Der Spiegel: high-ranking US govt official reveals how the DOD retaliates against internal critics

Now, a former high-ranking US government official has revealed how the Pentagon retaliates against internal critics.


John Crane doesn't live far from CIA headquarters on the south bank of the Potomac River, with its verdant forest and rolling hills. The Pentagon is just a few miles upstream. Crane, as a child of the US military-intelligence complex, feels at home here. He served as a part of the system for more than 25 years and he still believes in it -- even if it has since declared him as its enemy.

Crane is sitting in his kitchen. In front of him lies a leather briefcase embossed with the US seal. He is 60 years old, though he looks younger with his slicked-back hair and neatly trimmed beard. He still wears the typical uniform of day-to-day government business in Washington: a shirt monogrammed with his initials, cufflinks and a blazer with golden buttons. It's the way he showed up to work for more than a quarter century, when he flashed his badge to security and drove up to his office inside the complex on Army Navy Drive in Arlington, Virginia. For a long time, he could see the Pentagon, the American Department of Defense, right out his office window.

Later they moved, to a non-descript office tower a little further out, but Crane and his staff remained an important part of the Defense Department. Over the years, he made a career within the US military hierarchy. In his final role as assistant inspector general, he had finally made it up into the senior leadership ranks. Around 1,600 civil servants report to the inspector general, of whom around 90 worked for Crane until his departure. Their job is to follow up on internal problems, corruption and other violations of the law. In modern democracies, an inspector general is a kind of free safety who is supposed to ensure that the government apparatus is functioning according to the principles of the rule of law.


Crane's work inside the Pentagon was sensitive. It was his job to deal with grievances -- from small squabbles to major scandals -- within the military apparatus. He was responsible for relations with Congress and, first and foremost, the US defense apparatus' internal whistleblowing program -- a kind of complaint box for the close to 3 million civilian and military employees of the Pentagon as well as for the NSA, which is subordinate to the Defense Department. He remained in the position until he began suspecting that his superiors had bent the rules in order to nullify one unwelcome whistleblower.

The conflict led Crane to question almost everything he had ever believed in or worked for...................



more: Two Long Pages


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