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June 10, 2013
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Edward Snowden is in the crosshairs of the Obama
administration. The 29-year-old former employee of the Central
Intelligence Agency has just become world-famous for his disclosure to
The Guardian of the massive surveillance of Americans implemented by the
National Security Agency (NSA).
Now, holed up in a Hong Kong
hotel, he’s facing the possibility of being locked up in jail for his
actions. But he’s not the only one.
The Obama administration has
waged a war on government whistleblowers. So here’s 5 whistleblowers who
have been under attack by a president who once said that official
whistleblowers were “often the best source of information about waste,
fraud, and abuse in government.”
1. Edward Snowden
Snowden
is the latest whistleblower to find himself facing the possibility of
jail time for leaking information to the press in the hopes of greater
transparency and accountability. Snowden gave an interview to The
Guardian in which he explained his actions, which included giving the
news outlet access to top-secret NSA documents revealing that the phone
records of Americans have been collected and that the NSA has direct
access to the systems of Internet companies like Google and Facebook.
“My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them,”
said Snowden in the interview.
The
Department of Justice has confirmed
that they’ve launched a criminal investigation into the leak. Snowden
knew this was coming. He told The Guardian that the government would
“say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that
can be used against anyone who points out how massive and invasive the
system has become.”
The Espionage Act has been the favored tool to
go after leakers of government information. The act, meant to prohibit
the disclosure of information that could help enemies of the U.S., has
been distorted into a law that turns government whistleblowers into
enemies of the state.
Democratic and Republican members of intelligence committees have also called for Snowden to be prosecuted.
Snowden
is currently in Hong Kong, where he’s hoping to stay until he gets
asylum from another country. The U.S. will likely try to extradite
Snowden from the country, which has a strong tradition of a free press
and a vibrant civil society, but is also controlled by China.
2. Bradley Manning
In
a strange coincidence, the revelation that Snowden leaked the documents
came the same week as the trial of Bradley Manning started. Manning is
the military whistleblower who leaked thousands and thousands of
documents to WikiLeaks to expose U.S. war crimes in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Manning has been treated incredibly harshly. While in
confinement at a Marine base in Virginia, he was forced to surrender
his clothing at night and had to strip to his underwear during the day.
He was also held in solitary confinement for 23 hours of the day--all of
this because he was supposedly a suicide risk. This was all before
Manning was convicted of anything. A UN investigator
blasted his treatment as cruel and inhuman, and a military judge deemed his treatment “excessive.”
Manning
faces life in prison for leaking the documents. He has been charged
with “aiding the enemy,” because the government says his actions
allegedly gave information over to al Qaeda. Manning has also been
charged under the Espionage Act.
3. John Kiriakou
The
former CIA analyst was recently sent off to prison for his role in
disclosing the name of CIA officer who participated in the agency’s
torture program to a reporter, though the name was never printed.
Kiriakou
emerged as a prominent critic of the CIA’s use of torture after he gave
a 2007 interview to ABC News disclosing that a top al Qaeda operative
was waterboarded.
Like Manning, Kiriakou was initially charged
with violating the Espionage Act. But under a plea deal, that charge was
dropped and Kiriakou was ultimately convicted of the
Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
His
supporters point out that while Kiriakou was blowing the whistle on
torture, the people who implemented the illegal policy are walking free.
That’s still the case, and Kiriakou is now the only person in jail for
his role in the torture program--but it’s for exposing it, not for
implementing it.
4. Thomas Drake
A former
executive at the National Security Agency, Thomas Drake exposed details
about the agency’s Trailblazer Project. For this, he was charged under
the Espionage Act, though the government’s case against him
spectacularly failed.
Drake became concerned about the Trailblazer
Project’s cost--at $1 billion, it was way more than the NSA should have
been paying for a program they could have instituted in-house. He was
also concerned it would violate the privacy of Americans. But
Trailblazer, which was supposed to analyze intercepted communications,
was chosen to be the NSA’s vehicle for surveillance anyway. Drake
disclosed details about the NSA’s wastefulness to a Baltimore Sun
reporter.
The government initially threw the book at him, but their case collapsed. As
Marcy Wheeler explained in The Nation:
“The Department of Justice had been pursuing Drake for alleged
violations of the Espionage Act that might have sent him to prison for
up to 35 years. But the
government withdrew
the evidence supporting several of the central charges after a judge
ruled Drake would not be able to defend himself unless the government
revealed details about one of the National Security Agency’s
telecommunications collection programs.” Drake was eventually convicted
on the misdemeanor charge of exceeding authorized use of a computer.
5. Shamai Leibowitz
This
FBI translator became the first person under the Obama administration
to be prosecuted for leaking information to the news media.
Leibowitz,
an Israeli-American, became concerned about what he said was Israeli
government efforts to influence Congress to take a harder line against
Iran. He passed on secret transcripts to American blogger Richard
Silverstein that were collected when the FBI wiretapped Israeli Embassy
officials.
Leibowitz also disclosed that “the Israeli Embassy
provided ‘regular written briefings’ on Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza
to President Obama in the weeks between his election and inauguration,”
among other things.
Leibowitz was charged under the Espionage Act and sentenced to 20 months in prison.
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