Ex-CIA Director Says Snowden Should Be 'Hanged' For Paris Attacks (thehill.com)

SonicSpike writes with this excerpt from The HIll: A former CIA director says leaker Edward Snowden should be convicted of treason and given the death penalty in the wake of the terrorist attack on Paris. "It's still a capital crime, and I would give him the death sentence, and I would prefer to see him hanged by the neck until he's dead, rather than merely electrocuted," James Woolsey told CNN's Brooke Baldwin on Thursday. Woolsey said Snowden, who divulged classified information in 2013, is partly responsible for the terrorist attack in France last week that left at least 120 dead and hundreds injured. "I think the blood of a lot of these French young people is on his hands," he said.

Comments

Sounds like a psycopath.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Snowden doesn't have anyone's blood on his hands. Nice try tho

Re:Sounds like a psycopath.

[JMJimmy]

Ya, especially since the attackers were communicating on an unencrypted cell network. This is a purely political statement to move their surveillance agenda along.

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[Anonymous Coward]

... And cover their own asses. Afterall there has been no meaningful changes to protect our privacy in Europe from US/UK snooping. The US UK mass surveillance of France comms is still in place. Yet his mass surveillance DID NOT WORK. Terrorists still met, still talked, exchanged weapons and explosives all the while his $10 billion surveillance operation FAILED.

People wonder why he was looking as internet browser history instead of tracking machine guns and explosives!

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[amiga3D]

The reason is that they don't concentrate their resources. They spy on everyone. Instead of concentrating on real threats they consider everyone a threat. Trying to find a terrorist out of a 100,000 suspects is one thing. Picking a terrorist out of 7.3 billion people is an entirely different thing. It's simple, they are incompetent. He should be fired with no pension.

Re:Sounds like a psycopath.

[TheRaven64]

Your link doesn't go anywhere, which makes me think that it's a retracted story based on the initial announcement, which turned out to be incorrect.

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Paris police said they were not using encryption. This was reported on CNN. In addition, the Xbox encrypted comm. story turned out to be false as well.

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[mobby_6kl]

Well, we can still hang him to make an example!

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[khasim]

It's kind of hard to know who the real threats are without spying on people...

Bullshit. The point is that they were spying on EVERYONE. And being lazy about it.

Checking SPECIFIC people whom you have a VALID REASON to suspect is different.

The amount of data they're collecting is impossible to process in any useful fashion UNTIL AFTER SOMETHING HAPPENS.

Unless you want to spy on your ex-girlfriend or the cute barista who isn't interested in you. Too many opportunities for abuse.

Re:Sounds like a psycopath.

[TheRealHocusLocus]

Ya, especially since the attackers were communicating on an unencrypted cell network. This is a purely political statement to move their surveillance agenda along.

You're spot on. There's a cadre of retired intel who, like aging Hollywood actors providing voice talent, get 'tapped' to emerge from retirement and give an press interview or two to drop 'venerable old spook' seed quotes that Opinion columns can churn. I really do believe these people are called up and someone says, "We have an assignment for you. Plant this idea."

Retirees can emerge from the fog, drop their seeds and retreat, there is no unscripted follow-up. Politicians could not do this without having to field questions about their remarks at future press conferences. It is a bug in the human psyche that retired politicians are ascribed more credibility than those in power. They also become 'nonpartisan' in retirement and Opinion columnists of either party can pick up their remarks and without appearing to cross the line.

Crisis: Snowden brand is becoming too popular, achieving folk hero status.
Mission: Tie Snowden to Paris attacks, disingenuously if necessary. Be emotional, tactless and tearful.
Target demographic: People who believe a retiree is 'leaking' old secrets for the betterment of man.
Assigned to: R. James Woolsey, Jr., Director CIA under Clinton

Remember the Clinton Administration and his hatchet-man Al Gore, who made the rounds to Congress trying to sell the idea that it was time to outlaw all non-escrow encryption and impose a single government standard? It's that Woolsey, trying to pull the Woolsey over our eyes again.

