The Oath Keepers on Edward Snowden
16th June 2013
The Oath Keepers are a coalition of current and former military, police, and other public officials who have pledged not to obey unconstitutional commands. They’re extremely controversial, with critics accusing them (inaccurately) of fomenting terrorism and (more accurately) of attracting people with an affinity for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric. Since they were launched in the first year of the Obama administration, they are also sometimes accused of being unconcerned with the constitutional violations of the Bush years.
The latter charge doesn’t match what I’ve observed in my reporting about the group. Still, I was interested to see how they would react to the unfolding NSA story. In particular, I wondered whether they’d see Edward Snowden’s decision to leak the PRISM documents as the sort of disobedience they champion, and I wondered how much their discussion of the story would extend to Bush-era as well as Obama-era surveillance.
Wonder no more. Stewart Rhodes, the group’s founder, has emailed me a statement about Snowden….