Thursday, January 09, 2014

Valerie Plame Wilson on the NSA, Keith Alexander, and Edward Snowden

Ten years ago Karl Rove, Richard Armitage and Lewis Libby took revenge on a man who'd exposed some of Bush/Cheney's Iraq lies. Their revenge was to blow the operational cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA covert agent. Scooter Libby was convicted of lying to investigators and sentenced to prison. Bush commuted his sentence.

Yeah, the Bush/Cheney years were like that.

Today I heard Valerie Plame speaking on the NSA, Keith Alexander ... and Edward Snowden. If you have any doubt that Snowden is a heroic figure in American history you should listen to the speech.

Plame's description of Keith Alexander is particularly memorable -- and chilling. There are always people like Alexander lurking in the shadows of American history, waiting for their main chance. Most miss out, but 2001 was a very good year for Alexander. He is now a terribly powerful man, and a much greater threat to American democracy than Bin Laden ever was.

We're all living in his shadow now, and he's not gone yet.

2 comments:

GZ said...

This post has been collected and will be put in your permanent record.

THanks for that link.

JGF said...

It would be fun to imaging the NSA cared about my posts :-). I fear I'm just another dust mote in their vacuum.