“Lord Acton was right that power does tend to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So what if you combine that with absolute secrecy? Or enough secrecy … or an expanding secrecy?” ~T Drake
Thomas Drake is a decorated Air Force and Navy veteran, who has been awarded numerous medals including:
- Meritorious Service Medal
- Air Medal
- Air Force Commendation Medal
- Ridenhour prize
- Sam Adams Award
Drake was a member of the Defense Intelligence Senior Executive Service.
With a strong technical background in surveillance and computers, Drake was also one of the top NSA executives, and was Senior Change Leader within the NSA.
To get a sense of who Drake is, watch this recent PBS interview.
Washington’s Blog asked Drake if America is drifting towards tyranny.
WASHINGTON’S BLOG: Senator Frank Church – who chaired the famous “Church Committee” on the unlawful FBI Cointel program, and who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – said in 1975:
“Th[e National Security Agency’s] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything:telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.“
Is the NSA turning its capability around on the American people, as Senator Church warned?
THOMAS DRAKE: I believe they are. Those words are words that have been ringing from inside Pandora’s box … the one that I opened and looked into right after 9/11.
I grew up in the early 70′s as a very young teenager, and I remember those hearings in 1975. And it was rather a dramatic warning that he [Senator Church] actually issued to the nation.
I never imagined in ’75 that in a short 26 years later that I would become confronted by the stark reality that my own government would jettison the Constitution. Continue reading