talkpolitics | Another Obama Administration legal suit:

underlankers.livejournal.com posting in

Once again the Obama Administration has chosen to censor Americans who speak truth about the ways that the bureaucracy operates. This pernicious act of censorship is a direct violation of the values liberal democracies have been striving towards and expanding since the Enlightenment. This particular act is extremely offensive in the light of how true lawbreakers who have engaged in gross crimes and felonies walk around without so much as a hair on their heads touched. It is indeed corruption and police-state censorship. I present to you this:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/06/us-will-press-crimin.html

The U.S. military has announced that it will press criminal charges against 22 year old Pfc. Bradley E. Manning for allegedly transferring classified military information to his personal computer, "wrongfully adding unauthorized software to a Secret Internet Protocol Router network computer," obtaining "more than 150,000 classified U.S. State Department cables," and transmitting data to unauthorized persons.

The charge sheet published at the end of this post reveals that he will be charged with eight federal criminal law violations including one count of transmitting classified information to an unauthorized third party, a violation of the Espionage Act.

Manning is believed to be the person who leaked the so-called "Collateral Murder" video to Wikileaks. The 2007 video, edited before release by Wikileaks, shows an Apache helicopter strike that killed 12 civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters photojournalists.

Manning has been detained at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait since May, when he was arrested by the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command. According to reports, Manning "confessed" to ex-hacker Adrian Lamo that he leaked the "Collateral Murder" video, a video of the Granai airstrike in Afghanistan, and 260,000 diplomatic cables, to Wikileaks. Lamo is said to have then turned Manning over to authorities.

According to the U.S. Armed Forces Rules for Courts-Martial, Manning is entitled to a trial within 120 days after having been restrained. Word on Manning's case has been all but silent, but some of his supporters noted that charges were imminent, given that deadline.

Lt. Col. Eric Bloom, a spokesman for U.S. Division-Center—the Army headquarters that oversees security in central Iraq—told Bloomberg News, "The initial investigation is still ongoing because there are additional items to sift through." In today's statement, the Army said the question of whether Manning must face court-martial will be determined by a military version of a grand jury hearing.

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I find it absolutely fascinating how this man faces 52 years of prison for speaking truth about something that makes the government look bad but men like Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy are not only not in jail rotting away but free and out and speaking about what brave hewoes they were. This is the kind of governmental policy one expects from Russia, not the United States. What's opportune for Moscow is never far enough away from a liberal democracy.

But of course there's also the Obama Administration's attempts to censor whistleblowers as well (courtesy Glenn Greenwald):

The Obama administration's war on whistleblowers -- whose disclosures are one of the very few remaining avenues for learning what our government actually does -- continues to intensify. Last month, the DOJ announced it had obtained an indictment against NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who exposed serious waste, abuse and possible illegality. Then, the DOJ re-issued a Bush era subpoena to Jim Risen of The New York Times, demanding the identity of his source who revealed an extremely inept and damaging CIA effort to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program. And now, as Politico's Josh Gerstein reports, an FBI linguist who leaked what he believed to be evidence of lawbreaking is to receive a prison term that is "likely to become the longest ever served by a government employee accused of passing national security secrets to a member of the media." As Gerstein explains:

[I]t reflects a surprising development: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has taken a hard line against leakers, and Obama himself has expressed anger about disclosures of national security deliberations in the press. . . .
"They’re going after this at every opportunity and with unmatched vigor," said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a critic of government classification policy. . . .
Some experts said the administration and the Justice Department may be trying to appease the intelligence community after angering many by releasing the so-called torture memos and by reopening inquiries into alleged torture by CIA personnel. Others said intelligence personnel are terrified by outlets like Wikileaks, on which classified information can be posted without any meaningful chance for officials to argue for the withholding of details that could damage U.S. intelligence efforts.

Notably (and unsurprisingly), the article quotes the neocon Gabriel Schoenfeld -- who spent years demanding that the Bush DOJ criminally prosecute whistleblowers and even journalists responsible for stories such as the NYT's NSA eavesdropping revelation, and who then wrote a whole book arguing for greater government secrecy -- heaping praise on the Obama DOJ:

"I think it's remarkable," said Gabriel Schoenfeld, a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute who urged prosecution of The New York Times for publishing details of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program in 2005. "This is the administration that came in pledging maximum transparency. Plugging leaks is ... traditionally not associated with openness". . . .
"If Thomas Drake is convicted and sentenced to jail, this will be the first president to send two leakers to prison in his term in office. That’s never happened before,' said Schoenfeld, author of the book "Necessary Secrets." "You wouldn't have expected the Holder Justice Department to be particularly hawkish in these matters."

Schoenfeld was frequently critical of what he considered to be the Bush DOJ's lackadaisical attitude toward punishing whistleblowers, but he is obviously pleased with the Obama administration's aggression in that regard.

It isn't hard to see why Obama despises leaks. Just look at the front page of The New York Times today, which details a secret order from Gen. David Petraeus last fall ordering vastly increased Special Forces operations in a variety of Middle Eastern countries, including "allies" such as Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and "enemies" such as Iran and Syria. As Iran experts Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett contend, this constitutes, at the very least, "the intensification of America's covert war against Iran." That is how we also learned of what is, in essence, a covert war in Yemen as well (not to mention the covert war in Pakistan). Most of what our Government does of any real significance happens in the dark. Whistleblowers are one of the very few avenues we have left for learning about any of that. And politicians eager to preserve their own power and ability to operate in secret -- such as Barack Obama -- see whistleblowers as their Top Enemy.

