How the Pentagon Punished NSA Whistleblowers (theguardian.com)

10 years before Edward Snowden's leak, an earlier whistle-blower on NSA spying "was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially and professionally," according to a new article in The Guardian. "The only job he could find afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban Washington, where he remains today... The supreme irony? In their zeal to punish Drake, these Pentagon officials unwittingly taught Snowden how to evade their clutches when the 29-year-old NSA contract employee blew the whistle himself."

But today The Guardian reveals a new story about John Crane, a senior official at the Department of Defense "who fought to provide fair treatment for whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake -- until Crane himself was forced out of his job and became a whistleblower as well..." Crane told me how senior Defense Department officials repeatedly broke the law to persecute whistleblower Thomas Drake. First, he alleged, they revealed Drake's identity to the Justice Department; then they withheld (and perhaps destroyed) evidence after Drake was indicted; finally, they lied about all this to a federal judge...

Crane's failed battle to protect earlier whistleblowers should now make it very clear that Snowden had good reasons to go public with his revelations... if [Crane's] allegations are confirmed in court, they could put current and former senior Pentagon officials in jail. (Official investigations are quietly under way.)
Meanwhile, George Maschke writes: In a presentation to a group of Texas law students, a polygraph examiner for the U.S. Department of Defense revealed that in the aftermath of Edward Snowden's revelations, the number of polygraphs conducted annually by the department tripled (to over 120,000). Morris also conceded that mental countermeasures to the polygraph are a "tough thing."

Comments

Who will watch the watchers?

[_Sharp'r_]

Official investigations are quietly under way.

But who will watch (or protect) the watchers? Crane started blowing the whistle in 2002, so if there was an effective process for investigating his reports, you'd think it'd have concluded 14 years later...

If the assistant inspector general supervising the whistleblower unit can't figure out how to safely be a whistleblower without getting hammered, then who can? Ironically, the image of a whistleblower is that the whistle immediately alerts everyone to an issue. How's that worked out for folks?

Re: Who will watch the watchers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. The FBI has been a corrupt organization from the top (J. E. Hoover) on down, but because they were breaking the law for a "good cause", they were allowed to get away with it by both Democrat and Republican administrations. It wasn't until the release of the COINTEL papers and the fact that Nixon was in office, that Congress suddenly grew a spine, and investigated the FBI under the Church committee. But it never would have happened without the "illegal" release of the FBI's wrong doing.

As a follow-on, the FBI claims to have stopped the illegal COINTEL operations, but Parallel Construction leads me to believe it still goes on, under another name.

Re: Who will watch the watchers?

[Grishnakh]

The NSA, CIA, and FBI aren't intended to be criminal organizations. They were built to help the people of the US. The hope of the public at large is that this draws honorable people to those organizations, and that at worst, only a few bad apples will exist.

I really wish people would stop using this expression.

Have you ever left a bad apple in a bunch of apples? If you had, you'd know exactly what happens: the whole bunch turns bad very quickly. That's where the expression came from, and that's why it's invalid to say "only a few bad apples": there is no such thing as a few bad apples!!! When you have a bad apple, whether it's an apple or a cop in a police department, unless it's removed quickly, pretty soon they're all bad. Which is why the expression is apt for police, except that everyone keeps forgetting about what really happens with bad apples. Does no one keep bunches of apples any more?

Re: Who will watch the watchers?

[jcr]

because they were breaking the law for a "good cause" [wikipedia.org], they were allowed to get away with it by both Democrat and Republican administrations

No, they got away with it because Hoover and his minions had dirt on every president since Calvin Coolidge. JFK and RFK despised him, but they didn't dare make a move against him.

-jcr

Re: Who will watch the watchers?

[silentcoder]

>They were built to help the people of the US.
The trouble is that it is very easy for good ideas to get turned to nefarious purposes, and this is doubly true of wartime ideas when peace comes. The CIA was born out of the wartime OSS. Not so very long after that, JFK disbanded the CIA as he recognized the threat of having such an organisation outside of the war. During the war the enemy was clear, the need was clear -and the risks of what would happen if they failed kept them focused on the right stuff. Outside the war - the combination of power and secrecy was a deadly threat.
Of course, in one of his very first acts in office, LBJ undid that and reinstated the CIA. This bit of history is revealing - and it's part of the reason why JFK's death has been the subject of so many conspiracy theories, there were just too many people who stood to lose power and privilege as a result of him disbanding the CIA. I don't know if there's any truth to any of them (real conspiracies do happen after all, but most conspiracy theories are bullshit) but I can see how this confluence of events would inspire suspicions.

Either way - JFK's reasoning for disbanding the CIA was solid. There was no reason for the CIA to exist in peacetime - even with the cold war ongoing. The same could be said of the NSA.
The FBI, not being military was a lesser threat and I would argue has actually improved over time. Hoover's FBI had files on *everybody* today's FBI is a lot more restrained. You could argue it should be even moreso, or maybe even that it should not exist, but it's the one case where the trend seems to have been towards greater transparency and less intrusive behavior - perhaps because the FBI's very mandate is to deal with citizens, they operate more in the public eye and under public scrutiny. Their targets also get a day in court where flagrant 4th amendment violations are case-losers. Instead, you see a different kind of corruption there - like FBI lab-techs flagrantly lying to courts over the strength of DNA evidence for example.

In all cases, government organisations ought to be kept tightly focused and face real and serious repercussions for bad behavior, in some cases (like a wartime intelligence operation) these can come from circumstances, in the rest it must be written into legislation... and some of them should never exist.

I wonder sometimes, how much better a country the USA would not be, if defense budget was cut to 1/6th of what it is (which would still be 3 times bigger than any other country) - and that money spent instead on scientific research and the social safety net (which in total amounts to less than 0.05% percent of government spending yet we are constantly told is unaffordable).

