The US government uses scare tactics on the American people in order to sell them its massive spying programs, says Wayne Madsen, American investigative journalist and former National Security Agency (NSA) employee.
On Friday, the US State Department issued a global travel alert for US citizens, warning that al-Qaeda might be planning Å“to conduct attacks” by the end of August.
Moreover, the department has announced the single-day closure of 21 embassies across Asia and Africa on Sunday, August 4, 2013, citing a Å“continued potential of terrorist attacks” as the reason.
Å“What has the Obama administration done is itâ„¢s taken out the al-Qaeda card once again and itâ„¢s saying that thereâ„¢s this unspecified threat,” Madsen said in a phone interview with Press TV on Saturday.
Å“Closing embassies and issuing a worldwide travel alert is absolutely to scare the traveling public, the American people, to convince them all we need is NSA and its massive surveillance program to protect us against terrorists,” Madsen added.
Such efforts by the US government come despite the fact that Å“this NSA system did nothing to prevent the Boston Marathon bombing, the so-called underwear bomber on the plane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit, and a number of other so-called terrorist incidents that were really the FBI setting people up in entrapment operations,” he noted.
Documents leaked by American whistleblower Edward Snowden has blown the lid on a number of secret programs run by the US government for collecting data on Americansâ„¢ phone calls and Internet communications of people around the world.
US officials have repeatedly defended the NSAâ„¢s massive surveillance, claiming it protects Americans against Å“terrorist attacks.”
ISH/HJ
Republished from: Press TV