The NSA, Glenn Greenwald, and Angela Merkel



April 19, 2014

By Cliff Kincaid Having apparently been assured by the Eric Holder Justice Department that he won't face espionage charges, unlike his source Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald has returned to the U.S. and is cashing in on his notoriety. His bookwill be released soon, and he will be appearing on May 15 with one of his heroes, Noam Chomsky, a leading member of the Communist Party spin-off, the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.However, there is a 10-year statute of limitations, meaning that the administration that follows Obama's could charge Snowden's media accomplices with violating the Espionage Act ( Section 798 ).Greenwald's friend and mentor, Noam Chomsky, is a major supporter of the Hezbollah terrorist group, and opposed the killing of Osama bin Laden.Greenwald and Chomsky will be appearing at an event sponsored by Harvard Book Store, which will be held in a Unitarian church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Greenwald's publisher, Metropolitan Books, a division of Macmillan, has produced such titles as, a "startling history of the American war on Vietnamese civilians," and socialist Senator Elizabeth Warren's (D-MA)The publisher runs a blog for one of its authors called " The American Empire Project ," designed to expose the "imperial ambitions" of U.S. leaders.Greenwald, of course, has spoken publicly in favor of "weakening" America, saying that al-Qaeda's 9/11 terrorist attacks on America were "very minimal in scope compared to the level of deaths that the United States has been bringing to the world for decades – from Vietnam to illegal wars in Central America...."He described Anwar al-Awlaki, the American al-Qaeda leader killed in a drone strike, merely as "someone who the U.S. government hates because he speaks effectively to the Muslim world about the violence that the United States commits regionally, and the responsibility of Muslims to stand up to that violence." Al-Awlaki inspired the Fort Hood massacre, in which 13 were killed.Greenwald's record also includes collaborating with Leninist groups such as the International Socialist Organization, and Islamist organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood front.Meanwhile, Greenwald's new venture, The Intercept, financed by billionaire Iranian-American Pierre Omidyar, is out with another report , once again alleging that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been unfairly targeted by the NSA. What is left unsaid in the piece is why Merkel is an obvious target.Analyst J.R. Nyquist says Merkel was known to be suspiciously pro-Russian when she ran for high office in Germany but that her political party, the Christian Democrats, nominated her anyway, "and now Germany is more dependent on Russian natural gas than ever before." Germany's so-called "unique relationship with Russia" means that the country gets 36 percent of its natural gas imports and 39 percent of its oil imports from Russia.The increasing dependence on Russia is related to Merkel's decision, after the accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, to phase out Germany's nuclear energy program. Pressure to cancel Germany's nuclear program had come from the German Green Party.A prominent member of the German Green Party, Hans-Christian Ströebele, met with Edward Snowden in Moscow and gave him a "whistleblower" award. He previously served as a lawyer for the Soviet- and East German-backed terrorist group, the Baader Meinhof Gang (also known as the Red Army Faction), and was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment in 1982 for setting up a communications network between the terrorist prisoners and activists outside the jails.Merkel, who grew up in the formerly communist East Germany and spent 35 years of her life under the dictatorship, is the subject of a book by Günther Lachmann and Ralf Georg Reuth titledwhich suggests that she had deeper ties to the communist regime than previously known or acknowledged. She has admitted joining the Free German Youth, the communist youth organization, and a photo has surfaced showing her in a communist uniform. But the book argues that she hid her role in the youth group as secretary for agitation and propaganda, instead depicting herself as someone engaged in "cultural" affairs.One of Merkel's defenders said she "couldn't remember whether she was involved in agitation and propaganda."Russian ruler Vladimir Putin, of course, was a KGB spy in East Germany, and speaks German.In an opinion piece for Reuters, Jack Shafer wrote about the controversy created by the book. and said, "The longitudinal interest by the U.S. in all things Merkel may be informed by her past. She was a citizen of East Germany before reunification, and her personal history has long been controversial." He added, "An ardent Russophile, Merkel thrived in East Germany, which makes some question her deeper loyalties."Strangely, Merkel has complained about NSA surveillance, comparing the front-line U.S. intelligence-gathering agency to the East German secret police, the Stasi.The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) journal Foreign Affairs, a major voice of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, reacted by publishing a defense of Merkel by Yale University Professor Marci Shore, who wrote that "everyone who lived in the communist world participated in that world and was formed by it. No one emerged untouched."But the CFR has been tainted as well. Alger Hiss, a high-ranking State Department official, had been a member in good standing of the CFR. He went to prison on perjury charges for denying he was a Soviet spy.The controversy over Merkel got so intense that the German magazine Der Spiegel (an outlet for stories about some of Snowden's stolen documents) tried to knock down the "conspiracy theory" that "the German chancellor is some kind of KGB 'sleeper agent' installed by Moscow at the end of the Cold War."But the controversy doesn't end there.Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder went to work for the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. He is described as a personal friend of Vladimir Putin and once called the Russian president a "flawless democrat." He has defended Russia's invasion of Ukraine.Günter Guillaume, a top aide to Willy Brandt, another former German Chancellor, was exposed as a spy for East Germany.© Cliff Kincaid