Back when the Edward Snowden NSA disclosures happened I tried to convince people that it was a huge deal. Though the NSA programs were mostly targeted overseas I worried that such a powerful system would be very dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. Indeed, intelligence can often be used as a weapon against your enemies.
I was also very worried about the man who was in charge of the country at that time. Barack Obama was never a man I trusted and even during his first campaign I knew that he was someone that was dirty and corrupt, to the point where I seriously considered voting for Hillary Clinton in the primary just to stop him. I knew back then that Clinton would have been a terrible president, but, despite her obvious flaws and failures, I felt she was the safer option.
You see, I never trusted Barack Obama. Though I was never a birther, I did think that the movement got something right. Barack Obama may have been born in America, but he is not a person I consider an American. Even back than I knew he wasn't one of us and that given power he would abuse it. His experiences as a youth were so removed from normal Americans I knew that he would never have grown to respect our government and our constitution. If there was ever anyone who would spy on his political opponents it would be Barack Obama.
It's very clear that the intelligence tools that we use to keep our country safe were in the wrong hands. The FISA memo proves that to be the case. The FBI and Justice Department lied to the FISA court and spied on candidate and president elect Trump based on a web of lies. And Obama was president when it happened.
What isn't clear yet is how far it went. I have no belief left that those people had any interest in actually conducting an investigation into to an actual crime. Though it hasn't been proven yet, at least not in a way where people could be arrested for it, my belief is that they intended to prevent Donald Trump from winning the election and failing that, preventing him from taking office or even removing him once he got in.
That's totally unacceptable but I am not shocked at all. Why? Because I knew that given the tools that we had given our intelligence agencies it would only be a matter of time before those tools would be used against us. And I figured it would happen sooner than later. I never trusted Obama and sure enough, people under his command ended up abusing the system.
I do have to say I was wrong about one thing. It wasn't the NSA that was the "black hats". Indeed, Admiral Mike Rodgers seems like the only guy in this that is clean and he did a lot to help bring the whole scandal to light. I never would have thought it would be the FBI that was corrupted. But here we are...
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