Peter King To Anderson Cooper: Journalists Should Be Punished For Exposing Classified Info

Members of Congress seem to be playing a game of one-upsmanship in their increasingly hawkish reactions to the NSA leaks. Democrat Dianne Feinstein said whistleblower Edward Snowden committed an act of treason, and now Republican Peter King has decided that any journalists who reported the information leaked by Snowden should face criminal prosecution.

Anderson Cooper asked King if he thinks journalists revealing this information should be targeted. “Do you believe they should be punished as well? King said that they unequivocally should, and though he didn’t mention any specific names, he was mainly referring to Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who printed exclusive after exclusive with more information on government surveillance programs.

Here is King’s comment in its entirety: “Actually, if they–if they knew that this was classified information–I think action should be taken, especially on something of this magnitude. I know that the whole issue of leaks has been gone into over the last month. I think something on this magnitude, there is an obligation, both moral but also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something which would so severely compromise national security. As a practical matter, I–I guess it happened in the past several years, a number of reporters who have been prosecuted under us, so the answer is yes to your question.”

On Monday, King declared Snowden to be not just a threat to national security, but “dangerous to the country” and a “defector.”

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CNN’s John King Blasts GOP Rep. Peter King For Saying Reporters Should Be Charged [6-12-2013]

Rashad Evans

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Time to Expose Them: Whistleblowers Can Take Down the System

Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
June 13, 2013

General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA) is expected to appear before the Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) to answer for PRISM.

Senator Ron Wyden wants hearings to be scheduled for Alexander and others to answer Congressional questions to explain once and for all he details about the government’s surveillance program.

House Speaker John Boehner and Senator Dianne Feinstein are adamant that Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower, is a traitor and should be dealt with accordingly.

Closed meetings between federal intelligence heads and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) officials have taken place to discuss how to deal with the NSA leak.

With PRISM becoming a household name, those surveillance organizations working for the Obama administration are concerned about those programs that have yet to be exposed.

Chuck Hagel, Defense Secretary, has demanded that the Department of Defense (DoD) make sure that private sector contractors are clear that whistleblowing will not be tolerated.

The need for relationships of trust between those corporations and the federal government is necessary for the surveillance programs to continue.

In essence, it is the whistleblower that could take down the system.

Mainstream media (MSM) would have the populace believe that government surveillance is perfectly fine – as long as the citizens are told that they are being watched.

Under the PRISM program data collecting on citizens includes knowing:

• Websites visited
• IP addresses
• Type of device used
• Search terms used
• Passwords and logins

Alan F Westin, professor of public law and government at Columbia University, explained in an op-ed piece that: “American society is in the midst of a great debate over privacy, precipitated by the development and use of new surveillance devices and processes by both public and private authorities.”

Westin points out that the concern of the masses is that “these new means of augmented surveillance over individuals and groups now spans the ideological spectrum from extreme left to hard right. Worried protests against ‘Big Brother’ tendencies have become a staple item in the press, government proceedings, law reviews, and social science journals.”

The Signals Intelligence Service (SIS), begun after World War II and the pre-cursor for the NSA, dealt with telegraph corporations, much as the NSA collaborates with internet service providers (ISPs).

Under Project Shamrock , agents would be given telegraph intelligence under the cover of night through literal back-door deals.

For 30 years, Project Shamrock provided intelligence and was only exposed by Senator Frank Church during a Congressional investigation.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was passed to prevent another Project Shamrock from being implemented in secret by intelligence agencies within the federal government.

Since the George W. Bush Administration FISA has been twisted and broken with the advent of warrantless wiretapping. The Obama administration has taken FISA a step further and sought to manipulate it for their purposes to make illegal activity legal.

In a propaganda piece meant to discredit Snowden, USA Today and Verizon Wireless released a short broadcast that exposes the whistleblower.

• Snowden being in Hong Kong is fortuitous because of it’s connections to major cities across the globe through airports.
• Lindsey Mills, Snowden’s girlfriend is missing.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) is preparing a criminal case against Snowden, at the behest of the Obama administration. The FBI has been sent to interview Snowden’s friends and family.

Snowden has released documents that show the National Security Agency (NSA) has been involved in hacking attacks on officials in China, the Hong Kong University and students.

Snowden says that the NSA is conducting more than 61,000 cyber attacks globally.

He said: “We hack network backbones — like huge internet routers, basically — that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one. Last week the American government happily operated in the shadows with no respect for the consent of the governed, but no longer.”

Snowden explained: “People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality… My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate.”

Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, former chief security officer for Hong Kong said that it was in Snowden’s “best interest to leave Hong Kong.”

House Representative Peter King adamantly declared that Snowden is “either a defector or traitor. “I think what he’s done has done incredible damage to our country. It’s going to put American lives at risk.”

King said that journalists should be punished for doing their job of exposing corruption “if they willingly knew that this was classified information, I think actions should be taken, especially something of this magnitude. I think something on this magnitude there is an obligation both moral but also legal I believe against a reporter disclosing something which would so severely compromise national security.”

King claims that whistleblowers are aiding al-Qaeda by exposing the details on how the US government conducts surveillance operations.

He said: “By giving [al-Qaeda] such detail about what we are doing that enables them to adjust their tactics.”

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