I made the video above after many hours of watching eye-gouging videos of Brandon Bryant running his mouth. Using his own words, "Brandon Bryant - Say Anything" shows that the Senior Airman who left the drone program is willing to say anything for a bit of daddy love and some praise. He reads his lines like a champ, but his director is obviously an idiot since his claims are a case study in contradiction.
I have had an interest in Brandon's role in the very important drone discussion, for quite some time now since I met him online. I'm sure I saw him at work back in the day, but I had no reason to interact with him so we do not know each other personally, although we know many mutual people. I have blogged about his media appearances several times over the years and, until today, we were Facebook friends. I had to cut him off. After many online conversations over the years and after reading his public professions, I have come to the conclusion that several others offered me about him years ago. He's dishonest and not to be trusted. He's a con man and a fraud.
The video above doesn't get into the most embarrassing chunks that flow from Brandon's sewer. I didn't post clips that show that Brandon is more than willing to pretend that he's an economist, a political philosopher, a psychologist, and of course, an expert on warfare despite leaving the drone program after only five years and despite his public profession that drones can't be shot down (except by China). Oops. It is truly amazing what this guy will say.
But to be fair, he did a great deal in the drone program other than simply violate his oath to defend the Constitution. He flew more than 6000 hours in less than five years. That is a STAGGERING amount of time and I feel bad for him going through that. Nobody should have to live like that. When he says he spent time watching others live their lives, while he had no life of his own, he was telling the truth. He was used and abused and it's unfortunate.
But I have a feeling he's being used and abused right now by those who are able to spot a guy with flexible morals and a willingness to say anything. I'm talking about foreign activists and film makers like Tonje Hessen Schei, the creator of the new documentary, Drone, which stars Brandon Bryant. I am sure a person in her position is grateful to have an actor who gladly takes lines and spits them out to improve the script. It's too bad, though, that after working with Brandon for more than a year, and creating the Drone documentary, she still refers to Brandon as a pilot. She has to know he was not a pilot, so continuously labeling him one must be a conscious decision. Better for selling tickets I suppose, but it undercuts the credibility of her film. As does, of course, Brandon's participation in it.
Homeless despite having a generous GI Bill and a state school in your hometown where your mother lives? Sure why not. Suffering from PTSD from the moral injury sustained by violating your oath? Yes, please. Did nothing out of the ordinary whatsoever and only started an ever evolving need to speak "truth" once out of the military? CUT! That's not going to sell, let's take that one from the top. AND ACTION!
As to "my case" -- my so-called case is simply one of doing my job professionally, as I swore to do and as Brandon admits he did not. That's hardly the stuff for headlines or movies.
But one of the many unfortunate things about over-classification and the shadows that come from secret dealings, is that journalists and media and "whistle blower" lawyers in the accountability field don't have a lot to work with. It's supply and demand. That's unfortunate for credibility, as Ms. Jessica Radack is no doubt figuring out with her motley group (consisting of a charlatan that no lawyer would ever want to take the stand, and an admitted bath-salt-consuming coke head, along with a fuckin' computer guy who apparently pisses himself because somebody handed him a headset while deployed, in a military that he voluntarily joined, and who now claims PTSD and nightmares from hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del one too many times). That's the gaggle being trotted out to the public in this discussion? It's too bad Ms. Radack hasn't at least pointed out to Brandon that the part of the Constitution he claims that he was told he was violating while he was doing it, was Article Three, Section Three. Not Section Two as he has been rehearsing for his performances.
It saddens me to see Jessica Radack falling for this nonsense and undercutting her track record by doing so. As political scientist, C. Fred Alford, said of whistleblowers in an article written about her courageous service:
The great relief is that whistleblowers aren't like the vast majority of us, says Alford, the political scientist. For him, Radack's story is less about a world turned upside down by 9/11 than about what strange creatures whistleblowers necessarily are.
"STRANGE DOESN'T have to mean wearing funny shoes," Alford says. "It can just mean being a true believer. A real cynic isn't going to blow the whistle. A real conformist isn't going to blow the whistle. And a real radical probably won't be in a position to do it. It takes someone who believes in the system far more than the system ever believes in itself."
It should be obvious. But apparently any disgruntled employee with an axe to grind can seek the spotlight and be dubbed a whistle blower these days. I suppose that's why Ms. Radack now finds herself offering up fraud-and-pony shows when she used to represent public servants serving the American people (and still does, so long as she represents Edward Snowden). But to represent Brandon Bryant and his megalomaniacal crusade to falsely present himself in the same light? It's really sad.
What an embarrassment. Frauds, charlatans, and bath-salt-bathers pass as whistle blowers these days and greatly damage the credibility of those like Ms. Radack in the process.
Brandon Bryant is not in this discussion for truth or for principle. He is a wannabe celebrity and aspiring super hero. He loves comic books. He loves acting. As the video above shows, he thirsts for it. But if Brandon were to be a super hero, he would be Malleable Man. A person with a super power allowing him to bend and shift and distort and be shaped by any person, with the exception of his super villain and arch-nemesis that goes by the name of Truth. Truth, apparently, can't touch Malleable Man.
It's all fun and games until Malleable Man, twisted and shaped by foreign interests, starts releasing secrets to other countries to give them critical information about an American military technology that Malleable Man himself says is not good or bad but depends on how it is used (when he's not calling that same technology cowardly and bad like all distance warfare). When it comes to degrading the security of America, it ceases to be a comic book and becomes something quite different. His narrative has shifted and it's not hard to figure out why. In the beginning he positioned himself as "speaking out" because leadership abused his community of drone operators and he wanted people to understand they were human beings. When he didn't get the response he had hoped for, his message shifted to win a different audience. Enter all the many contradictions he spouts interspersed with Sun Tzu and other quotes he doesn't understand.
It's funny to see a mostly foreign collection praise and dote on a guy that claims he knowingly violated the law, and it was interesting to see Tonje back up her little star with the dubious excuse of "just following orders." What is the point of her documentary again? Too bad she wasn't around in the 1940s to make a documentary about the German SS. So let this documentary be a lesson to all you drone operators out there! Do your job poorly, violate whatever laws you want, violate your oath of office that you swore to uphold before God, and then when your commitment is conveniently over, simply say you did so and be welcomed with open arms by those from foreign countries! Well, of course, if you agree to help them with a narrative. Yeah, that should help with accountability. Nice going, Tonje.
There is a discussion that should be had on the topic. But the dishonest, unprincipled, and opportunistic do not further that discussion.
You are an embarrassment to your nation, Brandon Bryant, and don't think your new friends are stupid. Once they are done with you, which should be just about any day now, they will lose interest. And where will you be then? Not only did you violate the Constitution while you were in, you have degraded an important conversation on the outside for a bit of praise.
At any rate, just remember your comic book alter ego is called Malleable Man, not "SrA America." You have a hat in your hand, not a shield. You don't have an "A" on your chest, you have a "T" and that stands for treason. Not treason for speaking out, no not at all. Treason because you violated your oath and flew a mission to make war on America, and now you seek to lie on the outside to capitalize on it. But I know, I know. I'm not being compassionate. I should realize that it's tough when you're a "homeless" "disabled veteran" with a GI Bill who can travel the world on a speaking tour and do back flips on command.
Fraud and fiction...