Head of National security Agency General Keith Alexander attempted to resign after summer Snowden’s leaks. It was announced after first NSA documents revealed that Alexander would walk away from his both the NSA and US Cyber Command position next year.
“Shortly after former government contractor Edward Snowden revealed himself in June as the source of leaked National Security Agency documents, the agency’s director, Gen. Keith Alexander, offered to resign,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
It is evident that as soon as this statement was made the White House refused to let him to do leave. It comes without saying that the decision was made because Obama Administration did not want Snowden to win a political game he started and found Alexander’s resignation would not fix the NSA’s problems.
Despite, NSA agent, 30 years old Edward Snowden continued to release secret documents to the media, as evident by new reports published last week.
The decision of retirement was made after NSA realized the scale of its snooping program miscalculation.
“This has nothing to do with media leaks, the decision for his retirement was made prior; an agreement was made with the (Secretary of Defense) and the Chairman for one more year – to March 2014,” NSA spokeswoman told Reuters.
“It was cataclysmic,” Richard Ledgett of the NSA’s special Snowden response team said to the Journal. “This is the hardest problem we’ve had to face in 62 years of existence.”
“General Alexander has served an extraordinary tenure and capably led these agencies through critical periods of growth and transition,” White House spokeswoman Laura Magnuson added to The Hill. “The president looks forward to continuing to work with General Alexander until his term is complete and thanks him, and the men and women of the NSA, for their patriotism and dedication as they work every day to keep us safe.”
However, experts marked Snowden’s revelations and its ensuing consequences as the biggest intelligence community and secret agencies blunders yet.
“The president has full confidence in General Alexander and the leadership at the NSA and in the rank-and-file at the NSA who do extraordinary work on behalf of every American citizen and on behalf of our allies in keeping them safe,” White House National Security Council press secretary Jay Carney commented Alexander’s plans to resign on Oct. 28
Alexander himself commented Snowden’s leaks – as one of the biggest breaches of classified information in history – happened on his watch.
Edward Snowden collected a huge amount of secret documents about U.S. Intelligence activity in June and escaped from the country. Numerous of NSA secret reports were published after. Top Secret information was related to NSA spying network, much of the Internet, phone records, and agency’s similar spy organizations partners around the world.
It is worth noting that many of the NSA’s activities are dictated by other departments of the government (for example, the NSA claims that their monitoring of Angela Merkel came at the behest of the State Department). The NSA currently has 36,000 pages of intelligence requests from other agencies to be fulfilled, the officials added.
The White House made the statement of Alexander’s resignation will leave vacancies at the top of both the NSA and CYBERCOM.
