Snowden, Spies, and ‘Network’

June 18th, 2013

Peter Nolan

by
Gary North
Tea Party Economist

Recently
by Gary North: How
Snowden Did an End Run Around the NSA and the Obama Administration

“I
want Snowden here by noon. Have Lester cover the CIA hearings. And
give the White House to Doris.”

This bit of
dialogue in Network,
the black comedy written by Paddy Chayefsky, appears about 9 minutes
and 45 seconds into the movie. This introduces us to the working
day of a news team of a television network.

Chayefsky
was the greatest television screenwriter in the golden
age of television. With Network, he became the
greatest screenwriter in anti-television history. There
has never been anything like it in terms of dialogue.
The movie won four Oscars: best original screenplay,
best actor, best actress, and best supporting actress
for the shortest scene that ever won an Oscar. It should
also have won best supporting actor: Ned
Beatty’s “Mr. Beale” speech, which
I regard as the greatest dialog scene in the history
of the movies. Beatty got a nomination for the scene.

But
in terms of prophetic accuracy, nothing matches this:
“I want Snowden here by noon. Have Lester cover
the CIA hearings. And give the White House to Doris.”

The
movie was about the audience ratings for a network news
department, and what a news department was willing to
do to get higher ratings. The Obama White House now
faces the possibility that by extraditing Edward Snowden
and putting him on trial for espionage, it will create
a network news sensation: a media circus that will keep
this story in front of the public for months. The White
House does not want that. But America needs it.

Snowden keeps
upping the ante.

The
Guardian newspaper says the British eavesdropping
agency GCHQ repeatedly hacked into foreign diplomats’
phones and emails when the U.K. hosted international
conferences, even going so far as to set up a bugged
Internet cafe in an effort to get an edge in high-stakes
negotiations.

The
report the latest in a series of revelations
which have ignited a worldwide debate over the scope
of Western intelligence gathering came just
hours before Britain was due to open the G8 summit
Monday, a meeting of the seven biggest economies plus
Russia, in Northern Ireland. The allegation that the
United Kingdom has previously used its position as
host to spy on its allies and other attendees could
make for awkward conversation as the delegates arrive
for talks.

“The
diplomatic fallout from this could be considerable,”
said British academic Richard J. Aldrich, whose book
GCHQ charts the agency’s history.

GCHQ
declined to comment on the report.

“No
comment” is the preferred agency response these
days to each new revelation by Snowden. The story is
here.
Matt Drudge made it his lead story early on June 17:
“Snowstorm.”

Indeed,
it is exactly that. Snowden has let the cat out of the
bag. He is not threatening America’s security,
contrary to Attorney General Holder, who refused
to name him. But he is surely threatening the White
House’s security from public scrutiny.

The
White House is waiting for the Snowden story to die
down. But Snowden keeps letting more cats out of bags.
He is keeping the surveillance community in the spotlight.
Now he has broadened it to Great Britain.

The
United States government has yet to demand that Hong
Kong extradite him. To demand his extradition, the government
must accuse him of a crime. It must then try him. If
it tries him, an international media feeding frenzy
will begin. How much does Snowden know? No one in high
places knows. He knows a lot more than any other whistleblower
on the spy network who has gone public before.

He
has already become a worldwide phenomenon. The government
cannot get this toothpaste back into the tube. But if
it extradites him, it will have to try him. It is sure
to get a lot more toothpaste out of the tube.

Edward
Snowden is the equivalent of John Dean. The more he
talks, the worse it gets for the White House.

The
story will die down eventually, but the White House
does not know when. It is to the advantage of the White
House that it die down soon. But Snowden is keeping
it alive with new revelations. Now he is getting the
story to new audiences.

He
is causing great embarrassment to the spies. He is showing that
domestic populations are the main target, not foreign terrorists.
He is showing that the agencies are unleashing their digital tracking
technologies on their own populations, or — in the case of
Great Britain — the international diplomatic services. This
will pit agencies against agencies.

So
far, the government has refused to ask for his extradition.
The White House is trapped: he will not shut up. But
giving him new opportunities to tell more of his story
to the public is a real threat to the government’s
credibility.

How
much toothpaste is still in the tube?

Continue
Reading on news.nationalpost.com

June
18, 2013

Gary
North [send him mail]
is the author of Mises
on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com.
He is also the author of a free 31-volume series, An
Economic Commentary on the Bible.