There are others. Remember in the early days after 9/11, when Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz used practiced 'aggrieved old man scowls' to shut down questions they didn't like to hear at press conferences, leave them unanswered? And how the fawning press stopped asking those questions? The aggrieved old man bit really works, especially with young reporters.

It distresses me to see the bumbling neocon idiots who built their entire careers on the Big Lie, disregarding their own CIA intel and deceiving the public about threat level (Documentary: The Power of Nightmares) are now being 'tapped' for Middle East analyst sound bites. Every time Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Chaney or Pearl are quoted the bile rises in my throat. Likewise do old Democrats like Woolsey whose attempted Orwellian schemes I, for one, will never forget.

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[guruevi]

All those arrests came after good ole police detective work. None of those cases were aided by mass surveillance and the US has admitted as much.

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[rmdingler]

ack...he's ex-cia director. Too late to fire him.

Exactly; he's an ex-director of the CIA. What would you expect him to say?

"This whole nightmarish terrorist situation is all our fault, and it turns out we were asleep at the wheel."

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[LVSlushdat]

Not too late to try *him* for treason.. Him and a vast majority of the previous and current administrations should be behind bars for treason.... Just my (and a lot of other Americans) opinion...

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[haruchai]

Woolsey is part of the reason Americans were in favor of invadiing Iraq; he made comments about Iraqi complicity in 9/11 the VERY NEXT DAY and on several more occasions over the next few years.
Whatever he wishes for Snowden should be tried on him 1st.

Re:Sounds like a psycopath.

[nctritech]

See, herein lies the problem with the surveillance society. Once the watchers demonize encrypted communications as a tool only the Bad People(TM) would use, unencrypted, innocent-seeming messages become the communication tool of choice. This is "being hidden in plain sight." If you want to hide in a sea of automated data analysis, you simply duck your head below the noise threshold.

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[TWX]

The news has reported that many of the attackers, prior to recent radicalization were shiftless layabouts with no particular interest in their religion and violated most of the popular tenets of it. They drank. They had sex. They did drugs. They obviously weren't praying on a schedule.

This changed within the last few weeks to transform them from this into people willing to kill themselves. Find that catalyst and you not only find the people that masterminded the attacks but you also find the particular weaknesses that allowed these people that seemed to have nothing to do with their religion to be transformed into willing pawns for sacrifice. Maybe knowing what these weaknesses are can help societies identify hotbeds where this radicalization occurs and put a stop to it before the pattern repeats.

I'll give you one hint, when people feel like they belong they're a lot harder to exploit. When they feel connections with their neighbors, with the government officials they elect, even to an extent with the police, they are much less likely to try to tear-down the system in which they live. That neighborhood in Brussels that's described as a major source of terrorist development clearly has something unhealthy going on if the residents do not have this connection. Figure out why they feel isolated. Is it jobs? Is it racism? Is it religious bigotry even if they aren't particularly subscribing to "their" religion? Is it feeling bad about themselves because they're unemployed while the non-Muslims are employed? Figure it out and address it and perhaps this problem will actually go away.

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[laird]

Exactly. Friends in the security business tell me that these data mining leads have large negative value, because they require human effort to follow up on, and so far have a 0% success rate, meaning the pull resources away from more productive leads. Unfortunately the non-technical leadership LOVES the idea of data mining magically finding the bad guys, and keep pushing the programs forward.

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[skywire]

Ernest Becker, in his The Denial of Death, writes that human beings deal with their awareness of their inevitable demise by seeking heroism -- success at doing or contributing to something lasting. Each culture has its own hero-system. In a pluralist society, if one's need for heroism is not being met, one will turn to a system that does meet that need.

Re: Sounds like a psycopath.

[arth1]

Not understanding statistics is part of this, I believe.

If a data mining program claims to identify 99% of all border-crossing e-mails between terrorists, with only a 1% false positive rate, the unthinking suit wearing managers and politicians will wet themselves with excitement.

