Former U.S. Secret Police Boss Blames Edward Snowden for Paris Massacre

R. James Woolsey, Jr., CIA director for the first two years of Bill Clinton's reign, and an arch-reactionary and career imperialist apparatchik, says that "Snowden has blood on his hands." These were his last words yesterday (Sunday) afternoon on the U.S. government radio propaganda network "news" program "All [sic] Things Considered." NPR brought him on to tell us what to think about the Paris rampage in Paris by the reputed Islamic State terrorists on Friday November 13th. The NPR female co-host of the program (Audie N. Cornish) conducting the interview didn't ask for an explanation of this preposterous, demagogic libel, much less take issue with it.

NPR, like the corporate media, relentlessly dredges up various reactionaries to indoctrinate the public in how to view the world. 

Woolsey, born in the extremely rightwing state of Oklahoma, was identified as the chair of something called the "Leadership Council" at the hard-rightwing pressure group/propaganda mill "Center For the Defense of Democracies," which specializes in Islam-bashing these days.

In similar if more oblique and subtle vein, the boss of the New York City Police Department, a department with a global reach, William Bratton, expressed great interest in how the terrorists communicated and why their communications weren't intercepted. This is part of an ongoing campaign by U.S. and UK police chiefs and secret police bosses to attack the idea that there should be any protection of privacy in communications or any encryption of the people's communications. 

Since the terrorists were already known to the French secret police, a better line of inquiry would be why are they incompetent to foil such attacks. Another question is whether the French secret police and police deliberately allowed the attack to proceed. Police did not arrive at the rock concert where most of the deaths (80 of 129, with hundreds more wounded) occured, for 45 minutes. The targets were all in a neighborhood of young, liberal-minded people. So the victims were predominantly people that reactionary police loathe to begin with. Plus, this shakes the anti-war leanings of such people. So the reactionary power establishment wins two ways.

R. James Woolsey, Jr.,nasty apparatchik.