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

Posted by timothy on from the tell-us-how-you-really-feel dept.

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.

21 of 486 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds like a psycopath. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Sounds like a psycopath. by JMJimmy · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    2. Re: Sounds like a psycopath. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ... 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!

    3. Re: Sounds like a psycopath. by amiga3D · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re: Sounds like a psycopath. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    5. Re: Sounds like a psycopath. by mobby_6kl · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    6. Re: Sounds like a psycopath. by khasim · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    7. Re:Sounds like a psycopath. by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
    8. Re: Sounds like a psycopath. by guruevi · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    9. Re: Sounds like a psycopath. by haruchai · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    10. Re: Sounds like a psycopath. by skywire · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
  2. The article in question, including video by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  3. What a f@cking tool by mveloso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:What a f@cking tool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  4. Only one responsible party by Rumagent · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  5. Snowden a distraction from actual culprits .. by nickweller · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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 –

  6. Bodes Really Well for a Fair Trial by Kunedog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Bodes Really Well for a Fair Trial by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  7. Snowden or someone else? by Hairy1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Not a psychopath... by Etherwalk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  9. What US is focusing on by Parker+Lewis · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

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