Thomas Drake: '9/11 Became a Profit Center' for the NSA April 11, 2012

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2012/04/04/National_Security_Secrecy_and_Surveillance

Thomas Drake, a former National Security Agency senior officer who blew the whistle on the NSA "Trailblazer" surveillance program, talks about NSA's commitment to national security profit-making after 9/11. Stating that "9/11 became a profit center", Drake warns that the NSA has become a "jobs program", in line with the military industrial complex.

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The scale of government secrecy and surveillance has surpassed all previous boundaries—especially in the national security arena, where the budgets, size and scope of intelligence agencies have ballooned since 9/11. Unprecedented secrecy is largely evading traditional oversight mechanisms, leaving policy makers, the media, and the public in the dark.

What impact are secret governmental operations having on our democratic processes, and are the decisions that are being made behind closed doors helping or harming our national security? What tools are available to penetrate this secrecy, foster a new culture of government accountability, and impose enforceable constraints on intrusive surveillance of innocent Americans?

Thomas Andrews Drake is a former senior official of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, computer software expert, linguist, management and leadership specialist, and whistleblower. In 2010 the government alleged that he 'mishandled' documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. His defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project. He is the 2011 recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award.