Absolutely fascinating. I'd been wondering who pulled this off for a very long time now.
I never heard about this. That is, I knew about the scandal of the FBI's activities, but had no idea this was how it came out.
Fred Kaplan, one of Slate's non-morons, has a reasonable and nuanced take on why Snowden ought not get clemency. He's still wrong.
As Raines says at the end of the Times story:
"It became pretty obvious to us," he said, "that if we don't do it, nobody will."
Kaplan can criticize Snowden all he wants, but you go to war with the whistleblowers you have, not the ones you might want or wish to have at a later time.
If there were a bunch of competition among people performing this essential service, then I can see how you'd maybe want to distinguish one from the other. As it is, Snowden (and Manning) are all we've got, and as a matter of public policy, we ought to decide: Is it better that they came forward or not?
It's quite funny that Kaplan says, "one can't help but wonder if he is a dupe, a tool, or simply astonishingly naïve," given how many naïve things Kaplan says in that article. Snowden praised Russia while seeking refuge there? He should have personally kicked Putin in the balls instead! A bunch of the things Kaplan lists as concerns are also total speculation. Why did he go to Hong Kong, when he could have taken other air routes, huh? It wasn't just for the food!
Even some of my family was caught in the undertow and, when the subject came up, acted like Snowden's odd political opinions made him somehow ineligible as a whistleblower.
3:and as a matter of public policy, we ought to decide: Is it better that they came forward or not?
I'm sorry, but I actually laughed. This deserves Tonto's response.
If subversives pose an existential threat to current existing power structures, there is either no social "we" to pass judgement, or choosing a side that passes a judgement starts a war.
OTOH, if society has changed to the extent that either/both their causes and methods can be considered benign or salutory, pronouncing upon their justness from a present secure and comfortable place is simply trivially self-serving.
Better is to be honest. If the persons in the article had been really effective in the early 70s (and they accomplished nothing and nothing has changed) the nation would have devolved
into either civil war or totalitarianism, and you, though not I, would now be cursing their names.
2: I am Moby. This is a great story, but I'd never heard of the underlying mystery.
Who was right and who was wrong?
John Brown, Douglass, Garrison, Tubman, Lincoln?
Gompers, Goldman, Debs, Reed?
Martin, Malcolm, Huey, Eldridge?
Dohrn, Oughton, Ayers, Boudin, Machtinger?
We, who somehow consider ourselves their peers, can judge.
Revolutionary jumprope rhymes are the best.
4: Yeah. I think Kaplan sees the national security establishment as the Good Guys, and so he focuses on how Snowden ain't playing according to Hoyle without any examination of the surveillance state that Snowden is up against.
Not for any particular reason, but I feel compelled here to note that personally, I love America and the NSA, and if there is a subversive element here at Unfogged, it has to be bob and certainly isn't me. No sirree.
Question for we current subversive radicals:
Should Snowden release absolutely everything he has to the Internet, be it nuclear codes, foreign agents, or listening locations devices specifications?
No matter the unforeseeable consequences?
Agents.list.dat
Agents in Denmark:Hell yes. Release the names!
Agents in Iraq:Maybe?
Agents in China:Probably not
Agents in North Korea:God no, they don't deserve to die
Congratulations! You are now a proud junior member of the Imperial Security Apparatus, and are eligible for a visit from the Senate Oversight Committee staff to help convince you that your first two choices were wrong.
Good enough weather for dog walking.
Do the kids today not know about Hoyle?!
Does anyone on the blog count as a kid these days? L.?
16: teo was granted emeritus kid status.
13: I was looking for a hip, modern reference, so I rejected my original impulse to refer to the Marquess of Queensberry rules.
Hewey and Dewey were wrong. Louie rules.
I do know about Hoyle, but I'm not as young as L - just in the lowest well-populated Unfogged age bracket, that of the early thirtysomethings. (And I was also considering protesting Von Wafer's incredulity, so I'm glad nosflow went first.)
Why this 33-year-old knows about Hoyle.
I'm not 30 yet, for few short months.
I am mid-30s and know Hoyle well. Had the book of rules as a kid.
Wow, I guess it shows how much I live in the "anarchist bubble" that I thought pretty much everyone over 30 who had some kind of left politics would have heard of the Media, PA burglary, Church Commission, Cointelpro, etc. etc. What other lurking nodes of ignorance are out there? Scary.
I mean, I understand that not everyone is going to be able to quote from the Platform, or offer an argument about why the CIA killed Hammarskjold, but I thought all the Cointelpro stuff would just come up if you read much about Watergate, Vietnam, MLK, etc. Huh. Guess not though.
I'd heard of the Church Commission, Cointelpro, threatening and bugging MLK, and some related things, but I'd just never heard that what brought it to light was a burglary by activists who were never caught. Which isn't really surprising, right? The official history is that Mistakes Were Made and the establishment fixed itself and established oversight (just like the Pentagon Papers story is all about the Supreme Court and the NYTimes, not that dirty pinko Ellsberg). And of course it's even harder to push back against that airbrushing of history when the folks who actually put their lives on the line to uncover it were (sensibly) staying silent.
Hm. My results, as a 33-year-old, diverge for that triad. I'm not left-issimo, but: I could explain the Church Commission accurately, I have heard of Cointelpro and could explain it vaguely, and I don't know what the Media, PA, burglary is.
I guess it makes sense. Everybody knows the CIA took out Roberto Clemente, and its the same MO.
Ok, I just checked out the accident investigation report of the Hammarskjold crash, and its a little disconcerting that basically the investigators have no idea why the plane crashed.
