Edward Snowden: Whistleblower Who Exposed Unconstitutional Criminal Spying Activity Of U.S. Government

Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations

The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows

• Q&A with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I do not expect to see home again'

Link to video: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things'


The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.

Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations – the NSA.

In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."

Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight. "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing."

He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. "I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me."

Despite these fears, he remained hopeful his outing will not divert attention from the substance of his disclosures. "I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in." He added: "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."

He has had "a very comfortable life" that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
'I am not afraid, because this is the choice I've made'

Three weeks ago, Snowden made final preparations that resulted in last week's series of blockbuster news stories. At the NSA office in Hawaii where he was working, he copied the last set of documents he intended to disclose.

He then advised his NSA supervisor that he needed to be away from work for "a couple of weeks" in order to receive treatment for epilepsy, a condition he learned he suffers from after a series of seizures last year.

As he packed his bags, he told his girlfriend that he had to be away for a few weeks, though he said he was vague about the reason. "That is not an uncommon occurrence for someone who has spent the last decade working in the intelligence world."

On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.

In the three weeks since he arrived, he has been ensconced in a hotel room. "I've left the room maybe a total of three times during my entire stay," he said. It is a plush hotel and, what with eating meals in his room too, he has run up big bills.

He is deeply worried about being spied on. He lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them.

Though that may sound like paranoia to some, Snowden has good reason for such fears. He worked in the US intelligence world for almost a decade. He knows that the biggest and most secretive surveillance organisation in America, the NSA, along with the most powerful government on the planet, is looking for him.

Since the disclosures began to emerge, he has watched television and monitored the internet, hearing all the threats and vows of prosecution emanating from Washington.

And he knows only too well the sophisticated technology available to them and how easy it will be for them to find him. The NSA police and other law enforcement officers have twice visited his home in Hawaii and already contacted his girlfriend, though he believes that may have been prompted by his absence from work, and not because of suspicions of any connection to the leaks.

"All my options are bad," he said. The US could begin extradition proceedings against him, a potentially problematic, lengthy and unpredictable course for Washington. Or the Chinese government might whisk him away for questioning, viewing him as a useful source of information. Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory.

"Yes, I could be rendered by the CIA. I could have people come after me. Or any of the third-party partners. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or they could pay off the Triads. Any of their agents or assets," he said.

"We have got a CIA station just up the road – the consulate here in Hong Kong – and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be."

Having watched the Obama administration prosecute whistleblowers at a historically unprecedented rate, he fully expects the US government to attempt to use all its weight to punish him. "I am not afraid," he said calmly, "because this is the choice I've made."

He predicts the government will launch an investigation and "say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out how massive and invasive the system has become".

The only time he became emotional during the many hours of interviews was when he pondered the impact his choices would have on his family, many of whom work for the US government. "The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night," he said, his eyes welling up with tears.
'You can't wait around for someone else to act'

Snowden did not always believe the US government posed a threat to his political values. He was brought up originally in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His family moved later to Maryland, near the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade.

By his own admission, he was not a stellar student. In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework. (He later obtained his GED.)

In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".

He recounted how his beliefs about the war's purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged.

After that, he got his first job in an NSA facility, working as a security guard for one of the agency's covert facilities at the University of Maryland. From there, he went to the CIA, where he worked on IT security. His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma.

By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified documents.

That access, along with the almost three years he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the rightness of what he saw.

He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment.

"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he says. "I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."

He said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets. But, at the time, he chose not to for two reasons.

First, he said: "Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone". Secondly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary.

He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."

The primary lesson from this experience was that "you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act."

Over the next three years, he learned just how all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities were, claiming "they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them".

He described how he once viewed the internet as "the most important invention in all of human history". As an adolescent, he spent days at a time "speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own".

But he believed that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance. "I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."

Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said.
A matter of principle

As strong as those beliefs are, there still remains the question: why did he do it? Giving up his freedom and a privileged lifestyle? "There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."

For him, it is a matter of principle. "The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to," he said.

His allegiance to internet freedom is reflected in the stickers on his laptop: "I support Online Rights: Electronic Frontier Foundation," reads one. Another hails the online organisation offering anonymity, the Tor Project.

Asked by reporters to establish his authenticity to ensure he is not some fantasist, he laid bare, without hesitation, his personal details, from his social security number to his CIA ID and his expired diplomatic passport. There is no shiftiness. Ask him about anything in his personal life and he will answer.

He is quiet, smart, easy-going and self-effacing. A master on computers, he seemed happiest when talking about the technical side of surveillance, at a level of detail comprehensible probably only to fellow communication specialists. But he showed intense passion when talking about the value of privacy and how he felt it was being steadily eroded by the behaviour of the intelligence services.

His manner was calm and relaxed but he has been understandably twitchy since he went into hiding, waiting for the knock on the hotel door. A fire alarm goes off. "That has not happened before," he said, betraying anxiety wondering if was real, a test or a CIA ploy to get him out onto the street.

Strewn about the side of his bed are his suitcase, a plate with the remains of room-service breakfast, and a copy of Angler, the biography of former vice-president Dick Cheney.

Ever since last week's news stories began to appear in the Guardian, Snowden has vigilantly watched TV and read the internet to see the effects of his choices. He seemed satisfied that the debate he longed to provoke was finally taking place.

