"But He Swore an Oath! He Broke the Law!"

Here's a good article about the difference between Snowden breaking the law and those Senators on the Intelligence Committee who didn't: When it’s wrong to keep your word .

It's not long.  Have a read.  And may I add (or perhaps simply state differently):

1) Keeping an oath is not an honorable thing when your oath is to keep quiet about immoral and illegal activity.

2) Intelligence Committee Senators should not be praised for keeping their oath of secrecy, but instead should be tried for aiding and abetting crimes.

3) Those Senators did not keep their oath of secrecy because of some noble idea of the rule of law. They did it because they didn't want to lose their jobs.  The same reason the other people at the NSA working with Ed Snowden who knew what was being done didn't say anything.

..but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:   From a Nation interview November 2014...

Torture Report on Its Way Down the Memory Hole

Well protected from the American citizens. Everyone else knows what happened. (Well, maybe not the British and Canadian - and Australian - citizens.)

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request for the full, still-classified 6,900-page torture report, government lawyers wrote that most of the executive agencies that had been copied on the transmission of the full report to the White House from then-Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) hadn’t opened their sealed copy -- and in one case, never even picked it up.

[...]

"Neither [the Department of Justice] nor [the Department of State], moreover, has even opened the package with the disc containing the full Report.

[...]

The FBI’s copy remains sealed in the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs, according to the FOIA response. The bureau has yet to collect it.

[...]

"That shows a shocking disregard for their professional responsibilities, and appears to be an organized effort to cover up the truth about torture." [Sen. Ron Wyden]

[...]

The executive branch’s apparent failure thus far to delve into the behemoth study as Feinstein wished -- in the hope that its gruesome accounts would deter the nation from ever torturing again -- underscores the study's uncertain future. The committee’s new Republican leaders have made no secret of their disdain for the document. In a clear change from Feinstein's tenure, [The new Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chair, Republican Richard] Burr is campaigning to snatch back copies of the report and has signaled his intention to return to the CIA the particular contested document.

Certain Democratic lawmakers, including Wyden, and human rights groups have called for the public release of the full study.

But if officials in some of the most relevant, appropriately cleared agencies haven’t laid eyes on it, does the public even have a chance?

  HuffPo

In a word, no. And since Mark Udall declined to read the report into the Congressional record, I guess that leaves Ron Wyden to grow some, and do it himself. Fat chance. Maybe DiFi will. And, as Mike Meyers famously quipped in Wayne’s World…

Don't Pin Your Hopes on Mark Udall

He's been sitting on full knowledge of the extent of US torture for years.

In his first interview since Election Day, Udall told The Denver Post that he would "keep all options on the table," including a rarely-used right given to federal lawmakers, to publicize a secret report about the harsh interrogation techniques used by CIA agents in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

He also vowed to make one final push to curb the National Security Agency and its power to gather information on ordinary Americans.

"Trying to run out the clock ... is not an option," Udall said Thursday of the long-hidden CIA report. "The truth will come out."

  Denver Post

Keeping all options on the table.  And that's just where they'll stay.

Come on Mark. You’ll not be reading it into the record. You’re just taking advantage of your last opportunities to hold the national media attention.

With negotiations still in limbo, now nearly two years after the committee finished its investigation, free-speech advocates have leaned on Udall to take matters into his own hands before leaving office.

And he's not saying no.

Doesn’t have to.

Fat Chance

America’s rising civil liberties movement lost one of its strongest advocates in the US Congress on Tuesday night, as Colorado’s Mark Udall lost his Senate seat to Republican Cory Gardner.

[...]

But Udall’s loss doesn’t have to be all bad. The lame-duck transparency advocate now has a rare opportunity to truly show his principles in the final two months of his Senate career and finally expose, in great detail, the secret government wrongdoing he’s been criticizing for years. On his way out the door, Udall can use congressional immunity provided to him by the Constitution’s Speech and Debate clause to read the Senate’s still-classified 6,000-page CIA torture report into the Congressional record – on the floor, on TV, for the world to see.

  The Guardian

He’s not going to do that. He’s going to go through the revolving door to some private corp position. If he had any real principles, he could have already done that and let the chips fall where they may. He’s no Edward Snowden.

In 1971, former Senator Mike Gravel famously read the top-secret classified Pentagon Papers for three hours before almost collapsing and then entering thousands of pages more into the record after he couldn’t speak for any longer from exhaustion.

Kudos to Gravel. Udall is not Gravel.

With secrecy-fetishist Republican Richard Burr likely taking over the chair of the intelligence committee, the public cover-up is probably only going to get worse next year. While the Huffington Post’s Ali Watkins writes that it’s likely Senator Dianne Feinstein wouldn’t let the Republicans take over without first releasing at least the executive summary of the report, she’d have to release a version full of incomprehensible redactions the CIA still won’t budge on. Which is to say nothing of the actual report, which will almost certainly never see the light of day unless someone like Udall – or some very brave whistleblower – takes bold action.

