No Clemency for Snowden, profit for Feinstein and business as usual for the NSA

NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden has asked for Clemency so he can come home. The debate his revelations ignited has spawned multiple reform bills in Congress including one from Senate Intelligence committee chair Diane Fienstein. However, the White House and Feinstein continue to scream for his blood in the media. The media has failed to report that Feinstein's bill normalizes rather than reforms the NSA spying on the whole world. The media has also failed to report on the massive profits Diane Feinstien reaps from her husband’s business dealings with the intelligence community and the military.

According to Associated Press reports, Feistein responded to Snowden's clemency appeal by describing it as an "enormous disservice to our country," and declaring "I think the answer is no clemency." Only the President may grant clemency. It is that same legal theory that underpins all of the expanded powers the NSA has been granted in the last twelve years. These are the powers that Senator Feinstein's “reform” bill, the FISA Improvement Act of 2013, further regularizes and entrenches.

It all began not with an executive order, not with the Patriot Act, but with a secret memo written by Dick Cheney's lawyer, David Addington, in 2001. Addington is a leading legal theorist on what is known as the “unitary executive,” the idea that the executive branch as a whole is subject to presidential privilege. Thus the NSA's expanded mission is legal under the President's powers to make war. This memo is was so secret that the head of the NSA never read it. Although classified, it is considered privileged communication between the Vice President and his attorney and thus need not be released to anyone. According to documents released by Snowden, portions of it were read over a secure line to the head of the NSA in late 2001. The NSA did not even want to know that: “General Hayden, the NSA lawyers and the Inspector General agreed that it was not necessary for them to see the early opinions in order to execute the terms of the Authorization.” The memo was allegedly destroyed in a fire in the Vice President's office in 2007.

All legal authorizations for wiretapping since, either via the Patriot Act or Executive Order, have codified and extended this secret, privately owned memo which was authored by Addington. Feinstein's bill, which was discussed, modified and passed in an 11-4 vote Halloween night continues this trend. In a press release, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the country's leading online civil rights group, stated: “ Make no mistake: this is not an NSA reform bill at all.”

Although the bill requires regular reporting, the reporting is hollow in many ways. If the NSA decides that it broke the law, it must report this to Congressional Intelligence Committees. If the NSA feels like it did not break the law, it need not report. The NSA must regularly report unclassified aspects of its surveillance projects to the public, but nearly all of the activities of the NSA are classified, including the size of its budget.

The debate and new content of Feinstein's bill are not the only things being kept from the American public. The profits Feinstein's husband, billionaire Richard Blum, make from the intelligence community are also not often discussed. Once weekly, Obama meets with advisers to go over the kill list for the week on what is called “Terror Tuesday.” When the drones let the missiles fly into the hospitals, weddings and schools later in the week, Blum and Feinstein grow richer. Their company, URS Federal Services, provides communications maintenance support to the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing, the key military unit that operates Predator drones worldwide.

URS Federal Services was purchased in part from the Bush family friendly Carlyle Group, and has received over 500,000 individual contract payouts from the Defense Department alone. This figure does not include contracts or payments for classified programs, which are not a matter of public record that can be accessed. Over 41,000 of these Defense Department and intelligence agency transactions were as a subcontractor to Booz Allen Hamilton, Edward Snowden's former employer. More than 1,200 additional transactions were done with the Department of Homeland Security with Booz Allen as the prime contractor and URS as the subcontractor. Classified transactions are also not included in the Department of Homeland security figures.

Contracting agencies of the federal government that benefit the Booz Allen/URS team include the National Missile Defense Agency, the National Geo-spatial Intelligence Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Law Enforcement Training Center at Quantico VA, and the Special Operations Command.

URS Federal Services is also subcontractor under Palantir technologies, who were exposed while planning to spy on and defame activists opposed to the agenda of the United States Chamber of Commerce, as well as investigative journalists who supported Wikileaks, including Glenn Greenwald. Palantir apologized for its role in the “Team Themis” proposal to suppress the free speech and free press rights of Americans citizens on behalf of corporations while turning a profit. This did not stop Feinstein from joining them in accepting taxpayer money. It is not clear if URS and Palantir were granted the federal contracts because of Feinstein's influence.

Feinstein's profitable empire of death, dehumanization, destruction and despair stretches across all aspects of America's secret wars. Although Feinstein has spoken against America's torture camp at Guantanamo Bay, she began doing so only after she no longer made money on it. Her husband has an ownership interest in Astar Air Cargo Inc., which ran twice-weekly supply flights from Norfolk Naval Air Station to the torture camp until it ceased operations after losing a major contract with DHL in 2012. Feinstein voted to prohibit the use of funds for the transfer or release of certain individuals from Guantanamo Bay in November 2012. It appears that force feeding detainees that are not even accused of crimes is fine with Feinstein as long as the feeding tubes arrive on aircraft her husband owns.

Feinstein's previous voting record on NSA spying is telling as well. In 2012 alone, she voted four times against any curtailment in the intelligence community's spying operations and once in favor of extending certain enhanced spying operations for an additional five years. Her votes on spying appear to always be on the winning side of the argument.

Because of the secretive nature of America's 60 billion-plus dollar intelligence budget, it is not possible to see how much money lines Senator Feinstein's pockets from surveillance of American citizens and civilians around the world. It is clear that she has profited and continues to profit direct from drone strikes that kill non-combatants including children, and has profited from torture. It is not clear what exactly will change in practice from her proposed NSA reform bill. It is not clear if anything will change from that bill at all.

It appears that Congress has no will to actually defend a person's right to privacy, nor sees itself gaining any benefit from doing so. It does appear there is bi-partisan unity on punishing whistle-blowers like Snowden, torture and murdering children with drone strikes, especially when there is money to be made in the process.