Wake up Homeland Security Professional!
Someone has to be protecting the nation.
“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” Thomas Jefferson
Like many Americans, I have heard the “tree of liberty” quote many times and smugly thought I really understood what it meant. Even worse, as a senior homeland security professional, I was sure that I was part of the reason that America would always be great. But I had never, until this blog, read the whole quote….and it bothers me — alot. The quote proves to me that Thomas Jefferson and his cohorts were among the most prescient men to ever call this country home and they were speaking to us.
First, as I witness events unfold within this country, it sure does sound like Jefferson was predicting the state of the Union in which we are living. “The people cannot be all, and always, well informed….. will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.” This part of the quote scares me because a common theme in discussions these days is the antipathy that the American public displays for things happening right in their back yard — as long as it doesn’t directly affect them or their social networking. Has lethargy set in that is so deeply that the public can’t arouse themselves to protect their liberties? As professionals entrusted with protecting the nation, I think our job is to be the alarm and I don’t think we can afford to hit the snooze button.
As a means of ensuring their security, nations have always collected information through espionage and monitoring the communications of other nation’s and their enemies. Throughout the early 20th century in this country, military units were developed to concentrate on the interception and exploitation of foreign communications, a process that became known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). In the US, the National Security Agency (NSA), an intelligence agency, became one of the most technologically advanced and effective intelligence collection agencies in the world. Likewise, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) developed its expertise in Human intelligence (HUMINT) and is recognized as the leader in its field. These two agencies, supported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), are positioned at the forefront of the government’s intelligence collection efforts against foreign threats. Undoubtedly their efforts increase the nation’s security. But, like a “trained” attack dog should we ever relax our guard around them? I think history shows us otherwise…..
In 1945, following the national trauma of World War II, the military forerunner to the NSA initiated Project SHAMROCK, which featured the interception of all telephonic and telegraphic communication into and out of the US. The project collected all of our citizen’s private communications without any judicial oversight, and was freely shared with the other intelligence agencies to identify groups thought to have been subversive to the government.
The uncontrolled monitoring and collection of our citizen’s communications continued until 1967 when the NSA initiated Project MINARET, which went a step further and placed almost 1700 American citizens and organizations on “watch lists”. The “watch lists” included such dangerous persons as US Senators and Congressmen, Dr. Martin Luther King, other civil rights leaders, anti-war protestors, and media members. Inclusion on the lists resulted in these citizens being targeted by the FBI and CIA for additional collection efforts that included surreptitiously opening their mail and HUMINT operations. The follow-on efforts by the FBI were codenamed COINTELPRO and included a listing of over 26,000 citizens identified to be “rounded up” in the event of a “national emergency”.
Do secret “watch lists”, uncontrolled collection operations, and targeting citizens for “rounding up” sound eerily familiar? It should if you’ve been paying attention to the last decade. But it’ll get more disturbing — I promise.
When these operations were uncovered, Americans were not happy. During the “Church Committee” Senate hearings held in 1976, numerous leaders from the CIA, NSA and FBI testified, and defended, the operations and privacy rights violations as being necessary to protect the nation from existential threats. As homeland security leaders, the quote from a senior FBI intelligence officer should serve as a wake-up call when he testified that “Although the statutory law and the Constitution were often not [given] a thought…. there was a general attitude that intelligence needs were responsive to a higher law. It was my assumption that what we were doing was justified by what we had to do…. . the greater good, the national security.” The Church Committee hearings resulted in direct oversight of intelligence community operations by a specific Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee and tighter operational restrictions. And that has kept the intelligence guard dog at heel right? Well…….
Following another period of national trauma, post 9/11, the US struggled to ensure our security. How well did we do? Consider the Edward Snowden confirmed revelations regarding the NSA collection of our citizen’s electronic communications and private information. Or, more recently, consider the allegations that the CIA had spied on congressional investigators from the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee who were investigating allegations of torture and civil rights abuses by the CIA. The CIA vigorously denied those allegations, right up until CIA Director Brennan admitted the allegations were true. That’s right, the CIA spied on the committee put in place to control its operations, while the NSA was busy violating our civil liberties, all to protect our national security. Sound familiar?
As promised to our citizens in our nation’s founding declaration, we are a country based on freedom. Freedom because all men a created equal, with inalienable rights to pursue our dreams of life, liberty and happiness — without fear of government control or monarchical tyranny. The nation’s founding fathers thought those ideals were important enough to leave everything they knew, fight, and die to defend those ideals. However, like the dripping water that can bore holes through rocks, the degradation and eventual loss of the rights that made this country great does not happen with a cannon boom, instead it happens one drop at a time. The pity of it all may be that homeland security professionals, who are trying to protect the country with the noblest of intentions, may be the group who deliver the killing blow to the dream that is America.
Don’t hit the snooze alarm and roll over — it’s time to wake up.
