March 24, 2014
WASHINGTON: In a devastating putdown of Uncle Sam, President Obama's administration, and its runaway snooping, former President Jimmy Carter says he suspects even he is being spied on.
March 24, 2014
WASHINGTON: In a devastating putdown of Uncle Sam, President Obama's administration, and its runaway snooping, former President Jimmy Carter says he suspects even he is being spied on.
"I have felt that my own communications were probably monitored. And when I want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, I type or write the letter myself, put it in the post office, and mail it," Carter said in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, in a stunning rebuke to a Democratic administration that has gone unchallenged by the White House till the time of writing.
"Old-fashioned snail mail," the program host Andrea Mitchell pitches in. "Yeah, because I believe if I sent an email, it will be monitored," Carter responds. The former President says National Security Agency's electronic surveillance and the United States' use of drones "has been extremely liberalized, and I think abused, by our own intelligence agencies."
Remarkably, the host does not follow up this explosive comment by a former president, having premised in her question with "It has been argued that this kind of intelligence gathering (drones and NSA surveillance) is critical to try to protect the American homeland." Much of the American media has tamely accepted the administration's case that the snooping is limited and is in US national security interests.
The former President's criticism, delivered with a smile, is possibly the most startling exposure of the legacy of mistrust his Democratic White House successor will leave behind because of the NSA's snooping scandal, which gets bigger with each disclosure by renegade whistleblower Edward Snowden about how deep and intrusive it is.
It was evident from the interview that Carter and Obama are not entirely in sync, and even though they have some things in common, including winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and there is little of the mutual respect that sitting presidents and their predecessors express for each other.
In fact, Carter disclosed in the interview that President Obama does not seek his advice on foreign policy issues, which he characterized as "unfortunate."
"President Obama doesn't but previous presidents have called on me and the Carter Center to take action," he said, adding that it was difficult for him to explain it "with complete candor." Carter is now 89; Obama was 15 when Carter was elected President. The Obama administration, particularly its spymasters, have repeatedly justified their electronic monitoring saying it is within norms, has been green-lighted by the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, and is needed to protect US national security interests.
A senior NSA official last week challenged the Snowden's assertion, appearing by remote link at the TED Conference soon after the fugitive whistleblower made his case.
"Those capabilities are applied in very discrete and measured and controlled ways," Rick Ledgett, an NSA deputy director told the conference in a rare public rebuttal, arguing that Snowden's "unconstrained disclosure of those capabilities mean the targets see it and recognize it and move away from our ability to have insight into what they're doing."
"We have seen targets in terrorism, in the nation state area, smugglers, who have moved away from our ability to have insight into what they're doing. The net effect of that is that our people overseas in dangerous places, our military, our diplomats, our allies in similar situations, face a greater risk," Ledgett maintained.
The NSA official however agreed that the organization, dubbed "Never Say Anything" because of its secretive nature, needed to "transparent about our authorities, processes, our oversight, who we are. We at the NSA have not done a good job of that, and that's part of the reason why this has been so sensational. We're 'Never Say Anything,'"
"I've seen there's take offs of our logo of an eagle with headphones around it — that's the public characterization of our work. We need to be more transparent, but what we don't need to be transparent about, because it's bad to expose them, are the operations and capabilities that allow the people we're working against, the bad guys, to counter those," Ledgett said.
Courtesy: TNN
