Ex-Watergate investigators urge Obama to show leniency to Edward Snowden

[think]

Ex-Watergate investigators urge Obama to show leniency to Edward Snowden

Posted 20 hours ago by Jon Russell

~Snip~

15 former members of the 1970s Church Committee, led by its former chief counsel Frederick Schwarz Jr. and ex-staff director William Green Miller, sent an eight-page letter to the President and Attorney General Loretta Lynch arguing that Snowden’s actions were a catalyst that helped change secret service policy for the better.

“There is no question that Edward Snowden’s disclosures led to public awareness which stimulated reform. Whether or not these clear benefits to the country merit a pardon, they surely do counsel for leniency,” the letter reads.

Snowden has been living in Russia since he fled the U.S. via Hong Kong in 2013. He is charged with espionage for leaking internal NSA documents to the press and could face 30 years in jail should he return to American shores. While Obama has refused to pardon him, even in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump nominating a man who once said Snowden should be executed for head of the CIA, the Church committee group said Snowden’s disclosures have been instrumental in enacting much-needed change.

The group argued that the information he brought to the public domain resulted in reform of the Patriot Act, a change in how the NSA gathers data from foreigners, and it more broadly alerted the American people to “what intelligence agencies acting in our name had been up to.”...

Read more:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/29/church-committee-leniency-edward-snowden/

[Thinkingabout]

1. Since there has been suspicions of hacking from Russians into the DNC, etc, asking President Obama

to show leniency towards Snowden says to me hacking and stealing private information is ok, it is not. No, Snowden can return to the US and face his charges in a court of law.

[Tarheel_Dem]

2. THIS

[Generator]

3. Well since Trump is on record wanting him executed

I would not expect him to come back to this paragon of virtue called America. You probably live in a different country than me. One that doesn't torture for instance. Snowden is naive. He will never make it out of Russia alive. Stay there and live a good life and ignore the world.

Court of law? You jest. Putin is now co-owner of US. America is over but that's not Snowden's fault. He and that asshat Assange are two different beings.

[Thinkingabout]

4. He did his deed in the US, knew was wrong, perhaps he was never taught it is wrong to

steal.

[think]

6. 15 investigators of the Watergate break in took the time to craft an 8 page letter outlining their

reasons for leniency which they then sent to the President of the United States and the US Attorney General .

Does that not merit any consideration?

[Thinkingabout]

7. Did Snowden think deed through to the possible damage it could do to the US? He walked the walk and

talked the talk, he did his crime and now it is time to do his crime. Can Snowden undo the damage caused to the US? Don't think he can, this is a problem. Maybe his advisors should have thought further on their advising him of doing his crime.

[think]

8. Did you read the letter from these 15 people that investigated Watergate? Those aren't his advisers.

Those people are the ones whose investigation helped prosecute the Water Gate Break in.

These are fairly important legal experts in American legal history.

These former members of the historic Church committee believe Snowden acted to expose the wrong doings of the surveillance community.

They aren't acting like Snowden didn't break the law but understand that other whistleblowers who followed the proper channels had their lives ruined because of it. They are asking for leneincy and make the case for it rather well if one reads their letter.

This is how they treated whistleblowers who followed the rules:

How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowers

Sunday 22 May 2016 10.00 EDT

By now, almost everyone knows what Edward Snowden did. He leaked top-secret documents revealing that the National Security Agency was spying on hundreds of millions of people across the world, collecting the phone calls and emails of virtually everyone on Earth who used a mobile phone or the internet. When this newspaper began publishing the NSA documents in June 2013, it ignited a fierce political debate that continues to this day – about government surveillance, but also about the morality, legality and civic value of whistleblowing.

But if you want to know why Snowden did it, and the way he did it, you have to know the stories of two other men.

The first is Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on the very same NSA activities 10 years before Snowden did. Drake was a much higher-ranking NSA official than Snowden, and he obeyed US whistleblower laws, raising his concerns through official channels. And he got crushed.

Drake was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially and professionally. The only job he could find afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban Washington, where he remains today. Adding insult to injury, his warnings about the dangers of the NSA’s surveillance programme were largely ignored...

Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon-punished-nsa-whistleblowers

Again that's what happens when a whistleblower followed the rules. the whistle blower got punished and the public learned NOTHING. And this happened to the many other whistle blowers as well.

