Cheney: Snowden is a traitor
According to the Huffington Post, Former Vice president Dick Cheney told Fox News yesterday that Ed Snowden, the NSA contractor who has been releasing a slow stream of documents he stole from government computers on a flash drive to the media, is a traitor;
“I think he’s a traitor,” Cheney said of Snowden in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.”
“I think he has committed crimes in effect by violating agreements given the position he had,” he continued. “I think it’s one of the worst occasions in my memory of somebody with access to classified information doing enormous damage to the national security interests of the United States.”
Cheney defended the NSA surveillance programs, claiming that the United States may have been able to prevent the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington if such monitoring practices had been in place in 2001.
“As everybody who’s been associated with the program’s said, if we had had this before 9/11, when there were two terrorists in San Diego — two hijackers — had been able to use that program, that capability, against that target, we might well have been able to prevent 9/11,” Cheney said.
While I agree with Cheney that Snowden is a traitor, I don’t think that the NSA program will stop any terrorist attacks, nor would it have prevented 9/11. The government is so good at ignoring pertinent information related to terrorist attacks, I’m not convinced they’re actually in the business of stopping terrorist attacks. The only terrorist attacks they’ve prevented are the ones that the Feds themselves incited.
It didn’t prevent them from stopping Richard Reid and his shoe bombs, the Times Square bomber, the underwear bomber or any of the others – those terrorists were stopped by their own incompetence.
Fox has been running interviews all morning with Snowden’s father who is trying to paint an innocent picture of his son with public opinion, which is what fathers do. But, Snowden did it to make a name for himself, and apparently, he’s been planning to do it since before he got his contractor job with Booze Allen. His father does plead with Snowden to stop releasing documents, which he should, let Congress do it it’s job for once.
Category: Terror War
Hard to say if it would or did stop any… There are two programs, the one they used to examine all the phone call data and the one called prism that is actually going into known or suspected terrorist e-mails etc… that pass through US based Networks. I think the latter is the one they refer to when they imply it has helped to catch or prevent attacks.
In the case of things like Boston, it was reliance on going back and connecting dots after the fact which let’s face it is how most crimes are solved. Very few are actually prevented, but being able to quickly put together who, what, and how afterwards is what those programs are most likely going to be helpful for.
It is virtually impossible for them to do real time surveillance on everyone…and to be able to quickly connect random tidbits of data to lead them to an attack being planned.
Snowden is a damned Traitor though.
I’m just curious on how the hell he got a thumb drive to work on a Government computer. I know all of our USB ports won’t accept a thumb drive.
Well if Cheney says he’s a traitor that might actually help Snowden, that f#cking cowardly piece of sh1t Cheney has been hiding from service his whole life.
Cheney is the worst kind of hypocrite, avoid service at all costs by taking as many deferments as you can then when you are too old and too infirm to serve anybody start talking like a true patriot and see how many young’uns you can fool with your bullsh1t.
And of course Cheney would back a violation of your rights, since he’s never done a f$cking thing to defend anyone’s rights except his own it’s a guarantee that he doesn’t consider anyone else having the same place in the world as he does.
Nothing new here Cheney is all about Cheney and no one else, not the nation, not veterans no one…just himself….
Too bad his piece of sh1t’s heart didn’t fail on his 5th deferment we all could have been spared this 4sshole’s hypocritical attempts to continually deny the rest of the populations rights under the constitution.
The only preventive agency I can think of is the FBI. They stopped/caught the idiot who wanted to set off a bomb outside a night spot in Chicago.
They also stopped/caught the beer keg bomb-builders during the NATO conference in Chicago.
None of that was done by NSA, DHS or that other one, TSA. None of those people stopped the Boston Marathon bombers.
Cheney forgets that all of the security-related stuff was already in place before 2001, but the FBI and CIA weren’t communicating with each other about it.
If Cheney calls Snowden a traitor, Snowden’s stock just went up a tick in my book.
@2: If Snowden had admin rights to the machine, he could have enabled the USB ports. This is assuming that the ports weren’t turned on to begin with.
Gee, a butthurt Paultard selling secrets and his country out.
