Would Obama Authorize Snowden’s Assassination?

“Death solves all problems, no man no problem”

-Joseph Stalin

With the new Oceania’s eternal wars now well into the second decade and the hijacked and subverted government screaming “national security” whenever their illicit programs are threatened by even the most minimal of oversight it is a legitimate question as to how far that they will go. As the concerted pushback against the revelations of former government contractor employee Edward Snowden turned NSA whistleblower roar into the new year, intensifying like a hurricane destined to extract maximum vengeance on landfall could this government now be moving towards escalation? Would President Barack Obama sign off on the targeted assassination of Snowden? Would his administration turn a blind eye while CIA or JSOC hit squads murdered him so as to preserve an aura of plausible deniability? Would any rational person who is aware of just how far down the rabbit hole of an abyss that we have all been dragged into since September 11, 2001 be surprised if this were to occur?

The damage that Snowden has inflicted on the fascist state that rose out of the darkness of that Tuesday morning in late summer of 2001 is immense and as we continually are assured by Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald (who had also best be watching his back) there is more coming on NSA criminality. Just this past weekend, after authoritarians received a late Christmas present with federal Judge William Pauley’s ridiculously anti-American ruling in favor of the American Stasi on Friday there have been stories broken. Germany's Der Spiegel featured a large piece on the NSA's TAO division (Tailored Access Operations) that operates out of a secretive facility in San Antonio and specializes in hacking into computers and networks around the world. The unit offers up an array of sophisticated technical gadgetry, engages in the intercepting of shipped computers in order to implant "back doors" while they are enroute to buyers - yet another revelation that NSA activities are going to do even more costly damage to American businesses and taps into underseas telecommunications cables. If what has been seen to this point and with the escalation of the shadow government's war on journalists (particularly Greenwald) through operatives like Alan Dershowitz, capture of the courts to perform legal gymnastics to find programs to be constitutional on hair-splitting and technicalities and the braying of "treason" charges against Snowden the worst is still yet to be published and the decision has likely already been made to stop it under any and all circumstances.

This would include the removal of Snowden from the mortal coil, not the best option for a desperate rogue state in that it would make him into a martyr but he is even now becoming a powerful symbol that the bastards can be fought. When Snowden came out last weekend and declared victory it crossed a line and it would be so far against the grain of what the post September 11, 2001 junta on the Potomac to think that there is not currently a serious lobbying effort being made to terminate Snowden with extreme prejudice. Hell, it's not like Obama is adverse to ordering the killing of American citizens without due process, he already one-upped George Bush and Dick Cheney with the extrajudicial assassination of radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Mr. al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico, for a period following the 9/11 attacks was sought out by the establishment as a rational representation of an American Muslim (see WaPo piece from 2001) and was even invited to a dinner at The Pentagon. The iman became increasingly radicalized by the phony war on terror and its underlying war on Muslims and soon ended up as an enemy of the state, affixed with the al Qaeda devil horns by the propagandists and on the JSOC/CIA kill list. In September of 2011 the Obama administration had al-Awalki killed by a drone strike in Yemen therefore setting the precedent on depriving an American born citizen of any form of due process, not long afterwards his 16 year old son was also blown into hamburger by a drone, he was also an American citizen by birth. Obama's Justice Department provided the necessary legal cover of the killings in the manner that the department always does when high crimes need the stamp of official state sanction. This is not to defend al-Alwaki's calls for jihad on America but there are certain rights that Americans used to be entitled to as a matter of birthright, one being an actual trial. Obama has set a very dangerous precedent here and his ultimate legacy will be that he not only refined and cleaned up the programs of Bush-Cheney but codified them and sold them to liberals, an always gullible bunch.

Dick Cheney's lackey Michael Hayden, former NSA and CIA head, a regular on the propaganda circuit continued to nudge the "treason" accusation closer to mass dissemination with his Sunday morning gig on CBS's (the network that was just busted for airing a total fabrication of a propaganda piece on Benghazi) Face the Nation. Hayden, who bears far more responsibility for the unconstitutional NSA programs than current American Stasi Commandant Keith Alexander spoke that Snowden's leaks have left the agency "infinitely weaker" (a damned good thing for America in my opinion) and that "What Snowden is revealing … is the plumbing. He’s revealing how we acquire this information.” The irony of a turd like Hayden speaking of "plumbing" is just priceless and is illustrative of the absolute panic that exists that the Roto Rooter men are slowly unplugging the pipes and that the ensuing torrent that is about to come sluicing out has the capability of drowning the real traitors who have used their wars and fear mongering to disembowel the Constitution and destroy the very concept of a free and open society for their own sordid and nefarious ends. Snowden as it has been made abundantly clear by both the Obama 

administration and the neocon propagandists is already an enemy of the state, just like al-Awlaki was.

So the question remains, will Barry do it if ongoing efforts to drag Snowden back for a show trial and a life in a torture prison do not bear fruit? He has already proved that he is willing to act as judge, jury and executioner out of sheer political expedience and nothing should be ruled out for our constitutional law professor in chief.

