By Donald Jeffries
In 2012, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed our government had engaged in mass surveillance of an unwitting U.S. population. Reflecting a mindset that still exists in Washington, Tulsi Gabbard was grilled by both Democrats and Republicans during her confirmation hearings in an effort to get her to say that Snowden was a traitor.
Click the Link to Listen to the Audio of this Article
Republican Senate leaders at the time, including 2012 presidential nominee John McCain (Ariz.) and Speaker of the House John Boehner (Ohio), were viciously opposed to Snowden’s disclosure of “classified” information. Boehner called Snowden a traitor, and cited the usual concerns about “national security.”
McCain predictably blasted Snowden for “violating his oath of office” and was incensed that so many young people viewed him as a hero.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), along with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), confronted Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for his support of bulk collection of private metadata.
Donald Trump, who would later appoint Rubio as secretary of State, was more extreme than most other Republicans, even suggesting that Snowden should be executed for treason. Later, he would, in routine Trumpian style, tease many civil libertarians by hinting that he might pardon Snowden.
Republicans had fallen all over themselves to enthusiastically endorse the unconstitutional Patriot Act after 9/11, and this included the ominous Section 215, which allowed warrantless wiretapping, mass surveillance of phone records and travel, among other things.
Paul’s general opposition to surveillance of citizens has never been shared by many in either major political party. Last year, Congress reauthorized Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with bipartisan support, over the objections of civil libertarians. The reauthorization was praised by both Senate party leaders, Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas). This was in spite of the fact that, as Reuters reported in 2020:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans’ telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional.
Further vindicating the much-maligned Snowden was:
… evidence that the NSA was secretly building a vast database of U.S. telephone records—the who, the how, the when, and the where of millions of mobile calls—was the first and arguably the most explosive of the Snowden revelations published by the Guardian newspaper in 2013.
In perhaps a just irony, members of the Senate and the House have discovered that they themselves were the victims of the same secret surveillance they had supported when it was done on their constituents.
Earlier this month, the Senate Judiciary Committee revealed:
[A]n explosive FBI document obtained by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reveals the FBI targeted eight Republican senators’ personal cell phones for “tolling data” [information collected from electronic toll collection systems, including traffic volume, revenue, and trip details] as part of its Arctic Frost investigation.
One Republican member of the House was also impacted. The Arctic Frost investigation formed the basis of Jack Smith’s elector case against Trump.
According to the Senate Judiciary Committee:
Records Grassley made public last month showed the FBI also placed 92 Republican-linked individuals and Republican groups—such as Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA—under Arctic Frost’s investigative scope.
Matthew Cavedon, director of the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice, noted that:
The very senators who were spied on can ensure that this intrusion does not happen to them or their fellow Americans again. Even if the Supreme Court reads the Fourth Amendment too narrowly, Congress can pass a statute requiring the FBI to get a warrant before monitoring call information.
Trump’s comments on the Arctic Frost disclosure revolved typically around him. He lashed out at Smith, the hopelessly biased prosecutor, declaring: “Deranged Jack Smith got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. A real sleazebag!”
Operation Arctic Frost, which was headed by Smith, was an attempt by clearly partisan forces to find criminality in the protests by Trump and his allies regarding the 2020 election. Grassley called the Arctic Frost revelations “worse than Watergate.”
FBI director Kash Patel stated:
As a result of our latest disclosure about the baseless monitoring of members of Congress by the prior leadership team of the FBI, we have already taken the following actions: We terminated employees, we abolished the weaponized CR-15 squad, and we initiated an ongoing investigation with more accountability measures ahead.
Considering that Patel opposed Trump’s pardoning of Jan. 6 defendants who “had attacked law enforcement,” it is difficult to have confidence that the likes of Smith, former FBI Director Christopher Wray, and others will be prosecuted.
Hopefully, however, the fact that they were targeted themselves will cause all Republicans to pause before supporting America’s gargantuan intelligence industrial complex so unquestioningly.
As the great Lord Acton said long ago: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
