Obama continues the secret US war on whistleblowers
Photo: AFP
US President Obama has continued not only Bush wars and policies, but has continued and expanded the Bush war on whistleblowers, the last hope for many that the truth may prevail. In a sane world if one were to witness a crime or some other clearly egregious or amoral conduct, one would think that one could report it and the guilty would be dealt with, however we do not live in a sane world. For whistleblowers this is the initial dilemma, but due to their consciences or their belief in a higher morality they decide to blow the whistle, almost always knowing that they will suffer for it. Whistleblowers are heroes who risk everything to get the truth out, something which should be rewarded, in a sane world that is.
“Assange,” it is the first word that most
people think about when they hear the word “whistleblower” but this
association is in fact a slightly disingenuous one. Although the making
of the surname of the co-founder of the WikiLeaks organization a
household name worldwide by the global media has done a lot to focus on
the case of WikiLeaks and has helped to keep Julian Assange alive, it
has done little to help the plight of whistleblowers worldwide.
WikiLeaks
and Julian Assange are technically not really whistleblowers
themselves, they are something much worse and I will tell you why in a
minute. What the WikiLeaks organization did was far more insidious than
what any whistleblower could do; they provided an anonymous platform for
whistleblowers who had nowhere else to turn. They gave whistleblowers a
place to at least try to get the truth out, something that is usually
the domain of the Fourth Estate, which has proven since the Bush years
to be incapable or unwilling to go against the government line and to
expose malfeasance and crimes by officials, no matter how egregious.
Why
is WikiLeaks insidious and evil? They of course are not! I say that
from the point of view of the U.S. Government and the Obama
Administration. If you doubt for one instant that the criminals in
Washington are afraid of the truth all you have to do is look at the
reaction to WikiLeaks and the persecution of Mr. Assange and everyone
else connected to WikiLeaks.
The way they have used
almost every method known to man to try to shut down WikiLeaks is a true
real and damning testament not to the “evil” of WikiLeaks but to the
evil of the criminals in Washington hiding in the dark, behind cloaks of
secrecy and the all encompassing mien of “national security.”
The
“case” against Julian Assange (I used the term case which is for lack
of a better word as there is no “case” against him, there are trumped up
“allegations” of a sexual nature involving a ruptured condom but no
official complaint or criminal charges) and WikiLeaks has done perhaps
what it was designed to do and has detracted from the mission of
WikiLeaks by taking the focus away from the actual leaks and putting it
on the leakers. This has been voiced by WikiLeaks principals, by the
Anonymous collective, whistleblower advocates and proponents of
transparency regarding the fabricated Swedish claims and the U.S.
persecution of Julian.
WikiLeaks and Julian Assange are
very fortunate as they have been able to weather the storm, a fact that
must be repeated and respected, as they have survived an all out
sustained and prolonged assault by the full force of the U.S. Government
and all its mechanisms, and have managed to survive. Albeit for Julian,
being forced to seek refuge in an embassy and be deprived of his
freedom may be wanting, he has managed to stay alive and out of the
claws of the U.S. police state.
Their survival is due in
a large part to the media coverage the charismatic Assange has managed
to maintain but for whistleblowers like Bradley Manning and others, fate
has not been so kind. Whistleblowers are usually marginalized, their
reputations are destroyed, many are imprisoned, lose their jobs or have
outright “accidents” leading to their deaths. This is not an
exaggeration but a documented fact.
The motivations of
whistleblowers may be different but the attempt to correct wrongs, for
whatever reason is a noble act and should be rewarded and applauded, in a
sane world this would be the case. What we see now, and I am writing
about the U.S. but this applies to other countries as well, in
particular U.S. lapdogs like the U.K., Australia, Canada, and others, is
that these brave and upstanding individuals are demonized and the very
criminals they are attempting to expose are protected and rewarded. The
hypocrisy and reversal of logic is mind boggling and leaves one gasping
in disbelief.
Currently the Obama Administration is carrying out a shameful and, according to Bill Moyers dot com,
“… unprecedented campaign against whistleblowers, particularly on those
who have divulged information that relates to national security.” Of
course one cannot say shameful or disgraceful or criminally negligent on
U.S. media when referring to the “imperial Executive,” but I think all
of these words apply, and others as well.
Whistleblowers
are individuals who may see criminal activity, waste, violations of
regulations or unethical, immoral or other egregious behavior and
attempt to correct these wrongs but are then demonized by the very
system they are trying to bring in line with what is acceptable, moral
and legal. A system that goes after these individuals, by doing so
proves itself to be either criminally corrupt, morally bankrupt, guilty
as sin or all of the three. In the case of the U.S. this goes all the
way to the Oval office as it has since the Bush coup and the creation of
the all powerful imperial executive.
Moyers and
Company and two of their weriters, John Light and Laureen Sweeney, have
done what most in the U.S. toe-the-line-mass-media have feared to do and
have been negligent in doing, and have reported on six individual
whistleblowers and their plights and theie stories deserve attention and
they must all be applauded and rewarded. These are individuals who
followed their conscience, like Bradley Manning, and have had to pay a
high price for their morality.
The Obama
Administration, following in the footsteps of the first imperial U.S.
president George Bush, has gone after these persons using the Espionage
Act, an archaic law which had only been used three times in U.S. history
until Obama was placed in office. Obama has used it six times against
six individuals.
Citing Moyers and Company, these six
are: Thomas Drake a former senior executive at the U.S. National
Security Agency who was charged under the Espionage Act. He attempted to
report government waste on an NSA program called Trailblazer, which
cost $1.2 billion and one called ThinThread which cost $3 million. He
decided to blow the whistle on waste when the Bush administration began
the illegal warrantless surveillance of American citizens, something he
could not do anything about but which he disagreed with. According to
Moyers he initially faced up to 35 years in prison but eventually
pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.