Now consider that there may be 1000 terrorists in the US that use e-mail.
And an average e-mail users sends or receives a total of 10 e-mails across the border per day.
And a (conservative) estimate of half a billion e-mails crossing the US borders every day.
That means they'll "catch" more than five million suspicious e-mails every day, and less than 0.5% of those will be to or from a terrorist. Anyone "caught" in that drag will have a 99.5% chance of being innocent.
Do they have the resources to investigate millions of people every day, and correctly identify the overwhelming number of false positives through other means?

In reality, I expect the numbers are much much worse. Especially in the aftermath of attacks, where people are far more likely to mention key words like Syria, Kalashnikov, explosive, alluha akbar or Paris.

Collecting more hay is not a good way to find more needles in haystacks.

The article in question, including video

[Anonymous Coward]

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/260817-ex-cia-director-snowden-should-be-hanged-for-paris

What a f@cking tool

[mveloso]

Hey DCI Woolsey, maybe we can blame your ass for spending too much time on sigint instead of humint. Then you can go to the gallows first.

Re:What a f@cking tool

[Anonymous Coward]

Being the ex CIA director, he needs a diversion, because if that blood is on anyone's hand it's the CIA's. ISIS is financed and supported by Saudi Arabia, which is America's lapdog in the middle east. It's also the direct result of the war in Iraq. Who delivered the casus belli for that? Weapons of mass destruction? The CIA had proof, right? Every bit of "geo politics" that the CIA has "supported" with their covert operations and propagandist lies has turned into a clusterfuck of epic proportions. So obviously he uses each and every opportunity to divert blame away from the CIA and consequently himself. These people don't believe in truth, only in manipulation.

Re:What a f@cking tool

[Misagon]

The man in question was forced to resign as CIA director in 1995.
However, after that he did not retire but worked as a lobbyist for several right-wing and warmongering groups in Washington.
This statement here, is just another lobbyist action in the same vein.

Most significant of Woolsey's allegiances, is, I would say his membership in the PNAC - a lobbyist group for a US invasion of Iraq, Iran and Syria. Woolsey was one of the signers of a petition to Clinton in the late '90s to invade - a petition with one of the stated objectives to snatch their oil for US interests.
When G.W.Bush became president, several leading members of the PNAC got high-ranking positions in that administration: vice-president Dick Cheney, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolwovitz are the most well-known.
When PNAC became the government, the PNAC's agenda became the agenda of the United States.

There is therefore no doubt that this ex-CIA director has a lot of blood on his hands. That whole clusterfuck in that region was caused by the Woolsey-supported invasion to thieve oil followed by gross mismanagement by US officials in Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of civilians, soldiers and civilians have been killed, and millions of people are refugees from and in the region.
How can one even compare Snowden to that?

Re:What a f@cking tool

[HangingChad]

Anyone been accusing Snowden of climate warming yet?

No, but a farmer here had a three-legged calf born on a blue moon. We can legitimately tie that to Snowden making a deal with the devil. We should burn him. If he doesn't burn, he's a witch. If he does burn, then we owe him an apology.

How?

[mi]

"I think the blood of a lot of these French young people is on his hands"

I may be the sole /.-tter, who is not an admirer of Snowden, but even I do not see, how he can be blamed (however partially) for this particular attack... What could he have told Putin which, when relayed to ISIS, helped them organize the massacre?

Re:How?

[Darinbob]

It's typical law enforcement mentality that makes him think anything goes as long as it can catch a bad guy. The idea that the ends justify the means. What Snowden did was reveal government misconduct, and judges are not a lot more strict and are pulling back on the anything-goes style. In other words, he feels they could have caught the terrorists if only they had been allowed to snoop on everyone. And by everyone this means everyone.

Wow

[Greyfox]

He really doesn't sound like the kind of person who should be in charge of the CIA. Oh wait, he's not. Well. I guess that worked out well, then, didn't it?

Only one responsible party

[Rumagent]

And that is the murdering bunch of facist, misogynist, islamic assholes, that uses bronze age stories to justify the slaughter of innocents.

