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unhappycamper

(60,364 posts)
Fri Jun 28, 2013, 07:01 AM Jun 2013

Top Ten Ways the Beltway Press will treat Gen. Cartwright differently from Snowden

http://www.juancole.com/2013/06/beltway-cartwright-differently.html

Top Ten Ways the Beltway Press will treat Gen. Cartwright differently from Snowden
Posted on 06/28/2013 by Juan Cole

NBC reports that Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright is under investigation as the source for David Sanger’s 2012 New York Times article revealing that the United States is behind the Stuxnet computer virus, which was used to infect computers at Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facilities and at the Bushehr nuclear energy plants and delay their going hot.

High government officials in Washington routinely leak classified information, as part of turf battles inside the government. Cartwright may have been using Sanger to ensure that Stuxnet was not wholly abandoned (it was his baby). That such leaks are so routine, and are part of Washington’s way of doing business, is what makes the harsh espionage charges against people like Edward Snowden so hypocritical. He who is without leaks should cast the first stone.

The Cartwright story (and remember that he is only a suspect) intersects with Edward Snowden’s revelations about National Security Administration spying in many ways. It seems likely that suspicion is now falling on Cartwright because the NSA knows David Sanger’s phone number and has been looking at everyone he talked to on the phone in the months leading up to his article. We know that the NSA has been repeatedly requesting massive amounts of US phone information and storing it for easy search. Since Sanger’s article is proof that an illegal act was committed, as Obama said at the time, getting a FISA warrant to go through Sanger’s already-stored records would have been child’s play. When the PATRIOT Act was proposed, the FBI promised it would be used only for counter-terrorism. But that promise has for many years rung hollow.

While Osama Ben Laden knew not to use the phone during the last seven years of his life, American reporters and generals thought they were safe. PRISM did not catch Ben Laden because he went off the communications grid, and now anyone who wants to do anything the Federal government considers illicit had better do the same. This simple observation demonstrates that the Obama/ NSA cover story, that they are collecting all these phone records to fight terrorism, makes no sense. The data is most likely to be used against American non-terrorists
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Top Ten Ways the Beltway Press will treat Gen. Cartwright differently from Snowden (Original Post) unhappycamper Jun 2013 OP
The BIG story the media seems to have missed. GeorgeGist Jun 2013 #1
The top reason why Cartwright will be treated differently than Scumball Snowden is the fact SS has Thinkingabout Jun 2013 #2

Thinkingabout

(30,058 posts)
2. The top reason why Cartwright will be treated differently than Scumball Snowden is the fact SS has
Fri Jun 28, 2013, 07:28 AM
Jun 2013

Carried espionage to a total new level. I must have lost count on the ten ways Cartwright and Snowden will be treated but this does not even compare, not even close.

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