National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
NSWBC Advisory-September 3, 2006
Contact: Sibel Edmonds, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, sedmonds@nswbc.org
First Time Released Documents Expose Subservient Congress
"National Security" Converts
the United States into a Monarchy
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) has obtained documents revealing that to date
the Executive Branch has refused congressional requests to be briefed on
illegal black operations conducted by the NSA, and has denied these
representatives access to relevant witnesses and documents. To view these documents
click here.
The term
"national security" has become talismanic, conferring extraordinary
powers on the President whenever it is uttered. It insulates the executive
branch from congressional oversight and reduces the Constitution to advisory
status. The circularity of the term’s operation is frequently overlooked.
Information and programs are classified according to presidential orders and
when Congress or the judiciary seeks such information they are told that
because the information is classified, national security forbids disclosure.
Even the Code of Federal Regulations identifies national security information
as information that is classified pursuant to executive orders. In other words,
the material is classified and unavailable because the President says so; no
reasons need to be supplied. This prevents Congress from having access to the
material, for even the two select committees for oversight of intelligence
activities are shunned when they request documents.
In this link you see various letters
from members of Congress and the executive branch, with bureaucrats refusing
information to the two intelligence oversight committees because the committee
members do not have appropriate clearances. Of course, clearances, like
classified information, are exclusively controlled by the President. So if he
does not want oversight of anything he has made secret he simply refuses Congress
clearance to see the material. This is the modern version of Royal Prerogative
that was argued by Parliament against Charles I in 17th century
England and was finally, so we thought, put to rest in the United States by the
Constitution. "National security" has converted the presidency into a
limited monarchy with the power to deny the people, through their elected
representatives, accountability for executive actions.
These
letters show that oversight of Special Access Programs (SAPs) at the Department
of Defense is nonexistent because no one in congress has a high enough security
clearance. It highlights the nightmare
that Russ Tice, former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence analyst and
a member of NSWBC, went through to find someone in congress to whom he could
address illegal and unconstitutional activity involving the super secret realm
of “black world” programs and operations. Mr. Tice attempted to bring these concerns
to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Those attempts were rebuffed
by the NSA and the chairmen of the intelligence committees themselves. To date,
Russell Tice has not been allowed to address a full committee in closed session,
or even a single member of congress, about the abuses in these SAP programs.
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition,
founded in August 2004, is an independent and nonpartisan alliance of
whistleblowers who have come forward to address our nation’s security
weaknesses; to inform authorities of security vulnerabilities in our
intelligence agencies, at nuclear power plants and weapon facilities, in
airports, and at our nation’s borders and ports; to uncover government waste,
fraud, abuse, and in some cases criminal conduct. The NSWBC is dedicated
to aiding national security whistleblowers through a variety of methods,
including advocacy of governmental and legal reform, educating the public
concerning whistleblowing activity, provision of comfort and fellowship to
national security whistleblowers suffering retaliation and other harms, and
working with other public interest organizations to affect goals defined in the
NSWBC mission statement. For more on NSWBC visit www.nswbc.org
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© Copyright 2006, National Security
Whistleblowers Coalition. Information
in this release may be freely distributed and published provided that all such
distributions make appropriate attribution to the National Security
Whistleblowers Coalition.