Secrecy’s Tangled Web of Deceit
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/14-2
Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency.
he name card at the Senate hearing read, Hon. General Keith B. Alexander, but layering on the extra honorific title was not enough to change the sad reality that the National Security Agencys director a proven prevaricator was not honorable.
You might have thought that some impish congressional staffer was trying to inject a touch of irony into the proceedings by prefacing General with Hon. like Mark Antony mocking Julius Caesars murderers as honorable men in Shakespeares play. But that didnt seem to be the case.
Likely, the extra title was just a mistake by the person printing out the name cards or someone who thought it would do no harm to tack on one more flattering title like a court herald might do in announcing the arrival of royalty. But whatever the case the image of Alexander, with his history of lying to Congress (see below), sitting behind the assurance that he was honorable might have elicited from the Bard a comment like, Methinks they doth protest too much.
The Wednesday hearing was led by Senate Appropriations Committee chair Barbara Mikulski, Democrat from Maryland, the state which hosts the gargantuan multi-billion-dollar-spending National Security Agency. To her credit, she let her Senate colleagues focus on the revelations by Edward Snowden regarding highly intrusive NSA monitoring of the communications of virtually every living soul, even though cyber-security spending was to be the main agenda item.