Hence, we have a series of aggressive prosecutions from the Obama administration of Bush era exposures of abuse and illegality -- acts that flagrantly violate Obama's Look Forward, Not Backward decree used to protect high-level Bush administration criminals. As John Cole has suggested, perhaps if these whistleblowers had tortured some people and illegally eavesdropped on others, they would receive the immunity that Obama has so magnanimously and selectively granted. Instead, they merely exposed secret government corruption and illegality to the world, and thus must be punished.

While it's true that leaks can be both damaging and illegal, these prosecutions are occurring without any showing whatsoever of harm to national security, and with ample evidence that they were undertaken to expose high-level wrongdoing. Some secrets are legitimate, but the balance has swung so far in the direction of excess secrecy that it's extraordinary to watch the Obama administration move the anti-whistleblower persecution far beyond what the Bush administration did. And as Hilary Bok argued back in 2008 when the Right was demanding that NSA whistleblower Thomas Tamm be prosecuted: while it is generally preferable for whistleblowers to invoke the internal systems that exist rather than leak to the media, such an expectation is misguided under the circumstances that have prevailed for the last decade:

But there's one big exception to this rule: when the system has itself been corrupted. When you're operating within a system in which whistle-blowers' concerns are not addressed -- where the likelihood that any complaint you make within the system will be addressed is near zero, while the likelihood that you will be targeted for reprisals is high -- then no sane person who is motivated by a desire to have his or her concern addressed will work within that system.

What makes this trend of escalated anti-whistleblower activity particularly notable is that Obama, during his career in the Senate and when running for President, feigned serious support for whistleblowers. Today, Bush DOJ whistleblower Jesselyn Raddack -- while pointing out that "Bush harassed whistleblowers mercilessly, but Obama is prosecuting them and sending them to jail" -- notes that Obama previously made commitments like this one (click on image to enlarge):

All of that led to the widespread perception that the vital act of whistleblowing would, under an Obama administration, be protected rather than persecuted. This Washington Post article from December, 2008, was typical and reflects what Obama led people to believe:

As the Post article summarized: "there is plenty of evidence to make whistleblower advocates think the future for their issue will be better than its past." I think they have now been decisively disabused of such expectations. The Most Transparent Administration Ever seems to despise nobody quite as much as those who exposed Bush era corruption and lawbreaking, all with an eye towards deterring anyone who might do the same during this administration.

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But of course we are to believe that this Hope and Change along with the Supreme Court ruling that made this a precedent other Presidents can now follow as well:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.

Times Topic: Anwar al-Awlaki

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Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and spent years in the United States as an imam, is in hiding in Yemen. He has been the focus of intense scrutiny since he was linked to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in November, and then to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25.

American counterterrorism officials say Mr. Awlaki is an operative of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate of the terror network in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. They say they believe that he has become a recruiter for the terrorist network, feeding prospects into plots aimed at the United States and at Americans abroad, the officials said.

It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president.

But the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told a House hearing in February that such a step was possible. “We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community,” he said. “If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.” He did not name Mr. Awlaki as a target.

The step taken against Mr. Awlaki, which occurred earlier this year, is a vivid illustration of his rise to prominence in the constellation of terrorist leaders. But his popularity as a cleric, whose lectures on Islamic scripture have a large following among English-speaking Muslims, means any action against him could rebound against the United States in the larger ideological campaign against Al Qaeda.

The possibility that Mr. Awlaki might be added to the target list was reported by The Los Angeles Times in January, and Reuters reported on Tuesday that he was approved for capture or killing.

“The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words,” said an American official, who like other current and former officials interviewed for this article spoke of the classified counterterrorism measures on the condition of anonymity. “He’s gotten involved in plots.”

The official added: “The United States works, exactly as the American people expect, to overcome threats to their security, and this individual — through his own actions — has become one. Awlaki knows what he’s done, and he knows he won’t be met with handshakes and flowers. None of this should surprise anyone.”

As a general principle, international law permits the use of lethal force against individuals and groups that pose an imminent threat to a country, and officials said that was the standard used in adding names to the list of targets. In addition, Congress approved the use of military force against Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. People on the target list are considered to be military enemies of the United States and therefore not subject to the ban on political assassination first approved by President Gerald R. Ford.

Both the C.I.A. and the military maintain lists of terrorists linked to Al Qaeda and its affiliates who are approved for capture or killing, former officials said. But because Mr. Awlaki is an American, his inclusion on those lists had to be approved by the National Security Council, the officials said.

At a panel discussion in Washington on Tuesday, Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California and chairwoman of a House subcommittee on homeland security, called Mr. Awlaki “probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us.

are entirely for our own good and safety. That there is no danger to a government building powers that men like Richard Nixon could only dream of. We are expected to believe an eternal war against an emotion can bring us everlasting peace and freedom. Yeah. Right. So explain this to me, those of you who still believe anything President Obama says: why is it that policies like these are not merely continuations of what George Bush did, but far beyond his actions? Where do we draw the line with assassination once we start killing off the Father Coughlins? What happens if a demagogue like Palin or Huey Long gets into office with this kind of power?

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From:

http://users.livejournal.com/aviation_/

This whole thing with Bradley Manning both depresses me and impassions me to physically do something. I wish I could.
I am just so, so angry that he is being treated this way. He has been extremely heroic and is acting on conscience like few people do. I cannot believe that our government is doing this and that people and news outlets are mostly ignoring it to talk about LeBron James. When news outlets do present the information, the fact that he has taken the documents for whistleblowing purposes is completely skipped over.

I don't just have an opinion on this, I'm actually pissed off.

From:

mrbogey.livejournal.com

'When news outlets do present the information, the fact that he has taken the documents for whistleblowing purposes is completely skipped over.'

sure...

A place to discuss politics without egomaniacal mods.

Another Obama Administration legal suit:

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