2: Stephen Jin-Woo
Kim, a specialist in nuclear proliferation who worked as a contractor
for the U.S. State Department. He made a statement about a North Korean
nuclear test to the U.S. media, in a usual conversation between expert
and press, and was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury, but the case has
not yet been brought to trial.
3: John Kiriakou, was a
CIA agent who followed his conscience when it came to the illegal
interrogation methods and torture that was being carried out by the U.S.
and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for giving
journalists the names of two former colleagues who tortured detainees.
4:
Shamai K. Leibowitz, who was an FBI Hebrew translator and was worried
that Israel would take the disastrous step of bombing nuclear facilities
Iran. His leak of a wire tap to a blogger cost him 20 months in prison.
5:
Bradley Manning who believe the American public had the right to know
of the crimes being committed by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq. He
leaked documents and videos to Wikileaks. Myers wrote: “A military judge
ruled earlier this month that for Manning to be convicted under the
Espionage Act, the prosecution would have to prove that Manning had
‘reason to believe’ that the files could be used to harm the U.S. or to
aid a foreign power.”
6: Jeffrey Sterling was a CIA
officer who was privy to the details of a plan to derail plans Iran may
have had in building a nuclear bomb. He is cited as a source who
believed that a U.S. plan to sabotage Iran’s nuclear operations may have
in fact brought Iran closer to developing a nuclear weapon. Sterling
has maintained his innocence and the U.S. Justice Department says it has
effectively terminated the case.
These are
unfortunately just some cases which are being prosecuted under the
Espionage Act. The U.S. has myriad ways to deal with whistleblowers,
including outright assassination. There are many different areas where
whistleblowers have attempted to get the truth out and the people behind
the cases are as varied as the information. Sadly the result for most
is violent opposition by the authorities and unjust persecution.
Cases
of whistleblowers and truth proponents being persecuted are too many to
go into here and the sad part is that there are many people who we will
never know about, and who paid the ultimate price.
Of
the loud cases the Valerie Plame affair comes to mind, where CIA Agent
Controller Plame was burned by the New York Times and Karl Rove, leading
to the deaths of possibly hundreds of her previous agents worldwide.
Her husband was a diplomat who was against one of the false pretexts for
invading Iraq.
Then there are thousands of others
including: Daniel Ellsburg and Anthony Russo (Pentagon Papers), W. Mark
Felt (Deepthroat/Nixon), A. Ernest Fitzgerald (Cost overruns/Nixon),
Gregory C. Minor, Richard B. Hubbard, and Dale G. Bridenbaugh (nuclear
power plant flaws), Mordechai Vanunu (Israeli Nuclear Program, 17 years
in prison 11 in solitary confinement), Frederic Whitehurst (FBI
whistleblower), Gary Webb (CIA, Iran Contra, Drug funding) shot twice in
the head, Jesselyn Radack (John Walker Lindh), Katharine Gun (GCHQ Iraq
invasion crimes), Joseph Wilson (Plame Affair, Iraq invasion lies),
Richard Convertino (lack of Bush Administration support in prosecuting
terrorists), Joe Darby (Abu Ghraib), Sibel Edmonds (FBI post 9-11
issues), Bunnatine "Bunny" H. Greenhouse (Halliburton war profiteering),
Mark Klein (NSA illegal surveillance), Karen Kwiatkowski (USAF Iraq
lies), William Sanjour (EPA), Russ Tice (NSA, CIA, DIA), and Linda Tripp
(Clinton).
Then there are those who had knowledge of 9-11 who have been killed:
Barry Jennings, Beverly Eckert, Kenneth Johanneman, Michael H. Doran,
Christopher Landis, Paul Smith, Deborah Palfrey, Major General David
Wherley, Salvatore Princiotta, David Graham, Prasanna Kalahasthi, Wendy
Burlingame, Katherine Smith, Daniel Pearl, Benazir Bhutto, William
Cooper, Michael Zebuhr, Hunter S Thompson, Dan Wallace, Michael Connell
(Bush vote fraud, dead), and then you can add the thousands killed over
the Kennedy assassination and the list goes on and on.
When
writing this I remembered a strange event that happened to me in
Mexico. I met an American woman there who had been living there since
after the Kennedy assassination and she told me a story how a woman ran
up to her house one night and was pounding on the door saying killers
were after her. The woman and her husband let her in and proceeded to
listen to the woman telling a story about how she had witnessed where
the shooting came from during the Kennedy assassination. The couple
thought she was insane but humored her and drove her as far from the
town as they could. The next morning it was reported by the local press
that an unknown woman had been found shot to death in a ditch. The
woman’s husband soon after died mysteriously and she ran to Mexico. I
thought it sounded like a stretch but today I doubt it was.
That
is the problem with government secrecy and the way they marginalize
whistleblowers, people don’t believe you if you talk against those in
power, they either think you are crazy or making things up, then when
you are suicide or killed, it is a coincidence. My own whistleblowing
case in the US which involved hundreds of thousands of dollars in
federal money being stolen by local officials and the murder of a man in
prison ended with the same office I complained to a grand jury against
destroying my life. Unfortunately for me, like many of the people listed
above, no one wanted to listen.
Will the criminals in
power use every instrument they can to get truth seekers? Sure they
will, and do. Will they kill to keep their crimes secret? You bet. Just
ask Julian Assange, credited with being the most prolific whistleblower
in history with a reported 1.2 million individual leaks to his credit.
May
all of these heroes be remembered and honored, for that is what
whistleblowers are, true heroes and of a higher morality than those
around them who would extinguish the light of truth to continue their
nefarious activities in the dark.
The views and opinions expressed here are my own. I can be reached at robles@ruvr.ru.
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