Thomas A. Drake Quotes
I did not take an oath to support and defend government illegalities, violations of the Constitution or turn a blind eye to massive fraud, waste, and abuse…. My oath to defend the Constitution took precedence … otherwise I would have been complicit.
Thomas A. Drake, Whistleblower and Leaker of Government Information, Quoted in David Wise, “Leaks and the Law”, Smithsonian, Juy / August 2011
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In his Senate confirmation hearings Frankfurter was repeatedly asked about his association with the ACLU and his views on Communism by conservative Senator Pat McCarran:
He had been fired by the George W. Bush White House because he would not rush an indictment against a democratic politician to make the newspapers before the election that year thus being “loyal” to the party and administration.
Snowden, was a contract worker for Booz Allan assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA). He felt that some of the NSA activities were illegal and unethical and tried to complain to NSA officials who rebuffed him. Despite the fact that he had signed an agreement not to do so, he copied many critical, classified documents that exposed much of the NSA activities that the NSA officials had denied existed—including lying under oath to the Senate. He then made many of them public, violating his oath, breaking the law, and opening up an entire area of government spying which most Americans knew nothing about and about which senior government officials had lied under oath to Congress. They of course wanted to prosecute Snowden who had told the truth, while they had lied. For many Americans, this became a moral and ethical conundrum.
Lee although born in England was one of the most ardent of the patriots fighiting the British. This oath was even considered extreme at the time. He was considered a super hawk by Washington and others. He became the Senior Major General and if anything had happened to Washington he would have command. He was an extremist who thought himself far more militarily qualified than Washington. See {59589} and {55885} for two of his slights against Washington.
Thomas Andrews Drake (born 1957) is a former senior executive of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, and a whistleblower. In 2010, the government alleged that Drake mishandled documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. Drake's defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project. He is the 2011 recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award.