Re: Who will watch the watchers?

[Salgak1]

How did the agencies get that way ?

The most likely answer, is Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

To wit:

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":

          First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

        Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

Re: Who will watch the watchers?

[NotDrWho]

It still saddens me deeply that a majority of people assume that it's only the governments of OTHER countries that are doing horrible, horrible things. I want to take everyone who has ever said "No, the U.S. government would never do something like that" and put them in a room and force them to watch documentaries on the CIA and all the horrific shit they did, and are still doing, in South America and many other regions. And they did it all with our tax money. And they're STILL DOING IT, right now.

Not to mention astroturfing their propaganda

[Taco Cowboy]

When TPTB strikes, they make sure they cover everything

Not only they throw the book on the whistleblowers, they also make sure that those patriotic whistleblowers get their reputation totally ruined by releasing their 'wu mao' teams astroturfing their propaganda at online forum, such as this one on /. calling the whistleblowers 'traitors' and such

What TPTB of the United States of America is doing is getting closer and closer to that of the Chinese Communist regime

I came from China, I know how terrible fascism is, and unfortunately I am seeing the same thing happens here, more and more

They brought Snowden on themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what a lot of people don't get. Snowden had only two real choices: Go outside the system to reveal injustice, or keep his mouth shut.

The whole whistle-blower problem was brought to our attention decades ago. The powers that be promised "whistle blower protection". Some people accepted that... and still got screwed.

Snowden had to have know the history of all that. He knew he had two choices. Be a mobster, or turn "states evidence" to the only state that won't screw him: The public at large.

The U.S government is CORRUPT and VIOLENT.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I came from China, I know how terrible fascism is, and unfortunately I am seeing the same thing happens here, more and more"

The U.S. government has killed an estimated 11,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd world war. Often contractor companies do the violence, or arrange more violence so that they can make more money and so the managers can get promotions. It's killing for profit.

Why the Vietnam war? The CIA and Vietnam. "... from June, 1954 to June, 1963, that is, until two years after Dulles left office (August, 1961) the CIA was absolutely and exclusively dominant in creating and carrying out the policies which led eventually to the Vietnam War."

"To the CIA too must go the credit for the creation of the secret police forces of Diemâ(TM)s brother Ngo Dinh Nhu which prevented dissent within Vietnam until it was too late to change things."

The intention of the U.S. financial community to profit from corrupt practices was well known long before the crash in 2008. In the Berkshire Hathaway 2002 Annual Report (PDF), Warren Buffett said this on page 14: "I can assure you that the marking errors in the derivatives business have not been symmetrical. Almost invariably, they have favored either the trader who was eyeing a multi-million dollar bonus or the CEO who wanted to report impressive 'earnings' (or both). The bonuses were paid, and the CEO profited from his options. Only much later did shareholders learn that the reported earnings were a sham."

The Iraq war made huge amounts of money for the Bush family and Dick Cheney: Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War. That destruction will continue for decades: The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End.

Re: 1% illuminati triangle craft

[silentcoder]

Here's the problem:
A two-person election in November, Hillary will almost certainly win. Indeed, if history is anything to go by - it will be a massive landslide - every time Republicans have nominated an angry demagogue like Trump in the past the democrats got a landslide victory (see Barry Goldwater for example).

But if it's a three person election - then Trump may very well win, regardless who the third person is. Lets say Bernie Sanders decides to run as an independent. While he lost on maths, the man got a LOT of votes, and even in the states where lost his margins were narrow. One could easily see him taking several states that would otherwise have gone to Hillary, and just one or two states could make all the difference. I would prefer Bernie over Hillary but right now I hope he drops out after the convention - because if he runs then Trump wins.
Now what if say Kassich or Rubio runs ? You know, classic establishment republicans ? Well the landslide is definitely off the the table - since a lot of the independents who will gladly choose Hillary over Trump would not choose either over Kassich or Rubio. That would take votes from both of them - and the maths will get very complicated. It's unlikely this mainstream republican candidate could win but which of the other two does is suddenly a gamble, and Trump's odds look a lot better.
Okay, what if we one of the republican crazies ran ? Cruz or Paul maybe ? Well the trouble with those guys are - they always only appealed to the same brand of wingnuts that Trump drew... and he is better at it than they are. But a lot of independents will, yet again, choose their brand of crazy over Hillary - and that may be enough to give Trump a victory.

That's the problem right now - you got the republicans having gone full retard and nominated a man whose speeches are identical to those of fascist leaders and nazi's through the ages - but the democrats responded by nominating the woman with the worst unfavorables in years. Trump is probably the only candidate in history so terrible that Hillary could beat him (I don't think she could have won against either McCain or Romney... well maybe McCain if he had kept Palin). But that ability to beat him utterly depends on a two-candidate race. Any third candidate who splits the vote and the orangutang son of the NAZI gets the nuclear launch codes.

This pattern has been prevalent for a while. Quite a few candidates have lost because a third-party got just enough votes they would otherwise have gotten to cost them a win (Gore for example). But I think this is the most stark example ever.
So the question is, how badly do you NOT want a world where Goldwater won ? Can you imagine if that froth at the mouth lunatic had been president during the Bay of Pigs ? When the world was on the verge of a nuclear war, most of the credit for it not happening came down to a president who managed to keep his cool. JFK earned respect that day. Trump is the goldwater of our generation and make no mistake, there will be Bay of Pigs like events in the next 8 years, there always is... when they come, you need somebody making the calls who is known for acting calmly and keeping his cool and making careful, calculated decisions. You do not want an angry demagogue who never thinks before he speaks, let alone acts.