John McCain Says That Keith Alexander Should Be Fired... For All The Wrong Reasons
from the what-about-prosecuted dept
Senator John McCain, who is certainly considered more "hawkish" on national intelligence and thus a lot more likely to support the NSA, made some interesting statements in a recent interview with the German paper Der Spiegel, including saying that President Obama should fire Keith Alexander. While that might surprise you, the reality is that he does so for all the wrong reasons -- mainly, he doesn't blame Alexander for illegal spying. He blames Alexander for letting word get out that we were spying on "friends."SPIEGEL: Are the intelligence services out of control?Notice that it's not because of the spying that Alexander should be fired... but rather because people like Manning and Snowden were able to leak documents.
McCain: There has not been sufficient congressional oversight, and there has been an absolutely disgraceful sharing of information that never should have taken place. For many years, we had an absolute provision that any classified information, which was going to be shared, is based on need-to-know information. I was a Navy pilot and had Top Secret clearance because I was in a squadron that in case of war with Russia would carry nuclear weapons. But that did not mean that I was privy to everything to do with all of our war plans in case of a nuclear war.
SPIEGEL: That means that you only knew what you absolutely had to know.
McCain: Yes. Then along came 9/11 and we said, "Oh, one of the reasons why we didn't know about 9/11 is that we didn't do enough information sharing." So now we have a private in the Army with access to most secret cables.
SPIEGEL: You mean Private First Class Bradley Manning, now Chelsea, who leaked thousands of secret documents to Wikileaks.
McCain: And now we have a contractor employee, not a government employee, who has access to information which is, when revealed, most damaging to the standing prestige of the United States and our relations with some of our best friends. Why did Edward Snowden have that information? And what are we doing as far as screening people who have access to this information? It's outrageous, and someone ought to be held accountable.
SPIEGEL: Who must be held accountable?
McCain: The head of the NSA, the president of the United States, the Congressional Intelligence Committees, all of these contractors we pay that were responsible for performing the background checks. There should be a wholesale housecleaning.
SPIEGEL: Should Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, resign?
McCain: Of course, they should resign or be fired. We no longer hold anybody accountable in Washington. The Commandant of the Marine Corps fired a couple of generals because of failure of security at a base in Afghanistan. Tell me who has been fired for anything that's gone bad in this town.
And, yes, elsewhere in the interview, McCain does complain about the extent of the NSA's spying... but not on ordinary Americans. No, the only thing that seems to upset him about it is when it impacts our relationships with "friends" in foreign governments. Look at this key quote:
SPIEGEL: In your opinion, how should intelligence services define the lines that must not be crossed?Notice absolutely no mention of things like people's rights to privacy? Notice absolutely no mention of concern for citizens either in the US or elsewhere? Nope. His only concern is when the spying might "damage relations" with a friendly country. Incredible.
McCain: The limit should be the potential damage to relations with that country. In other words, is it worth the collateral damage that could result in those techniques being revealed? What would be the reaction of our friends to it?
Elsewhere in the interview, McCain scoffs at the idea that Germany might offer Snowden asylum, saying "we're too good friends" for Germany to do such a horrible thing. He also insists that he knows Snowden revealed everything to the Russians, despite no evidence to support this. He says that if you don't believe Snowden revealed everything to the Russians, "then you believe that pigs can fly." Furthermore, he calls Snowden a "defector," which is simply factually inaccurate. Snowden was forced into the Russians' hands by the US's clumsy approach to trying to stop him.
The only thing that seems to offend McCain is (1) that we let "low level" people like Manning and Snowden have access to secrets and (2) that we might offend a few "high level" friends. It's the complaint of an ultimate insider, who only cares about friends in high places and has absolutely no concern whatsoever for the common people he hasn't been in touch with in decades.
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Filed Under: angela merkel, bradley manning, chelsea manning, ed snowden, germany, john mccain, keith alexander, surveillance
Reader Comments
The First Word
“What about every single politician's pledge, to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.
That includes the 1st and 4th Amendments, which have been grossly violated.
McCain never once mentioned that "his" pledge to the American People has been broken. McCain needs to work on keeping his pledge, before demonizing someone, such as Snowden. Snowden was attempting to uphold McCain's broken pledge for him.
Any politician who demonizes Snowden, is demonizing the Constitution of the United States along with.
This just shows the HUGE disconnect politicians have with the rest of their constituents. When the disconnect becomes so obvious, it's time for the politicians to go. Because they no longer able to acknowledge their constituent's concerns.
