NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden On The Run, Seeking Political Asylum

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Boy, isn’t that the truth?  Isn’t that something that needs to be shouted from the rooftops?  You want to rat out your evil empire federal government from doing all the despicable things it’s doing, you better find yourself asylum in a foreign country, because your own government will come after you.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  We did learn over the weekend that Edward Snowden, a young man who was working for a contractor that was executing the tyranny against the American people, that Snowden is the whistleblower.  Last I checked last night, he was holed up in a hotel room somewhere in Hong Kong and was hoping that someone would extend political asylum to him.  AG, do you have any news?  Is Snowden still in China as far as we know?

AG:  He has left the hotel but no one seems to have a beat on the location in terms of where he’s at now.

Mike:  So he fled the hotel.

AG:  Yes, or checked out.  I don’t know if fled has a negative connotation, but he checked out of the hotel.

Mike:  Why would you need to check out?  Let me get my phone bill.  I need my room charges.  I may file for a reimbursement from my employer.  Snowden was featured in a video that I guess he taped and aired on the BBC.  I know the Guardian had it on their website.  Snowden is a 29-year-old.  According to a profile of him written at CNN, he had contributed to the campaign of Congressman Paul.  That reminds me, when Paul was running for president — I had highlighted that particular part of the story and made a note to remind myself.  Does this now mean — Bradley Manning has been praised by Ron Paul and I believe had a similar relationship to Paul, meaning he donated to his campaign.  Now we have Edward Snowden having donated to the 2012 presidential campaign of Ron Paul.

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Does that now mean that — think about this.  That’s information, folks.  If you then are a government spook, if you’re a government employee and you’re one of these 900,000 to 1 million high-security clearance spooks that we have now, upwards of 900,000 — I’ve heard the number closer to 1 million.  These are public records.  If you are a government employee, especially if you work for the NSA or CIA or any of these other outfits that’s engaged in all the spyfare that we’re talking about here lately and you donated — if you think your phone records are available publicly and you’re not happy about that, you’re right to feel that way.  Let me inform you that your campaign contributions are part of public record.  Every solitary one of them is published somewhere.  Just think if you contributed to Congressman Paul.  You’re tooling to work right now in northern Virginia on your way to some secret NSA hideout to assume your high-level elite government clearance gig.  You know that those spooks, you know that those agencies have put two and two together.  They’ve done it after the fact, but they have searched their employee database to see if any of your names come up and match campaign contributors to Congressman Paul’s campaign in 2012.  That means you better learn Morse code, buddy…

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If you want to trick an NSA spook — I just wonder out loud about these things.  If you want to try and fool one of these guys or get your correspondence past the surveillance line without anyone knowing what it is, you may want to go and grab a book or pamphlet and learn Morse code.  If you peck it out in Morse code, I can’t imagine that anyone is smart enough today to actually know it, unless they are one of those single dudes that the Navy has in its employ that can use the shutter lights on a naval vessel and signal another vessel using the code in case radio silence is need.  We could go back to Morse code.  Wouldn’t that be funny?

[mocking] “What is that contraption on your desktop?” — “That’s my telegraph.” — “What do you do?” — “Well, I call friends up and I send them messages over the speakerphone using the Morse code.  I’ve got it rigged up that way.” — “Why do you do that?” — “I just figure that government agents aren’t smart enough to be able to read or translate Morse code.  Rather than having the NSA record my telephone conversations, they’re just recording a series of codes.”  Of course, there would be some enterprising government spook that would figure this out and say: Wait a minute, we don’t even need windtalkers to break this code.  We don’t even need the Navajo.  We’ve got books out there and libraries to break this code.

[reading]

Democratic senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky say they’re worried the government could be overreaching with the program.

[end reading]

Mike:  Then you have Dianne Feinstein, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham saying: Nothing to see here, move along.  Saxby Chambliss as well, from Georgia.  I’ve got to ask you people in Georgia a question.  Did you know, when you elected Saxby Chambliss to the United States Senate, did you know that you were electing the big government GOP version, the big government Foghorn, I say, Foghorn Leghorn version of Chuck Schumer?  I don’t even think Schumer is as excited about the prospects of the NSA wiretapping and phone record, what’s the terminology, phone record surveilling program continuing.

[reading]

Snowden told the Guardian newspaper that while he admires Manning and Daniel Ellsberg, famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam war, he considers himself different from Manning because he “carefully evaluated every single document” to “ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest.”

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“There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn’t turn over, because harming people isn’t my goal,” he said. “Transparency is.”

But no matter his intention, he says he’s paying a price. [Mike: This is Edward Snowden. This is how Glenn Greenwald and Washington Post got access to what was going on at the NSA.] The newspaper gave details of his comfortable life before he became a leaker, saying that he walked away from a $200,000 job for Booz Allen Hamilton, which let him work from his Hawaii home. Booz Allen Hamilton is a private consulting firm the government contracted to work on the program.

Afraid the government would come after him, the paper said, he told his girlfriend he had to go away for a bit and has been living in a hotel room and stuffing pillows under his door to thwart eavesdroppers.  Staying at the hotel [Mike: He’s staying at a hotel in China, or he was.] is expensive enough, the Guardian said, but room service is killing him.

Snowden is hoping a country will offer him political asylum — a wish reminiscent of notorious WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Like Assange, Snowden may be already on a path to cult status.

“Yeah, man, going to try and get this page big and then get donations for his lawyers,” wrote Rob Williams on one of many Facebook pages supporting Snowden.

“Very courageous what this man has done,” Williams wrote, on a site with more than 1,000 “likes.”

The focus shouldn’t be on Snowden, another page argued. “It’s not about the government seeing who I call or what you Google,” Facebook poster Brett Foley wrote. “This is about our government becoming an evil empire.”

[end reading]

Mike:  I got news for you, it already is an evil empire.  What I’m amazed by are the number of people that are willing to go out there and defend this stuff, and they defend it with good reason.  As I told you earlier today, polls show that people just love this stuff and they can’t get enough of the eavesdropping.

[reading]

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Snowden’s actions are not tantamount to spying or aiding the enemy, argued a CNN commenter.

Former FBI agent Coleen Rowley gained notoriety in 2002 when a scathing memo she wrote about the agency became public. She criticized the FBI for mishandling the investigation of terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui before the September 11, 2011 attacks.

Rowley said top bureau officials stymied a wider investigation into Moussaoui, then held in Minnesota on immigration charges. She also accused FBI officials of acting to “circle the wagons” after the attacks on New York and Washington. Moussaoui was later charged as a conspirator in those attacks.

Rowley was one of three whistle-blowers featured in Time magazine’s Persons of the Year in 2002.

“I’m sure (Snowden) has a healthy awareness of the bumpy road ahead of him,” Rowley said, adding that she felt it was “sad” that “American truth tellers” have to go to another country.

[end reading]

Mike:  Boy, isn’t that the truth?  Isn’t that something that needs to be shouted from the rooftops?  You want to rat out your evil empire federal government from doing all the despicable things it’s doing, you better find yourself asylum in a foreign country, because your own government will come after you.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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