How the NSA’s boss can believe his agency’s own propaganda

[Commentary] Stanford legal scholar Jennifer Granick had a July 30 dinner with National Security Agency director Keith Alexander and she described how Alexander explained to her, with a tone of slight exasperation, that the NSA’s domestic surveillance programs operate within the law and under the strict supervision of the courts. Over the next three weeks the public would learn otherwise. An internal audit would show rampant privacy violations at the agency, while a FISA court opinion found that the NSA had broken the law and repeatedly misled the court. “How does a good man sit across from you at the dinner table and assure you the government is properly constrained,” Granick wonders, “when in reality it lies and disregards even the most anemic purported safeguards?”

Lee believes what motivates high-level executives to believe their own propaganda is that people tend to seek employment with institutions they admire. And that those who question the policies of the institutions they work for are effectively marginalized, as was the case with former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake who now works in an Apple Store after becoming a whistleblower within that organization. Alexander has remained convinced of his organization’s ideology, allowing him to continue up the career ladder to the well-protected position he is in now, where he rarely encounters the critical scrutiny of the likes of Granick.