Fuck him for suggesting otherwise!

Re:Only one responsible party

[quenda]

And that is the murdering bunch of facist, misogynist, islamic assholes

Oh I think we can add a few names for contributing - starting with the CIA for fabricating evidence of WMDs that lead to the invasion of Iraq, and a slaughter of civilians on a scale that makes ISIS look like a bunch of schoolboy puppy-stranglers.

The CIA may well be nice guys compared to ISIS, but they have done far more damage.

Re:Only one responsible party

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nice. Maybe France should get rid of its current Muslims and replace them with Indonesians then.

A huge fact like this - the worlds largest Muslim population has a secular government with freedom of religion -- is dismissed as "that's nice". Not very open to see in anything other than black and white here? The answer to your question is that France should get rid of its extremist Muslims the same way US should get rid of KKK and Christians bombing abortion clinics.

Re:Facepalm is hard in this one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as big a moron (or "f@cking tool") as the idiots who will actually believe what he says. Fear them more.

Snowden a distraction from actual culprits ..

[nickweller]

Exploiting Emotions About Paris to Blame Snowden, Distract from Actual Culprits Who Empowered ISIS

There is NO "War on Terror"
--

PROTHERO: Do you believe this crap, Dascombe? DASCOMBE: It's not our job to believe it, Lewis. Our job is to tell the people –

In other news...

[timrod]

Ex-CIA director attempts to prove relevance by making outrageous statements on current events, fails.

Bodes Really Well for a Fair Trial

[Kunedog]

If anyone had any lingering hope left that Snowden could get a fair trial for the probable charges that aren't simply fabricated out of nowhere, surely this clears it up.

Re:Bodes Really Well for a Fair Trial

[amiga3D]

What difference would a fair trial make? He's guilty. Whether you think it was right or not it was certainly illegal.

Re:Bodes Really Well for a Fair Trial

[Anonymous Coward]

Whistleblowing laws are irrelevant since Snowden has been accused under the espionage act. He is not allowed to defend his actions, only to deny them which would be absurd. So the outcome of the trial is predetermined: no judge is going to state that he does not believe Snowden and considers him not guilty of doing what he always admitted to have done.

Under the espionage act, there is nothing but a show trial with predetermined "guilty" verdict in stock for Snowden. No judge or jury can reasonably change that. The government has decided that he will not get a fair trial, and the espionage act is the tool for making sure that he won't.

Re: Bodes Really Well for a Fair Trial

[Aighearach]

If it is helpful has absolutely nothing to do with the very technical question of if a person is guilty of violating an existing criminal statute.

It seems a lot of people become so blinded by disliking what the law is that they are no longer capable of remembering what it is. How do they still know they don't like it, if they can't even use its extant state in their analysis?

A fair trial and he would be found guilty, because he has admitted what he did in public. There is basically no factual difference between his account and the governments regarding what actions he took. The assertion that a 'fair' trial could end other than in a guilty verdict is silly.

It is perfectly reasonable to say that you don't believe he should be charged because [reasons]. But it is not obvious that allowing government workers to give away official secrets without penalty is some sort of "moral" objective. How is a law banning espionage by government employees inherently immoral? It seems an impossibly high hurdle to categorically show the espionage act to be immoral. That remains true even if you don't believe it should be applied in some cases.

I've heard a lot of people call for a pardon, for example. That seems a more reasonable basis of moral argument.

Anyway on a random jury only 2 or 3 people are going to want him hanged.

Re: Bodes Really Well for a Fair Trial

[KGIII]

He was a sub-contractor as I recall. As such, he'd probably not have taken that oath. He probably would be, technically, guilty of a few crimes. However, that's what jury nullification is for. There's some secrets acts and probably a case to be made for being a traitor (albeit a weak case - but one the State could try) but, again, that's what jury nullification is for.

Jury nullification relies on a sympathetic and intelligence populace. Which, by all accounts, means's he's fucked. 'Tis a pity, too.