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Hey, Arizona...
/s
But, seriously, he's like Feinstein, he's too old and needs to go.
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Now I see why everyone celebrated in the movie.
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A simple strategy
1) Pin blame for any fallout on Snowden as much as possible
2) Scapegoat Alexander/Clapper (due to retire anyway)
3) A false defeat of the NSA (Feinstein's bill)
#2 and #3 together are designed to assuage public sentiment against the NSA, including those who insist that someone must pay while presenting a new face under new laws. That they will continue with business as usual they hope to get the vast majority of the public to ignore.
#1 is designed to ensure that their is no public backlash against their moves to prevent whistle blowers from exposing the lack of change.
This move should not come as any surprise to anyone, and allows us to pin McCain as a supporter of the NSA. Avoid those he endorses.
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Second, the NSA is supposed to be using gvt employees, not private contractors, to screen security issues and that if people had been doing what they are supposed to do, the "leaks" wouldn't have to happen.
He basically knows what can and should be classified and his stating his war history says that. Remember this is the same guy that introduced a bill to allow cable packages to be more customizable...
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Hey, Mike: don't pay attention to what they say, look at what they do.
Even if Mike is absolutely right about problems, he has no solutions to even suggest.
04:13:58[f-170-4]
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Re: Hey, Mike: don't pay attention to what they say, look at what they do.
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True, but,,,
Plus there is at least a tiny sliver of merit in his argument. I think the expectation that "spy" agencies are going to follow all the rules is probably hopeless. I suspect that most agencies have never followed the rules since they were created and the real questions become "How far do they stray from strictly legal and against whom?" and "How is the straying monitored and limited and by whom?". In that context the question of who gets to see the "naughty stuff" is indeed a key one.
If access to the kind of information they clearly have were limited to "genuinely critical need to know" instead of "I'd kinda like to know please, coz it might be related to this other unrelated thing I'm working on", I'd still be far from happy but I'd certainly be a lot less unhappy.
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Meaningless
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What about every single politician's pledge, to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.
That includes the 1st and 4th Amendments, which have been grossly violated.
McCain never once mentioned that "his" pledge to the American People has been broken. McCain needs to work on keeping his pledge, before demonizing someone, such as Snowden. Snowden was attempting to uphold McCain's broken pledge for him.
Any politician who demonizes Snowden, is demonizing the Constitution of the United States along with.
This just shows the HUGE disconnect politicians have with the rest of their constituents. When the disconnect becomes so obvious, it's time for the politicians to go. Because they no longer able to acknowledge their constituent's concerns.
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Now for the reasons he state, well that is McCain the idiot talking, who cares the man is batshit crazy with his conspiracy theories and world views, but he is right even if for all the wrong reasons that Alexander must go.
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Re: True, but,,,
His, "government secret service with far less private contractors" may be able to kill off some of the extremely damaging lobbyists and the unhealthily close bond between government and military/law enforcement/secret service. That could be an enormous move towards getting the oversight back on track instead of them constantly getting distracted by pleas for bloating the budgets etc. (not a complete solution for obvious reasons, since Rogers and Feinstein are part of the problem!)
On the other hand, it would seem like the completely wrong track to stick with the bloated collection and reducing sharing of it. That is a recipe for a new 9/11 if there ever was one in these areas. Reducing the extend of several programs and further increasing cooperations with foreign services and FBI, CIA etc. seems like the only reasonable approach given that the bulk collections are the true problems here. A few foreign leaders getting pissed about their private lives getting seriously invaded, is just the cost of being a politician. Germany ao, should have blamed their own counter-spying efforts instead of blaming USA for that.
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Re:
McCain: There has not been sufficient congressional oversight, and there has been an absolutely disgraceful sharing of information that never should have taken place. For many years, we had an absolute provision that any classified information, which was going to be shared, is based on need-to-know information. I was a Navy pilot and had Top Secret clearance because I was in a squadron that in case of war with Russia would carry nuclear weapons. But that did not mean that I was privy to everything to do with all of our war plans in case of a nuclear war.
He also states that he knows the meaning of national security a whole hell of a lot better than the NSA does...and what he means by "Low Level" merely indicates security clearances that Snowden and Manning didn't have, but easily gained access...
So to put it short.
1. He's not at all happy about the NSA spying (remember he voted to pass the Smith/Amash Act...)
2. The situation with Snowden as a whistle blower would not have happened if it were not for the lack of oversight to the NSA's activities...