Clearly the system was broken and something needed to be done. As the Church members stated if it weren't for Snowden it could have been decades before any action was taken:

Without Snowden, it would have been decades, if ever, until Americans
learned what intelligence agencies acting in our name had been up to. We know first
hand that lack of disclosure can cause just as many, if not more, harms to the nation than
disclosure. When intelligence agencies operate in the dark, they often have gone too far
in trampling on the legitimate rights of law-abiding Americans and damaging our
reputation internationally. We saw this repeated time and time again when serving as
staff members for the U.S. Senate Select Committee, known as the Church Committee,
that in 1975-76 conducted the most extensive bipartisan investigation of a government’s
secret activities ever, in this country or elsewhere.

I would hope you could at least acknowledge that these members of the Church Committee understand the law and understand what they are recommending to the President of the United States.

[Egnever]

9. Nonsense

The info was all out there the public learned it all they just didn't care. Once Obama was in office suddenly the exact same info was big news....

Odd that.

[think]

10. {Edit:} I was wrong on the role of the Church investigation. They followed up the Water Gate scandal

and did not lead the investigation as I had wrongly thought.

[Zen Democrat]

11. The Church Committee FOLLOWED Watergate and was during Ford Administration - 1975

The Church Committee uncovered CIA abuses, which stopped when Ford put George HW Bush as head of CIA and the cooperation ended.

[think]

12. Thank you for correcting me. I got that completely wrong. I forgot it was a follow up investigation

rather than the lead investigation.

[think]

13. It was pointed out to me that the Church Committee did a follow up investigation rather than lead it

I apologize for misstating their role in the investigation of the Water Gate scandal.

I need to bone up on my history a bit. Again. I'm sorry for my slip on the facts.

[think]

5. Here's the entire text from the 8 page letter the 15 members of the Church Committee sent:

MEMORANDUM FOR PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
ATTORNEY GENERAL LORETTA LYNCH
November 28, 2016

As former professional staff members of the U.S. Senate Select
Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities
(the “Church Committee”), we are writing to urge that the White House and the Justice
Department negotiate a settlement of the charges against Edward Snowden that both sides
can accept.

There is no question that Edward Snowden’s disclosures led to public
awareness which stimulated reform. Whether or not these clear benefits to the country
merit a pardon, they surely do counsel for leniency.

In the American political system, bipartisan government reforms are
generally regarded as the most legitimate and durable. Recently, however, our
government has all but stopped making bipartisan reforms. There is one big exception:
the surveillance reforms inspired by Edward Snowden’s revelations.

It was Snowden who supplied journalists with evidence that our
government had, for many years, been collecting information about the domestic phone
calls of millions of Americans. As a result, a bipartisan coalition in Congress formed to
amend the Patriot Act to prohibit the practice. In the Senate, Mike Lee, a conservative
Republican from Utah, joined with Patrick Leahy, a liberal Democrat from Vermont, to
sponsor the reform. In the House, the move toward reform started with two Michigan
Congressmen, Justin Amash, a junior Tea Party Republican from Grand Rapids, and John
Conyers, a veteran liberal Democrat from Detroit. Republican Congressman James
Sensenbrenner, a primary author of the Patriot Act and its extensions, also backed the
reforms saying he and his colleagues had not intended to permit the NSA’s widespread
scooping up of data about Americans’ communications.

It was also Snowden’s material that showed the extent to which the
National Security Agency intercepts and filters international electronic communications
from undersea fiber optic cables, and taps internal links connecting data centers for
Internet companies like Yahoo! and Google. All this was in pursuit of former NSA
Director Keith Alexander’s directive to “collect it all.” Untold millions of Americans’
communications are swept up in these programs, where they are available for perusal by
the FBI and CIA through what has become known as the “backdoor” search loophole.
Republican Reps. Ted Poe and Tom Massie have joined with Democratic Rep. Zoe
Lofgren in sponsoring legislation to ban this practice.

Snowden’s documents also revealed the broad scope of NSA spying on
foreigners including eavesdropping on close allies in addition to potential adversaries like
Russia and China. While some have argued that leaking such “legal” surveillance
activities disqualifies Snowden from any mercy, President Barack Obama has
acknowledged that stronger controls were necessary. He implemented the first-ever
reforms to afford privacy protection for foreigners from surveillance unless it is necessary
to protect our national security.

