Reign of Terror

by Spencer Ackerman

  “incited him to violence”: Bruce Bawer, “Inside the Mind of the Oslo Murderer,” Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2011. Adam Serwer, “In Response to Norway Attacks, Right-Wing Bloggers Suddenly Demand Nuance,” Washington Post, July 25, 2011. Serwer, “Professional Islamophobe Angry the FBI Discontinued Anti-Muslim Training,” Mother Jones, September 19, 2011. Shane, “Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.”

  Chapter Six: The Left vs. Obama’s War on Terror

  largest single-day protest: Phyllis Bennis, “February 15, 2003: The Day the World Said No to War,” Institute for Policy Studies, February 15, 2013.

  seminal 2010 filibuster: Sen. Bernie Sanders statement, “Sanders Votes against PATRIOT Act Extension,” May 26, 2011, available at www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/sanders-votes-against-patriot-act-extension. Sen. Bernie Sanders, “Full Congressional Record Transcript of Sanders’ Filibuster: ‘The Economy,’ ” December 10, 2010, available at www.c-span.org/video/?297021-5/senator-sanders-filibuster.

  The United Nations called: Mike Allen and Josh Gerstein, “Crowley Resigns over WikiLeaks Flap,” Politico, March 13, 2011. Ed Pilkington, “Bradley Manning’s Treatment Was Cruel and Inhuman, UN Torture Chief Rules,” Guardian, March 12, 2012.

  Ilyse Hogue of MoveOn: James Dao, “American Antiwar Movement Plans an Autumn Campaign against Policies on Afghanistan,” New York Times, August 29, 2009.

  same argument as its predecessor: John Schwartz, “Obama Backs Off a Reversal on Secrets,” New York Times, February 9, 2009. Marc Ambinder, “Obama DoJ Asserts ‘State Secrets’: ACLU Blasts Obama,” The Atlantic, February 9, 2009.

  Disclosure and accountability: Ian Williams, “Seeking the Truth about the Bush Years,” Guardian, March 5, 2009. Caroline Fredrickson, “Reconciling Senator Leahy’s Independent Commission Proposal,” ACLU, February 10, 2009.

  “You only want to”: Daniel Klaidman, “Independent’s Day,” Newsweek, July 20, 2009. Wil S. Hylton, “Hope. Change. Reality,” GQ, November 11, 2010.

  ACLU’s executive director: Unbylined, “Top Prosecutor Orders Probe into Interrogations; Obama Shifts Onus,” CNN, August 24, 2009.

  agendas of Bush and Obama: Center for Constitutional Rights statement, “Human Rights Group Denounces End of Torture Investigation,” press release, August 30, 2012, available at https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/human-rights-group-denounces-end-torture-investigation.

  meeting with civil libertarians: David Axelrod, Believer: My 40 Years in Politics (New York: Penguin, 2016), 400.

  “war porn,” she later called them: Nick Davis and David Leigh, “Afghanistan War Logs: Massive Leak of Secret Files Exposes Truth of Occupation,” Guardian, July 25, 2010. Nick Davies, Jonathan Steele, and David Leigh, “Iraq War Logs: Secret Files Show How U.S. Ignored Torture,” Guardian, October 22, 2010.

  chose the handle “Mendax”: Julian Assange, “I Am—Like All Hackers—a Little Bit Autistic,” Independent, September 22, 2011.

  army’s Criminal Investigation Division: Kim Zetter and Kevin Poulsen, “U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in WikiLeaks Video Probe,” Wired, June 6, 2010.

  insightful counterinsurgency critic: “The War Logs: Reaction to Disclosure of Military Documents on Afghan War,” New York Times, July 25, 2010, atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/the-war-logs, accessed February 26, 2020.

  Torture Euphemism Generator: Rob Beschizza, “The New York Times Torture Euphemism Generator!” BoingBoing, October 22, 2010. Danny Schechter, “Media War: WikiLeaks vs. the Pentagon,” Al Jazeera, October 26, 2010.

  fully redact names: Matthew Weaver, “Afghanistan War Logs: WikiLeaks Urged to Remove Thousands of Names,” Guardian, August 10, 2010.

  German tech activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg: Kim Zetter and Kevin Poulsen, “Unpublished Iraq War Logs Trigger Internal WikiLeaks Revolt,” Wired, September 27, 2010. Mark Hosenball, “Swedish Sex Probes of WikiLeaks Founder May Be Closed This Week,” Newsweek, August 23, 2010. Kim Zetter, “WikiLeaks Defector Slams Assange in Tell-All Book,” Wired, February 10, 2011.

  “the blood of some young soldier”: Spencer Ackerman, “Top U.S. Officer: WikiLeaks Might Have ‘Blood on Its Hands,’ ” Wired, July 29, 2010.

