Trump’s Pick For CIA Director Has Called For Execution Of “Traitor” Edward Snowden
By
Posted on
On Friday, Trump announced that Kansas Congressman
Mike Pompeo was his pick to run the Central Intelligence Agency. Pompeo,
who supports NSA surveillance, has previously called for the execution
of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Credit – ABC News
As True Activist reported
last week, it didn’t take long for President-Elect Donald Trump to
back-track on some of his campaign promises and rhetoric, particularly
his promise to “drain the swamp” of Washington DC corruption. As Trump
works with his transition team to select the people who will form part
of his administration, the picks announced so far have drawn ire from
Trump supporters and detractors alike for being too close to “the
establishment.” Most recently, Trump announced
that Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo would take over as director of the
Central Intelligence Agency. Pompeo, like many of the people now
associated with Trump’s transition team, is a controversial figure,
known for his support of policies that are unpopular with many Americans
and, in some cases, unconstitutional.
In 2014, Pompeo accused Edward Snowden,
the NSA whistleblower that exposed the NSA’s unconstitutional program
of mass surveillance, of “intentional distortion of the truth that he
and his media enablers have engaged in” and called him “a traitor” who
should be “given a death sentence.” Pompeo’s dissatisfaction with Snowden’s work
on behalf of the US public is likely due to his strong support for the
NSA program that collects the bulk data of millions of innocent
Americans. Pompeo has called for an end to legal barriers for the NSA (the Constitution, perhaps?) and has raised concern repeatedly from civil liberties advocates for stances he has taken while serving on the House Intelligence Committee.
He has also sought to undo
the few changes to the NSA’s “Big Brother” surveillance program that
were realized after Snowden’s revelations by calling on Congress to
allow the NSA to resume its phone records program and to “pass a law
re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with
publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a
comprehensive, searchable database.” Pompeo even supports a “fundamental
upgrade to America’s surveillance capabilities.” It should come as no
surprise, then, why Pompeo and the man who hopes to appoint him have
called for Snowden’s execution were he to return to the US from Russia,
where he currently has political asylum.
In addition to his ardent support for the NSA’s
unconstitutional surveillance program, Pompeo is also a staunch defender
of the controversial US prison at Guantanamo Bay, which he has called “an important national asset.” He has further argued that closing the facility would endanger the lives of Americans. Pompeo has also defended
the CIA’s abhorrent torture program, arguing that “the programs being
used were within the law” and that those employed by the program “are
not torturers.” He also referred to the 6,000-page torture report
commissioned by the Senate as “some liberal game being played by the
ACLU and Sen. Feinstein.” The report, released in full in 2014, revealed nightmarish abuses
against CIA detainees that were found to be both brutal and
ineffective, though the worst of the abuses were kept classified and
thus not part of the report. The fact that the man who is set to the run
the CIA believes that “rectal feeding,” 180 hours of sleep deprivation,
sexual abuse, and mock executions do not constitute torture is
something that should concern all Americans, particularly in light of
the fact that the US military-industrial apparatus has become more and
more focused on “domestic terror” in recent years.
If Pompeo is confirmed, the CIA under his leadership
could be a nightmare for American muslims just for that reason. Pompeo
has accused Islamic faith leaders and American muslims of “condoning
terror,” even going so far as to say that American imams were “potentially complicit”
in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings despite the fact that numerous
Islamic leaders within the US condemned the attacks. Some groups that
avidly supported Trump should also be concerned as Pompeo is likely to
continue the US intelligence community’s trend
of characterizing Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal
authority” and “reverent of liberty” as “extreme right-wing terrorists.”
With a CIA director who disrespects the rights of citizens enshrined in
the constitution, all Americans are in danger.
What are your thoughts? Please comment below and share this news!This article (Trump’s Pick For CIA Director Has Called For Execution Of “Traitor” Edward Snowden) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.co
Do you like our independent & investigative news? Then please check
these two settings on Facebook to guarantee you don't miss our posts:
No comments:
Post a Comment