The NSA, CIA, and Defense Department maintain that harm resulted from
the disclosures, particularly with respect to our efforts overseas, where they say
relationships with intelligence partners have been damaged and our adversaries may
know more about our capabilities. No one is asking that these claims be ignored, only
that they be checked, and then weighed against the benefits.

America clearly did benefit from Snowden’s disclosures. Former
Attorney-General Eric Holder said that Snowden “performed a public service by raising
the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made.” President Obama has
said that the public debate regarding surveillance and accountability that Snowden
generated “will make us stronger.” The President also issued an executive order
recognizing that foreigners have privacy interests––an acknowledgement no previous
President had ever made––and also asked the intelligence community to find ways to
provide foreigners with some protections previously provided only to Americans.

Without Snowden, it would have been decades, if ever, until Americans
learned what intelligence agencies acting in our name had been up to. We know first
hand that lack of disclosure can cause just as many, if not more, harms to the nation than
disclosure. When intelligence agencies operate in the dark, they often have gone too far
in trampling on the legitimate rights of law-abiding Americans and damaging our
reputation internationally. We saw this repeated time and time again when serving as
staff members for the U.S. Senate Select Committee, known as the Church Committee,
that in 1975-76 conducted the most extensive bipartisan investigation of a government’s
secret activities ever, in this country or elsewhere.

Among the mass of long-lasting abuses that we uncovered were: For 30
years, NSA had obtained copies of every telegram leaving the United States. For 25
years, the FBI had planted an informer in the NAACP despite knowing from the outset
that it did nothing illegal. For decades, the FBI had run a secret program called

COINTELPRO designed to harass and destroy groups and individuals whose lawful
policy positions the Bureau did not like. Actions included secretly breaking up marriages
of dissidents, getting teachers fired based on false information, provoking beatings and
shootings, and trying to get civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., to commit suicide
by using information from bugs in his hotel rooms. For years, the CIA attempted to
assassinate foreign leaders of countries with whom we were not at war, experimented
with the use of drugs like LSD on “unwitting” Americans, and conducted domestic
surveillance of anti-Vietnam War protesters and civil rights activists—which was in
direct contravention of the CIA’s charter.

The number of Americans caught up in these decades-long webs of
excessive––and secret––intelligence activity was huge. Moreover, the Church
Committee’s disclosures revealed that six presidents, coming from both parties—from
Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon—had abused their secret powers. All this set the
stage for bipartisan reforms that made our intelligence agencies stronger by bringing
them into compliance with the law and American values, and by establishing independent
oversight mechanisms. As Republican leader Senator Howard Baker said at the end of
the Church Committee, our disclosures “in the long run result[ed] in a stronger and more
efficient intelligence community.”

Snowden’s disclosures—which significantly lessened the time that
overbroad and inappropriate secret surveillance lasted in the 21st century—have had and
will continue to have the same beneficial impact.

Some oppose leniency for Snowden because he violated the law. But
many in the national security establishment who committed serious crimes have received
little or no punishment. President Obama’s decision to “look forward, not backward”
absolved from liability the officials who designed and implemented the torture and
extraordinary rendition programs at the CIA and Defense Department during the George
W. Bush Administration. It also meant that those who destroyed evidence of these
crimes and misled Congress about illegal torture and surveillance would never face
charges.

In addition, the government has also been lenient to high-level officials
who made illegal disclosures or destroyed classified information. Examples are cases
involving National Security Advisor Sandy Berger and CIA Directors David Petraeus and
John Deutch.

CIA Director David Petraeus, who also had been a top general, violated
the law and his obligation to protect national security information when he provided his
biographer, who was also his close friend, with voluminous notebooks documenting Top
Secret military and intelligence operations, as well as sharing classified information with
reporters. He also made false statements to the FBI to avoid accountability for his
actions. Yet he was allowed to plead guilty to just one misdemeanor for which he
received no jail time. Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger broke the law
when he removed several highly classified documents sought by the 9/11 Commission
from the National Archives and then destroyed them. He too was allowed to plead guilty
to a misdemeanor and received a fine and probation. President Bill Clinton pardoned
former CIA Director John Deutch before the Justice Department filed a misdemeanor
charge against him for improperly taking hundreds of files containing highly classified
information and storing them on an unprotected home computer. In all these cases,
recognition of the public service the individuals had provided weighed against strict
enforcement of the law, to come to a fair and just result.