He lay, propped up against pillows, watching CNN's Wolf Blitzer ask a discussion panel about government intrusion if they had any idea who the leaker was. From 8,000 miles away, the leaker looked on impassively, not even indulging in a wry smile.

Snowden said that he admires both Ellsberg and Manning, but argues that there is one important distinction between himself and the army private, whose trial coincidentally began the week Snowden's leaks began to make news.

"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."

He purposely chose, he said, to give the documents to journalists whose judgment he trusted about what should be public and what should remain concealed.

As for his future, he is vague. He hoped the publicity the leaks have generated will offer him some protection, making it "harder for them to get dirty".

He views his best hope as the possibility of asylum, with Iceland – with its reputation of a champion of internet freedom – at the top of his list. He knows that may prove a wish unfulfilled.

But after the intense political controversy he has already created with just the first week's haul of stories, "I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

TRUMP TAKES ON THE BUREAUCRACY WITH CIVIL SERVICE REFORM

On Friday, President Trump signed three executive orders aimed reforming the federal bureaucracy. The first order makes it easier to fire incompetent federal employees. The second limits the amount of time federal employees can be paid for union work. The third requires federal agencies to negotiate union contracts in less than a year.

Last year, Congress passed a law that made it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire poor performers and employees involved in misconduct. The law was urgently needed, given the problems that have plagued the VA.

But why shouldn’t officials at all government agencies have similar power to reward good performers and to remove those who are letting taxpayers down? A government job ought not be a sinecure. Federal workers should be held accountable for poor performance just as employees in the private sector are.

The second reform, limiting the amount of time federal employees can be paid for union work, also makes great sense. Under Trump’s executive order, they can spend no more than 25 percent of their workday doing union business. The administration estimates that this measure will save the government $100 million a year.

Frankly, 25 percent seems like an excessive amount of time for government workers to spend blowing off their real job to work on union matters, including political matters on the unions’ agenda. As Rick Manning of Americans for Limited Government says, “there is nothing more galling to limited government advocates than public employee unions being largely subsidized by taxpayer dollars while using their dues payments to support politicians in favor of expanding government.” But at least Trump’s order restricts this phenomenon. It’s a step in the right direction.

Executive orders can be overturned by a new president. As sensible as Trump’s order are, I would expect the next Democratic president to overturn all three, including the one facilitating the discharge of poor performers. Protecting incompetent people who belong to groups that vote for Democrats is a significant component of what that party is about.

Candidate Trump promised to rein in the federal bureaucracy. This is now yet another promise Trump has moved decisively to keep.

And it’s yet another action Trump has taken that conservatives have wanted for years. Others include nominating conservative judges, cutting taxes and reforming the tax code, increasing military spending, eliminating or trimming excessively burdensome federal regulations, effectively ending Obamacare’s individual mandate, enforcing immigration laws, expanding domestic energy production, withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, aligning the U.S. more closely with Israel, being tougher with Iran, and, for that matter, being tougher with Russia.

If the Obama administration and its deep state operataives used improper methods in an effort to undermine Trump’s presidential bid, and later his presidency, it’s easy to see why. What’s difficult to understand is why some conservatives provided so much aid and comfort to these efforts and continue to...

If Facebook, Twitter, And Google Hide Information For The World’s Rulers, Elections Are A Scam

In the name of ‘saving democracy,’ the global ruling class is making sure nobody’s votes count but theirs.

In a September interview that went viral on social media Sunday, a United Nations operative admitted the U.S. government-funded organization “partnered with Google” to rig the results returned on the world’s dominant search engine for the phrase “climate change.”

This follows multiple casual disclosures that, yes, politics control the information on monopoly tech platforms. In fact, government officials all the way up to the White House routinely use Big Tech to control what citizens are allowed to say to each other online, as an ongoing lawsuit from several U.S. attorneys general recently divulged.

The Biden White House is fighting further disclosures about high-level federal officials’ involvement in this government-pressured censorship regime, including Anthony Fauci and the White House press secretary. The companies involved include Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, the court documents say.

Earlier this year, a clip of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg — who threw hundreds of millions of dollars obtained from his communications monopoly company into helping Democrat activists embed inside government election offices in 2020 — also went viral. It showed him telling podcaster Joe Rogan that the FBI also controls the information Facebook allows people to share. The FBI’s meddling affected the 2020 presidential election outcome.

In other words, it’s not just Communist China where the citizenry’s access to knowledge is controlled by government officials. It’s now a global phenomenon. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and the other Big Tech companies are global monopolies headquartered within the United States whose information monopolies affect elections globally. Again, they admit to limiting and amplifying election-affecting information at the behest of U.S. officials. (No wonder China won’t allow Google or Facebook inside its Great Firewall.)

In countries that pretend to be self-governing “democracies” such as the United States, government officials controlling what information is allowed to spread on platforms that government policies help keep dominant is blatant election meddling. It’s controlling elections by controlling the...

Trump Legal Team Blasts DOJ for ‘Leak,’ ‘Unprecedented Behavior’

Former President Donald Trump’s legal team blasted the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI for scattering documents seized from Mar-a-Lago across the floor “for dramatic effect” in its latest court filing on Wednesday.

