Racism and government stupidity are the real threat to America's national security

That's the key lesson in Glenn Greenwald's big scoop

NSA
(Image credit: (REUTERS/Eddie Keogh))

The American security apparatus seems intent on needlessly kneecapping itself — a lesson all too clear in Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain's long-anticipated scoop in The Intercept. Greenwald and Hussain detail the U.S. government's reprehensible racial profiling of five prominent Muslim-Americans whose emails have been monitored by the NSA and the FBI. The document revealing this surveillance is from 2008, though some of the snooping is described as "sustained." Here's the list:

• Faisal Gill, a longtime Republican Party operative and onetime candidate for public office who held a top-secret security clearance and served in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush;

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.