Feinstein and Rogers Blame Boris and Natasha - HuffPo

Feinstein and Rogers Blame Boris and Natasha
Bea Edwards - HuffPo
Posted: 01/22/2014 9:33 am

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On Sunday, January 19, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Ca.) and Representative Mike Rogers (R-Mi.) appeared on Meet the Press to announce their entirely speculative insinuation that Edward Snowden -- the contractor who disclosed the National Security Agency's (NSA) wholesale collection of Americans' digital information -- had help from the Russians (note: the segment aired on the web is sponsored by multibillion-dollar Defense Department contractor Boeing).

Also on Sunday, the New York Times published "Russians: Still the Go-To Bad Guys." The article, by Steven Kurutz, critiques the movie Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, which opened at multiple theaters last week. Jack Ryan revives the eponymous Tom Clancy hero who uncovers a financial terrorist plot hatched by a drug-addicted Russian sadist with advanced computer skills and peculiar tastes in interior design. The Russian, together with his sinister heavily-accented cronies, intends to crash the US economy.

On Monday, Martin Luther King, Jr. day was unseasonably warm in Washington, D.C. A solemn wreath-laying at his new memorial belied the fact that the FBI tried for years to tie him to Soviet Communists, illegally tapping his phone and tracking his movements with the blessing of the US Attorney General. In 2014, we have occasion to recall this in some detail as it was only a few months ago that those responsible for the 1971 break-in at the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania came forward. Among the documents they gave the press was the one that ultimately led to the exposure of COINTELPRO and the slander designed to portray Dr. King as a dupe of the Russians.

Never mind. Dr. King was not a Communist sympathizer. Nor is Mr. Snowden a Russian defector. Still the accusation carries a toxic charge. For those of us raised in America during the Cold War, the Russians are a terrifying people. We fear and loathe them. We grew up with the incessant warning: "The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming." We believed that they were about to incinerate us and the rest of the world at any moment for no reason whatsoever.

But guess what? The Russians never came. Instead their ramshackle Union of Soviet Socialist Republics fell apart 25 years ago. Without a shot fired, the empire disintegrated in 1989.

Feinstein and Rogers must have missed that bit of news. This is unnerving because they both hold responsible posts in government. They are high-placed elected officials in the legislature of the United States and they chair committees with responsibility for oversight of the NSA. Of course, as we now know they both failed utterly in this job. Nonetheless, they are currently wondering whether the Russians were behind the exposure of NSA dragnet domestic surveillance that made them -- Feinstein and Rogers -- look like useless political hacks.

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More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bea-edwards/feinstein--rogers-blame-b_b_4644100.html