“Even yesterday, the Government’s Response gratuitously included a photograph of allegedly classified materials, pulled from a container and spread across the floor for dramatic effect,” Trump’s attorneys wrote.

Wednesday’s filing by Trump’s attorneys came in response to the DOJ’s Tuesday filing opposing Trump’s request for a special master to conduct an independent review of the documents the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago in early August.

Trump’s legal team blasted the government’s opposition motion, calling it an “extraordinary document” that suggested “the DOJ, and the DOJ alone, should be entrusted with the responsibility of evaluating its unjustified pursuit of criminalizing a former President’s possession of personal and Presidential records in a secure setting.”

“Now, the Government twists the framework of responding to a motion for a Special Master into an all-encompassing challenge to any judicial consideration, presently or in the future, of any aspect of its unprecedented behavior in this investigation,” Trump’s attorneys wrote.

In the DOJ filing, counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt said the government found “evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”

The DOJ’s response to Trump’s request for a special master also included photos of documents the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago scattered across the floor, leading some to assume that is how Trump kept the documents.

“There seems to be confusion as to the ‘picture’ where documents were sloppily thrown on the floor and then released photographically for the world to see, as if that’s what the FBI found when they broke into my home,” Trump posted on Truth Social hours before his legal team submitted its latest filing. He continued:

Wrong! They took them out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet, making it look like a big ‘find’ for them. They dropped them, not me – Very deceiving…And remember, we could have NO representative, including lawyers, present during the Raid. They were told to wait outside.

Trump’s attorneys also criticized the federal government’s justification for its criminal inquiry into the former president. Trump attorneys said:

The purported justification for the initiation of this criminal probe was the alleged discovery of sensitive information contained within the 15 boxes of Presidential records. But this ‘discovery’ was to be fully anticipated given the very nature of Presidential records. Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm.

Although the DOJ argued a special master is no longer necessary because its “filter team” had already conducted a preliminary review of the seized documents, Trump’s legal team blasted the DOJ’s Privilege Review Team for not contacting them and argued the review was...

It’s Time to Abolish the Teachers Unions

A disaster for students and good teachers alike.

"All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.”

The above caveat about government unions – usually known by the kinder and gentler “public employee unions” – was not issued by the Koch Brothers or Donald Trump. The statement was made by none other than progressive icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Additionally, George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO for 24 years, once stated, “It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.” Both men understood that the very nature of government makes it wrong for its leaders to enter into negotiations with any union. When government unions negotiate, they often sit across the table from people they helped put in office with generous campaign contributions. And when these unions go on strike, they walk out on the taxpayer.

In the private sector, if a business is forced to pay its workers more money, those costs are passed on to the consumer. If the cost of a product is raised too high, the purchaser can choose to go elsewhere. Most unions get this and realize they can’t bargain for excessive salaries and perks. But some unions push things too far and ultimately price their members out of a job. An example of the latter is the United Auto Workers, whose exorbitant demands drove car buyers to Japanese models and automakers to produce cars elsewhere, thus sending Detroit down the road to ruin.

But the government unions are always a nightmare for consumers, as they can’t shop elsewhere for services provided by the state, because the government has a monopoly on them. When union negotiators and elected officials agree on exorbitant pay packages and protections for cops, prison guards, firemen and teachers, what can the public do? Call a different fire department if their house is burning down?

There is an exception here with schools, but unless there is a parental choice system in place, where public tax money follows the child, only the well-to-do really have a choice. In exercising that option, they must pay twice, however – in state and local taxes which go to their local public school and tuition payments for...

Judge Doughty and Biden’s Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’

It’s hardly news that the government has long managed news reporting through a combination of leaks, favored treatment, and threats. With the growth of social media and the COVID-19 “pandemic,” the Biden administration blatantly used every tool in its arsenal to censor constitutionally protected free speech. Posters on the pre-Musk Twitter and Facebook, to take the most obvious examples, were regularly shadow banned and even silenced altogether from posting alternate views to those of the government.

This past week, Judge Terry A. Doughty detailed the government’s manipulation of social media in a 155-page memorandum. Based on what was presented to the court, he enjoined agencies, officers, and employees from HHS, NAIAD, CDC, FBI, DoJ, White House, OMB, DHS , and DoS from continuing their practices. Those practices, which the judge characterized as “almost dystopian,” included flagging posts and “urging encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech." It also bans their working with the “Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group for the purpose of urging suppression or reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech.”

The public officials had threatened the social-media companies with adverse consequences for noncompliance, including reforming Section 230 immunity, antitrust enforcement, and increased regulations if they failed to comply. It’s clear that these tactics allowed the Biden Administration to suppress free speech through proxies, where to have done so directly would have resulted in more immediate scrutiny and judicial halt. The memorandum is a well-documented history of the Administration’s unconstitutional control of information.

While a great deal of the suppression concerned COVID-19’s origin, the government response, and treatments, the judge found it was very wide reaching: suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 election; suppressing speech about the lab-leak origin of COVID-19,the efficacy of masks, lockdowns, and the vaccines; suppressing speech about the integrity of the 2020 election and voting by mail; suppressing even parody content about the Bidens and the administration; suppressing negative posts about the economy and the President himself.