The Surveillance State’s Manhattan Firewall

Authoritarians rejoiced as Friday’s bold judicial activism emanating from a New York district court dealt a blow to civil liberties and privacy rights in the post September 11, 2001 Homeland. The smug certainty of a corrupt elite cadre of government officials who knew damned well that the fix was in exalted after the Manhattan miracle allowed an even more corrupt state media to spin away the events of last week, flushing them once and forever down the memory hole.  Judge Pauley’s scathing remarks, scoffing at American’s constitutional right to privacy are a revelation at the extent of the corruption of every institution in this once great country.  With the focus group friendly, bumper sticker two word phrase “Bold Jujitsu” being used to invoke the al Qaeda demon and choke off attempts to bring the NSA surveillance programs under control the judge spewed invective in his defense of the fascist state.

In his ruling, peppered with the sneering disregard for liberty that has become so prevalent wrote:

..it would be an "absurdity" to permit anyone whose records had been collected to challenge the NSA in court, since Congress had allowed only for the phone companies to argue their case in the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"The ACLU would never have learned about the section 215 order authorizing collection of telephony metadata related to its telephone numbers but for the unauthorized disclosures by Edward Snowden," .."It cannot possibly be that lawbreaking conduct by a government contractor that reveals state secrets -- including the means and methods of intelligence gathering -- could frustrate Congress's intent."

What is truly horrifying about this ruling is evident and I excerpt from a Washington Post column by Andrea Peterson entitled “The most Kafkaesque paragraph from today’s NSA ruling” comments on that particular paragraph:

Re-read that a few times and let it sink in. Pauley is essentially saying that the targets of the order have no recourse to challenge the collection of their personal data because Congress never intended for targets to ever know that they were subject to this sort of spying. And that the fact that everyone knows about it now, thanks to Edward Snowden, doesn't change the targets' ability to challenge the legality of the order.

That suggests a troubling possibility: that even if there were clear-cut evidence that the government was sending out illegal 215 orders, the people harmed by the government's illegal conduct might not have any way to stop it. Instead, the only recourse may be for the recipient of an order (such as Verizon) to challenge it in the notoriously secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But Verizon isn't the one whose privacy is harmed by the order, so why would it expend legal resources to fight it?

Pauley’s ruling and the promulgating of its legitimacy using their mighty Wurlitzer not only ensures that all who challenge the rogue state will be not only denied any future recourse but that those who do not heed this last warning and undertake the efforts to fight back are doomed in the most existential sense of the term. None more so than Snowden himself though.

On the morning propaganda circuit the typical array of ghouls were dragged out to defend the mass state criminality. A favorite these days seems to be former NSA director Michael Hayden who is on the cutting edge of the coming search and destroy campaign against former government contractor Booz-Allen employee Edward Snowden. Hayden, appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation pushed the envelope in labeling Snowden a “traitor” and without proof nor challenge served up this escalation in rhetoric: "I think there's an English word that describes selling American secrets to another government, and I do think it's treason". It matters not that there is no proof whatsoever that Snowden ever sold a damned thing to any other government and when it comes to traitors selling out America then Hayden need only look into a mirror as the worst stuff is yet to come about the NSA Stasi and what they are doing with all of that information. Industrial espionage is a certainty and when that is the case then the selling secret information to the highest bidder for blackmail and competitive advantage and front running markets based on insider information gleaned by surveillance is inevitably going to follow. That is just the way that things work in The Homeland and men like Hayden belong standing in the dock answering for their crimes against the republic rather than appearing on government propaganda organs to deliver their lies and unproven accusations.

With the counter-offensive shifting into overdrive following Judge Pauley’s wiping his ass with the U.S. Constitution and the bought and paid for media providing the new false narrative the focus is going to soon turn to Snowden himself. It is a perfectly reasonable question to ponder on whether President Barack Obama has taken a break from golf and luaus over his Hawaiian Christmas vacation to consult with those who manage his kill lists. Snowden’s poke in the eye mission accomplished” and “I already won” braggadocio are literally the last straw. I would expect that a hellfire missile now may be in his future if the almost inevitable negotiations with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to expel him from Russia for torture and a show trial fail. It is for delicate tasks such as this that JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command), the executive branch’s assassination arm exists, for extrajudicial killings. The precedent has already been set with the killings of radical cleric and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi's denial of due process when he was taken out by a drone in 2011 in Yemen. Obama and the government crossed the Rubicon with that one and while the man was calling for jihad he still was an American and therefore entitled to a trial.

The story of JSOC is one that is chilling given the potential for abuse. The elite military command was at one time referred to as Dick Cheney’s assassination squad and operates with the same degree of impunity that the NSA Stasi does in the world of secret an unaccountable government that we now live in. Just because Snowden isn’t a Muslim calling for violence doesn’t mean that JSOC will not be sent after him similarly. There is another much more ominous question on the NSA surveillance and the secret state in which it operates that has not to this point been asked and that is to what extent does the assassination program extend to?  The NSA program’s enemies list has little to do with preventing terrorism, that is all bullshit for the rubes and the government knows this but it is increasingly likely that it has everything to do with targeting enemies of the surveillance state itself. Michael Hastings anyone?

The gloves are now coming off, Hayden and his fellow miscreants on this morning’s Orwellian two minute hate disinformation broadcasts are the vanguard of what now looms as the empire strikes back.