COLEEN ROWLEY, [email protected] Rowley, a former FBI special agent and division counsel whose May 2002 memo to the FBI Director exposed some of the FBIs pre-9/11 failures -- was named one of Time magazines Persons of the Yearr in 2002. Rowley wrote to the FBI Director again in February 2003 with some hard questions about the reliability of the evidence being adduced to justify the impending invasion of Iraq. She just wrote the piece NSA: No Problemo...Until about lawmakers like Sen. Dianne Feinstein backing government surveillance -- until they are a target. Rowley warns: The out-of-control ‘security state™ now threatens the balance of power set up under the Constitution -- as well as the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. The President needs to fulfill his promises to change the rotten system that has resulted from years of deceitful war on terror. A good first step would be to listen to Edward Snowden and other government whistleblowers instead of threatening them with prison terms equating them with being spies. Instead of magnifying the vilification of Edward Snowden -- who happens, for better or worse, to have no option but to remain in a country of asylum -- Obama ought to recognize that Snowden and earlier NSA whistleblowers are the ones who possess the insights to help him climb out of this rabbit hole, fix the constitutional mess and restore the rule of law.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 21:08:32 +0000