MARK KARLIN, BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Who is watching the watchers?It's not official, and it may never come to pass.

But various press sources are reporting about a growing movement to have NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden testify in Germany.

According to the newspaper that broke the Snowden NSA revelations, The Guardian UK:

Some German politicians and newspaper columnists have backed calls for Snowden to be invited as a witness. The justice minister, Sabine Leuheusser-Schnarrenberger, told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper: "If the allegations build up and lead to an investigation, one could think about calling in Snowden as a witness."

Thomas Oppermann, of the Social Democrats, said: "Snowden's claims appear to be credible, while the US government has blatantly lied to us on this matter. That's why Snowden could be an important witness, also in clearing up the surveillance of the chancellor's mobile."

In Süddeutsche Zeitung, the columnist Heribert Prantl wrote: "Granting asylum to Snowden could be a way of restoring Germany's damaged sovereignty."

The Bundestag will hold a special session to discuss spying on 18 November. The Green party and the leftwing Die Linke have been leading calls for that session to result in a parliamentary investigation.

There is even talk in progressive circles of finding a legal way to grant Snowden asylum. With Chancellor Angela Merkel's outrage at having her cellphone tapped -- along with the apparently massive data mining of other German officials and German citizens -- the uproar is not likely to soon subside.

On Tuesday, BuzzFlash at Truthout wrote a commentary, "What We Know About Government Malfeasance Is Primarily Due to Whistleblowers." As we pointed out, whistleblowers have shown that using massive surveillance to protext us from terrorists is a very small part of US surveillance objectives, which include political spying, suppression of protest movements, and corporate espionage conducted by the US government -- among other goals.

Many persons, even progressives, have argued that it is only natural to assume all governments, even friendly ones, spy on each other. Perhaps that is true, although to vastly varying degrees.

But even if one accepts that premise, our nation has been lied to about what are the real objectives of the NSA and America's massive surveillance apparatus build-up since the Cold War. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent to find a few terrorists? If you believe that, we've got a three dollar bill to sell you.

What is most significiant about the latest development in Germany is it creates headlines that are utterly embarrassing to the United States and the Obama administration. It's an international political debacle. This is the fallout from transparency that the Obama administration so furiously sought to capture Snowden in order to prevent.

But they failed.

(Photo: Gerben's Photos)