A few months back, in “From State Secrets to War to Wiretaps: Two Sides of the Same Coin”, former FBI language specialist and also the founder / director of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, Sibel Edmonds reflected upon the first leg of the Obama administration. It was not a settling pensivity.
She first noted the perpetual “rationalizing…defense …[and] illogical excuses [of] ‘He’s been in office for only 20 days, give the man a break!’ and ‘He’s had only 50 days in office, give him a chance!’ and currently, ‘be reasonable – how much can a man do in 120 days?!’” before asking if we mightn’t call it all a “swindling of the voters”. Her real gripe was the State Secrets Privilege statute because, appropriately enough, she was historically “the first recipient of this ‘privilege’ during the now gone [Bush] Administration”. Her use of “privilege” was, of course, a properly snide irony, and she was now targetting the slim black man who promised an end to Washington DC secrecy (“When I am president we won’t work in secret to avoid honoring our laws and Constitution” – candidate Obama, 2007). She also was irate that Obama was allowing his admin to use the act (statute, whatever) in three important judicial cases: “Al Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Obama, Mohammed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, and Jewel v. NSA”. More than a little outraged, she noted that “[i]n the Al Haramain case, Obama’s Justice Department has threatened to have the FBI or federal marshals break into a judge’s office and remove evidence already turned over in the case”, an explicit example of the old we have the might; thus, we have the right Mr. Obama pledged to exterminate in America’s legal affairs.
The New Dark Age 