Former CIA/NSA Boss Michael Hayden Admits Ed Snowden Was A Whistleblower
from the freudian-slip? dept
Ever since Snowden first leaked the documents he took from the NSA, there's been a (somewhat ridiculous) debate over whether or not he was a "whistleblower" or "a traitor" (or potentially somewhere in between). However, it seems like many fall into one of those somewhat polar opposite positions. To many of us, it's been quite clear that he's a whistleblower. However, to folks like former NSA and CIA boss Michael Hayden, the view has been somewhat different. After all, Hayden has directly called Snowden a traitor, claimed that he was worse than a variety of spies (including the Rosenbergs, Klaus Fuchs, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen), and publicly fantasized about killing Snowden.So it seems at least somewhat noteworthy that, in a moment of what appears to be accidental honesty, Hayden admitted that Snowden was really a whistleblower (spotted by Snowden legal advisor Jesselyn Radack).
"When Snowden blew the whistle on the 215 program... that's the metadata stuff, the phone bills up at Ft. Meade...."Of course, he goes on to insist that the program was clearly perfectly legal based on all of the supposed "oversight." He conveniently leaves out the fact that many of the details of the program were not actually known by those who did the approving. For example, he leaves out that the FISA Court's approvals did not involve a full judicial analysis of the program until after the Snowden revelations (7 years after the program started), and that the original approval was based on a twisted interpretation of an approval of a very different program. He leaves out that the approval in Congress was done with most of Congress not being told how broad the program was and that it captured phone records on just about every phone call. He leaves out that the evidence of abuse of the program or the lack of a working audit system to prevent abuse weren't widely known.
But, still, he does appear to be admitting that Snowden was, in fact, a whistleblower. Even if it's something of a Freudian slip, it's still telling. Furthermore, at the end of his statement, he does further admit that even those approvals across the branches of government is viewed by many in the public as "consent of the governors, not consent of the governed" and seems to at least acknowledge that this is a legitimate concern. I doubt we'll see Hayden coming around to the views of many of us concerning the gross abuses by the intelligence community (many of which happened under his watch), but these do seems like baby steps in the right direction.
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Filed Under: cia, ed snowden, michael hayden, nsa, section 215, whistleblower
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Since Hayden said it, we know it's not true.
Crap.
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What's he gonna do now?
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So what?
He will readily believe that Edward Snowden is a traitor, a whistleblower, a vampire, a toadstool and a quarterhorse at the same time without blinking if you tell him national security and the Spanish Inquisition depend on it.
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Re: So what?
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Flag Down!
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Re: Flag Down!
In even more generic terms, a whistle is used to call attention to or indicate something. It doesn't necessarily need to be something wrong, however that is the typical use.
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Re: Flag Down!
The first recorded usage of "blowing the whistle" to mean denouncing illegal or wasteful practices by public servants comes from P.G. Wodehouse in his 1934's "Right Ho, Jeeves":
Raymond Chandler also used it in 1954's "The Long Goodbye".
It is unclear if the term refers to the blowing of a referee's whistle or the blowing of a policeman's whistle.
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Just a turn of the phrase
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Re: Just a turn of the phrase
However, when you do say something like this, you are clearly full of s***.
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Re: Re: Just a turn of the phrase
http://adult-mag.com/cocksucker-chelsea-summers/
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URL error
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looks like ol' mike's guilty conscience is getting the best of him. first he gives us "we kill people based on metadata", and now "when Snowden blew the whistle"... yeah, likely those are freudian slips, but those are the things we should pay most attention to, before the rationalizing criminal mind has a chance to wave it all away in a puff of sophistry....
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Re:
"blowing the whistle" is just a phrase. He could have said "wave a red flag". Would that have made him a bullfighter?
It shows that with careful, thoughtful, and perhaps intentional misunderstanding, you can build almost any truth you like. Just ask Alex Jones or Fox "news".
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Re: Re:
Why not - it's what the NSA (and its ilk) do...
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Re: Re:
What you believe "blowing the whistle" to signify in itself is irrelevant. That a whistle was blown by a whistleblower is fact. Therefore Snowdown is here being called a whistleblower.
And no, "blowing the whistle" doesn't inherently indicate foul. What it does indicate is STOP.
In the same way, the idiom "waving a red flag" has nothing to do with bullfighting. It's got everything to do with semaphore, where a red flag means STOP.
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start your statement with a bit of truth...
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