To be sure, the government has some legitimate purposes in monitoring posts which are not violative of the right to free speech. The judge specifically held that the preliminary injunction does not prohibit the defendant agencies, officers and employees from:

(1) informing social-media companies of postings involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies:

(2) contacting and/or notifying social-media companies of national security threats, extortion, or other threats on its platform;

(3) contacting and/ or notifying social-media of criminal efforts to suppress voting, to provide illegal campaign contributions, of cyber-attacks against election infrastructure, or foreign attempts to influence elections;

(4) informing social-media companies of threats that threaten the public safety or security of the United States;

(5) exercising reasonable government speech promoting government policies or views on matters of public concern;

(6) informing social-media companies of postings intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures;

(7) informing or communicating with social-media companies in an effort to detect, prevent, or mitigate malicious cyber activity;

(8) communicating with social-media companies about deleting, removing, suppressing, or reducing posts on social-media platforms that are not protected free speech by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

This is merely an injunction that is effective only under a full hearing and order in the case, indicating that the court believed the plaintiffs were likely to succeed after a full trial. Nevertheless, the Administration finds so threatening this minimal limit on its power to shut down protected speech that it has filed an immediate appeal.

The most obvious targets at this stage of the case were the infectious disease epidemiologists Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), leaders in the fight against lockdown policies. They expressed concern that lockdowns had damaging effects on physical and mental health, dissented from the views that everyone needed to be vaccinated, that masks protected people from COVID, that it was appropriate to mask young children, and asserted that natural immunity was stronger than vaccine immunity. But states also have an interest in open discussion of alternate views in setting policies. Missouri and Louisiana contended they have a “sovereign and proprietary interest in free speech.” I think that is inarguable. It is, after all, the most significant reason for the First Amendment -- an informed citizenry.

Lest you think this is just partisan wailing by conservatives who were banned or a theoretical discussion of constitutional law, Brett Swanson shows how it had significant, even deadly, consequences:

House Leaders Question Environmental Group’s Ties With China

Congressional leaders are pressing their case against environmental activists who are closely aligned with Chinese government officials.

In a letter Wednesday to the Washington-based World Resources Institute, Reps. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, and Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., ask the leader of the nonprofit international research group to document compliance with federal law covering agents of foreign powers.

Bishop and Westerman note that World Resources Institute consistently has praised China’s actions through certain media platforms even as it sharply criticizes recent U.S. policy under the Trump administration:

While WRI criticizes policies of the U.S. government, WRI is silent on Chinese human rights violations such as arrests of environmental protesters and the mass detention of ethnic minorities. By contrast, WRI advocates on behalf of the rights of indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in other countries. On important issues for Chinese leadership, WRI’s position appears to closely reflect China’s goals and objectives.

Bishop is chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee and Westerman is chairman of its oversight and investigations subcommittee.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires anyone who acts as an agent of foreign principals “in a political or quasi-political capacity” to disclose that relationship periodically with the U.S. government, according to the Justice Department. The law also requires disclosure of all “activities, receipts, and disbursements in support of those activities.”

The two congressmen’s letter to Andrew Steer, president and CEO of World Resources Institute, notes that the organization has operated in China since 2008.

It says the institute’s “leadership regularly interacts with senior Chinese government and Communist Party officials and provides public support for Chinese environmental programs, including supplying positive quotes for Chinese government press releases and op-eds in the government-controlled China Daily.”

China Daily is an English-language newspaper that is registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the letter says.

The two House Republicans quote FBI Director Christopher Wray as calling China “the broadest, most challenging, most significant” counterintelligence threat to the U.S.

For this reason, Bishop and Westerman argue, “the apparent strong ties between the People’s Republic of China, the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and certain U.S.-based tax-exempt organizations” warrant clarification and investigation.

Steer, an economist from Great Britain, previously worked as a special envoy on climate change for the World Bank. He is a member of the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, an advisory body sanctioned by the Chinese government.

Bishop and Westerman set a deadline of Sept. 12 for Steer to respond to the request to document compliance with the law.

The Daily Signal asked World Resources Institute for comment on its compliance, its reaction to the letter, and meeting the deadline. In an email Friday, the institute replied:

In order to respond to the world’s most urgent sustainability challenges, it’s vital to work in the world’s developing countries and major economies, including China, the world’s most populous country. We are proud of our work in China, including on issues related to air pollution, traffic congestion, and water quality.

We welcome the opportunity to respond to the [Natural Resources] Committee’s letter, as we vigorously pursue our goal of making the planet safer, healthier and more prosperous for all people.

World Resources Institute, founded in 1982, received its initial funding in the form of a $15 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The institute describes its mission as “to move human society to live in ways that protect Earth’s environment and its capacity to provide for the needs and aspirations of...

Did Robert Mueller Defy A Court Order To Stop Lying About Russian Companies?

Nobody apparently reminded Robert Mueller that Judge Friedrich ordered his team to stop saying Concord and the Internet Research Agency work for the Russian government.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with every detail of the winding Donald Trump-Russia collusion investigation (don’t feel badlyre, Robert Mueller hasn’t either), a little review will help explain the importance of a bombshell that is about to go off.

You may remember a triumphant Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein holding a dramatic press conference in February 2018, in which he announced the indictment of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies. These companies included Concord Management and the Internet Research Agency (IRA).

