QOTD: Michael Hayden
by digby
If anyone wants to know why so many of us find the fatuous hand-wringing over Edward Snowden’s revelations a bit much, look no further than this from Emptywheel about the various leaks and sources on this embassy threat story:
Remember, Saudis and Yemeni sources have a well-established history of leaking sensitive intelligence about our thwarted plots. But in this case, the original source (to the NYT) seems to be American, with a Yemeni first providing the really remarkable level of detail.
And thus far, no one from the government has called for the NYT, McClatchy, and WaPo sources to be jailed. How … telling.
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…And here’s Michael Hayden, who for weeks has been arguing that Edward Snowden should be made an example of, suggesting this alert is good because it lets the bad guys know we’re onto them:
“The announcement itself may also be designed to interrupt Al Qaeda planning, to put them off stride,” Michael V. Hayden, a former C.I.A. director, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “To put them on the back foot, to let them know that we’re alert and that we’re on at least to a portion of this plotline.”
And here I thought that letting them know that we can figure out their plots was tantamount to treason. It’s so hard to keep up.
There’s much more at Emptywheel about the various anomalies and strange contradictions in this whole event. I’m not sure it adds up to anything more than a reasonable desire to avoid anything that could look like another Benghazi. That’s just run of the mill politics. But it’s also not unreasonable to suspect the government might be inclined to raise the threat level for a variety of other reasons as well. It’s not as if it hasn’t done so before.
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