Re: Bodes Really Well for a Fair Trial

[Antique Geekmeister]

Afghanistan is considered part of the Middle East by many, and has strong language and cultural ties with the rest of the Muslim cultures of the Middle East. It's a key land route between the Middle East and Asia, which is one reason it's been so valuable and so often invaded by other nations.

And yes, Russia's invasion was marked by disaster, as was the more recent US invasion, and the previous British invasion.

Re:Bodes Really Well for a Fair Trial

[caseih]

It makes a huge difference. Nearly all whistle blowers are violating the law in a technical sense to reveal greater breaches of the law by others who are powerful. A fair trial means that all the nuances and subtleties of the crime are made known and an appropriate sentence passed, based on all the factors (including the fact that the NSA violated the law and the constitution), not just technical guilt. This is the kind of justice that the US has prided herself on for generations. And the lack of fear of going after powerful (usually) men in high places for their own crimes revealed. This ex-CIA man has confirmed what we've known for years. There will be no such fair trial for Snowden. His guilt has been known for years, but apparently the full sentence has been known already too. This is morally wrong. And clearly those that violated the constitution and acted in an unlawful fashion (IE crimes) against the American people have no intention of being responsible for their actions either in any courts of law.

Snowden or someone else?

[Hairy1]

The suggestion that Snowden, in revealing the illegal practises of the US Government is somehow responsible for ISIS carrying out the Paris attack is patently ludicrous.

But perhaps those making the accusations are trying to deflect their own responsibility? ISIS were established, at least originally, by Sunni Muslims from Iraq who had been alienated and excluded from the political process in Iraq. Without the Iraqi invasion ISIS would not exist. Didn't stop there either. In the attempt to supply the Syrian Free Army, which was in fact a number of groups including those who would become ISIS, with weapons and aid the Americans had not only given them fertile ground to harvest, but given them the tractors and machines to till the soil.

And now the Americans complain that Putin is fighting the enemy of Assad; which is ISIS. ISIS for their part took the opportunity to take poorly defended US military equipment in Northern Iraq. Those fighting ISIS in Northern Iraq, the Kurds, have been given little support, and continue to be attacked by US ally Turkey. So how, given the facts on the ground, can the US in all seriousness try to condemn others for assisting ISIS, when without the US they would not exist?

I am not saying the US has made ISIS do what they have. The reprehensible attacks across the world are the behaviours of morally vapid thugs who are totally responsible for their actions. Make no mistake that I have no sympathy for them. But the US cannot wash its hands of the part it has played, once again, in enabling this kind of tyrannical villainy.

Misplaced blame?

[fahrbot-bot]

Wasn't it CIA meddling that instigated the various messes around the planet, including Afghanistan and Iran in the first place? Ultimately, it seems the CIA has the more blood on its hands than Snowden ever could - presuming Woolsey had a valid point and wasn't, apparently, a bat-shit crazy socio/psycho-path with a really short and/or selective memory.

Who cares?

[aralin]

Why are we discussing the accusations thrown about by war criminals? Every director of CIA since at least Nixon's presidency has been responsible for war crimes. So why are we still listening to them? After all it is the CIA who is directly arming and training people who then immediately deflect to ISIS. That sounds like much more direct responsibility than anything Snowden might have done.

Is this a joke?

[CustomSolvers2]

I quote from the video "...they knew how to use encrypted communications because of the E. Snowden revelations..."!!

It is not about defending/attacking Snowden or what he did. It is not even about a person working for a governmental agency publically and arbitrarily blaming someone for the Paris attacks by using a so strong language.

For me, the main problem here is that extremely important actions, like properly understanding/analysing/making decisions, are performed by clueless individuals. A person delivering the aforementioned nonsense should be immediately fired. People coming to so nonsensical conclusions are certainly responsible for lots of bad things.

So, is lying to congress also treason?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Snowden is to be punished so brutally for revealing crimes then what is in store for Woolsey for committing them?

Not a psychopath...