The indictment accused Concord and IRA of creating fake social media accounts to post “derogatory information” about a number of candidates, including “disparaging” Hillary Clinton. There are two of these “Russian interference cases.” The one involving Concord and IRA does not involve hacking or trafficking in stolen emails. The Concord/IRA case is sometimes referred to as the “Russian Troll Farm” case.

The indictment of Russian individuals and companies appeared, at first, to be a mere publicity stunt, as nobody believed the Russians would voluntarily appear in court to challenge the charges. But then one of them did. Concord hired an attorney to fight the indictment.

Both Mueller’s report and Attorney General William Barr’s April press conference releasing the report included statements strongly suggesting that Concord and IRA worked at the direction of the Russian government. Nobody bothered to notice that the original indictment did not charge Concord with being a tool of the Russian government until Concord filed a motion for a contempt citation against the government for making that allegation.

On July 1, 2019, Judge Dabney L. Friedrich issued an order (to which the government agreed) prohibiting further public statements by the government about the Concord and IRA case, particularly statements alleging that Concord and IRA worked on behalf of the Russian government. A more detailed discussion of this train wreck can be read here.

But Mueller Just Did It Again


This takes us to the Mueller testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees last week. On live television in front of an audience of millions, former special counsel Robert Mueller carefully skirted speculating on the guilt or innocence of Roger Stone due to his ongoing criminal prosecution. But nobody apparently reminded Mueller that Judge Friedrich had ordered Mueller’s team to...

Are You A Conservative? Then Chances Are The Obama Government Was Spying On You.

Conservative author, filmmaker, and proud Indian-American, Dinesh D’Souza, who was among the most vocal in warning America about the rampant abuses by the Obama government, was then sentenced to prison for what amounted to a relatively minor political contribution violation. D’Souza claimed Barack Obama had deep-rooted fascist leanings. (Where was ANTIFA then to go to war against Mr. Obama?) Soon after, the Obama government proved those fascist leanings by allocating $100,000 dollars to investigate and ultimately charge D’Souza for an alleged $20,000 campaign contribution violation.

And get this – the Obama government had likely been surveilling D’Souza for months and months. The Obama IRS did the same thing to multiple private groups who opposed his socialist version of America. The Obama FBI did it to the Trump campaign. And chances are, if you are conservative and you have shared conservative/libertarian/small government/freedom and liberty/pro-America articles via social media, the Obama government was surveilling you as well.

Would President Obama have been that petty to target a critic for draconian law enforcement over a movie? The way the Soviet KGB might have targeted a dissident?
Well, given the common thread of socialism in both, it shouldn’t be a big surprise that he would.

It now comes to light that apparently, yes, he did. Dinesh D’Souza reports that he seems to have been in that unlucky category, targeted for any violation however minor, after making a couple of richly textured, artistically good and very popular critical movies about Obama. When a minor campaign finance violation was finally found after all that looking, D’Souza got the book thrown at him.

He now tweets that there is evidence for it:

My file—obtained by the House Oversight Committee—shows FBI red-flagged me as an Obama critic & allocated $100 K to investigate a $20 K case
— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) January 24, 2018

And that quite a few government resources went into ensuring he got arrested for something, anything. Here’s what he thinks might have been done, given the taxpayer cash that went into pinning something, anything, on him :

If Obama ordered surveillance on @realDonaldTrump in 2016, I wonder if he ordered it on me in 2012, leading to my selective prosecution
— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) January 24, 2018

It’s creepy to think there are lawmen with that little integrity out there to have not spoken out about such a blatant abuse of police power for political purposes. And it suggests that law enforcement agencies are shot through with leftists, which would mean no diversity of thought in the ranks, same as welfare, public defender, and other leftwing agencies.

What this vast expansion of resources – $100,000 for a $20,000 at most violation – also shows that Obama’s claims to “prioritization of resources” such as he claimed when he enabled the open border and its “child migrants” – was spoken with a forked tongue.

There was prioritization all right and it had nothing to do with best use of resources. It had everything to do with what was politically best for himself.

And lastly, it validates the truth about D’Souza’s claims made in his movies that Obma had a fascistic streak. He was not only like Benito Mussolini, he acted like Mussolini, given his...

British Scientific Advisors: China Covering Up Full Extent Of Coronavirus; Could Be 40 Times Worse Than Reported

Government believes that the communist state is “seeking to build its economic power during the pandemic with predatory offers of help”

Scientific advisors to the British government have reportedly told the Prime Minister Boris Johnson that China is covering up the full extent of the coronavirus pandemic, and that things could be 40 times worse there than the communist state admits.

The Daily Mail reports that “Mr Johnson has been warned by scientific advisers that China’s officially declared statistics on the number of cases of coronavirus could be ‘downplayed by a factor of 15 to 40 times.’”

“There is a disgusting disinformation campaign going on and it is unacceptable,” an anonymous government source told The Mail. “They [the Chinese government] know they have got this badly wrong and rather than owning it they are spreading lies.”

“It is going to be back to the diplomatic drawing board after this. Rethink is an understatement,” another government source said, with a further source adding that “There has to be a reckoning when this is over.”

The British government also “believes China is seeking to build its economic power during the pandemic with ‘predatory offers of help’ [to] countries around the world.’” the report continues.

