by Lindsay Bigda
on May 25, 2011
(
2010 )
 The New Yorker: James Risen's Subpoena
The federal prosecutor who is charging GAP client and NSA whistleblower Tom Drake under the Espionage Act has just issued a subpoena against The New York Times reporter James Risen, to "testify against a former C.I.A. officer who is accused of leaking national-security secrets to him." That officer, Jeffrey Sterling, is being charged for his alleged role in revealing information related to a botched C.I.A. attempt to hurt Iran's nuclear program. Risen revealed such information in his book, State of War.
This action shows the clear trend of the Obama administration to harshly retaliate against national security whistleblowers. GAP Homeland Security and Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack discusses this turn of events in this blog posting.
You can lend your voice against these wrongful actions by signing a petition telling the Department of Justice and Congressional Judiciary heads to stop the retaliatory prosecution of Tom Drake!
Click here to sign the petition!
Key Quote: As soon as The New Yorker published the story of one aggressive leak prosecution by the Obama Justice Department, the news was topped by a second. Today, William Welch II, the same federal prosecutor who is pressing espionage charges against Thomas Drake, sparked a new showdown against the press.
The Atlantic: Obama’s War on Whistleblowers
On the heels of the decision to subpoena Risen, this piece details the whistleblowers who the Obama administration is going after. They include Tom Drake, Jeffrey Sterling, Bradley Manning, and Shamai Leibowitz.
Key Quote: The extent to which the administration is prosecuting leakers has troubled those who see leakers as speakers of truth to power.
Foreign Policy: Multilateralists Gone Wild
May 23, 2011
Summary: In the wake of the scandal surrounding the sexual assault charges against the IMF's former managing director, this piece explores how top officials who manage the world’s multilateral bodies often live by a “a separate set of [ethics] rules.”
Key Quote: Bea Edwards, International Reform Director for the Government Accountability Project, said "recent experience" shows the dispute tribunal is taking effective steps to make the environment more equitable than it has been historically.
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by Lindsay Bigda
on May 24, 2011
(
2010 )
 Washington Post: Businesses Criticize Whistleblower Reward Plan
As the SEC is preparing to vote tomorrow on its new whistleblower reward program, many companies are expressing concerns. Businesses are advocating that whistleblower complaints must first be addressed by the companies themselves before being taken to the SEC. This is a terrible idea.
Lawyers who represent whistleblowers and government officials say that it is not acceptable to put potential whistleblowers “ in danger of retaliation by requiring them to begin by dealing with the companies they think are breaking the law.”
Tech Dirt: Travesty Of Thomas Drake Being Charged With Espionage Making Mainstream News
This piece highlights the media coverage of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, focusing on the “ridiculousness of charging him” over records that he had kept for the “(official and legal) complaint he filed with the Inspector General's office.”
To support Tom Drake, please sign the petition demanding accountability for his prosecution, and "like" the Save Tom Drake Facebook page.
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by Lindsay Bigda
on May 23, 2011
(
2010 )
 60 Minutes (CBS): The Espionage Act – Why Thomas Drake Was Indicted
Last night, GAP client and NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake was featured on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in his first public television interview. Drake spoke out about a decision by NSA management to reject an available data-mining program called “ThinThread” in favor of a more costly, more invasive, and less developed alternative called “Trailblazer.” Drake and other former NSA employees believe that ThinThread could have picked up critical intelligence prior to 9/11 that might have prevented the tragedy.
When Drake and other whistleblowers went through proper channels to alert Congress and the Defense Department that the NSA was trading the nation's security for money at the expense of Americans' privacy, the government retaliated. Drake will go on trial next month for charges brought under the Espionage Act, and could face 35 years in prison.
To support Tom Drake, please sign the petition demanding accountability for his prosecution, and "like" the Save Tom Drake Facebook page.
Click here to read more by Jesselyn Radack on GAP’s blog.
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by Jesselyn Radack
on May 23, 2011
(
2010 )
NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake and two other former NSA employees (Bill Binney and Kirk Wiebe) gave stunning interviews on 60 Minutes last night.
In a hard-hitting, on-point report, they told Scott Pelley that NSA had technology---a program called ThinThread--that was ready to deploy in January 2001 and could have picked up critical intelligence prior to 9/11. NSA management rejected ThinThread, and embarked on a billion-dollar boondoggle, Trailblazer, a proposal designed figure how to do what ThinThread could do (collect and analyze massive amounts of data) on a massive and far more invasive scale. NSA also tossed ThinThread's privacy protections, leaving Americans vulnerable to illegal surveillance.
