The Ridenhour Awards are today, and GAP, as always, is extremely proud to partner with the Nation Institute, Fertel Foundation, and others to make this event happen. There should be more events that honor the brave acts that whistleblowers take in the name of Americans. These coveted prizes are among the most respected for those citizens who act "in the spirit of courage and truth."

Every year, the awardees are exceptional. This year is no different. Whistleblower and author Wendell Potter takes the Ridenhour Book prize this year for his work in exposing the true nature of health care providers. Sen. Russ Feingold takes the Courage Award for his continued, principled fight against corporate wrongdoing. And a new award this year, the Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize, is being handed out to the producers of Budrus.

And the coveted Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize -- hands down the most respected annual American award for whistleblowers -- is going to National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Tom Drake. Drake, who GAP has advocated for strenuously over the past year, helped expose multi-billion dollar waste and fraud at the NSA by going through several internal government channels. His concerns eventually were reported in the Baltimore Sun. For his actions of protecting America, he now has the dubious distinction of being the fourth American indicted under the Espionage Act for allegedly mishandling classified information. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was the first person.

The Justice department wants to hold the prosecution of former NSA official and whistleblower Thomas Drake in a Soviet-era vacuum. Recently the government has moved to preclude any mention of published, properly authenticated newspaper articles, over-classification; and, as the Justice Department must be sensitive to the fact that it is trying to jail a whistleblower, it also asks to bar mention of whistleblowing! The icing on the cake is that war-on-whistleblowers "General" William Welch wants to use a "secret code" to talk about evidence in Drake's case.

What kind of fair trial will this be?

In USA Today Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney defended the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers:

At the same time, there are appropriate avenues for whistle-blowers to follow when it relates to handling of classified information. People with access to classified information cannot make unilateral decisions that such information doesn't have to be treated as classified, regardless of their motive.

That offers no defense whatsoever for the Obama administration's prosecution of Drake because Drake did not leak classified information to the media, and is not charged with leaking classified information to the media. Moreover, Drake did go through appropriate channels for providing classified information to Congress and the Department of Defense Inspector General.

Remember former U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch? Appointed under the Bush administration to head the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which investigates federal whistleblower disclosures, Bloch quickly gained notoriety as a threat to the merit system and his own employees. Bloch was put under investigation in 2007, following a litany of allegations that he was pursuing personal political agendas over his mandate to protect whistleblowers. A quick and dirty attempt to wipe his own hands clean has landed him a month's worth of jail time, unless his own prosecutors give him a 'get out of jail free' card.

Last April, Bloch pleaded guilty to criminal contempt of Congress for withholding information from Congressional investigators. In 2006, he hired Geeks on Call to scrub his government-issued computer of evidence that he violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. After Bloch withheld details from the House Oversight Committee of this evidential purging, a federal judge sentenced Bloch to a mandatory one-month minimum jail term.

Red flags went off in the whistleblower community earlier this month when Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Leon filed a motion for reconsideration to reduce Bloch’s jail term to probation. Bloch’s lawyers eagerly joined the motion. Apparently, Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson’s ruling threatened the plea deal that Bloch and his prosecutors arranged.