Pete Seeger Quotes
I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this. I would be very glad to tell you my life if you want to hear of it.
United States, Congress, House, Committee on Un-American Activities. Investigation of Communist Activities, New York Area—Part 7. Government Printing Office, 1955, p. 2284.
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.
While this was a strong central political principle for Reagan, a substantial part of his political party strongly advocated the against the government interjecting itself into people’s lives.
In 2006, in the midst of the War on Terror, it was revealed that President George W. Bush had approved a electronic surveillance program that was on the surface contrary to the FISA laws prohibiting such government activity. The President claimed that the necessities of the war required such a deviation. A national debate ensued as to whether the President was always required to follow laws as passed or did he have “inherent powers” under the Constitution to do whatever he thought necessary to fight a war.
Peter Seeger was an American folk singer and social activist.
