Obama Continues the Bush Policies of Secrecy

Some of us naively thought during the terrible Bush decade that if we could replace the heavy handed Security State of the Republican administration by electing a Democratic president and that we could reestablish our tattered democracy.  In hindsight how foolish we were.  We thought that Obama, who campaigned on government transparency and rolling back the Patriot Act would end the dominating control of the most powerful NSA/CIA Security State made strong by 8 years of zero oversight and an unlimited budget.  We were wrong.  How could we think that those in power would relinquish that power just because a new president was inaugurated?   Sadly, some here in DU think that’s exactly what happened in spite of the evidence otherwise.

In “The Nation” magazine of Oct 27, there is a good article, “The Government’s War on Whistleblowers.”  
http://www.thenation.com/article/173521/obamas-crackdown-whistleblowers

“To date, the Obama administration has charged nine people with violating the …… Espionage Act – far more that all other administrations combined.”

As bad as that sounds, that is the tip of the iceberg.  Many others have undergone Espionage Act “investigations” that didn’t result in prosecutions, but most likely destroyed careers.  Some see this as heavy-handed intimidation.  

“In its 2011 Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, the FBI formally authorized the use of national-security letters to obtain the call records of journalists who are witnesses to a crime. (NSLs are secret orders that the FBI can issue with no judicial review. Recipients are prohibited from telling anyone they’ve received such an order.)”

The article goes on to detail how Obama’s DOJ used subpoenas to gather records of 100 journalists exposing their sources whether or not the sources were relevant to the justification for the subpoenas.

It is apparent that our powerful NSA/CIA Security State, via the DOJ, has declared war on whisleblowers and investigative journalists.

When Obama became president he inherited a very powerful Security State from the Bush/Cheney administration that operated with an unlimited budget, carte blache authority and zero oversight.  It appears that Security State has grown even more powerful under President Obama.  This threat to our democracy should be obvious to all but those living in a state of denial.  And those that applaud the president for the gains we’ve made must realize that without democracy those gains can disappear quickly.  

Majority Say Brennan Violated Checks and Balances, and Must Go

Posted by Dan Froomkin Oct. 1, 2014 on “The Intercept”

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/01/majority-say-brennan-violated-checks-balances-must-go/

“According to a new poll, a sizeable majority of American voters believe CIA officials violated the constitutional system of checks and balances when they hacked into computers being used by Senate staffers investigating torture.”

“And by a two-to-one margin (54 percent to 25 percent, with 22 percent not sure) they believe that CIA Director John Brennan should resign on account of the misleading statements he made about the incident.”

“The poll found overwhelming public support for release of a long-completed report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The report is said to disclose abuse that was more brutal, systematic and widespread than generally recognized, and to expose a pattern of deceit in the Bush administration’s descriptions of the program to Congress and the public.”

“Calls for Brennan’s ouster emerged quickly after Feinstein’s floor speech in March, describing a blatant violation of the principle that Congress conducts oversight over the executive branch, not vice versa. Brennan quickly issued an angry denial whose qualifications were widely overlooked. A CIA Inspector General’s report, whose conclusions were made public in July, confirmed Feinstein’s allegations.”

Some might believe that Brennan has a higher pay grade than the President. Just sayin'.