Top Secret in America:
The Rise of the New American Security State
Dana Priest and William Arkin
“Calling
the reaction to al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack a ‘war’ ensured that the government
could justify classifying everything associated with fighting it. Under President
George Bush, journalists’ efforts to figure out how the United States was
waging this war…were often criticized by senior administrative leaders, members
of Congress, cable television pundits, even the public. Many of those journalists
hoped that would change under…Barack Obama. It is true that the president and
his cabinet members have not publicly disparaged the news media as much as
[Bush] did. But behind the scenes, the situation is actually worse….Obama’s
Justice Department has taken a more aggressive tack against unauthorized disclosure of classified
information by pursuing so-called leak investigations than the Bush
administration. Recent indictments were issued against a former CIA employee
who allegedly talked to book author James Risen…about a botched attempt to slip
faulty nuclear plans to Iran; and a former National Security Agency official,
Thomas Drake, who helped a Baltimore Sun
reporter detail the waste of billions of dollars at his agency. In early June
2011, the government was forced to offer Drake a deal because its lawyers said they
did not want to reveal classified information related to the case in court.
Drake accepted the…offer…[and] expected to serve no prison time. Then there is
the case of former Justice Department official Thomas Tamm. In August 2007,
eighteen FBI agents, some with guns drawn, burst into his home with only his
wife and children present, to raid his files during an investigation into his
alleged role in helping the New York
Times develop its seminal warrantless surveillance story in 2004. The
government dropped his case nearly four years later, in April 2011, after Tamm’s
career had been ruined and he faced financial peril.” [pp. xx-xxi]
Read it and weep. Welcome to the New World Order.
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