Drake called the failure to gather critical intelligence prior to 9/11
one of the great tragedies in the history of NSA
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by Decora
on May 20, 2011
(
2010 )
Note: Some may find this diary wandering, overlong, meandering, obtuse, and scatterbrained. I agree. However one person has expressed a like for it, so I reckon I'll post it anyways.
I am not the sharpest tack in the box. I'm not trained in national security, law, or much of anything really. Like most people, I first heard about the NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake case back in mid 2010. I didn't, at first, think he was a whistleblower. I thought he was just some guy who had been caught doing something dumb. Some of the news stories quote anonymous sources, saying that it was "hubris" or "corporate IT politics" that Drake had gotten caught up in. I believed that. Part of the problem was that I couldn't understand the basic facts of the case. It was like swimming through algae. I looked at the news stories; many were titled something like 'leak case' or 'leaker', and they had this 'tsk tsk' vibe and they were short on details. Most of them didn't even list the actual specific charges against him; they just said 'leaking'. I don't think any of the headlines said 'Whistleblower'. Now, looking back, I have to wonder; how can the word 'leaker' meet journalistic ethics rules for neutrality, but not the word 'whistleblower'?
Something about those words "Espionage" or "Leaking" seem to switch off the logic center of my brain. Maybe I just don't wan't to support anything that might "harm the troops"; maybe I want to be patriotic. When the government says things, I'm inclined to believe them. In the Drake case, I believed what the indictment said... that he shredded documents, that he copy-pasted classified info, that he gave classified information to a reporter, and that he lied about all of it. I was totally, completely, one hundred percent wrong. And now I'm ashamed of myself.
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by Lindsay Bigda
on May 19, 2011
(
2010 )
 Democracy Now: Inside Obama’s "Orwellian World" Where Whistleblowing Has Become Espionage - The Case of Thomas Drake
This segment on President Obama’s attack on intelligence whistleblowers focuses on the case of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, featuring an interview with GAP Homeland Security and Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack alongside clips of Thomas Drake and Thomas Tamm. In Jesselyn Radack’s blog about the interview, she explains exactly what Drake is being charged with – and why these charges do not merit a criminal prosecution.
To support Thomas Drake and demand congressional scrutiny of his prosecution, please sign our petition, and “Like” the GAP Facebook page and the Save Tom Drake Facebook page.
Inter Press News: The Lonely Plight of the Whistleblower
This review of The Corporate Whistleblower's Survival Guide, a new handbook recently authored by GAP Legal Director Tom Devine and former GAP Litigator Tarek Maassarani, characterizes the book as a realistic warning of the perils of whistleblowing as well as a guide to navigating the whisteblowing process amid “changing legal and cultural landscapes.”
Key Quote: Still, Devine finds reason to be optimistic, even idealistic, about the situation. "Nothing is more powerful than the truth, if it's used strategically and if it's not a secret," he said. It can "overwhelm conventional authority or money or political power."
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by Kathleen McClellan
on May 19, 2011
(
2010 )
The NSA makes up one third of the total U.S. intelligence budget
Jane Mayer's recent New Yorker piece on the criminal prosecution of National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Thomas Drake reveals a sliver of the intelligence industrial complex costing Americans' their money and their freedom.
Drake blew the whistle on the NSA wasting billions and sacrificing Americans' privacy on what The New Yorker describes as a "$1.2 billion flop." The program, Trailblazer, though intended to collect and analyze massive amounts of data, was a funding vehicle with "nothing to show for [itself] other than mounting bills." NSA management rebuffed and retaliated against Drake and other public servants who pointed to a cheaper, ready-to-deploy program that contained privacy protections for Americans.
Trailblazer's failure is a prime example of the endemic revolving-door intelligence spending policy that wastes taxpayer dollars by the billions. Mayer's article describes the problem:
As the [Trailblazer] system stalled at the level of schematic drawings, top executives kept shuttling between jobs at the agency and jobs with the high-paying contractors. For a time, both [former NSA Director] Hayden's deputy director and his chief of signals-intelligence programs worked at SAIC, a company that won several hundred million dollars in Trailblazer contracts.
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