Developing: Top NSA and DOJ Officials Have Fled the U.S. - Obama Admin. Files Espionage Charges
by David Harris Gershon Jul 17, 2013 5:26pm PDT
In
a stunning development, Deputy Director of the NSA, John Inglis, along with
Assistant Attorney General, James Cole, have fled the United States after their
participation in a contentious
congressional meeting on Capitol Hill.
In
that meeting, both Inglis and Cole revealed that the depth of NSA spying far
surpassed anything that whistleblower Edward Snowden has made public to
date. The unauthorized leaks to Congress by Inglis and Cole, which exposed more
about NSA spying than anything Snowden has revealed, shook congressional
leaders to their core.
The National Security Agency revealed to an angry
congressional panel on Wednesday that its analysis of phone records and online
behavior goes exponentially beyond what it had previously disclosed.
[...]
John
C Inglis, the deputy director of the surveillance agency, told a member of the
House judiciary committee that NSA analysts can perform "a second or third
hop query" through its collections of telephone data and internet records
in order to find connections to terrorist organizations.
John Inglis
"Hops"
refers to a technical term indicating connections between people. A three-hop
query means that the NSA can look at data not only from a suspected terrorist,
but from everyone that suspect communicated with, and then from everyone those
people communicated with, and then from everyone all of those people
communicated with.
The Obama administration, blindsided by the leaks,
immediately announced that the two would be charged under The Espionage Act,
and declared them enemies of the state.
Eric
Holder, in a hastily convened press conference, admitted that the two had fled
the United States on private jets immediately after the hearing, and that their
whereabouts where unknown.
He was, however, confident
that the U.S. would bring them to justice.
“The national security of the United States has been damaged
by those leaks. The safety of the American people and safety of people in
allied nations is at risk."
James Cole
[...]
“I
am confident that the people who are responsible will be held accountable.”
Rumors are that the two senior intelligence officials have
fled to Venezuela, where like Snowden, it is anticipated they will seek asylum.
However, much speculation is swirling at this stage regarding their location
and fate.
While
President Obama, in a short session before reporters, said, "We won't be scrambling
any jets to catch these middle-aged leakers," diplomatic channels were
already furiously at work, trying to close off all international airspace.
Updates
on this story as details emerge will appear below the break.
Updates
(EST):
11:01
pm - It has been confirmed by multiple sources that Inglis and Cole have
fled to Hong Kong.
Despite
this revelation, mainstream media is fawning
over news that Cole's wife was once a hand model for Palmolive.
10:24
pm - CNN is reporting, per an anonymous government source, that Inglis and
Cole intentionally took their respective posts at the NSA and DOJ in order to
leak surveillance information to Congress.
"They
engaged in a decades-long, career-building venture just for today's leak,"
the source said.
9:57
pm - MSNBC pundit Melissa Harris-Perry has called for Inglis and Cole to
return to the States and face the consequences of their actions, apparently
already tired of talking about the two whistleblowers.
"So
come on home, John and James, so we could talk about, you know, something else,"
Harris-Perry said.
9:42
pm - As the world searches for two of the nation's top intelligence
officials, President
Obama referred to them as "hackers" in a brief media appearance,
attempting to recast the Deputy Director of the NSA and Assistant Attorney
General as basement-dwelling, Ramen-noodle-eating cyber thieves who were never
employed by the U.S. government or affiliated contractors.
9:16
pm - David Gregory has asked this evening whether congressional leaders,
who asked the questions that led to Inglis and Cole's whistle-blowing, should
be arrested.
"It
was just a question," Gregory Tweeted after coming under fire for
suggesting U.S. legislators be jailed for doing their jobs. "I was just
echoing what others were wondering."
9:03
pm - After rumours began swirling that Inglis and Cole were aboard a plane
with the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, several European
nations closed off their airspace and forced
Nazarbayev's twin-engine aircraft to land in a field in Lithuania.
"We
have not been this humiliated since that Jew Borat's movie!" screamed
Nazarbayev after Lithuanian officials announced Inglis and Cole were not aboard
the president's plane.
8:42
pm - Wikileaks has Tweeted that it has been in touch with Inglis and Cole,
though refused to reveal their location or whether or not the organization is
helping the two asylum seekers.
8:24
pm - A furious Venezuela has denied that intelligence officials are in the
country. "The airspace around Latin America is closed. Nobody can get in
or out!"