  State Department’s Harold Koh: Josh Rogin, “State Department Refuses to Negotiate with WikiLeaks,” Foreign Policy, November 28, 2010.

  Joe Biden called Assange: Ewen MacAskill, “Julian Assange Like a Hi-Tech Terrorist, Says Joe Biden,” Guardian, December 19, 2010.

  The Pentagon expanded: Spencer Ackerman, “DARPA’s Star Hacker Looks to WikiLeak-Proof the Pentagon,” Wired, August 31, 2010. Michael O’Brien, “Republican Wants WikiLeaks Labeled as Terrorist Group,” The Hill, November 29, 2010.

  The pretext for this cruelty: Chelsea Manning, “The Years Since I Was Jailed for Releasing the ‘War Diaries’ Have Been a Roller Coaster,” Guardian, May 27, 2015. Ed Pilkington, “Bradley Manning: Stripping Me of All My Clothing Is Without Justification,” Guardian, March 11, 2011. Charlie Savage, “WikiLeaks Case Lawyer Chides Marine Jailers on Manning’s Treatment,” New York Times, December 11, 2012.

  Philippa Thomas, a BBC journalist: Philippa Thomas, “The State Department Spokesman and the Prisoner in the Brig,” Philippa Thomas Online, March 10, 2011, philippathomas.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/the-state-department-spokesman-and-the-prisoner-in-the-brig, accessed February 29, 2020.

  Obama lectured the protesters: Scott Shane, “Obama Defends Detention Conditions for Soldier Accused in WikiLeaks Case,” New York Times, March 11, 2011. Carrie Budoff Brown, “Obama Gets a Singing Rebuke,” Politico, April 21, 2011. MJ Lee and Abby Phillip, “Obama Says Manning ‘Broke the Law,’ ” Politico, April 22, 2011.

  Bill O’Reilly called Manning: Bill O’Reilly, “There Are Traitors in America,” Fox News, November 29, 2010.

  UN special rapporteur: Jason Leopold, “Secret Report Contradicts U.S. Position on Chelsea Manning Leaks,” BuzzFeed, June 20, 2017. Ed Pilkington, “Bradley Manning’s Treatment Was Cruel and Inhuman, U.N. Torture Chief Rules,” Guardian, March 12, 2012. Ed Pilkington, “Bradley Manning Leak Did Not Result in Deaths by Enemy Forces, Court Hears,” Guardian, July 31, 2013.

  “these dynamics were artificial”: Alexa O’Brien, “Transcript: US v Pfc. Manning, Pfc. Manning’s Statement for the Providence Inquiry, 2/28/13,” alexaobrien.com/archives/985, accessed February 24, 2020. Spencer Ackerman, “Bradley Manning Takes ‘Full Responsibility’ for Giving WikiLeaks Huge Government Data Trove,” Wired, February 28, 2013. In her chats with Adrian Lamo in May 2010, Manning refers to her WikiLeaks interlocutor as “Assange.” Kim Zetter and Kevin Poulsen, “ ‘I Can’t Believe What I’m Confessing to You’: The WikiLeaks Chats,” Wired, June 10, 2010.

  data empires of these Silicon Valley: Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, “NSA PRISM Program Taps into User Data of Apple, Google and Others,” Guardian, June 7, 2013. Documents released by Edward Snowden, including an April 2013 overview of PRISM, note that PRISM actually began before the 2008 law, under its 2007 predecessor, the “Protect America Act.” Conspicuous in the PRISM document is a lack of reference to Amazon.

  the codename MUSCULAR: Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani, “NSA Infiltrates Links to Yahoo, Google Data Centers Worldwide, Snowden Documents Say,” Washington Post, October 30, 2013.

  the lawlessness of UPSTREAM: Spencer Ackerman, “NSA Illegally Collected Thousands of Emails Before FISA Court Halted Program,” Guardian, August 21, 2013. Electronic Frontier Foundation, “Jewel v. NSA” overview, available at www.eff.org/cases/jewel, accessed March 3, 2020. Trevor Aaronson, “NSA Secretly Helped Convict Defendants in U.S. Courts, Classified Documents Reveal,” The Intercept, November 30, 2017. John J. Bates, October 3, 2011, opinion, www.dni.gov/files/documents/0716/October-2011-Bates-Opinion-and%20Order-20140716.pdf, accessed March 3, 2020. Bates wrote that “the sheer volume of transactions acquired by NSA through it
s upstream collection is such that any meaningful review of the entire body of the transactions is not feasible,” 31 of the opinion. See also Charlie Savage, “Don’t Cite the Prism v. Upstream Collection Numbers from Judge Bates’ 2011 FISC Opinion Anymore,” September 17, 2017, charliesavage.com/?p=1714. Savage provides a thorough caveating of statistics cited by Bates that seem to quantify the 702 surveillance but end up complicating it.

