The Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper tells The Daily Beast‘s Eli Lake:
“We will never ever be able to guarantee that there will not be
an Edward Snowden or another Chelsea Manning because this is a
large enterprise composed of human beings with all their
idiosyncrasies.”
He also suggests he’d beat the shit out of Snowden if put in the
same cell with the guy. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has suggested that
Clapper be put away for lying to the Senate about collecting data
on Americans on American soil.
“Senator Paul says I should get to know [Snowden] by being in
the same prison cell with him, which I don’t think is a good
idea….Probably wouldn’t be in Mr. Snowden’s best interest.”
And the 72-year-old vet of the military and intelligence
services cops that he just doesn’t understand Snowden’s
motivations:
“Maybe if I had I’d understand him better because I have trouble
understanding what he did or what he’d do,” the director said.
“From my standpoint, the damage he’s done. I could almost accept it
or understand it if this were simply about his concerns about
so-called domestic surveillance programs. But what he did, what he
took, what he has exposed, goes way, way, way beyond the so-called
domestic surveillance programs.”
A coupla weeks back,
Clapper told the Beast that Americans would have
totally gotten behind super-secret surveillance if only he’d had
the foresight to tell them about it ahead of time.
Regarding the prevention of another Snowden, NSA whistleblower
William Binney told Reason TV that there were ways to prevent the
sort of heist Snowden pulled, but it would require a more
decentralized and less-hubristic approach to intelligence. Binney
and other NSA lifers brought their concerns about mismanagement and
illegal surveillance to Congress and the Department of Defense in
the early 2000s and were repaid with…a subsequent investigation
against them by the FBI. Hear his story:
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