[News] Drone Pilots have Bank Accounts and Credit Cards Frozen by Feds for Exposing US Murder

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Drone Pilots have Bank Accounts and Credit Cards Frozen by Feds for
  Exposing US Murder

By William N. Grigg 
<http://thefreethoughtproject.com/author/william-n-grigg/> on November 
25, 2015
*http://thefreethoughtproject.com/drone-pilots-bank-accounts-credit-cards-frozen-feds-exposing-murder/*

For having the courage to come forward and expose the drone program for 
the indiscriminate murder that it is, 4 vets are under attack from the 
government they once served.

The U.S. Government failed to deter them through threats of criminal 
prosecution 
<http://www.democracynow.org/2015/11/20/exclusive_air_force_whistleblowers_risk_prosecution>, 
and clumsy attempts to intimidate their families 
<http://www.newsweek.com/air-force-told-mother-drone-program-whistleblower-brandon-bryant-isis-after-385859>. 
Now four former Air Force drone operators-turned-whistleblowers have had 
their credit cards and bank accounts frozen 
<https://twitter.com/JesselynRadack/status/668253880271114240>, 
according to human rights attorney Jesselyn Radack.

    . at wikileaks <https://twitter.com/wikileaks> My #drone
    <https://twitter.com/hashtag/drone?src=hash> #whistleblowers
    <https://twitter.com/hashtag/whistleblowers?src=hash> went public
    this wk & now their #CreditCards
    <https://twitter.com/hashtag/CreditCards?src=hash> + #BankAccts
    <https://twitter.com/hashtag/BankAccts?src=hash> are #frozen
    <https://twitter.com/hashtag/frozen?src=hash>. Advice?
    pic.twitter.com/4wymwZgeZ9 <https://t.co/4wymwZgeZ9>

    — unR̶A̶D̶A̶C̶K̶ted (@JesselynRadack) November 22, 2015
    <https://twitter.com/JesselynRadack/status/668253880271114240>

“My drone operators went public this week and now their credit cards and 
bank accounts are frozen,” Radack lamented on her Twitter feed 
<https://twitter.com/JesselynRadack/status/668253880271114240>(the 
spelling of her post has been conventionalized). This was done despite 
the fact that none of them has been charged with a criminal offense – 
but this is a trivial formality in the increasingly Sovietesque American 
National Security State.

Michael Haas, Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland and Stephen Lewis, who 
served as drone operators in the US Air Force, have gone public with 
detailed accounts of the widespread corruption and institutionalized 
indifference to civilian casualties that characterize the program 
<https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/former-drone-operators-say-they-were-horrified-by-cruelty-of-assassination-program/>. 
Some of those disclosures were made in the recent documentary Drone; 
additional details have been provided in an open letter 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2515596-final-drone-letter.html> from 
the whistleblowers to President Obama, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, 
and CIA Director John Brennan.

“We are former Air Force service members,” the letter begins 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2515596-final-drone-letter.html>. 
We joined the Air Force to protect American lives and to protect our 
Constitution. We came to the realization that the innocent civilians we 
were killing only fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism 
and groups like ISIS, while also serving as a fundamental recruiting 
tool similar to Guantanamo Bay. This administration and its predecessors 
have built a drone program that is one of the most devastating driving 
forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world.”

Elsewhere the former drone operators have described 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/obama-drone-war-isis-recruitment-tool-air-force-whistleblowers> 
how their colleagues dismissed children as “fun-sized terrorists” and 
compared killing them to “cutting the grass before it grows too long.” 
Children who live in countries targeted by the drone program are in a 
state of constant terror, according to Westmoreland: “There are 
15-year-olds growing up who have not lived a day without drones 
overhead, but you also have expats who are watching what’s going on in 
their home countries and seeing regularly the violations that are 
happening there, and that is something that could radicalize them.”

By reliable estimates, ninety percent of those killed in drone strikes 
are entirely harmless people, making the program a singularly effective 
method of producing anti-American terrorism. “We kill four and create 
ten,” Bryant said during a November 19 press conference 
<http://livestream.com/accounts/16161253/events/4520120>, referring to 
potential terrorists. “If you kill someone’s father, uncle or brother 
who had nothing to do with anything, their families are going to want 
revenge.”

Haas explained that the institutional culture of the drone program 
emphasized and encouraged the dehumanization of the targeted 
populations. “There was a much more detached outlook about who these 
people were we were monitoring,” he recalled. “Shooting was something to 
be lauded and something we should strive for.”

Unable to repress his conscience or choke down his moral disgust, Haas 
took refuge in alcohol and drug abuse, which he says is predictably 
commonplace among drone operators. At least a half-dozen members of his 
unit were using bath salts and could be found “impaired” while on duty, 
Haas testifies.

Among the burdens Bryant now bears is the knowledge that he participated 
in the mission that killed a fellow U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki. 
Identified as a radical cleric and accused of offering material support 
for al-Qaeda, al-Awlaki was executed by a drone strike in Yemen. His 
16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was killed in a separate drone strike a 
few weeks later while sitting down to dinner at the home of a family 
friend. Asked about the killing of a native-born U.S. citizen – who, at 
age 16, was legally still a child – former White House press secretary 
Robert Gibbs appeared to justify that act by blaming it on the 
irresponsibility of the innocent child’s father. 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1rwpgE3Xvc>

As Bryant points out, as a matter of law the elder al-Awlaki was 
innocent, as well.

“We were told that al-Awlaki deserved to die, he deserved to be killed 
as a traitor, but article 3 of section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states 
that even a traitor deserves a fair trial in front of a jury of his 
peers,” Bryant notes, lamenting that his role in the “targeted killing” 
of a U.S. citizen without a trial was a violation of his constitutional 
oath.

Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill hasproduced evidence suggesting 
that the White House-approved killing of Anwar al-Awlaki’s son may have 
been carried out as retaliation against the family for refusing to 
cooperate in the search for the cleric 
<http://www.thenation.com/article/inside-americas-dirty-wars/>. There 
are indications that the government has tried to intimidate the 
whistleblowers by intimidating their families.

In October 
<http://www.newsweek.com/air-force-told-mother-drone-program-whistleblower-brandon-bryant-isis-after-385859>, 
while Brandon Bryant was preparing to testify about the drone program 
before a German parliamentary committee, his mother LanAnn received a 
visit in her Missoula, Montana home from two representatives of the Air 
Force’s Office of Special Investigations 
<http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/10/20/intimidation-drone-whistleblowers-mother-told-isis-looking-at-her>. 
The men claimed that her personal information was in the hands of the 
Islamic State, which had placed her name on a “hit list.” She was also 
told not to share that disclosure with anyone – a directive she promptly 
ignored by informing Ms. Radack, who represents Brandon and the other 
whistleblowers.

According to Radack, a very similar episode occurred last March in which 
the stepparent of another whistleblower received a nearly identical 
visit from agents of the Air Force OSI. “This is the US government 
wasting taxpayer dollars trying to silence, intimidate and shut up 
people. It’s a very amateurish way to shut up a whistleblower … by 
intimidating and scaring their parents. This would be laughable if it 
weren’t so frightening.”

Given the role played by the U.S. government in fomenting, equipping, 
and abetting the growth of ISIS, such warnings have to be perceived as 
credible, albeit, indirect death threats.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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