  “the greatest regret of my life”: Edward Snowden, Permanent Record (New York: Metropolitan, 2019), 69–101, 2.

  Dixie Cups through chain-link fences: Snowden, Permanent Record, 80.

  indexing tool called Boundless Informant: Boundless Informant is less famous than these other programs, but it catalogs the country of origin of NSA’s intercepts. Its existence complicates the stated position of the NSA that estimating how many Americans have their surveillance caught in its dragnets is impossible. However, just because an intercept emerges from America does not make it American, due to the America-centric architecture of the internet. Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, “Boundless Informant: The NSA’s Secret Tool to Track Global Surveillance Data,” Guardian, June 11, 2013.

  His greatest fear: Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, and Laura Poitras, “Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations,” Guardian, June 11, 2013. The original version of the article appeared Sunday, June 9, 2013. Snowden’s explanation for the Verax handle is on 251 of Permanent Record.

  an “act of treason”: Jeremy Herb and Justin Sink, “Sen. Feinstein Calls Snowden’s NSA Leaks an ‘Act of Treason,’ ” The Hill, June 10, 2013.

  Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner: Spencer Ackerman, “NSA Surveillance: Narrow Defeat for Amendment to Restrict Data Collection,” Guardian, July 25, 2013.

  retained NSA’s mass surveillance: Wholesale domestic internet metadata collection, such as email records and web search histories, was the exception. Clapper’s spokesman said in 2013 the program was “discontinued in 2011 for operational and resource reasons.” Glenn Greenwald and Spencer Ackerman, “NSA Collected U.S. Email Records in Bulk for Two Years under Obama,” Guardian, June 27, 2013. It was later disclosed that the NSA replicated much of the same collection through targeting internet infrastructure overseas “with less oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.” Charlie Savage, “File Says NSA Found Way to Replace Email Program,” New York Times, November 19, 2015. Author interview with Ben Rhodes, July 13, 2020.

  “no support for the agency”: Washington Post staff, “TRANSCRIPT: President Obama’s August 9, 2013, News Conference at the White House,” August 9, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/politics/transcript-president-obamas-august-9-2013-news-conference-at-the-white-house/2013/08/09/5a6c21e8-011c-11e3-9a3e-916de805f65d_story.html, accessed March 2, 2020. Shane Harris, “NSA Veterans: The White House Is Hanging Us Out to Dry,” Foreign Policy, October 11, 2013.

  the “least untruthful” answer: Spencer Ackerman, “Clapper: I Gave ‘Erroneous’ Answer Because I Forgot about Patriot Act,” Guardian, July 2, 2013.

  Clapper denounced Snowden’s revelations: Harris, “NSA Veterans: The White House Is Hanging Us Out to Dry.”

  “human relations database”: A. J. Vicens, “Stopping the ‘Ever-Expanding Surveillance State,’ ” Mother Jones, July 31, 2013.

  prevented any terrorism: Spencer Ackerman, “NSA Chief Claims ‘Focused’ Surveillance Disrupted More Than 50 Terror Plots,” Guardian, June 19, 2013. Ars staff, “NSA Director Addresses Black Hat, Says There Have Been ‘Zero Abuses’ of Data,” Ars Technica, July 31, 2013.

  searched through them: Usually this querying occurs by algorithm, rather than a person performing the search.

  Bates secretly found: Bates, October 3, 2011, 33 of opinion. See Ackerman, “NSA Illegally Collected Thousands of Emails.”

  “the whole haystack”: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing, “Potential Changes to Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA),” October 29, 2013. Available at www.hsdl.org/?view&did=747348.

  The general was left to insist: Janus Kopfstein, “NSA Director Heckled as He Pleads with Hackers to Put ‘Facts on the Table,’ ” The Verge, July 31, 2013.

  “Eddie Snowden supporters”: Chuck Hagel, “Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel Delivers Remarks at Retirement Ceremony for General Keith Alexander,” Fort George Meade, Maryland, March 28, 2014. Transcript available at www.defense.gov/observe/photo-gallery/igphoto/2001126886.

  one Snowden had been catastrophic: Spencer Ackerman, “DARPA’s Star Hacker Looks to WikiLeak-Proof Pentagon,” Wired, August 31, 2010.

  Snowden’s discomfort with Assange: In Permanent Record, 301–2, Snowden calls Assange “vain, moody and even bullying,” as well as referencing “a sharp disagreement just a month after our first, text-based conversation” that caused him to cease contact with Assange. He writes, “I never was, and never would be, a source” for WikiLeaks.

  Snowden was a “paranoid libertarian”: Sean Wilentz, “Would You Feel Differently about Snowden, Greenwald and Assange If You Knew What They Really Thought?” The New Republic, January 19, 2014.

