The event was hosted in Washington by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII), a group of former CIA officers who annually select "an intelligence professional who has taken a stand for integrity and ethics," (Wikipedia).
Drake was recognized by the SAAII for protecting the public interest by whistleblowing about warrantless wiretapping and government fraud at the National Security Agency.
Jesselyn Radack, director of the Government Accountability Project, a top whistleblower protection organization, was a co-recipient of the 2011 SAAII award. Past recipients include Coleen Rowley and Sibel Edmonds of the FBI, Lt. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, and British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray.
In his speech, Drake quoted leading abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, and said that the technology exists to make George Orwell's 1984 a 21st century reality.
Drake said that his fight against the government in post-9/11 America reminded him of his time in East Germany. He said, "I used to monitor East Germany when I flew a RC-135 during the latter part of the Cold War, an absolutely fascist state. Given what I've experienced over the past number of years I have a lot of bad memories."
Gunter Spens, a former army officer in East Germany, also said that America has turned into a police state like East Germany in an interview on Infowars Nightly News on December 16, 2011. Gens recognized that tyranny was advancing in America and joined the Texas branch of Oath Keepers, an "American nonprofit organization that advocates that its members (current and former U.S. military and law enforcement) uphold the Constitution of the United States should they be ordered to violate it," (Wikipedia).
Drake is the quintessential Oath Keeper and a great American. He told the attendees of the Sam Adams Award presentation that there is no time to waste because the survival of America depends on an active and knowledgeable citizenry. Below are further excerpts from his great speech:
"We now live in post-9/11 America, only to suddenly discover that we are not doing the driving and the brakes are failing and others are in the front and backseat and also following us.Watch the full speech at The Real News, or you can read the full text of the speech at consortiumnews.com.What country do we want to keep? We increasingly no longer govern ourselves – as in of, for and by the people.
There is a long list of both private industry and government actions that are ripping away our privacy and our Fourth Amendment rights and our ability to speak freely about it!I challenge you all to demand accountability, to update our protections in the Internet Age, and to insist upon adherence to the Constitution — conservative and liberal and independent alike. Even in the open press, we know enough about what both the industry and government are doing. Do you care? What will you do about it?
What country do we really want to keep? Do we want to continue to have a burgeoning military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-surveillance-cybersecurity-and-media complex? Whom does it benefit? Do we want to concede the eroding of basic human rights?"
Drake is not the only former American government official who believes America is turning into a tyranny. He is part of a rising wave of intelligent, concerned, and brave patriots within the American fascist state who want to restore individual freedom and the rule of law in America.
The conditions exist for a peaceful restoration of American liberty. Movements like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are only the beginning of a long process of political struggle between the lawless and immoral establishment and the law-abiding, tax-paying citizens of America.
The majority of the American people want to bring an end to the two-party political system, and the illegal wars in the Middle East. If you judge American public opinion according to the propaganda literature pumped out by Homeland Security and the Southern Poverty Law Center then most Americans are "anti-government extremists" because they hold anti-government beliefs such as 9/11 was an inside job, and medial marijuana is a good thing.
In other words, you're an extremist and domestic terrorist if you believe George Washington, James Madison, And Thomas Jefferson were good guys, the founding principles of America must be defended, and the American experiment in self-government should not be terminated.
Most members of the hijacked U.S. government are standing on the opposite side of American public opinion, and they know it, hence the treasonous NDAA bill and the hidden plans for Martial Law.
American lawyer and George Washington University Professor Jonathan Turley emphasized the split between American public opinion and the crazy Washington Establishment in his interview on C-SPAN on December 19, 2011, saying that "you have this remarkable disconnect, where the majority of citizens are going, 'We're really concerned about this. We are fearful of our own government,' and yet it's just not translating on the hill."
Drake said that in such a bleak situation "something's gotta give." An unpopular, criminal, evil, and authoritarian government cannot hold down the aspirations of a people in the face of rising political movements on the left and right. The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street can morph in the future into a single and unified national movement for liberation, or they can build the political ground that will give birth to new anti-fascism/authoritarianism movements.
Quoting Douglass, Drake said that, "Power concedes nothing without a demand." The rest of that quote is as follows: "It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
What America is facing at this moment in history is what Iran, North Korea, Israel, and every authoritarian country has faced: the corruption of bad men and the tyranny of government dogma.
But tyrannies only prosper because people allow it. Individuals who see the trail of lies, cruelty, and terror, and look on without raising any objection are forfeiting their lives, their spirits, and their country.
The more a people chooses to stomach tyranny and its abuses, and learns to adjust to the insanity of their existence, the more psychopathic their leaders grow.
At the end of tyrannies, what's left behind for history to judge is a country in ruins, and a people shocked out of a state of sleep and slavery. We will see this outcome unfold in America and Iran. The tyrannies there will be brought to an end. And there will be blood. The question is: how much blood?
There is no doubt that a third world war will give the ruling cabals in America and Iran a great opportunity to kill the revolutionary movements that seek to overthrow them, but I don't think they will be successful in crushing them out of existence.
The people of America and Iran both desire liberty and transformative social and political change. A silly little war is not going to block that basic human desire.
The desire for true freedom must be fulfilled, or else the tyrannical governments in America and Iran will be brought down and replaced.
