Visit the NSA and do a potluck picnic.

Friends,

 

It is that time of the year to make our annual trek to the National Security Agency located at Fort Meade, Maryland.  People are gathering at my house at 9 AM on July 4, Interdependence Day, to leave around 9:15 AM for an approximate arrival in the visitor’s parking lot at 10 AM.  There is a bit of poignancy to our visit as Thomas Drake, the NSA whistleblower, is to be sentenced on July 15 in federal court in Baltimore.  So we decided to do a Burma Shave demo on Route 32 to support Drake before his sentencing.

 

Can you join us?  We can provide transport.  For example, we are picking up Bernie at 25^th & St. Paul Sts. around 9:20 AM.

 

Can you make a Thomas Drake sign?  Mine says Thomas Drake Told the Truth.

 

At 6 PM on July 4, we will meet at Cindy &Sharon’s for a potluck picnic.

 

What can you bring?  I am bringing watermelon, charcoal and more.

 

Finally, see below the letter sent to the director of the NSA seeking a meeting.  Let me know your plans for Interdependence Day.

 

Kagiso,

 

Max

 

Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, 325 East 25th Street, Baltimore, MD  21218

 

July 1, 2011

 

Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander

Director, National Security Agency

Chief, Central Security Service

National Security Agency

Fort George G. Meade, MD  20755

 

Dear General Alexander:

 

As members of a peace and justice group with grave concern for the National Security Agency’s role in the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan and Yemen, we have been writing since 2007 requesting a meeting.  You seem to be quite imperious, as you have refused to respond to our requests.  It is not surprising, as your agency, besides its involvement in the various wars, has been involved in illegal wiretapping and wholesale collection of U.S. citizens’ phone records, infiltration of peace groups opposed to the policies of this government and the NSA’s surveillance of our group.  Nevertheless, we are renewing our request for a meeting

 

The NSA continues to be involved in the methodical and purposeful destruction of our civil liberties and infringements on Constitutionally-protected dissent.  In his confirmation hearings to become the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, General Michael Hayden, the former head of the NSA, declared that only “reasonableness” and not a warrant was necessary to conduct warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens.

 

As you must be aware, the Pledge of Resistance only engages in nonviolent action, and its members are citizen activists who want to see that government officials are held accountable for illegal activities. Yet the NSA is willing to waste time and taxpayers’ money monitoring us.

 

General Hayden played a key role in crafting Colin Powell’s February, 2003 speech before the UN.  In response to Sen. Carl Levin's question about the legal standard for declassifying information in the public interest, Hayden said, "We used that in Powell's speech. George [Tenet] had to call me for three tapes."  General Hayden was instrumental in providing false information to Colin Powell, at George Bush’s request, so that the invasion of Iraq could proceed.  Of course, no weapons of mass destruction were found. And as the peace movement predicted – civil war, the breakup of the country and the destruction of Iraqi society – did happen.  So the NSA is complicit in possibly one of the worst debacles and humanitarian crises in this nation’s history.

 

Also the NSA was involved in the wiretapping of the UN Security Council in 2003.  The NSA asked British intelligence to tap the phones of the UN Security Council members’ offices so the US would know how each country would vote on the resolution to invade Iraq.  Luckily, Katherine Gunn, a courageous British intelligence linguist, alerted the world to that illegal operation.

 

Another scandal to hit the National Security Agency was the arrest and indictment of Thomas A. Drake, a former employee.  He recognized that the Agency, in catching up with the volume of e-mail and cell phone traffic, spent hundreds of millions of tax dollars on programs for your eavesdroppers.  Instead of letting taxpayers know that the money was wasted, you hid this costly boondoggle.  Taking a significant risk, Drake took his concerns “everywhere inside the secret world: to his bosses, to the agency’s inspector general, to the Defense Department’s inspector general and to the Congressional intelligence committees. But he felt his message was not getting through.” [New York Times, June 11, 2010] What is particularly revealing in the Drake case is that he wanted to do what he believed was best for the NSA. 

So he went to the media and became a whistleblower.  Soon he was facing years of incarceration because he was charged with an incredible ten felonies. Obviously, the government was trying to silence future whistleblowers.  Eventually this ridiculous case collapsed, and in June 2011 Drake pled guilty to a misdemeanor, unauthorized access to the intelligence agency’s intranet.  He is to be sentenced on July 15, but in a just world would be feted for blowing the whistle on a wasteful NSA boondoggle. 

You should have revealed to the general public that tax dollars were wasted on costly technology programs which were ineffective.  Not revealing this is an indication of inept management. There would have been no need for a whistleblower if you had come clean. 

General Alexander, we wish to discuss these critically important matters with you.  Also we request that the NSA turn over to us unredacted files on Baltimore-area peace and justice organizations.  What we have received is heavily redacted.

 

Our system of government, based on laws and checks and balances, hangs by a thread.  As concerned citizens, we will continue our efforts to challenge government agencies which show a disdain for the Constitution.  We are available at your convenience and look forward to hearing from you about a meeting.

 

In peace,

 

Max Obuszewski, for the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore

410-366-1637 or mobuszewski at verizon.net

 

 

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs