{"id":25254,"date":"2015-04-28T09:32:55","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T17:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=25254"},"modified":"2015-04-28T09:32:55","modified_gmt":"2015-04-28T17:32:55","slug":"whistleblowers-vs-fear-mongering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/28\/whistleblowers-vs-fear-mongering\/","title":{"rendered":"Whistleblowers vs. ‘Fear-Mongering’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seven prominent national security whistleblowers Monday called for a number of wide-ranging reforms – including passage of the \u201cSurveillance State Repeal Act<\/a>,\u201d which would repeal the USA Patriot Act – in an effort to restore the Constitutionally guaranteed 4th Amendment right to be free from government spying.<\/p>\n

Several of the whistleblowers also said that the recent lenient sentence of probation and a fine for General David Petraeus – for his providing of classified information to his mistress Paula Broadwell – underscores the double standard of justice at work in the area of classified information handling.<\/p>\n

Speakers said Petraeus\u2019s favorable treatment should become the standard applied to defendants who are actual national security whistleblowers, such as Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Jeffrey Sterling (who has denied guilt but who nevertheless faces sentencing May 11 for an Espionage Act conviction for allegedly providing classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen).<\/p>\n

In a news conference sponsored by the ExposeFacts project of the Institute for Public Accuracy at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., speakers included William Binney, former high-level National Security Agency (NSA) official; Thomas Drake, former NSA senior executive; Daniel Ellsberg, former U.S. military analyst and the Pentagon Papers whistleblower; Ray McGovern, formerly CIA analyst who chaired the National Intelligence Estimates in the 1980s; Jesselyn Radack, former Justice Department trial attorney and ethics adviser, and now director of National Security and Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project; Coleen Rowley, attorney and former FBI special agent; J. Kirk Wiebe, 32-year former employee at the NSA.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Several speakers warned that the Constitution, since the attacks of September 11, 2001, has been shredded under Presidents Bush and Obama, and that Obama\u2019s unprecedented \u201cwar on whistleblowers\u201d is part of the effort for the government to – as NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake put it – \u201cunchain itself from the Constitution.\u201d Drake said that he and other national security whistleblowers were \u201cthe canaries in the Constitutional coal mine\u201d to warn of the NSA mantra \u201cto collect it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drake said he personally was \u201cthrowing my weight behind\u201d passage of H.R. 1466, the Surveillance State Repeal Act, which was introduced by the bipartisan duo of Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky). According to its sponsors, the measure would remove NSA\u2019s claimed justification for its bulk phone metadata accumulation, but would also repeal the FISA Amendments Act through which the government claims the right to spy on Internet users. The issue is coming up now because three key provisions of the Patriot Act expire later this month.<\/p>\n

Responding to a question from a reporter, the other six whistleblowers said they also supported passage of H.R. 1466.<\/p>\n

Petraeus\u2019s recent favorable treatment from the Justice Department and a federal court judge came in for pointed comments from several speakers. In his deal with the government, Petraeus was allowed to plead to a misdemeanor for turning over classified materials to Paula Broadwell, who was writing an admiring biography of the general. Also, as part of the plea deal Petraeus was not even charged with the felony of lying to the FBI.<\/p>\n

This stands in marked contrast to as many as nine individuals – including whistleblowers such as Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, John Kiriakou (CIA) and the soon-to-be-sentenced Jeffrey Sterling – who have all been charged under the Espionage Act since Barack Obama became president. Until the Obama administration came into office, the Act had only been used three times since its passage in 1917, which means Obama has used it three times as much as all of his predecessors put together since the law\u2019s passage. But General Petraeus somehow gets to skate free.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all owe a debt of gratitude to General David Petraeus for showing us what a farce (the Obama administration\u2019s) war on whistleblowers and leaks more generally really is,\u201d said Jesselyn Radack. She said she personally had represented seven whistleblowers \u201ccharged under the Draconian Espionage Act…the weapon of choice for the Obama administration except in the case of General Petraeus who was allowed to enter a plea on a minor misdemeanor charge,\u201d which subjected him to two years probation and a $100,000 fine. Drawing on Petraeus\u2019 favored treatment despite the seriousness of his offense and his lying to the FBI about it, Radack said probation and a fine – such as Petraeus received – was \u201ca more appropriate response\u201d to unauthorized disclosure or leaks of classified information, rather than prison sentences.<\/p>\n

Daniel Ellsberg commented in the same vein that, \u201cI don\u2019t think General Petraeus should go to prison\u201d for providing classified material to Broadwell, but neither did he think true whistleblowers in the public interest should go to jail. He added, though, that \u201cit would be wonderful for once to see a public official\u201d go to jail for lying to Congress, or the courts, or the FBI – and for that I\u2019d be willing to see him go to jail.\u201d As for the Obama administration\u2019s overuse of the Espionage Act, Ellsberg said, \u201cnobody but spies\u201d who provide classified information to foreign governments should be tried under the Espionage Act.<\/p>\n

Ellsberg prodded the mainstream press not only to protect whistleblower sources, but also to recognize that such sources are \u201cthe grist of investigative journalism.\u201d Too many in the mainstream press, Ellsberg said, seem to regard whistleblowers the way police officers regard their informants – as \u201csnitches\u201d and \u201claw-breakers.\u201d He warned that Obama has \u201cset the precedent\u201d for dealing with whistleblowers, and the press needs to be more supportive of whistleblowers.<\/p>\n

