The United States government hasn’t revealed just yet how it will handle the case of Edward Snowden, but former congressman Ron Paul says he fears the Obama administration will resort to taking down the NSA leaker with a drone strike.
Speaking to Fox Business News on Tuesday, the former Republican
congressman from Texas said, “I’m worried about somebody in
our government might kill him with a cruise missile or a drone
missile.”
“I mean, we live in a bad time where American citizens don’t
even have rights and that they can be killed. But the gentleman
is trying to tell the truth about what’s going on,” Paul
said.
Rep. Paul, who retired from Congress earlier this year after an
unsuccessful bid at the presidency, has been outspoken in regards
to both the Obama White House’s drone program and the need to
protect whistleblowers. On the campaign trail last year he hailed
Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks source behind hundreds of
thousands of sensitive files, and earlier this week he threw his
weight behind supporting Snowden.
“The Fourth Amendment is clear,” the Washington Times
reports Paul said earlier this week. “We should be secure in
our persons, houses, paper and effects, and all warrants must
have probable cause. Today the government operates largely in
secret, while seeking to know everything about our private lives
– without probable cause and without a warrant.”
“The government does not need to know more about what we are
doing. We need to know more about what the government is
doing,” he said. “We should be thankful for individuals
like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being
carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the
risk. They have done a great service to the American people by
exposing the truth about what our government is doing in
secret.”
Adding to Fox Business, Paul said, “It’s a shame that we are
in an age where people who tell the truth about what the
government is doing gets into trouble.”
Previously, Paul had harsh words for the drone program after an
unmanned aerial vehicle was used to execute three US citizens in
Yemen in 2011. “Now we know American citizens are vulnerable
to assassination,” he said during a GOP debate last year. But
despite Rep. Paul’s efforts to turn the drone program on its ear,
the White House has continued to order strikes against suspected
terrorists, an issue that it has only really began to discuss in
public in recent months after the congressman’s son, Sen. Rand
Paul (R-Kentucky) demanded the administration justify the killing
of Americans.
“America cannot take strikes wherever we choose — our actions
are bound by consultations with partners, and respect for state
sovereignty,” President Barack Obama said during a national
security address in Washington, DC last month in which he
admitted that drones have killed four US citizens between 2009
and 2011. “America does not take strikes to punish individuals
— we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent
threat to the American people, and when there are no other
governments capable of effectively addressing the threat. And
before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no
civilians will be killed or injured — the highest standard we can
set,” he said.
Samir Khan, Jude Kenan Mohammed, Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage
son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki – were all executed by US drones.
Attorney General Eric Holder admitted last month that only the
elder al-Awlaki was targeted to strike, adding at least three
Americans to the list of collateral damage causalities created in
the name of the drone war.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics’ website
OpenSecrets.org, Snowden made two contributions totaling $500 to
the presidential campaign of then-Rep. Ron Paul during 2012.
This article originally appeared on: RT