There are, of course, differences between these cases and Snowden’s. But
the crucial point is that only in Snowden’s case was the motivation behind his illegal
activity to benefit America. The three others involved efforts to gain glory or avoid
criticism, or simple convenience and simple disregard for the law that put our security at
risk. Yet the perpetrators were treated leniently.

Snowden’s explicit intent was to raise public awareness about activities
that he believed (and that all three branches of government have to varying degrees
affirmed) were illegal, or overbroad, so that there could be a robust public discussion
about the proper scope of government surveillance.

Snowden did not try to mask his identity, or lie to the FBI. He knew he
would pay a personal price. As he has.

Contrary to his critics, Snowden did not flee to Russia. Rather he was
trapped there when our government revoked his passport during the first leg of his flight
to Ecuador, where he had requested asylum. Exile in Russia was not his choice, and has
come at a high price personally, to him and his family. The United States thwarted his
efforts to obtain safe passage to other countries that had offered asylum, going so far as to
force Bolivian President Evo Morales’ plane to the ground in Austria to ensure Snowden
wasn’t on it.

The House Intelligence Committee has also claimed that Snowden should
have brought his concerns to superiors in the NSA and to Congress. But Snowden knew
that former NSA official Thomas Drake tried to report his qualms about NSA programs,
and was charged with violations of the Espionage Act nonetheless. More importantly,
the Intelligence Committees in Congress had known for years about the programs
Snowden exposed. But the Committees had not acted. Nothing happened in Congress
until public pressure, fueled by Snowden’s disclosures, caused lawmakers on both sides
of the aisle to act.

Snowden also learned from Chelsea Manning’s wholesale document dump
to WikiLeaks, some of which put individuals and organizations named in the documents
at risk. Rather than simply publishing the NSA documents on the Internet, Snowden
provided them to media organizations, believing that the journalistic process would
ensure that only materials in the public interest would be published, and that the
government would have a chance to argue for redactions or withholding of materials that
might truly cause harm. While this method is not perfect, it was the best of the possible
choices available to get the word out with the least chance of harm. Such prudence is
also relevant to leniency for Snowden.

Some argue that Snowden should surrender to U.S. authorities, face trial
under the Espionage Act and make his argument that he acted in the public interest in a
courtroom. But, under the Espionage Act, a defense of acting in the public interest is not
allowed. Snowden also could not tell a jury that his actions spurred reform. The
Espionage Act, a harsh law, was designed to prosecute spying on behalf of foreign
nations rather than whistle blowing to inform the American public about government
overreach.

Under current law, the only way to weigh the public benefits of
Snowden’s leaks and account for his aim to help America is for the government to
mitigate the charges through settlement discussions.
The status quo is untenable. Snowden presumably does not want to stay in
Russia, and our government does not want him there. As the U.S. relationship with
Russian deteriorates, the risk to all interests involved increases. There is no question that

Snowden broke the law. But previous cases in which others violated the same law
suggest leniency. And, most importantly, Snowden actions were not for personal benefit,
but were intended to spur reform. And they did so.

We therefore urge that the White House and the Justice Department
negotiate a settlement with Edward Snowden of the charges against him that both sides
can accept.

Frederick A. O. (“Fritz”) Schwarz - Church Committee Chief Counsel

Jr. William Green Miller - Church Committee Staff Director

David Aaron
Joseph Dennin
James Dick
Peter Fenn
Karl F. “Rick” Inderfurth
Elliot Maxwell
Paul Michel
Christopher Pyle
Gordon Rhea
Eric Richard
Patrick Shea
Athan Theoharis
Burton Wides

[socdem]

14. Good one...

Allow me to re-post something from the letter that seems to be invisible to the perpetually outraged:



Snowden’s explicit intent was to raise public awareness about activities
that he believed (and that all three branches of government have to varying degrees
affirmed) were illegal, or overbroad, so that there could be a robust public discussion
about the proper scope of government surveillance.




.

[think]

15. Thank you. This is the essence of why these Church Committee members have come forward IMO

Without Snowden's efforts these activities would be occurring in even greater frequency and they would be more emboldened to act as if they were within their rights to do so.