Paul Craig Roberts June 11 2013
It has been public information for a decade that the US government secretly, illegally, and unconstitutionally spies on its citizens. Congress and the federal courts have done nothing about this extreme violation of the US Constitution and statutory law, and the insouciant US public seems unperturbed.
In 2004 a whistleblower informed the New York Times that the National Security Agency (NSA) was violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by ignoring the FISA court and spying on Americans without obtaining the necessary warrants. The corrupt New York Times put the interests of the US government ahead of those of the American public and sat on the story for one year until George W. Bush was safely reelected.
By the time the New York Times published the story of the illegal spying one year later, the law-breaking government had had time to mitigate the offense with ex post facto law or executive orders and explain away its law-breaking as being in the country’s interest.
Last year William Binney, who was in charge of NSA’s global digital data gathering program revealed that NSA had everyone in the US under total surveillance. Every email, Internet site visited and phone call is captured and stored. In 2012 Binney received the Callaway Award for Civic Courage, an annual award given to those who champion constitutional rights at risk to their professional and personal lives.
There have been a number of whistleblowers. For example, in 2006 Mark Klein revealed that AT&T had a secret room in its San Francisco office that NSA used to collect Internet and phone-call data from US citizens who were under no suspicion.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews/klein.html
The presstitute media handled these stories in ways that protected the government’s lawlessness from scrutiny and public outrage. The usual spin was that the public needs to be safe from terrorists, and safety is what the government is providing.
With all the horror that took place in Boston, Massachusetts, April 15th and throughout the ensuing days until Friday night, April 19th, when the alleged suspect was captured, very little—if any—news reporting focused on significant national issues that ought to have been considered equally important to the well-being of the nation’s safety and security but apparently was overlooked. The New York Times, however, gave mention to “U.S. Engaged in Torture After 9/11, Review Concludes.”[1]Reading NYT journalist Scott Shane’s report, one realizes just how much the public doesn’t know but should, since the United States apparently committed what is being considered “war crimes.” That assessment came after a two year study by a bipartisan commission co-chaired by two former U.S. congressmen – Republican, Asa Hutchinson and Democrat, James R. Jones – of coercive interrogation methods used on prisoners by the George W. Bush administration.