Posted on Categories News & Comment

PBC News & Comment: NSA Whistleblower Tom Drake Details Salt Lake Dragnet

NSA veteran Thomas Drake reveals NSA’s total surveillance of Salt Lake City during 2002 Olympics, joined by attorney Rocky Anderson….–Anderson was Mayor of Salt Lake City at the time, and leads lawsuit based in part on Drake’s sworn declaration of the NSA’s unconstitutional “field operation” in US; follow developments in the case here

–imprisoned CIA whistleblower Jeff Sterling—convicted solely by phone metadata—is rejected in appeal to reduce his sentence

–in major opus, Washington Post publishes magazine-length report on alleged Russian hacking in 2016, with more unproven claims and anonymous sources

NY Times runs lengthy laundry list of Trump’s lies since January, and shows some courage by calling them “lies”

–Trump intentionally misled about possibility of tapes of Comey conversations

–Gareth Porter reveals how US arms in Syria wound up in the arms of al Qaeda groups

–2 very different perspectives on Syria both say US is “sleepwalking” into global confrontation—aka world war—in Syria

–Saudis and allies present demands to Qatar, including shutdown of al Jazeera

–gruesome torture—including a human rotisserie—reported in Yemen and attributed to UAE, implicates the US

–Physicians for Human Rights releases new report that US torture methods amounted to unethical human experimentation, we talk to co-author Dr. Scott Allen

–Senate healthcare-wrecking bill is in trouble, Rand Paul thinks it’s not cruel enough

–GOP extremist in Missouri say “show me your birth control pills” in new law that allows employers and landlords to punish people for contraception and abortion

–new Netflix doc shows how billionaires Peter Thiel and Sheldon Adelson used their wealth to control media outlets they considered unfriendly

–Nancy Pelosi defends her leadership, as some Dems call for change