Manning
in Prison, Snowden in Exile, Petraeus in…the Next Presidential Cabinet?
November 29, 2016 by Sarah Nelson
David
Petraeus (Official CIA Portrait)
As of
Monday morning, General David Petraeus is being floated by the Trump transition
team as a top candidate for secretary of state. Petraeus is the four-star
general and former CIA director that was forced to
resign in 2012 after it was revealed that he gave classified documents to his
mistress. If Petraeus were to be chosen and approved as secretary of state, it
is possible that he would serve his
first few months in office while on criminal probation.
The
announcement of Petraeus’ consideration stings with hypocrisy, and not just
because Trump advocated for jailing Hillary Clinton during the election for
being careless with classified information via a personal email server. The
most glaring part of the hypocrisy is that our politicians excuse and lionize
someone like Petraeus who leaks classified information for the benefit of his
biographer mistress, but demonize and exile someone like Edward Snowden that
cautiously blew the whistle to journalists in order to expose illegal mass
surveillance by our government.
Petraeus gave his mistress
his personal notebooks that contained detailed notes of high level security
meetings on US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, various classified documents
and the identities of covert agents. Petraeus also lied to the
FBI when asked about what he had and had not disclosed to his extramarital
partner. For all of these indiscretions, Petraeus was only slapped with a
misdemeanor charge that came with two
years of probation and a fine of 100,000 dollars, which was a sentence
considered light even in the eyes of the Department of Justice.
In
comparison, we can look at how whistleblowers who leaked information that could
not even begin to compare to the magnitude of Petraeus’ fared, while keeping in
mind that these whistleblowers leaked information for the good of the country
and not for the good of impressing their lovers.
For
example, there is Jeffrey Sterling, who is currently serving a three and half
year prison sentence for blowing the whistle on Operation Merlin. During his
sentencing, Sterling was told that he had to be sentenced harshly because he
revealed the identity of a CIA operative and there is “no more critical
secret” than that. Sterling is only accused of revealing the
identity of one CIA agent while Petraeus turned over documents with the names
of numerous operatives and code words, but for some reason Sterling deserved
jail time and Petraeus did not.
The judge
also told Sterling that his sentence was increased because he did not concede
wrongdoing, but Petraeus received no penalty for repeatedly telling FBI agents
that he had never provided classified information to his mistress and for
outright lying in a written statement to the FBI.
Then we
have John Kiriakou, who got a three-year prison sentence for confirming that
the United States was using torture (particularly waterboarding) with the
approval of the executive branch. Again, we have the same hypocrisy that was
present with Sterling, that Kiriakou is somehow worse than Petraeus for
revealing the name of an individual that participated in torture.
The
statement from Petraeus at the time of Kiriakou’s sentencing is bitingly ironic
in hindsight: “[This case]
marks an important victory for our Agency, for our Intelligence Community, and
for our country. Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those
who believe they are above the laws.”
Perhaps
the most glaring example of Petraeus getting away with what another person
cannot is with the case of Chelsea Manning. In an act of conscience, Manning
leaked videos and documents that informed the American people of what our
government was really doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, which was lying about
not having an official tally of civilian deaths, holding prisoners at
Guantanamo with no legitimate cause, excusing atrocities from defense
contractors and covering up the deaths of journalists. For this public service,
Manning is currently in her third year of a thirty-five-year long sentence.
Detractors
of Manning always stick to the same abused talking points in justifying her
sentence, that she should have never released so much information and that she
knew the information could harm the national security of the United States. It
is an argument that rings hollow when the same people defend Petraeus, who gave
away our intelligence capabilities and upcoming war strategies while telling
his mistress that they were “really…highly
classified.”
The
juxtaposition of Petraeus with whistleblowers like Jeffrey Sterling, Edward
Snowden, Chelsea Manning and John Kiriakou illustrates a massive double
standard: if you leak information for the public good then you are a traitor,
but if you leak information out of pure negligence from a position of power
then you can be the next secretary of state.
####
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; 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
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