3. He had top secret clearance or better when he was in the US Air Force.....a High Level security clearance.
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McCain cover blown
It will be hard for him to shepherd once the sheep discover his motives.
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Re: Meaningless
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Considering he's ex-Air Force, this is probably the best we'll get
We have to realize that a significant portion of the jury is still out on whether or not Snowden's a traitor. I've met several individuals with security clearances who considered the man a traitor and are still as pissed as the rest of us when we find out about the NSA's shennanigans. Hypocritical? Yeah, but that's human nature.
And McCain's reasons for calling for Alexander's resignation are just as valid as everyone who wants the dear general gone for his "COLLECT ALL TEH DATA" Constitution-violating policies.
Think of it this way: from McCain's view, the issue here is the intelligence community's sheer incompetence when it comes to protecting sensitive information (among other things), and I have to agree with the Senator when looking at things from the security angle. The interviewer mentions Manning and Cablegate. This was three years ago. The fact that Snowden was able to do all the things he did three years after the last time someone got their hands on the US' dirty secrets shows complete incompetence on the part of the US intel agencies to learn from past mistakes.
I'd be calling for Keith's head on a platter if I were in McCain's shoes for those reasons alone. I mean, if you can't be trusted to keep your own dirty laundry under wraps (legality and whether Congress lets the NSA gett away with it is another issue), then any security measures you helped set up around real, honest to god issues of national security (i.e. military secrets, power grid systems, etc) are immediately seen as potential easy targets by foreign aggressors (it'll most likely be China or North Korea, but who knows in today's world).
In short, McCain's reasons for doing this aren't wrong, they're just not the reasons most of the tech world, or at least the majority of TechDirt commentators, want him to use.
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Re:
Wrong. They should have been looking at and said "NO" when the ideas were first floated not when someone suddenly said "I think something fishy is going on here." That is their job on that Committee. That is the primary purpose of the Committee in the first place.
"Second, the NSA is supposed to be using gvt employees, not private contractors, to screen security issues and that if people had been doing what they are supposed to do, the "leaks" wouldn't have to happen."
Wrong again. Manning was in the military (ie. government employee) not a contractor. Being a government employee doesn't mean you don't have a conscience. So no, just because it's only government employees doesn't mean there won't be leaks.
I said it before and I'll say it again. If you want to stop the next Snowden, start following the Constitution instead of figuring out ways to subvert it then trying to hide it and justify it when it is exposed. If they did that, there would be nothing to leak.
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Re: Considering he's ex-Air Force, this is probably the best we'll get
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Re:
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Fuck me how we are still alive?
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Re: Re:
Problem is that the Intelegence Subcommittee was lying to the rest of Congress and keeping it a secret from them...politicians often don't watch the news very much or very rarely read from politically biased sources because there is a fuckton of pressure that can come from the average unnecessary nitpicking some of the major media like CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews can get to your head..
So the severe disconnect on this case is quite understandable from McCain when you consider how he's not at all happy with how this was handled.
Now...as you can see...just because I did not say "and said NO" does not at all make my statement untrue or "wrong" as you put it...the Oversight Comittee's job is in fact to look into things...so in a literal sense we are both correct :-)
Second...I never specified Manning or Snowden did I? Really the simple idea is that in order to prevent "leaks", the NSA has to be held accountable on illegal things it has done and McCain is seemingly quite livid that it was bad enough of an abuse of power by the NSA and the Intelegence subcommittee to make it necessary for a whistleblower to come out with the truth...Chelsea Manning's case is a whole other ball of wax from Snowden because of the type of intel she leaked...which had nothing to do with the unethical and illegal policies and procedures the NSA had put into place...We know who leaked what type of information..Honestly I would be quite livid too if people who were supposed to say and do something honest weren't doing their jobs of overseeing the NSA's activities to make sure that they did things accordingly with the Constitution..
As for your last pontification about saying it once and again...that is EXACTIY the point McCain is trying to raise.
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John McCain
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Re: Re:
*Facepalm*
I was talking about career politicians like McCain, Feinstein, etc. who have been in office way too long going back well into the 20th century. My comment was a call for fresh blood in D.C., people who haven't been long corrupted by money and special interests. I would consider a 21st century politician to be someone with no political history going back to the 20th century... someone first voted into office in the 21st century, not children.
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warmongering McCain
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