In From The Cold
smack-dab into the frying pan
Let’s start with the last para where the gems are usually buried:
The NSA revoked Tice’s security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that’s the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers. Today the NSA said it had “no information to provide."
Well, I hardly know the guy but already I’m getting a flavor of Oppositional Defiant Disorder…
Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet.
#1: Going to the NYT is not the choice of s “whistleblower.” It’s the choice of a narcissistic, self-righteous know-it-all. Going to Congress via appropriate channels—and directly if those channels don’t work—is the act of a “whistleblower.”
For 20 years, Tice worked in the shadows as he helped the United States spy on other people’s conversations around the world.
“I specialized in what’s called special access programs,” Tice said of his job. “We called them ’black world‘ programs and operations."
The highlighted words above were your first clue that becoming Blabby McBabbelson wasn’t the way to go.
But now, Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret “black world" [there’s those words again...] operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law [ok - now he’s a legal/constitutional expert *and* a spy??]. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the NSA in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists.
Well, iddn’t ‘at special?
"The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we’re going to do whatever it takes to get them,” he said.
...uhm, yeah.
President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.
But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.
Here’s a critical thinking skill [so out of favor in academe today] that I learned from RAH: If something could be as described, that means it also could be a hot fudge sundae. When could be is combined with if that’s also called Vaporware.
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