The Logic of Illogic is...?

Trey Smith

Mike Spindell, a regular guest blogger on Jonathan Turley's blog, likens Edward Snowden's disclosure of top secret NSA documents to a proverbial Catch-22. Here is how Spindell encapsulates the paradoxical insanity of the US government's position.

So the logic of this situation is this:

A. We profess to be a country governed by the Constitution and ultimately by the people through the electoral process.

B. To be able to exercise our rights as citizens, via the electoral process, we need information on the major issues of how our government is operating.

C. To “protect us” from our “enemies” we need intelligence agencies gathering information to discern threats to our country and this “gathering” must include information on all of our citizens.

D. The operations of these intelligence agencies must be cloaked in secrecy to keep our “enemies” from knowing what we know.

E. Only a very few of our elected representatives are allowed information on the operations of our intelligence community as putative oversight.

F. These intelligence representatives are precluded by secrecy laws from disclosing what they learn to their legislative colleagues.

G. If they can’t disclose any intelligence information that they find disturbing, then in effect they have no oversight ability over the Intelligence Establishment since they can’t get legislation to counter it.

H. Without oversight the Intelligence Agencies can do as they please.

I. Therefore when it comes to Intelligence the American people are unable to exercise their rights as citizens via informed votes in the electoral process.

Adding to this illogical mishmash, President Obama has said that he "welcomes a debate" on issues we would not have had a reason to debate if not for their disclosure! While repeating his welcoming debate mantra, he concurrently has shown that he doesn't want to talk about it in any sort of substantive way because...it's secret and it can't remain secret if we talk about it!

If you haven't had the pleasure of watching the movie, Catch-22, I have included a small video snippet below that illustrates the utterly insane logic highlighted throughout the film. Pay special attention to the last minute of the clip where Major Major explains how people are to "see" him in his office. If you are able to obtain the film and watch it in its entirety, you will have a good feel as to what is going on in our nation's capitol today!