  “I don’t get into making comments”: Vicens, “Stopping the ‘Ever-Expanding Surveillance State.’ ”

  An exception was Bernie Sanders: Jim Sciutto, Brian Todd, Barbara Starr, and Wolf Blitzer, “Interview with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders,” The Situation Room, CNN, January 6, 2014.

  ban on the bulk collection: Spencer Ackerman, “NSA Admits It Improperly Collected a Huge Amount of Americans’ Call Records,” Daily Beast, June 29, 2018.

  tech giants disclaimed responsibility: Casey Newton, “Mark Zuckerberg on NSA Spying: ‘The Government Blew It,’ ” The Verge, September 11, 2013. Steven Levy, “How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet,” Wired, January 17, 2014.

  lead Senate torture investigator: Unless otherwise noted, the primary sources for this section, including all quotations, come from “The Insider,” a three-part series I reported for The Guardian in 2016 after extensive interviews with Jones. Spencer Ackerman, “Crossing the Bridge: Inside the Fight to Reveal the CIA’s Torture Secrets,” September 9, 2016. Ackerman, “ ‘A Constitutional Crisis’: The CIA Turns on the Senate,” September 10, 2016. Ackerman, “No Looking Back: The CIA Torture Report’s Aftermath,” September 11, 2016.

  “The Public Roll-Out”: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program” (“The Torture Report”), December 9, 2014, 378, endnote 2137. Available at www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/CRPT-113srpt288.pdf.

  a book called Rebuttal: Ewen MacAskill, “Former CIA Leaders Go on Offensive to Deny Claim Torture Was Ineffective,” Guardian, December 10, 2014.

  Brennan’s clash with the Senate: Greg Miller and Julie Tate, “CIA Director Faces a Quandary over Clandestine Service Appointment,” Washington Post, March 26, 2013. John Hudson, “CIA’s New Clandestine Service Chief Remains Undercover,” Foreign Policy, May 7, 2013.

  “We’re always the ones left”: Spencer Ackerman, “No Looking Back: The CIA Torture Report’s Aftermath,” Guardian, September 11, 2016.

  “lack of violence”: Spencer Ackerman, “ ’A Constitutional Crisis’: The CIA Turns on The Senate,” Guardian, September 10, 2016.

  antiwar perspectives and values: The author would like to thank Daniel Denvir for sharpening his thinking on this point.

  BLM had been born: Jelani Cobb, “Some Answers, More Questions in Ferguson,” The New Yorker, August 15, 2014. Ryan Devereaux, “A Complete Guide to the Shooting of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson,” The Intercept, November 20, 2014. Unbylined, “Ferguson Cop Darren Wilson Not Indicted in Shooting of Michael Brown,” NBC News, November 24, 2014. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, March 4, 2015, 10: “City, police, and court officials for years ha
ve worked in concert to maximize revenue at every stage of the enforcement process, beginning with how fines and fine enforcement processes are established.” Jelani Cobb, “The Matter of Black Lives,” The New Yorker, March 7, 2016.

  police would claim there were gunshots: Two Ferguson police officers were shot, but not until the following year. Unbylined, “Ferguson Police Shot During Protest,” BBC, March 12, 2015.

  flash-bang grenades: Robert Patrick and Joel Currier, “Ferguson Highlights Police Use of Military Gear and Tactics,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 15, 2014. Yasmine Hafiz, “Ferguson Police Reportedly Shot Pastor Renita Lamkin with Rubber Bullet During Protest,” HuffPost, August 14, 2014. Amnesty International, “On the Streets of America: Human Rights Abuses in Ferguson,” October 23, 2014. Mark Berman, “Holder Criticizes Police Response in Ferguson, Says He Is ‘Deeply Concerned’ about Use of Military Equipment,” Washington Post, August 14, 2014. Mark Berman and Wesley Lowery, “Justice Dept. Criticizes Police Response to Ferguson Protests,” Washington Post, June 30, 2015.

  “dangers of militarizing the police”: Amnesty International, “On the Streets of America.” Luke Harding, Patrick Kingsley, and Shaun Walker, “From Cairo to Moscow: How the World Reacted to Ferguson,” Guardian, November 25, 2014. Author’s interview with Mandy Simon, the author’s wife, August 23–24, 2020.

  Journalist Radley Balko: Radley Balko, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013), 301.

  Thanks to a 2007 law: Spencer Ackerman, “US Police Given Billions from Homeland Security for ‘Tactical’ Equipment,” Guardian, August 20, 2014. Jon Swaine, Spencer Ackerman, and Sabrina Siddiqui, “Ferguson Forced to Return Humvees as US Military Gear Still Flows to Local Police,” Guardian, August 11, 2015.

  three-day-long instruction: Mark Bell, “Three-Day Anti-Terror Training Scrutinized,” Murfreesboro Daily News Journal, February 15, 2012. Mark Bell, “SEG President Defends Anti-Terror Law Training,” Murfreesboro Daily News Journal, February 16, 2012.