Only around a quarter of the recent NBC News interview with former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden made it to broadcast, but unaired excerpts now online show that the network neglected to air critical statements about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, reports RT.
When the four-hour sit-down between journalist Brian Williams and Snowden made it to air on Wednesday night, NBC condensed roughly four hours of conversation into a 60-minute time slot. The network uloaded online portions of the interview that didn’t make it into the primetime broadcast, including remarks from Snowden in which he questioned the American intelligence community’s inability to stop the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
In response to a question from Williams concerning a “non-traditional enemy,” Al-Qaeda, and how to prevent further attacks from that organization and others, Snowden suggested that United States had the proper intelligence ahead of 9/11 but failed to act.
“You know, and this is a key question that the 9/11 Commission considered. And what they found, in the post-mortem, when they looked at all of the classified intelligence from all of the different intelligence agencies, they found that we had all of the information we needed as an intelligence community, as a classified sector, as the national defense of the United States to detect this plot,” Snowden said. “We actually had records of the phone calls from the United States and out. The CIA knew who these guys were. The problem was not that we weren’t collecting information, it wasn’t that we didn’t have enough dots, it wasn’t that we didn’t have a haystack, it was that we did not understand the haystack that we have.”
“The problem with mass surveillance is that we’re piling more hay on a haystack we already don’t understand, and this is the haystack of the human lives of every American citizen in our country,” Snowden continued. “If these programs aren’t keeping us safe, and they’re making us miss connections — vital connections — on information we already have, if we’re taking resources away from traditional methods of investigation, from law enforcement operations that we know work, if we’re missing things like the Boston Marathon bombings where all of these mass surveillance systems, every domestic dragnet in the world didn’t reveal guys that the Russian intelligence service told us about by name, is that really the best way to protect our country? Or are we — are we trying to throw money at a magic solution that’s actually not just costing us our safety, but our rights and our way of life?
They did broadcast those comments on their website. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence. responded to what Snowden said about Boston and corrected his facts about Russian intelligence. Where is Snowden's outrage over local govt ignoring the Constitution on a daily basis? He lacks credibility on the Constitution. Has he ever read a Supreme Court case on the 4th Amendment? What kind of warrantless search can a cop do when he pulls over your car on the highway? Most of the people who have their panties in a twist over the NSA mistakenly believe the 4th requires a warrant for any search. It does not.
ReplyDeleteYep, Jerry, nothing requires a warrant for any search anymore. Because your fellow fascists rule. For now - though eventually they will get their arses kicked - because as we all know the EBT cards will eventually stop working. Arithmetic says so.
DeleteFunny how the NSA believes it's a matter of national security to spy on every American, and then they miss the obvious, as pointed out by the excellent article.
ReplyDeleteIf NSA can't even protect the 75 million American shoppers that got hacked in the Target fiasco, how do they expect to respond to a real matter of national security that could cost Americans their lives. ON HOME SOIL!?!
You see, it's comments like these that make me seriously question Snowden. You know what those comments sound like, they sound like a C.I.A. agent making the case to the Feds that the NSA budget should be cut in favor of boots on the ground at Langley instead. They do not sound like the words of a liberty loving whistleblower. He is not saying that we should not gather all the data. He is saying "what is all that data for if we can't analyze properly." He is NOT saying that we should not be collecting the data. It's a pretty important difference
ReplyDeleteI agree. Snowden is a tiger. He was planted to make us think that some guy is looking out for us all. To give a hero to cheer for and keep us sitting on our asses.
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