General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Edward Snowden is a man without honor. [View all]matt819
(10,749 posts)I'm one of them as well, and, twenty years out, I've honored that commitment.
Here's the challenge. You're back in the NSA, back in the 1960s. Or in the 1980s during Reagans' war on waste, fraud, and mismanagement. Waste and mismanagement are irritants, of course, and damn near inevitable in any large bureaucracy. But there you are, a GS-9, and you discover fraud. Oh, I don't know. Let's say you discovered that your organization is, in direct violation of US law, recording the phone calls of, say, every American. They're storing this info on reels and reels of tape in a warehouse in, for argument's sake, Utah. You ask a few questions and learn that this fraud goes all the way to the top, or at least it's above GS-13, which to a GS-9 is really up there. But everywhere you turn, because you're one persistent GS-9, you find out that it really does go to the highest levels. These are the pre-contractor days. Everywhere you turn are fellow federal employees, fellow bureaucrats. And you're a good little bureaucrat because some day you want to be a GS-13, or maybe higher.
But this is wrong, dammit. People's telephone calls should be private. Sure, airplanes are being hijacked, and the Marines in Beirut were killed in a bombing, but there are limits.
But everywhere you turn you're shut down. And as far as you know, nothing's changed.
What about that commitment then? What would I have done? I don't know. And, frankly, I'm grateful I never had to confront this.