When Private Bradley [aka Chelsea] Manning put his conscience ahead of his personal well-being by allegedly releasing important information to the world's public via WikiLeaks, he was put into an inhumane solitary confinement and is now facing charges that carry the possibility of him spending the rest of his life in prison.

I would have never thought that I would hear myself saying that the president of the United States is afraid of the CIA. But he is. He's afraid of the NSA as well. How else to explain that the National Intelligence director, who lied under oath to his senate overseers on the 12th of March 2013, is still the director of National Intelligence?

When an administration embarks on a war justified by little or no intelligence, speaking the truth can be regarded as treachery. The country could use more of that kind of "treachery".

Form a small group. Five or six people, of people who think the way you do, and are willing to meet regularly, every week, and you will be surprised at what imaginative, gutsy thought and action comes out of that synergy. Takes a while, but there's something that every little group like that can do.

I would answer with the words of the Stasi alumnus Wolfgang Schmidt, who was asked that question: "What about these Americans who say, I have nothing to hide?" And he said, and I quote: "This is very naïve. This is the reason that the government collects the information in the first place to use against you. The only way to prevent that is to prevent the information from being collected in the first place." End quote.

I knew about some experience on the operational part of the CIA with Latin American services and so forth having to do with torture. But this was the first time that the CIA was openly advocating for permission to be able to torture. And that seemed to me so abhorrent that I wanted to disassociate myself from the CIA for the first time since 1963, because I didn't want to be associated in any way, however remotely, with an agency engaged in torture.

Now, how do you explain Obama's claim, that he can kill American citizens without due process? Well, he has his attorney general get up and say, "Well, it doesn't say in the constitution judicial process. It just says due process." Now that's a lawyerly diversion from the truth.