I wouldn't put trying something like this past the 1960's-era CIA, but I'm absolutely skeptical of their ability to pull it off so smoothly.
The Inquirer article is pretty interesting too:
Raines, who spent the ensuing decades as a professor of religious studies, said the crime and the aftermath made this a Philadelphia story in a much deeper sense than just geographical.
"I am convinced it could not have been successful except in the Philadelphia region," he said, "and for this reason: We knew that there were literally thousands - thousands - of war resisters in the Philadelphia area, and we knew that no matter how many agents J. Edgar Hoover threw out there to try to find us, they faced a very daunting task to sift through thousands of possible suspects."
31: That's great--I hadn't known that about Philly (& hadn't known about this specific case, though I knew about the consequences).
Moving further south in anecdotes, when I was in school in DC, I judged debate tournaments for a B'more high school. The coach and I were driving through Catonsville one day, and I mentioned that I had always mentally associated it with the Berrigans/Catholic anti-war resistance. The coach told me that one of the draft cards that had been destroyed that day was his father's.
32.1: Quaker influence ftw!
32.2: I kind of wish we had more Berrigan-esque militant social justice folks, although it's very, very hard on their families, I think.
Sort-of connected, I was an adult before I learned about Catholic Worker Houses. Gave me a whole new perspective on Catholicism.
Now with working Catholic Worker houses link.
33.2: One of the original Minnesota 8 lives around the corner from me. He's done alright, as old radicals go. I guess the worst thing that happened to him, other than going to prison, was that he got bad jacketed after his release. But everyone likes him now.
There are a lot of stories that will be coming out a lot later about this sort of thing. There have been cautionary tales, hypothetical questions over beer, changes in policy, significant looks, etc. going on since I've been involved with the commercial Internet.
For my part, I was under an NSL for a while, but it turned out to be bullshit, so they eventually dropped it, thank dog. It is a scary, freaky thing. You're an overworked geek, and now you have an increased workload for no good reason, you can't talk to a lawyer or your manager,, and your loyalty is split between doing well for your firm and keeping your ass out of jail.
I did talk to a lawyer who knew as much as anyone did, informally and in extremely hypothetical, vague terms. That really helped mentally. It was useless for formalities, except to know I wasn't the only one on a spit, and she had suggestions for managing interaction.
I didn't send her an Xmas card, because I've been a fucking loser this year. I should fix that.
I wouldn't put trying something like this past the 1960's-era CIA, but I'm absolutely skeptical of their ability to pull it off so smoothly.
Absolutely. Always remember that the CIA, pretty much from its foundation to the Church Committee, was mainly run by madmen - and I don't mean "people with very different views about the world, acceptable government action, morality, and so on", I mean "people who were clinically ill and often ended up in mental hospitals".
Natilo: what does being "bad jacketed" mean? Google just gets me a lot of Michael Jackson memorabilia.
Gompers, Goldman, Debs, Reed?
Martin, Malcolm, Huey, Eldridge?
Dohrn, Oughton, Ayers, Boudin, Machtinger?
So, bob, black guys don't deserve to be known by their surnames? Just first names? Interesting choice, and one with interesting historical echoes.
Or maybe you did it because they don't have very distinctive surnames. I mean, "X" could be anyone.
Huge cockroach in the kitchen. At least there was only one.
Socialism! http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/07/seattle-socialist-kshama-sawant-council-member
presumably Bob will explain that she is actually Hitler.
37.2 (or is it .3?) "Bad-Jacketing" was a COINTELPRO (or Red Squad) technique of causing suspicion of members of protest organizations by framing them as snitches. A word here or there by an actual snitch or a black bag job to plant false documents or sometimes just mailing those documents to the "wrong" address was usually how it was done It's how the FBI destroyed the Panthers when they weren't just, you know, shooting them 57 times in their beds.
(Could I have just said "fitting them up as supergrasses"?)
That's some slang I haven't heard in a while.
43: aha, thanks. And, yes, "fitting them up as supergrasses" is indeed what they were doing.
Always two there are, no more, no less.
Two shall be the number of the Sith and the number of the Sith shall be two. Three are there not, nor shall there be one, excepting that thou then addest a second. Five is right out.
"I was under an NSL for a while"
Are you allowed to say that, even if it was dropped?
I've always been interested in the Buffalo draft file case and trial because my dad knew a lot of (all?) the people involved, and I liked this interview I found a while ago.
Time was I would have expected a lot more from Bob on something like this than to issue the List of Four Necessary Ritual Denunciations.
46: yes, I can say that now. I can talk about what it was about, and mention the target. The target could take issue, but they don't exist anymore.
It cost entirely too much to figure this out.
The target could take issue, but they don't exist anymore.
Hardcore. Don't mess with Grumbles!
36: I'm surprised that NSL's stay as secret as they do. I'd have thought you'd have to let your manager know sooner or later, and then it would leak out. Also, aren't there still some anarchist hackers who would love to leak that kind of story?
I will join the chorus of folks who who knew about the revelations but now their source. I am tempted to break my new book fast and order that, it sounds like a wonderful yarn.
I'm against ever releasing the names of agents. Partially b/c I think pissing off their fellow agents is bad for the health. One of the reasons I prefer this old fashioned filtered paper leakage---let the journalists redact the parts we don't all need to know so we can all luxuriate in the gossipy bits without guilt.
I've probably mentioned this before, but I found "The Last Refuge:Yemen, Al Qaeda, and America's War in Arabia" really interesting and well written, and really good at integrating a bunch of wikileaks stuff with more conventional information. It painted a very persuasive and coherent if necessarily incomplete portrait of the region and US operations as super chaotic and crazy, and not even maliciously so.