From RT.com - March 27, 2014 | Thanks to Golden Age of Gaia.
While admitting he is not fully briefed on the repercussions, a former US president has admitted that he would be open to pardoning Edward Snowden if the former NSA contractor returned to the states and was convicted of leaking classified agency secrets.
President Jimmy Carter, a Georgia Democrat who sat in the Oval Office from 1977 to 1981, has been outspoken in his criticism of the NSA surveillance programs Snowden revealed last year. Touching on a number of topics during an interview with the Washington Post, Carter, 89, said he does not have “the information President Obama has about what has been done to our security apparatus,” but that absolving Snowden of his crimes should be an option.
“If he was found guilty and sentenced to death, I would certainly consider pardon,” said Carter, who also recommended that Obama explore using an executive order to stop the surveillance.
When pressed on if he would pardon the NSA whistleblower if he was in office now, Carter said, “No, because you can’t pardon someone who has not been tried and convicted.”
These comments come just days after Carter said during an interview with NBC that when he communicates with other decision makers throughout the world, he does so via mail because of the possibility that his online communication is being monitored. He said the intelligence policies have “been extremely liberalized and I think abused by our own intelligence agencies.”
“As a matter of fact, you know, I have felt that my own communications were probably monitored, and when I want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, I type or write the letter myself, put it in the post office and mail it,” he told Andrea Mitchell. “I think it’s an intrusion on one of the basic rights we have on Americans, is to have some degree of privacy if we don’t want other people to read what we communicate.”
National Security Agency director Keith Alexander told Fox News that President Carter can rest assured with the knowledge that the NSA does not view what an individual writes in an email.
While Carter has been more vocal than any other former president on NSA leak, he has also used the promotional tour for his new book, “A Call to Action,” to speak on a number of different issues.
One of them, which is a prominent theme throughout his book, was the abuse of women, which Carter wrote is “largely caused by a false interpretation of carefully selected religious texts and a growing tolerance of violence and warfare, unfortunately following the example set during my lifetime by the United States,” as quoted by the Christian Science Monitor.
Sitting presidents have been known to consult with their predecessors in difficult situations, when they need advice from a trusted advisor outside their inner circle. President Clinton is known to have had a close relationship with Nixon, while George W. Bush often relied on his father. Carter said during his press tour, though, that despite being two of the three Democrats to occupy the White House over the past few decades, Obama has not asked for his help on any foreign policy issues.
“President Obama doesn’t, but previously presidents have called on me,” he told NBC. “I think the problem was that – in dealing with the issue of peace in between Israel and Egypt – the Carter Center has taken a very strong and public position of equal treatment between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And I think this was a sensitive area in which the president didn’t want to be involved.”
UK Threatened to Shut Down Guardian for Printing Snowden Leaks
A picture shows the offices of the Guardian newspaper in central London (AFP Photo / Andrew Cowie
From RT.com - March 27, 2014 07:17
A picture shows the offices of the Guardian newspaper in central London (AFP Photo / Andrew Cowie)
British secret services threatened to shut down the Guardian newspaper as it was publishing its exposé of US massive surveillance based on Edward Snowden leaks. The story was the most difficult piece of reporting the paper has ever done.
“We were threatened that we would be closed down. We were accused of endangering national security and people’s lives. It left us in a very difficult position,” Guardian deputy editor Paul Johnson told the Radiodays Europe conference in Dublin.
A senior civil servant had told the paper’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, that the “prime minister, the deputy prime minister, the foreign secretary, the home secretary and the attorney general have got a problem with you,” Johnson said, as cited by the Irish Times.
The attitude of the British authorities was a sharp contrast to that of the Americans, he said. In the US Snowden leaks led to a nationwide debate on surveillance and privacy while in the UK the authorities just assumed that national security trumps press freedom.
The story, which exposed the scale of electronic surveillance by US National Security Agency and its intelligence allies throughout the world, was probably the most challenging to run in Guardian’s history, the deputy editor told the audience. It was more difficult than reporting on leaked US documents exposed by the whistleblower site WikiLeaks or the phone tapping by the News of the World tabloid.
“It was the most difficult story we have ever done and that includes WikiLeaks, because reporters and editors couldn’t speak to each other. We could only speak using encryption systems,” he said.
The paper had to install a secure room with new computers and a guard standing 24/7 at the door for the work on the story.
Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, leaked troves of classified files to leading media outlets exposing the scope of US surveillance programs and the fact that they targeted millions of common people, world leaders – including those of countries allied with America – and key businesses.
After getting stranded in a Moscow airport due to his passport being revoked by Washington, the whistleblower applied and received temporary political asylum in Russia.
While many officials branded Snowden a traitor, he also has numerous supporters who see him as a champion of human rights.
