Barry and the Thought Police

Night had already fallen when the man finally appeared in the castle gardens. We sat outdoors. He looked left and right, and then behind him. Only then did Daniel Ellsberg allow the interview to begin. “The most dangerous man in America,” as he was called by Henry Kissinger, was still suspicious and assumed there was a spy behind every bush. In Vienna, his assumption was likely to be right. Early in the 1970s, he had photocopied a 7,000-page secret document known as “The Pentagon Papers.” That document spelled out the systematic deception perpetrated on the American public concerning the Vietnam War. The New York Times and The Washington Post serially published excerpts of it for weeks. The resulting scandal marked the beginning of the end of that war. Ellsberg was prosecuted for his actions and subsequently acquitted.

“Back then,” he told me, “the legal situation in the United States was far different and the law was on my side.”* In today’s post-9/11 and WikiLeaks world, it’s far different. Edward Snowden, the whistleblower behind the PRISM scandal, must therefore seriously have to believe he may spend the rest of his days behind bars.

As a deeply disappointed onetime supporter of President Barack Obama, he exposed the comprehensive U.S. surveillance mechanism with a clear conscience. Like Bradley Manning, the WikiLeaks informant, who has been sitting in solitary confinement for years on end, Ellsberg will now feel the full weight of the new legal order. Obama wants to ensure that people all over the world are informed as quickly and completely as possible about “thought crimes” as described by George Orwell in his book “1984.”

“Peeping Barry,” as The New York Times labeled the president, exploits like no one before him the legal options against American citizens who are, after all, only fulfilling their primary civic duty — standing up for their rights and freedoms. It almost seems as if he’s leading a campaign against those traitors who dare oppose his policy and fail to recognize the secrecy shenanigans as a constitutive feature of an advanced democracy.

Like Ellsberg and Manning, Snowden will also be charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 that forbids providing classified documents to the enemy. The Obama administration has used this charge six times previously — twice as often as all previous administrations before it.

Barack Obama thereby nullified everything he claimed to represent regarding government transparency and openness and his promise to restore the full rule of law when he took office in 2009. He implicitly continues the very thing he promised in a major speech to end, namely the war on terror. But there has to be a war if there is to be prosecution for aiding the enemy. If it can’t be waged against bloodthirsty terrorists, then it must be waged against one’s own citizens.

Back to Daniel Ellsberg in the castle garden: “We have the infrastructure of a police state. Sure, it’s not a police state, but only because we haven’t yet turned on it. Another 9/11 is missing.”* The PRISM revelations have already made his conclusion irrelevant.

*Editor’s note: These quotes came from a personal interview with the author and while accurately translated, could not be verified.