The Political-Corporate Complex Lives On

The head of the National Security Agency contends what he "has revealed has caused irreversible and significant damage to our country and to our allies."   He "put people's lives at risks," maintains the independent senator from Maine.   The senior senator from California charged him with "an act of treason" and the Speaker of the House labeled him a "traitor."

France, Spain, and Portugal- presumably encouraged by the U.S.A.- denied permission to a plane carrying the president of Bolivia to fly over their airspace because they were afraid the monster might be on board. And now, as reported by the Guardian of the U.K.,, the "White House has expressed anger and dismay on Thursday after Russia granted temporary asylum to the American whistleblower Edward Snowden and allowed him to leave the Moscow airport where he had been holed up for over a month."  More noble, apparently, it would have been for Snowden to return to the Land of the Free and face roughly the same fate as Shamai Leibowitz, John Kiriakou, Bradley Manning, and Thomas Drake.  Your freedom is tenuous with an administration which until two months ago promised to "strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government."  That would be the same president who has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined.

Fortunately, though, the Obama administration wouldn't put up with any business or organization which would hire the likes of Edward Snowden, an employee of Booz Allen-Hamilton until shortly after he leaked classified NSA documents to the Guardian of the U.K.  Or maybe not:

Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) today announced it received a $25.8 million award from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to provide program and technical support to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Policy in coordination and management of its policy research and assessment. The Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract, competitively awarded earlier this month, runs through June 2018.

On Thursday, Charles Pierce noted

Yesterday, Booz reported that quarterly sales held steady, year over year, at $1.4 billion while profits jumped 13 percent to $73.2 million. The higher profits are a result of Booz's ability to increase rates for its billable consulting hours, a measure of the company's prestige with clients. Booz stock is up nearly 50 percent this year.

A couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Air Force cleared Booz of any accountability for Snowden's data heist, saying that the firm could not have known. In the earnings call, Booz chief executive Ralph W. Shrader addressed the Snowden issue for the first time, saying that "Mr. Snowden was on our payroll for a short period of time, but he was not a Booz Allen person and he did not share our values."

Well, no, Edward Snowden did not- and does not- have the same values as Booz.   Snowden could have taken the information his employment at Booz Hamilton made available to him and sold it to any number of countries.  If he had, at least his old company could not have honestly stated "he did not share our values."


Share |