China has been delivering hundreds of thousands of testing kits and masks to nations around the world. One problem, however, is that they don’t work.

“In Spain, which currently has the fourth-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, the government purchased 640,000 rapid test kits from China and South Korea as it fights the pandemic,” The Free Beacon reported this week.

“Experts soon discovered, however, that the tests it purchased from Chinese company Bioeasy were only correctly identifying coronavirus cases 30 percent of the time, according to Spain’s El Pais.” the report notes.

“The Czech Republic also purchased 150,000 rapid test kits from China, and have likewise found problems.” the report continues, adding that “One doctor using the tests found that 80 percent of the kits were faulty and has reverted back to the conventional lab tests, which are significantly slower to process.”

Other countries such as Turkey and Georgia, as well as Holland have reported problems with the tests and the masks.

Ever since the outbreak began in December, it has been acknowledged that China has been lying about the true numbers.

A scientific study out of the University of Southampton in the UK found that had China acted sooner to combat their coronavirus, then the further spread could have been almost entirely avoided, and it would not have become a...

Bill Barr: Public Schools Are Becoming Unconstitutional ‘Secular-Progressive Madrassas’

'It may no longer be fair, practical, or even constitutional to provide publicly-funded education solely through the vehicle of state-operated schools,' the two-time U.S. attorney general contends.

“The greatest threat to religious liberty in America today,” said former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr in a recent speech, is “the increasingly militant and extreme secular-progressive climate of our state-run education system.”

Barr, whose high-profile career has demonstrated a deep commitment to the U.S. Constitution as written and intended, spoke to the religious liberty legal defense organization Alliance Defending Freedom. The legal lion put together a strong argument that a half-century of Supreme Court decisions combined with the left’s long march through American institutions have pushed U.S. public schools so far from religious neutrality that many now comprise a government-established preference for the atheist religion. Government preferences for some religious views over others are unconstitutional under the First Amendment.


“The heavy-handed enforcement of secular-progressive orthodoxy through government-run schools is totally incompatible with traditional Christianity and other major religious traditions in our country. In light of this development, we must confront the reality that it may no longer be fair, practical, or even constitutional to provide publicly-funded education solely through the vehicle of state-operated schools,” he said.

Government Schools the No. 1 Anti-Religious Force

While many American adults believe U.S. public schools keep religion out of the classroom, that era ended with their childhoods, Barr says. Too many Americans are dangerously unaware that today’s public schools forcefully instruct children in specific religious and political beliefs that openly undermine Christianity and, therefore, the private self-government necessary to preserve the United States’ foundational natural rights regime.

The evidence for this is strong, both in data and personal testimony. “[Ex]pansions in government service provision and especially increasingly secularized government control of education… can account for virtually the entire increase in...

Thousands Resume Hong Kong Protests, China Media Warns Beijing Won’t ‘Sit Idly By’

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Thousands of protesters took to Hong Kong’s streets on Sunday, a day after violent clashes between anti-government protesters and police, and as China’s official news agency warned Beijing will not let the situation in the Asian financial hub continue.

The Chinese-controlled city has been rocked by months of protests against a proposed bill to allow people to be extradited to stand trial in mainland China and a general strike aimed at bringing the city to a halt is planned for Monday.

Police said in a statement early on Sunday that they had arrested more than 20 people for offences overnight including unlawful assembly and assault.

On Saturday police fired multiple tear gas rounds in confrontations with black-clad activists in the city’s Kowloon area. On Sunday thousands of demonstrators marched peacefully in the town of Tseung Kwan O in the New Territories brandishing colorful banners and leaflets.

Dressed in black the protesters cheered as they called for a mass strike across Hong Kong on Monday.

“We’re trying to tell the government to (withdraw) the extradition bill and to police to stop the investigations and the violence,” said Gabriel Lee, a 21-year-old technology student.

Lee said what made him most angry was that the government was not responding to any of the protesters’ demands or examining the police violence.

By Sunday evening, some protesters had blocked roads in the area, removing railings from the kerbside and setting up barricades.

In the island’s Western district, thousands of people gathered to rally in a park to urge authorities to listen to public demands.

What started as an angry response to the now suspended extradition bill, has expanded to demands for greater democracy and the resignation of leader Carrie Lam.

“Even if Carrie Lam resigns, its still not resolved. It’s all about the Communist Party, the Chinese government,” said Angie, a 24 year old working for a non-government organization in the city.

Protesters on Saturday set fires in the streets, outside a police station and in rubbish bins, and blocked the entrance to the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, cutting a major artery linking Hong Kong island and the Kowloon peninsula.

Major shops in the popular tourist and commercial area Nathan Road, normally packed on a Saturday, were shuttered including 7-11 convenience stores, jewelry chain Chow Tai Fook <1929 .hk=""> and watch brands Rolex and Tudor.

The protests have become the most serious political crisis in Hong Kong since it returned to Chinese rule 22 years ago after being governed by Britain.

Thousands of civil servants joined in the anti-government protests on Friday for the first time since they started in June, defying a warning from authorities to remain politically neutral.

PROTEST TACTICS

The protests have adapted rapidly since the start of June with the movement spreading from the city’s Admiralty area, where the legislative council is located, across to the whole city for the first time.

Previous protests have also targeted mainland visitors to try and make them understand the situation in the special administrative region.

