Edward Snowden is “Heroic” Says David Stockman (Reagan Director of White House Budget Office)

Yahoo Finance ^ | 3 hours ago | By Bernice Napach

[drewh]

David Stockman is no stranger to what he calls the U.S. military-industrial-security complex. He tried to cut--not just trim--the defense budget during his tenure as director of the White House Budget Office under President Reagan but met stiff resistance from the White House as well as the defense establishment. Now, following revelations about the NSA’s expansive surveillance program of phone calls and emails, Stockman says the U.S. “military-industrial-security complex is a clear and present danger.”

He tells Aaron Task in the accompanying video that Edward Snowden, the former CIA contractor who disclosed the NSA surveillance program, is “heroic” and “has done a great service to alert everybody in this country about the absurd lengths to which all of this has gone, to the degree to which the Constitution itself is imperiled.” Stockman says he was not aware of the NSA surveillance program, which he sees as an extremely overzealous response to actual security risks. “In one recent month 93 billion communications were surveilled or looked at in some form or another,” says Stockman. “I think there are a couple of hundred jihadists in the world of maybe a couple of thousand at most.”

"The Patriot Act needs to be repealed. The national security apparatus needs to be dramatically shrunk. We need to get back to the idea that if you’re going to interfere in private communications you need a warrant with specific reasons." Many in Washington like Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) defend the NSA program. Coats writes in today's Wall Street Journal op-ed that 9/11 may well have been prevented if the NSA program existed then. But Stockman says, “If we had a dictatorship… [or] a police state maybe you could have prevented a lot of things from happening, but that’s not what you do in a democracy.”

[SierraWasp]

David Stockman is so generally full of crappola that his eyes are brown!!!

Just because he worked for Reagan does NOT mean he was ever a righteous Reagan conservative!!!

Personally, I have never wished to honor anyone who tries to take the law into their own hands.

However, I am personally aware of too many situations in government where the corruption is so bad and the courage to fight it is so weak that I can hardly blame any individual who tries to shine the searchlight on the ratbastards that scurry when that light beam hits them!!!

Sometimes the violation of the public trust just gets outrageously rampant.

[Christie at the beach]

Everyone is entitled to their opinion of Snowden.

The US government will be set out to destroy him for ratting their corruption/illegality out of not upholding the 4th Amendment. They made new laws to protect the Patriot Act though does not mean those laws are constitutionally strong and right.

[gaijin]

I’m a total jingoist, but you know what? The man is RIGHT.

Our budget is too big, and we’re fighting in many places where we aren’t appreciated, in conflicts we don’t understand.

The Framers wouldn’t want this.

Some of the people here reflexively back ANYTHING with a uniform and short haircut, and they say anyone who isn’t like that is a hippy.

[Jewbacca]

I view him a bit like a rat who turns State’s evidence against the Mob.

Yes, he’s done a good thing, very helpful to society. In particular, I have no doubt Obama used the NSA to spy on political enemies and blackmail political enemies.

But he’s still a rat.

[ozdragon]

Stockman went off the rails many years ago

[SC_Pete]

One of Reagan’s biggest mistakes ever made was not firing this guy when he failed to follow the President’s lead on the budget.

[SierraWasp]

I agree, but his non-mistakes so drastically out weighed his mistakes that it made his mistakes seem insignificant by comparison. That’s about the best any mortal can hope for in this vail of tears!!!

[SC_Pete]

No doubt.