[Etherwalk]

Not a psychopath, just a propagandist. The idea is pretty simple: connect whistleblowing of illegal government surveillance to Paris terrorist attacks in order to assist your political positions on (1) being anti-encryption, (2) being pro-surveillance, and (3) being anti-whistleblower. He's blatantly violating his oath to defend the Constitution but is doing that because his (former) job is a lot harder if he has to follow the Constitution--and all the people who died in France, the CIA didn't see it coming, maybe because of Snowden.

Of course, if the NSA hadn't been collecting massive illegal surveillance of *Americans*, Snowden probably wouldn't have happened. While Snowden should be held to account for leaking classified information, the biggest blame by far goes to the NSA and the Senate Intelligence Committee for failure to oversee it properly.

Majority:
        Richard Burr, North Carolina, Chair
        Jim Risch, Idaho
        Dan Coats, Indiana
        Marco Rubio, Florida
        Susan Collins, Maine
        Roy Blunt, Missouri
        James Lankford, Oklahoma
        Tom Cotton, Arkansas

Minority:
        Dianne Feinstein, California, Vice Chair
        Ron Wyden, Oregon
        Barbara Mikulski, Maryland
        Mark Warner, Virginia
        Martin Heinrich, New Mexico
        Angus King, Maine[9]
        Mazie Hirono, Hawaii

Ex officio:
        John McCain, Arizona
        Mitch McConnell, Kentucky
        Jack Reed, Rhode Island
        Harry Reid, Nevada

not like the CIA will accept that it's their fault

[dltaylor]

70 years of incredibly stupid foreign blunders have left a large part of the world with utterly justifiable anger at the United States, and any and all allies. It's the CIA who should be hanged as traitors, if anyone.

Re:Plenty people in power should be hanged..

[jcr]

islam as the root of all evil,

So, that's why evil was completely unknown in the world before 570 AD, right?

Get back on your meds, you tragic little troll.

-jcr

What US is focusing on

[Parker Lewis]

What we know about Paris terrorists:
- Not Syrian
- Not refugees
- No encryption

What the US is focusing on:
- Syrians
- Refugees
- Encryption

Priceless.

[Kevin by the Beach]

1. Allied foreign intelligence provides name of terrorist year in advance.
2. Ignore hard intelligence, because Skynet knows all
3. SMS clear text and Facebook used to plan horrific crime

Blame: Edward Snowden -- Priceless

Re:Plenty people in power should be hanged..

[james_gnz]

Islam is a mono-cultural ideology that by definition tolerates no other cultures on basis of equality.

Christianity is hardly a beacon of equality either. According to Christianity, Christians will be rewarded with everlasting paradise, and everyone else will be punished with everlasting torture, and this is right and just, because they are evil and deserve it, and it is the will of an all-loving god. By no means does this view espouse equality. Granted, Jesus tells his followers not to be violent, while he'll bring an army of angels to cast the unbelievers into the pit of fire that they deserve. (Do as I say, not as I do.) That said, if a Christian should kill an unbeliever, they will be forgiven, and still go to heaven, while the unbeliever will still burn in hell.

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. (Matthew 10:34)

Christianity inspired the crusades, inquisitions, and witch hunts. (Seriously, if you think you've got the seed of Satan spreading evil among you, and they deserve to be killed, and you'll be forgiven for killing them, would you not?) The practice of religious tolerance in the West began begrudgingly in response to wariness from over a hundred years of Christian infighting in the European wars of religion. Modern liberal Christianity (the "don't be such a literalist, when Jesus said non-believers deserve to be burned, it was a metaphor for something nice" variety) draws its morals from the Enlightenment (atheist thought), not Christianity, although it steadfastly refuses to acknowledge it. Modern liberal Islam is relatively benign mental masturbation in the same vein.

Re:Plenty people in power should be hanged..

[Stephan Schulz]

Neither are "the Muslims" killing anyone, just a few fanatics are. "The Americans" are commencing drone warfare with >90% "collateral damage" (that's a euphemism for "innocent civilians killed or maimed") - does that make it ok to attack all Americans and their values?