Young people have mostly been at the forefront of the protests, infuriated with broader problems including sky-high living costs and what they see as an unfair housing policy skewed toward the rich.

However, the demonstrations have seen people of all ages, including families and the elderly take part.

The protests mark the biggest popular challenge to Chinese leader Xi Jinping since he took office in 2012.

China’s official news agency Xinhua wrote on Sunday that the “central government will not sit idly by and let this situation continue. We firmly believe that Hong Kong will be able to overcome the difficulties and challenges ahead. “

Hong Kong has been allowed to retain extensive freedoms, such as an independent judiciary but many residents see the extradition bill as the latest step in a relentless march toward...

General Flynn and His Business Partner Targeted by Mueller and Obama’s Deep State for Reporting Obama and Clinton’s Ties to Islamic Terrorist in Pennsylvania

General Flynn and his business partner and son were targeted by the Obama Deep State for outing the former President and the Clintons in aiding and abetting an Islamic terrorist in Pennsylvania.

The Flynns and America are still being persecuted for standing up for America!

A federal jury on Tuesday found General Flynn’s associate Bijan Rafiekian guilty of illegally lobbying for Turkey after just 4 hours of deliberation. Politico reported that Rafiekian, an Iranian-American and former business partner of Flynn’s was caught up in Mueller’s Russian collusion witch hunt — for his work with Turkey.

The timing of this announcement is suspect because Mueller is scheduled to be in front of Congress tomorrow to talk about his sham investigation.

Mueller investigated a $600,000 contract and public relations work Rafekian did and determined he was working as an unregistered foreign agent while he worked for the Flynn Intel Group.

In the summer of 2016, a Turkish businessman named Ekim Alptekin paid the Flynn Intel Group (through a Dutch shell company) $600,000 to investigate a Turkish cleric living in the United States — the Turkish cleric, Fetullah Gulen was living in exile after the Turkish government accused him of masterminding a failed coup in July of 2016. Gulen is a allegedly a terrorist.

Government prosecutors even admitted that they did not have evidence that the Turkish government actually paid the $600,000 contract to investigate Gulen, but that they have emails from Flynn, Rafiekian and Alptekin that suggest the Turkish government was being kept up to date on the investigation.

The US government planned to call General Flynn in as a witness, however at the last minute they moved to designate Flynn as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the case against Rafiekian.

Government thugs also tried to intimidate the younger Flynn, Mike Flynn Jr. and named him as a government witness — Prosecutors ended up...

Unconstitutional Impeachment: The Real Abuse of Power

The House has filed articles of impeachment against President Trump. The charges are vague, not criminal, not in line with constitutional requirements, but Democrats don't care. The American people are opposed to this illegal impeachment, but again, Democrats don't care. They have a mission, and nothing will stand in their way.

But then we've been here before, haven't we? In 2009, our government rolled over us like a tank in Tiananmen Square to pass Obamacare. Like impeachment, Obamacare was unpopular, opposed by most Americans. Like impeachment, Congress and their media pushed the lies, the empty promises: to tamp down opposition.

And here we go again. Nancy's marshaling her forces to once again steamroll the people. And she's just as committed to overthrowing our government as she was to enacting a socialist takeover of our health care. Our government operates outside the will of voters because it can. Once we send these people to Washington, we relinquish control, have no way to stop them until the next election, usually years away.

The horrifying truth is, we the people no longer matter. This globalist cabal has plans in place to take control of America, and it's not going to let a bunch of Constitution-toting idealists get in the way. We had no say with Obamacare, and we have no say in impeachment.

That fact was driven home on the eve of the Obamacare vote, when thousands of Americans gathered in the square beneath the Capitol to protest the bill. Afterward, Howard Fineman blogged the following on his Newsweek site:

I'm sitting in the House Press Gallery writing a piece for Newsweek. It's almost 10 pm and the House is moving toward a vote. On the plaza below, outside the Capitol, I can hear the remnants of a raucous Tea Party crowd. They are chanting "Nancy! Nancy!" and "Kill the Bill." They just sang "God Bless America." I've been around a while, and don't remember a crowd of foes trying to shout down a bill from outside as the vote approached. Maybe it's happened. Though the voices are faint, they're worth noting — and remembering.

The American people a footnote "worth noting — and remembering." The people couldn't stop the socialist law because government is by nature tyrannical.

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." —George Washington

Our government already has a ruling class. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and others break the law with impunity, remain free to give speeches, go on book tours, even run for president. Meanwhile, everyday Americans are jailed for far less.

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force." —Ayn Rand

Today people around the world risk injury, jail, and their lives to reject oppression, to fight for freedom. In Hong Kong, protesters flooded their streets to stop a despotic law that infringed on their liberty. They flew the American flag, sang our national anthem as they faced tear gas and clubs. They're standing up against a...

50 Years of Federal Gun Control: The 1968 Gun Control Act

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968. The GCA is the main federal law that governs interstate commerce of firearms in the United States. Specifically, the GCA prohibits firearms commerce across state lines except between licensed manufactures, dealers, and importers. Under the GCA, any individual or company that wants to partake in commercial activity dealing with the manufacture or importation of firearms and ammunition, or the interstate and intrastate sale of firearms must possess a Federal Firearms License (FFL).