Don’t hold your breath.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Wyden/Udall

Two Democratic senators accused the Obama administration on Tuesday of seeking to “ignore or justify” statements it made to the Supreme Court about warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency, contributing to what they called a “culture of misinformation” by the executive branch.

In a letter to Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the senators, Mark Udall of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon, maintained that the Justice Department was not being forthright about what they portrayed as factual misrepresentations to the Supreme Court in 2012. The case involved a challenge to the constitutionality of a law permitting warrantless N.S.A. surveillance.

  NYT

CIA Lawyer's Nomination Approved

The top CIA lawyer at the heart of a clash between the agency and its political overseers has been replaced, after senators lifted a block on confirming his successor. Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, said on Thursday that he released a procedural obstacle he had placed on the CIA’s nominee for its next general counsel, Caroline Krass.

[...]

Krass had already cleared the Senate committee, but Udall put her on hold to gain leverage for the committee in its struggle for access to CIA documents.

  Guardian

Yeah, so they still don’t have the docs. Why change stance?

While [Robert] Eatinger [the outgoing atty] was never going to be the agency’s permanent general counsel, he is now the first explicit casualty in the row between the CIA and its Senate overseers.

What’s the angle in ditching him now?

"I released my hold on Caroline Krass’s nomination today and voted for her to help change the direction of the agency,” Udall said in a statement on Thursday.

Still not making sense. If she could “help change the direction of the agency” now, why couldn’t she do that when Udall put a hold on her nomination?

In a statement, CIA director John Brennan said was “extremely pleased” that the Senate had confirmed Krass .

Now it gets really curious. Or maybe I’m just really thick.

Marcy Wheeler has a post today that comments on Eatinger via Jack Goldsmith:

Eatinger didn’t refer this case when CIA first started worrying about possible violations of Federal law (nor, as far as we know, did Stephen Preston make a referral in 2010 when documents started disappearing from the server). He didn’t refer the case after CIA’s initial “investigative, protective, or intelligence activity” — at that point, Brennan still wanted CIA to continue its “investigative, protective, or intelligence activity” itself.

It was only after CIA got referred for its “investigative, protective, or intelligence activity” that Eatinger decided the matter had reached what Goldsmith claims is a very low bar for referral.

[...]

Eatinger let things get far beyond the “low bar” before he referred the issue to DOJ.
  Empty Wheel

I can’t decide if that helps clarify my questions or just muddies them. Maybe it has no impact at all. I have the feeling (and it may be way off mark) that they are getting Eatinger out of the current picture because leaving him there would provide an obstacle to what the Senate committee is after. But then, why would John Brennan be "extremely pleased"? *

* UPDATE:  http://youwillanyway2.blogspot.com/2014/03/more-info-on-eatinger.html

"I Did Everything I Could"

No, but Edward Snowden did it for you.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) says he “did everything short of leaking classified information” to bring attention to the National Security Administration’s seizure of Americans’ phone records.

“I did everything in my power to bring attention” to the program, he told the Denver Post.

[...]

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder last year, Udall and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said, “We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of . . . these secret court opinions. As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows.

  WaPo

As could Ron Wyden.  And neither one of them would have had to run for his life.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Speaking of Mark Udall:

A search team found the body of Colorado Sen. Mark Udall's brother in western Wyoming's Wind River Range on Wednesday after he didn't return from a solo backpacking trip, the family said.

James "Randy" Udall, 61, had left June 20 for the weeklong trek, setting off from a trailhead 10 miles northwest of Pinedale. He was due back a week ago.

[...]

Mark Udall's office released a statement from the family saying that while an autopsy is forthcoming, it appears his brother died of natural causes.

[...]

Randy Udall helped found the nonprofit Community Office for Resource Energy Efficiency, which promotes the use of renewable energy in the Aspen, Colo., area.

  USNews

NSA Still Trying to Buffalo the Public About Surveillance

On Monday, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) wrote to the head of the [NSA] alleging that one of [two documents posted on the NSA website] was misleading and inaccurate. The senators claimed, without elaborating, that a fact sheet “contains an inaccurate statement about how the section 702 authority has been interpreted by the U.S. government.”

NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander responded to the two lawmakers Tuesday, and while he didn't admit inaccuracy, he said the documents could have been clearer.

"After reviewing your letter, I agree that the fact sheet that the National Security Agency posted on its website on 18 June 2013 could have more precisely described the requirements for collection under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act," Alexander said in a letter of his own.

[...]

“Given the intense interest from the media, the public, and Congress, we believe the precision of the source document (the statute) is the best possible representation of applicable authorities,” NSA spokesperson Judith Emmel said in a statement.

  Politico

” Could have more precisely described.. .” In other words, could have been accurate, but wasn’t.

The documents were removed from the internet, but if you want to look at them, there are links in the Politico article.