NYT: Obama admin 'has lost all credibility'
The New York Times editorial board responded to revelations about the NSA's gathering of Americans' phone records with a scathing editorial on Thursday afternoon condemning the Obama administration for abusing the power of the executive branch.
'Within hours of the disclosure... the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights,' the Times editorial read.
'Those reassurances have never been persuasive - whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency's phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism - especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability,' it contineud. 'The administration has now lost all credibility. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.'
The editorial comes one day after The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald reported that the NSA has been 'collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.' On Thursday morning, a White House official sought to defend the order on the grounds that the metadata 'does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber.'
The Times editorial board condemned this 'lame' excuse, as well as the 'absurd' defense offered by Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, who said authorities needed the information in case someone becomes a terrorist in the future.
The Times editorial set off a shockwave on Twitter and other social media outlets Thursday. The New York Times editorial page is the most influential editorial page in the country and has historically supported President Obama's policies.
No comments:
Post a Comment