases. He did not respond to an e-mail message seeking comment.
In one of the more remarkable examples of the administration’s aggressive approach, Thomas A. Drake, a former employee of the National Security Agency, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act last year and faced a possible 35 years in prison.
His crime? When his agency was about to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a software program bought from the private sector intended to monitor digital data, he spoke with a reporter at The Baltimore Sun. He suggested an internally developed program that cost significantly less would be more effective and not violate privacy in the way the product from the vendor would. (He turned out to be right, by the way.)
He was charged with 10 felony counts that accused him of lying to investigators and obstructing justice. Last summer, the case against him collapsed, and he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor, of misuse of a government computer.
Jesselyn Radack, the director for national security and human rights at the Government Accountability Project, was one of the lawyers who represented him.
“The Obama administration has been quite hypocritical about its promises of openness, transparency and accountability,” she said. “All presidents hate leaks, but pursuing whistle-blowers as spies is heavy-handed and beyond the scope of the law.”
Mark Corallo, who served under Attorney General John D. Ashcroft during the Bush administration, told Adam Liptak of The New York Times this month that he was “sort of shocked” by the number of leak prosecutions under President Obama. “We would have gotten hammered for it,” he said.
As Mr. Liptak pointed out, it has become easier to ferret out leakers in a digital age, but just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be.
These kinds of prosecutions can have ripples well beyond the immediate proceedings. Two reporters in Washington who work on national security issues said that the rulings had created a chilly environment between journalists and people who work at the various government agencies.
During a point in history when our government has been accused of sending prisoners to secret locations where they were said to have been tortured and the C.I.A. is conducting remote-controlled wars in far-flung places, it’s not a good time to treat the people who aid in the publication of critical information as spies.
And it’s worth pointing out that the administration’s emphasis on secrecy comes and goes depending on the news. Reporters were immediately and endlessly briefed on the “secret” operation that successfully found and killed Osama bin Laden. And the drone program in Pakistan and Afghanistan comes to light in a very organized and systematic way every time there is a successful mission.
There is plenty of authorized leaking going on, but this particular boat leaks from the top. Leaks from the decks below, especially ones that might embarrass the administration, have been dealt with very differently.
E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;
Twitter.com/carr2n
There is noticeably a bundle to comprehend this. I assume you have produced precise nice points in characteristics also.
Obama disparages drilling while fellow Democrats howl to release the Petroleum Reserve. If we had been able to drill for the last three Obama years we would have a constant release of petroleum and reasonable fuel prices. But as the Energy Chief said, “we don’t want to low gasoline prices”.
dongledick: actually we do want low prices…obama and company do not…
Once again I attempted to share this article to my facebook page and I was unsuccessful. The article was in code and unreadable. This has happened every time I have attempted to share. Is anyone else having this problem? I did attempt, as well, to contact your web support people with little success.
I appreciate your point of view and want to share it with other.
Help.
Thank you.
Bair
james bair: when you have difficulty let support know…there is place on the site to send detailed message of your problem to them…letting me know won’t really help…Cutty&Powers maintains the site…
“It’s not a good time to treat the people who aid in the publication of critical information as spies”. That strikes me as being an understatement. Barry might do himself a favor to recall what happened to “Tricky” Dick Nixon and the job the press did on him (rightfully) when they got wind of the botched Watergate spying attempt. Turns out they did have Richard Nixon to kick around some more. The press has a long memory. If he keeps abusing the reporters, even though the press has been his lap dog so far, they might start reacting like a cornered dog, and come out biting. In a way it’s like trying to hassle the guy on stage who has the microphone. You’ll lose.
sumitch: one can only hope he suffers Nixon’s penalty…plus a very long spell in prison w/out parole…
Thank you, Mychal. Very interesting read. And, thanks to Jack Tapper for bringing to light what is happening with the media and why.I am looking at the most recent act of not allowing the Pipeline to progress, and not using our very own Natural Resources. Meanwhile, Billions of our dollars are being pumped into solar system that doesn’t work. Wind mills explode because they are not perfected and it will be a very long time before they are perfected. In the end, customers will see much higher energy bills. As I read data from various places, Germany has tried solar energy and has spent billions of dollars into almost bankruptcy only to find that solar energy does nothing about reducing green house gasses. “Despite massive investment, solar power accounts for approximately three percent of Germany’s total energy…when the sun shines!” So solar energy is a misleading concept. Meanwhile, our Natural Resources sit in the ground and no one demands that we explore and become indipendently energy secure and sell some of our energy products to other countries; plus, bring down the cost of gasoline. (Sure we can drive smart cars but how do supplies get delivered to businesses? Semi Trucks! Price of product must go up to pay for supplies delivered.) So when it comes to ‘transparency’ we are not being told the entire story about clean energy by our very own government. I smell something very disgusting.
marilyn: we’re not getting any truth about the failings of green tech….
Point well taken, Mychal! I just heard on the news today that Israel will not leave the US know if (or when) they start an attack on Iran. The reason being given that it will save the US from having to defend our position by knowing the secret mission. More likely, it’s to prevent us leaking the mission to Israel’s enemies by the traitor-in-chief who’s brown-nosing his way into our (and Israel’s) enemies good-graces. Some of us remember in 1979 a certain hit song by Vince Vance & the Valiants called ‘Bomb Iran’ (to the tune ‘Barbara Ann’). John McCain tried spoofing this in 2008 & immediately fell out of favor w/ the MSM. I agree w/ the lyrics “gonna turn Iran into a parking lot”. Make that Afghanistan, too. Hats off to Jake Tapper for getting some backbone & doing what reporters are supposed to do-Joseph Farah has been doing this for years-being the watchdog on government- what a free press is supposed to do. Pretty sad day when the real cuplrits of espionage are the ones in office!
I thought that was pretty crafty of Israel. They made it look like they are doing us a favor when in fact they are protecting themselves from one of their worst enemies. And I don’t mean Iran or Palestine. And the world knows it. I’ll bet some heads of state are privately laughing with pleasure to see what they consider to be an idiot out smarted. Paybacks are hell. Maybe the next president won’t be quite so quick to publically show contempt and insult a head of state by walking out on a meeting with a head of state. That hurt him then and I’ll bet it will hurt him come voting time. I doubt that he’ll carry the Jewish vote. And it looks like he lost a lot of the religious vote recently. If his record holds true, he’ll try to mess with the second amendment next. Bad idea. Next to our right to shoot off our mouths is our right to protect ourselves for doing it.
sumitch: i can not understand Jews supporting obama…
May as well toss in North Korea too. If it’s settle up time, let’s do it right.
Agree w/ both your comments!!
chris: Israel knows obama would be on hte phne w/ iran in a hot minute to tip iran off….
Dear Mychal, I did not know about the issues described by you and am grateful you exposed it. I do know that we are being lied to and have known it before he was sworn in. Your quote “a reporter was locked into a closet”, demonstrates more than the words could express and provides the insight of the means to an end. I am so disgusted by it all.
mischa: the reporter was at a joe biden event…this is why they want to control talk radio and the internet…it is so they can lie to us w/ impunity…
The only thing Obama is transparent on is Israel’s plans.
Obama could care less for Israel. which is the only free non Islamic, non dictatorship democracy in the entire region. a nation about the size of my back patio. has he even visited there yet? but yes he is very transparent about abortion and socialism. and oh I almost forgot high gas prices.
branwen: he hates Israel…and you’re spot on about what he is transparent about…
barbara: that and his contempt for American tradition, the constitution, and our values…