Ellsberg, Radack and Ray McGovern also said that the Espionage Act, which prohibits whistleblowers from presenting their motives for disclosing classified information as part of their defense, needs to be amended to allow for \u201ca public interest defense.\u201d Illustrating the need for reform, McGovern said that in the Manning court-martial and the Sterling trial, as soon as defense attorneys started to raise the issue of motive, there was an immediate government objection and an immediate ruling of sustained from the judge.<\/p>\n

McGovern said Sterling was convicted on \u201cthe vaguest of circumstantial evidence\u201d in a \u201ccase that was not proven\u201d against him. The government showed that Sterling had had telephone conversations with New York Times reporter James Risen, who had previously written about Sterling\u2019s workplace discrimination lawsuit against the CIA – and prosecutors apparently convinced the jury that they were not discussing Sterling\u2019s discrimination suit, but rather his knowledge of a CIA plan to provide flawed nuclear weapons blueprints to Iran .<\/p>\n

What was the lesson any intelligence agency employee might draw from the flimsy evidence used in the Sterling case? Said McGovern: \u201cDo not speak to journalists.\u201d And, especially, \u201cdon\u2019t speak to James Risen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contrasting Sterling\u2019s situation (facing a possible long prison sentence) with Petraeus (walking free, with a $100,000 fine, which McGovern noted was three-fourths of a one-hour speaking engagement fee for the general), McGovern said: \u201cEqual justice? Forget about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coleen Rowley centered her remarks around a statement Obama made last week in apologizing for the deaths of two hostages – an American and an Italian – in a drone strike in Pakistan. Obama, she said, opined that \u201cone of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish that were true,\u201d Rowley said. \u201cThat would be nice if we learned from our mistakes,\u201d but instead the government is going in the opposite direction in areas such as the drone program, as witness the accidental killing of the hostages. Gathering an accurate assessment of intelligence is inherently going to happen at the bottom levels of intelligence agencies, Rowley said, so employees in the lower positions have to resist someone at the top stating a desired outcome and asking people at the bottom to tailor the intelligence accordingly. She said that government officials and employees\u2019 \u201chighest loyalty is to the rule of law itself.\u201d That is where whistleblowers come in.<\/p>\n

Kirk Wiebe said that the public and political response to the NSA surveillance disclosures has not been encouraging, and painted a dire picture of civil liberties abuses, the militarization of local police forces and the \u201cde facto destruction of the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am now entering the phase where I am becoming frightened,\u201d Wiebe said. \u201cPeople have asked me, are we going to be able to get out of this mess…to turn the Titanic around?…I don\u2019t see the way to miss hitting the iceberg.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe as a nation are more aware of these issues than ever before,\u201d Wiebe said, but \u201cwe\u2019ve become a society willing to look the other way in the face of wrongdoing,\u201d adding: \u201cWe are no longer afraid of the police state happening. It\u2019s here in small measures, in increasing measures, week by week, day by day…\u201d<\/p>\n

In introducing William Binney, IPA\u2019s executive director Norman Solomon noted that 10 months before Edward Snowden\u2019s NSA surveillance documents began to appear in The Guardian in June 2013, Binney had already gone public in a mini-documentary by filmmaker Laura Poitras. In that interview Binney – without documents – raised many of the spying allegations that Snowden subsequently disclosed. It was this video that apparently encouraged Snowden to contact Poitras, who in turn contacted journalist Glenn Greenwald, to give them the NSA documents.<\/p>\n

Binney said the NSA since 2002 had managed to use \u201cterrorizing and fear-mongering\u201d as a way to manipulate and \u201cco-opt Congress and a senior judge at the FISA court,\u201d while keeping the public in the dark about \u201cviolating the Constitutional rights of everybody in the country.\u201d Since it had the White House blessing, Binney said the NSA controlled all three branches of government before its activities came to light. Former NSA director Michael Hayden \u201cto this day\u201d continues to lie that the agency doesn\u2019t collect content, only metadata, Binney said. In raising the alarm about the sweep of NSA programs since leaving the agency, Binney said he had been painted by NSA as someone who had no credibility \u201cbecause I was a disgruntled former employee.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Hanrahan is a former executive director of The Fund for Investigative Journalism and reporter for <\/i>The Washington Post, <\/i>The Washington Star, UPI, and other news organizations. He also has extensive experience as a legal investigator. Hanrahan is the author of <\/i>Government by Contract<\/a> and co-author of <\/i>Lost Frontier: The Marketing of Alaska<\/a>. He has written extensively for NiemanWatchdog.org<\/a>, a project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.<\/i><\/p>\n

Reprinted with permission from <\/i>ExposeFacts<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seven prominent national security whistleblowers Monday called for a number of wide-ranging reforms – including passage of the \u201cSurveillance State Repeal Act,\u201d which would repeal the USA Patriot Act – in an effort to restore the Constitutionally guaranteed 4th Amendment right to be free from government spying. Several of the whistleblowers also said that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-25254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25254"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25256,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25254\/revisions\/25256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25254"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=25254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}