This weekend, University of California-Berkeley will be celebrating President's Day by celebrating whistleblowers. Seems apropos, no? After all, most government whistleblowers are patriotic civil servants who are extremely dedicated to the welfare of our country, and blow the whistle at great personal risk.

As our third president (Thomas Jefferson, if you don't recall your American history lessons) said, "There is no truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world." The conference itself used this quote and it fits. We can only hope that more and more people start to take this view.

The university will be hosting Occupy the Truth: Whistleblowers Conference this weekend, February 17-19. It will feature well-known whistleblowers as well as a "participant-driven environment" for networking and whistleblower support strategies.

GAP National Security & Human Rights Director (and Department of Justice whistleblower) Jesselyn Radack and GAP client (and National Security Agency whistleblower) Tom Drake will be speaking on Saturday. Also featured are Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, former State Department official (and Iraq war critic) Ann Wright, and former CIA agent and intelligence activist Ray McGovern, all three of whom will be discussing the plight of Bradley Manning – the solider accused of giving classified information to WikiLeaks – in a panel this (Friday) evening.

Citing the Obama administration Justice Department's war on whistleblowers as one of many examples of excessive secrecy, the National Security Archive at George Washington University awarded the 7th annual Rosemary Award (named for Nixon tape-eraser secretary Rosemary Woods) to the Department of Justice. WaPo reports:

The Justice Department, beating fierce competition from the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security and others, has won this year’s coveted Rosemary Award, named for President Richard M. Nixon’s secretary Rose Mary Woods , who somehow erased 181 / 2 minutes of a crucial Watergate tape.

The seventh annual award, presented by the George Washington University-based National Security Archive, honors the agency that has done the very most in the previous year to enhance government secrecy and keep the public in the dark.

The Archive said the department, among other things, engaged in “selective and abusive prosecutions of espionage laws against whistleblowers as ostensible ‘leakers’ of classified information” and conducted “more ‘leaks’ prosecutions in the last three years than in all previous years combined,” while experts say “over-classification” of government documents is endemic.

The media is feeling the chilling effect from the Obama administration's record-breaking number of Espionage Act prosecutions against so-called "leakers," who are usually whistleblowers. The New York Times reported this weekend on what I've chronicled since the first of six indictments – that of National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Thomas Drake: 

It used to be that journalists had a sporting chance of protecting their sources. The best and sometimes only way to identify a leaker was to pressure the reporter or news organization that received the leak, but even subpoenas tended to be resisted. Today, advances in surveillance technology allow the government to keep a perpetual eye on those with security clearances, and give prosecutors the ability to punish officials for disclosing secrets without provoking a clash with the press.

I'm all too familiar with this fact having represented clients who - knowing what the NSA is capable of - insisted on meeting in-person at places like the Olive Garden. Pay in cash. No phone calls. No texts. Definitely no e-mails.

The Obama administration's Espionage Act prosecutions result in a massive chilling effect on whistleblowers and potential whistleblowers working in the ever-expanding national security establishment - an effect that seems precisely the purpose of the prosecutions (the prosecutor argued that Drake needed to be punished to "send a message"). The Times recognized this weekend that the attack on sources has already turned into an attack on the media in the Espionage Act case against former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee Jeffrey Sterling, where the Justice Department attempted to subpoena Times reporter Jim Risen three times. Risen commendably fought the subpoena and offered a glimpse into just how closely Big Brother is watching journalists:

I have learned from an individual who testified before a grand jury . . . that was examining my reporting about the domestic wiretapping program that the Government had shown this individual copies of telephone records relating to calls made to and from me . . .

State Department whistleblower Peter Van Buren writes in TomDispatch today about the escalating retaliation taken against him since he wrote a book about massive reconstruction fraud in Iraq: We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.

Van Buren writes:

For the crime of writing this book and maintaining a blog that occasionally embarrasses, State Department officials destroyed my career, even as they confirm my thesis, and their own failure, by reducing the Baghdad Embassy to half its size in the face of Iraq's unraveling.

Even as the Secretary of State rails against suppression of free speech abroad, the State Department continues to retaliate and threaten Van Buren for a book written in his personal capacity on his personal time.

Van Buren detailed some of the retaliation, which tellingly began shortly before his book's publication:

Without allowing any rebuttal or defense, State suspended my security clearance, claiming my blogging was an example of “poor judgment,” transferred me from a substantive job into a meaningless telework position, threatened felony conviction over alleged disclosure of classified information, illegally banned me from entering the building where I supposedly work, and continues to try to harass and intimidate me.

“The State Department was aware of Mr. Van Buren’s book long prior to its release,” explains attorney Jessleyn Radack, who now represents me. “Yet instead of addressing the ample evidence of fraud, waste, and abuse in the book, State targeted the whistleblower. The State Department’s retaliatory actions are a transparent attempt to intimidate and silence an employee whose critique of fraudulent, wasteful, and mismanaged U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq embarrassed the agency.”