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<h1 class="post-title">Drone Pilots have Bank Accounts and Credit
Cards Frozen by Feds for Exposing US Murder</h1>
<p class="single_postmeta"> <span>By <a
href="http://thefreethoughtproject.com/author/william-n-grigg/">William
N. Grigg</a> on November 25, 2015<br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://thefreethoughtproject.com/drone-pilots-bank-accounts-credit-cards-frozen-feds-exposing-murder/">http://thefreethoughtproject.com/drone-pilots-bank-accounts-credit-cards-frozen-feds-exposing-murder/</a></small></small></small></b><br>
</span> <span> </span></p>
<p class="subtitle">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.</p>
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<p>The U.S. Government failed to deter them <a
href="http://www.democracynow.org/2015/11/20/exclusive_air_force_whistleblowers_risk_prosecution">through
threats of criminal prosecution</a>, and <a
href="http://www.newsweek.com/air-force-told-mother-drone-program-whistleblower-brandon-bryant-isis-after-385859">clumsy
attempts to intimidate their families</a>. Now four former Air
Force drone operators-turned-whistleblowers <a
href="https://twitter.com/JesselynRadack/status/668253880271114240">have
had their credit cards and bank accounts frozen</a>, according
to human rights attorney Jesselyn Radack.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" width="500">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">.<a href="https://twitter.com/wikileaks">@wikileaks</a>
My <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/drone?src=hash">#drone</a>
<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/whistleblowers?src=hash">#whistleblowers</a>
went public this wk & now their <a
href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CreditCards?src=hash">#CreditCards</a>
+ <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BankAccts?src=hash">#BankAccts</a>
are <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/frozen?src=hash">#frozen</a>.
Advice? <a href="https://t.co/4wymwZgeZ9">pic.twitter.com/4wymwZgeZ9</a></p>
<p>— unR̶A̶D̶A̶C̶K̶ted (@JesselynRadack) <a
href="https://twitter.com/JesselynRadack/status/668253880271114240">November
22, 2015</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>“My drone operators went public this week and now their credit
cards and bank accounts are frozen,” <a
href="https://twitter.com/JesselynRadack/status/668253880271114240">Radack
lamented on her Twitter feed </a>(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.</p>
<p>Michael Haas, Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland and Stephen
Lewis, who served as drone operators in the US Air Force, <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/former-drone-operators-say-they-were-horrified-by-cruelty-of-assassination-program/">have
gone public with detailed accounts of the widespread corruption
and institutionalized indifference to civilian casualties that
characterize the program</a>. Some of those disclosures were
made in the recent documentary Drone; additional details have been
provided in <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2515596-final-drone-letter.html">an
open letter</a> from the whistleblowers to President Obama,
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and CIA Director John Brennan.</p>
<p>“We are former Air Force service members,” <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2515596-final-drone-letter.html">the
letter begins</a>. 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.”</p>
<p>Elsewhere the former drone operators <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/obama-drone-war-isis-recruitment-tool-air-force-whistleblowers">have
described</a> 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.”</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://livestream.com/accounts/16161253/events/4520120">press
conference</a>, 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.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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 – f<a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1rwpgE3Xvc">ormer White
House press secretary Robert Gibbs appeared to justify that act
by blaming it on the irresponsibility of the innocent child’s
father.</a></p>
<p>As Bryant points out, as a matter of law the elder al-Awlaki was
innocent, as well.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill has<a
href="http://www.thenation.com/article/inside-americas-dirty-wars/">
produced 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</a>. There are indications that the
government has tried to intimidate the whistleblowers by
intimidating their families.</p>
<p><a
href="http://www.newsweek.com/air-force-told-mother-drone-program-whistleblower-brandon-bryant-isis-after-385859">In
October</a>, while Brandon Bryant was preparing to testify about
the drone program before a German parliamentary committee, <a
href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/10/20/intimidation-drone-whistleblowers-mother-told-isis-looking-at-her">his
mother LanAnn received a visit in her Missoula, Montana home
from two representatives of the Air Force’s Office of Special
Investigations</a>. 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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
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