For some who are handicapped by an inability to fathom obvious logic –or an unwillingness to conduct real scholarship- it is necessary to spell out why some things are as they are. In columnist Nat Hentoff’s fifth-column frenzy to rehabilitate Snowden suggesting he is a constitutional hero akin to James Madison and a potential write-in presidential candidate, Hentoff asks “How can [Snowden’s treason] be treason?” Sun Tsu said: “Don’t use a hammer to kill a fly on your own forehead.” Dr. Tsu said nothing about using a hammer on someone else’s head. Mr. Hentoff wrote two nationally syndicated editorials sanctioning Snowden’s sainthood. Justice demands equal time for the plaintiff (me) before the bar of public opinion. In my previous musing I offered concrete reasons the NSA conducts business as it does and why it doesn’t share this information with the public. Like the old Saturday Night Live skit “Now the News! ….FOR THE HEARING IMPAIRED! [Gary Morris signing by shouting]” I will answer Mr. Hentoff’s question “How can this be treason?” If Hentoff had practiced a modicum of journalism he could have found these answers the same way I did – on Google. You see, with the internet, the Russian and Chinese embassies in D.C. no longer need to back up flatbed trailers to the government printing office dock each week to receive “free” (at your expense) hard copies of almost all of our government’s Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) – although they still do. Maybe someone in the CIA should put the KGB on a distributed mailing list – “burying them” in tons of unwanted advertisements. The next time you’re in D.C. take a gander at the Russian embassy located – not coincidentally – on the highest terrain inside the beltway and count the number of antennas on the roof. Very few of them are for transmitting. In the trade they’re called “ears.”
The availability of this information is an indicator of America’s free and open society. Our Information Security Program is publicly available for everyone to read (ah! Perhaps there lies the problem!). The entire document is unclassified! Only in America (despite Hentoff’s claim to the contrary). In Russia or China you would be arrested, jailed, and tortured just asking about it. You would be shot next to your hero for defending him (….sigh!). The government also provides the option of filing a Freedom of Information Act if you desire answers on our security program (AR 25-55) although 70% of all FOIA requests are by American companies requesting patented information on their domestic competitors (no honor among thieves?). So, what national security information you can’t get from your loose-lipped congressman (or President) you can get through FOIA.
Although an Army Regulation (AR) 380-5 Dept. of the Army Information Security Program, the policy is basically the same throughout the federal government. In practice, hardly anyone pays much attention to it until classified information goes missing during an annual inspection. Almost every espionage case in our history shows at some point in the spy’s conduct (often over decades) someone saw something suspicious and said nothing (including within the FBI itself) – or said something and was ignored (9/11). The Federal Bureau of Investigation is responsible for investigating espionage on the civilian side. Within the military, depending on the sensitivity of the information (and the rank of the person responsible) a 15-6 investigation (equivalent to a Grand Jury) is begun by a higher commander. One still does not know what consequences were suffered by the officer who left the Panama invasion plans at the Miami airport – if any. Damn those airport bars!
Information security is mandated by presidential Executive Orders 12958,12972 and 13142 which every president of the United States has signed since Gerald Ford. Every nation has these procedures because every nation has information “requiring protection in the interest of national security.” The feigned protests of offended nations was obligatory but hypocritical. Japan has a government office dedicated to “commercial” espionage on the United States (see Friendly Spies).
The following kinds of information require protection (Paragraph 2-8.page 9):
a. Military plans, weapons systems, or operations
b. Foreign government information
c. Intelligence activities …, intelligence sources or methods, or cryptology.
d. Foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources.
e. Scientific, technological, or economic matters relating to the national security.
f. United States Government programs for safeguarding nuclear materials or facilities.
g. Vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, projects or plans relating to the national security.
For all we know – and the indicators are there to support the supposition – Snowden’s frenzied shopping spree within the Puzzle Palace may have compromised all of the above. NSA isn’t called a global signals vacuum for nothing.
Section 1-9: “All DA (and government) personnel, regardless of rank, grade, title or position have a personal, individual, and official responsibility to safeguard sensitive information related to national security, …all personnel will report violations (the SIGINT version of the felony-murder rule)…” etc.
It describes “Unauthorized Disclosure” as a communication or physical transfer of classified information to an unauthorized recipient. So far that includes Russia and China. The U.S. can train “die hard” Communists and Sudanese Socialists (I taught the first and met the second) at our Army’s “Intelligence School of Excellence” but not give them the crown jewels. The following are examples of what cannot be classified: 1. Conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error, 2. Prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency, 3. Restrain competition, 4. …Well, I have to stop here to retain my credibility and restrain my sarcasm.
Snowden knew what he was doing when he signed Security Form 312 Non-Disclosure Agreement. A lengthy and minutely detailed security indoctrination briefing is given to everyone who signs the form. It’s a lifetime agreement. You can’t divulge classified national security information while you’re alive…”or after you’re dead” (as the joke goes). That’s how serious the government takes it.
If Snowden’s motive was pure as, …well…, driven snow, why did he provide our nation’s enemies with the information? If he were so altruistic about the privacy of American citizens, why not present his case to the American people with specific examples of NSA intrusion like that of the IRS against the Tea Party – or Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers? Snowden is not a “Founding Father patriot.” He’s not even a man. A man plants his feet and stands square shouldered on principle (like Russian KGB Colonel Oleg Penkovskey who chose to remain in place – and died by firing squad when discovered). Spies, like terrorists, are motivated by delusions of what Louise Richardson calls the 3 “R”s: revenge, renown and reaction. And, like most spies, Snowden scurried away to escape the consequences he knew would follow (minimum 10 years in prison and $10,000 fine). Neither his treason nor his consequences should be sanitized into sainthood – much less into a write-in candidate for president of the United States.
