© Stone Cold Truth
Famed whistleblower Edward Snowden was recently interviewed by Italian publication
La Repubblic. The publication noted the 5-year mark of Snowden's historic act of blowing the whistle on the NSA's expansive surveillance programs and that "many thought he would end up very badly, but when he connects via videolink for this interview with
La Repubblica, he seems to be doing very well: the frank smile and peaceful face of someone who is easy in his mind."
In an excerpt from the exclusive
interview, Snowden explained how the presidencies of both Obama and Trump are shaped by the Deep State following an illuminating question by journalist Stefania Maurizi.
Stefania Maurizi: We saw that President Obama, who was an outsider to the US military-intelligence complex, initially wanted to reign in the abuses of agencies like the CIA and the NSA, but in the end he did very little. Now we see a confrontation between president Trump and so-called Deep State, which includes the CIA and the NSA.
Can a US president govern in opposition to such powerful entities?Edward Snowden: Obama is certainly an instructive case. This is a president who campaigned on a platform of ending warrantless wiretapping in the United States, he said
"that's not who we are, that's not what we do," and once he became the president, he expanded the program. He said he was
going to close Guantanamo but he kept it open, he said he was
going to limit extrajudicial killings and drone strikes that has been so routine in the Bush years.
But Obama went on to authorize vastly more drone strikes than Bush. It became an industry.
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