Who fuckin knew? I wonder if Snowden was one of those “overwhelming support for Paul from veterans” they so love to bleat about.
@2 he was the network administrator, and all I can guess is he gave himself permissions on the network to be able to use a thumb drive.
@7, my thoughts too, Sparky.
@3 Right on Brother. Cheney continues to shoot people in the face all the time, it just is the whole American people now not just his good friends.
Thanks for the info, I can see how that is possible.
I don’t like Cheney; given another time and place, he would have been a third-world dictator of epic proportions. But was he right saying Snowden is a traitor? Absolutely.
No one program will catch everything, but I think most of the programs we have do provide information that, if assessed and used correctly, will provide a buffer against at least some of the potential terrorist activity here. Hopefully our agents have better sense than TSA, as far as not shaking down little old ladies in wheelchairs and babies in diapers.
Data collection should not be a surprise. Its been done for centuries. The digital world only made it easier. I don’t disagree that collection makes it easier to spot terrorist trends and find and hunt them down. What I have a problem with is public oversight….and sorry…I don’t trust Congress to do one flipping thing to make that any better.
Snowden a traitor? that statement feels harsh to me, but I can see why it applies…..certainly he is a criminal as he did break laws. I’ll hold off on the traitor label and see how this unfolds. I just don’t know yet.
the problem I have with data collections is that “If we’re free and powerful as citizens, privacy is something we’ll be able to negotiate among ourselves. The key is reciprocal accountability… when we have the power to watch the watchers.”
Privacy vs security. I lean towards privacy, but only as part of a responsible society that knows how to protect themselves (i know…one can dream). more security is not my default option.
I think Snowden was just a simple spy, selling shit to the Chinese. Dude’s a loser who never finished anything, and we know he embellished his military career by name-dropping SF – dude with no honor is suddenly going to leave a lucrative job and hot girlfriend because of some moral outrage? Nonsense. He’s Robert Hannsen II, but with a brilliant exit strategy.
It didn’t take Dick Cheney to say Snowden is a traitor to convince me. Snowden is the kind of person who justifies his action in saying his beliefs undermine any agreement he signed. The Chinese aren’t going to give him up, but I’ll bet he’ll embellish more stories – and the Chinese will get sick of his crap at some point, then he’ll have no place to go.
@15 I agree. I didn’t need Cheney to convince me Snowden is a self serving, wannabee ass hole. Who IS a traitor and should be arrested and charged as such. He had this in his head to make a name for himself from the time he got the job. My paycheck is on that!
Snowden is a sh1tbag traitor of epic proportions who should get life or the needle, but it p1sses me off that Cheney has anything to do with discussing how anybody else is a problem.
I let my distaste for Cheney cloud my point, I am no fan of Snowden. I think men like Cheney taint everything they touch because of their hypocrisy and their corruption.
@17 Well put VOV.
Ditto
I don’t have any problem with an NSA program to monitor data coming to and from between the US and terrorist countries, it’s what they are tasked to do. I do have a problem with them collecting and analyzing data from American citizens with no connection to terrorists, without a warrant. THAT’S a clear violation of the 4th Amendment.
As for Snowden, a real whistleblower/hero/man would have stood his ground in the US, not run off to hide in China while saying that China is a bastion of free speech. When he started to reveal hacking by the US against China and eavesdropping on the G8 by the UK, then he stepped right into being a traitor. He’d better not have plans to come home – ever.
I never gave Cheney much thought. I tend to disregard vice presidents and totally ignore former vice presidents. I know that he can’t handle a shotgun properly, that he had 40 or 50 heart attacks, and that his daughter is a lesbian. That’s about it.
did see a decent column in the Houston paper…. we give this kind of information up, and more, at grocery stores just to get a freakin’ discount. Biggest problem with the Feds doing this is we don’t get sh*t for it… how ’bout a tax break? Maybe a coupon good for some beer?
Snowden has betrayed his cause as well as the American Constitution. The “original” disclosure could be “justified” as there is no legality or classification for those things which violate the 4th Amendment.
He crossed the line when he began disclosing the specifics of G20 intercepts.
Regardless, the US govt has no authority to collect on US Citizens.