Since
early June when the first stories were released, we have seen a wave of
leaked information drastically change our understanding of the United
States government. Its activities in intelligence gathering have been
shown to be much wider than previously thought; its relationships with
major tech corporations have been shown to be much murkier and of a
darker nature than was publicly known.
Its relationship with the
people of the United States is on shaky ground — revelations have been
met with untrue explanations time after time, each exposed as false by
further leaks. One of the few things we can say for sure is that things
are not as they have been presented to us, by Republicans or Democrats.
More will be leaked, and it’s hard to imagine the nature of that
information now.
As many have documented, James Clapper, director
of national intelligence, lied directly to Congress about the nature of
the surveillance the NSA was carrying out on American citizens, and came
up with a series of story changes to attempt to justify them. It has
been
convincingly argued that he only dug the hole deeper, but those of us waiting to see him fired and prosecuted for perjury are still waiting.
Others have
taken umbrage
at the feigned motive of transparency behind a release of documents
that had been called for by the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation).
Most recently, Clapper responded to the revelations that the NSA has
been spying on the Brazilian oil firm Petrobras by insisting that it
was, despite all logical conclusions, done in the name of national
security.
Clapper
insisted:
“It is not a secret that the Intelligence Community collects
information about economic and financial matters, and terrorist
financing. We collect this information for many important reasons: for
one, it could provide the United States and our allies early warning of
international financial crises which could negatively impact the global
economy. It also could provide insight into other countries’ economic
policy or behavior which could affect global markets.”
Even
if we assume that this serves as a justification, which it doesn’t, his
statement raises far more questions than it answers. His attempt to
bring “terrorist financing” into the discussion is shameful — there is
no connection whatsoever between Petrobras and funding terrorism, and if
there were, the U.S. would have been screaming about it and would have
taken a completely different plan of action. So if it isn’t about
terrorism, the idea that the NSA must spy on a Brazilian oil company,
and on that nation’s president, Dilma Rousseff, an ally of the United
States, in the name of preserving economic stability is laughable.
This
is coming from the government that showed itself unable to adequately
regulate its largest banks, indeed Wall Street as a whole. As a result, a
completely preventable crisis rocked the world in 2008, and its
repercussions continue. I should not have to remind anyone that none of
those on Wall Street most directly responsible for the toxic assets and
flawed attempts to mitigate risk have been prosecuted, let alone put in
jail.
While the rest of the world watches in horror as the U.S.
fails to regulate investment banks, and indeed we are seeing signs that
another crisis would not be unforeseeable,
Clapper claims that the NSA’s spying on Brazil is justified in the name
of preventing a financial crisis. Not only is he continuing to lie to
justify the NSA’s flagrant excesses, but we all remain at risk.
We
shouldn’t stop there, then. To go down the logical path laid by
Clapper’s own claims as a hypothetical exercise, why doesn’t the NSA spy
on Wall Street? This could get them all the evidence they could need to
successfully prosecute those responsible, and truly move toward
stabilizing the economy. If any part of American society or business had
shown itself to be corrupt to the core, and thus in need of
surveillance, it’s Wall Street.
My answer would be it seems they
don’t have to. Washington and Wall Street are so deeply intertwined that
they already know what’s going on. Even if you write that off as too
jaded, recent revelations have shown that the DEA in the United States
has been using surveillance technology
to start major investigations, before they manufacture a false evidence trail ex post facto.
I
am not arguing they should expand that practice; indeed quite the
opposite. I am merely asking, rhetorically, if they are willing to break
the rules and “launder” evidence in this way, why don’t they go after
investment banks in the same way? I think we all know the answer: Major
corporations, especially banks, have fused with the American political
elite. They are now scarcely separable from each other.
The legal
system we have developed in this country is not perfect, but it has a
series of effective checks and balances. Corrupting those checks and
balances and bending the rules has the effect of eroding justice
throughout the Unites States. The longer the NSA, or major financial
institutions, remains above the law, the worse off we all are. James
Clapper must be fired and put on trial for perjury without delay.
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