Accountability

                                 “ ACCOUNTABILITY”



The world is aflutter over “bad boy” Edward Snowden.

I am not.

Snowden is a bit player in what should be a standing room only trial for anyone charged with leading the information gathering required for the defense of this nation.

The greatest nation on earth spends the largest sum of money on earth to uncover information designed to protect the citizenry.  Just to be certain you are following my argument: we are talking billions of dollars a year.

In carrying out this task there are hundreds of thousands of employees at home and abroad, known and unknown, from receptionists to cloak-and-dagger agents.

They work in buildings with “state of the art” security systems. They talk in code. They carry multiple passports and speak many languages. They are known to have the most sophisticated weapons with new inventions being added to their inventory daily.

The President of the United States makes crucial decisions based on the information provided to him by these people.

The decisions made by the President of the United States affects people all over the world.

Back to Snowden.

He is a junior player for a firm our government contracted to help them do  business. I emphasize: even with the billions of dollars and hundreds of thousand employees our government is still contracting with management consulting firms to help them get the job done.

The outside consultants hire people like Edward Snowden.

It is unlikely he was subjected to any of the scrutiny we would give to someone actually applying to work at the NSA or the CIA. Yet we gave him the keys not only to the front door of our security apparatus but also to the safe where we keep the most sensitive stuff.

Evidently he was not only pretty good using the keys we gave him but also very effective at stuffing one or more suitcases with all the paper and discs he could carry right out into the street in front of the building.

He was able to purchase tickets and haul our national secrets from the homeland to Hong Kong.

Let us remember you and I cannot get access to a commercial airliner if we happen to have one bottle of water on our person. Good old Ed carried the secrets of the free world right over to the center of Communism.

So lets just forget about Ed.

We need to put on our big boy pants and get really angry with our government. While the New York Times and other papers launch a campaign to provide Ed with a first class ticket home and a ticker tape parade down Broadway, we should be looking for bigger game.

Last time I looked the same guy was running the CIA who was running it before Snowden got his 15 minutes of fame. Ditto the guy at the NSA. Ditto the guy at the FBI. Ditto the Senators who chair committees charged with supervising intelligence. Ditto the Congressmen.

 The responsibility for this embarrassing international mess rests way above the pay grade for a clerk like Snowden.

I am angry that neither the President nor the Congress has seen fit to “deep six” or at least “drop kick” a few of these highly paid and poorly performing spy agency heads.

And I have a secret suspicion that the same consulting firm that gave the keys to the kingdom to Edward Snowden is still getting government checks while they continue to help us out.

On this matter, as on so many other matters lately, we seem unwilling or unable to hold anyone accountable for their performance.