Procedural jargon notwithstanding, the enactment of 1968 GCA was a watershed moment in U.S. politics. It was the first piece of legislation that put the gun control debate on the map.

Political Context of the GCA

It should be noted that the GCA was not the first piece of gun control passed at the federal level. In 1934, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act of 1934 into law. The first comprehensive gun law at the federal level, the NFA taxed and mandated registration of certain firearms such as machine guns, sawed-off rifles, and sawed-off shotguns. This law was passed under the pretext of addressing mob-style violence during Prohibition. But careful review of the New Deal era shows how the NFA was just another piece of FDR’s unprecedented social engineering program.

This NFA was followed up by the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, which created a precursor to the 1968 GCA’s FFL system. Despite the government’s encroachments on gun rights, the federal government stayed away from further regulation for the next three decades.

Once the 1960s arrived, gun politics reverted back to its interventionist roots. The assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King caused federal policymakers to rethink gun policy. In the JFK case, considerable uproar was made about how his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was able to acquire his firearm via mail-order purchase. Even though President Lyndon Baines Johnson was not able get licensing and gun registration on the table, he succeeded in signing the GCA into law.

The Birth of Pro-Gun Lobbies

The passage of the GCA wasn’t without its fair share of opposition. Groups like the National Rifle Association, which traditionally focused on conservation and outdoor niches, were compelled to take nominally pro-gun stances. The NRA wasn’t alone, however. Groups likeGun Owners of America came into the spotlight positioning themselves as a “no compromise” alternative to NRA. By the early 1980s, pro-gun lobbies would become pivotal actors in the never-ending circus of DC politics.

The Gun Control Apparatus Continues to Grow

In pro-gun circles, it’s fashionable to brag about how the Second Amendment has stood strong against government infringements. In a relative sense, this is somewhat accurate. Compared to say, the health care sector , gun rights are in some regards more secure. But in the present-day climate of administrative politics, complacency is government growth’s best friend. And from the looks of it, there are some troubling developments gun owners cannot ignore.

The passage of the 1968 GCA not only gave the federal government an entry point into firearms commerce, but also served as a springboard for future interventions like the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993. The Brady Act takes advantage of the GCA’s FFL system by mandating that all licensed firearms sellers conduct background checks of potential purchasers. The Brady Act also paved the way for the creation of the infamous National Instant Background Check System. NICS is an integral feature of the federal gun control apparatus and has been in existence for two decades, despite research showing it has been ineffective in deterring crime.

These government intrusions aren’t without their fair share of disturbing consequences. According to gun researcher John Lott, the number of federally licensed firearms dealers (FFLs) has decreased from 283,000 in 1993 to 118,000 in 2013. Higher licensing costs played significant role in pricing out smaller weapons dealers. This trend will likely continue as the regulatory state grows larger by the day.

And the infringements on gun rights continue.

The Federal government recently snuck Fix NICS into an unpopular Omnibus bill. Fix NICS enhances the current background check system and puts federalism at risk by incentivizing state governments to turn over private records of gun owners. To add insult to injury, the...

In England, only leftist-approved speech is free

The British Isles bestowed blessings and curses on the world. On the one side, Britain was the Western world’s foremost colonialist nation. However, on the other side, unlike Islam, the other foremost colonialist nation, England brought economic prosperity and the idea of liberty to the nations it colonized. In America, at least, chief amongst those ideas was free speech. However, in England itself, free speech is dead. Only those with government-approved ideas may speak aloud there—and one of those ideas seems to be “kill the Jews.”

At the end of the 17th century, when James II fled England following the Glorious Revolution, Parliament created the 1689 Bill of Rights. One stated that “the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament.” By the mid-18th century, Englishmen, including those in the North American colonies, felt their right to speech extended beyond Parliament’s four walls. A hallmark of a free people is the right to speak their minds without government retribution.

So, in 1791, the newly created nation of America, which looked to England for its ideas about individual liberty, enshrined free speech in the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Recently, in America, the left has relentlessly worked to silence speech with which it disagrees. However, it keeps being stymied by that pesky First Amendment.

England, however, has no right to free speech. That’s because when American colonists started speaking out against Parliament, the solons in England declared that the Bill of Rights applied only to the monarch, not the rest of the government.

Since 2000, we’ve seen England clamp down on speech with which it disagrees. This happens with both conservative and leftist governments. That’s because—and this is important—outside of America, they have no notion of individual liberty versus government tyranny. Instead, parties represent different types of government tyranny. In England, no matter which tyranny they represent, all government leaders are university graduates, which means they all share certain values (the same American graduates share).

One value is fealty to the pro-LGBTQ+ agenda. That’s why anyone who dares to offend LGBTQ+ sensibilities will be arrested:

Another value is that abortion is sacred. That’s why anyone who dares offend pro-abortion sensibilities, even by praying silently or standing peacefully, will be arrested:

However, what will not get you arrested in England is loudly calling for Jewish genocide. That is fine:

The reality is that England foolishly invited into her country people whose values are completely antithetical to Enlightenment notions of liberty. They’re afraid of them now because they’ve seen what they do to those who oppose them. And of course, Britain has disarmed her citizens, so they are defenseless, as the people at the rave for peace or in many of the invaded communities were.

Here in America, Biden has also lawlessly opened the border to aliens who hate...