2022-04-26 Steven Donziger Is Finally Free. Onward Toward Justice for the People of Ecuador! Today, human rights lawyer Steven Donziger woke up free, marking the closure of the latest chapter in Chevron’s scheme to evade justice for contaminating the Amazon rainforest. Now all eyes turn back to the true crime – Chevron’s contamination from 1964-1992 in Ecuador and the company’s efforts to escape accountability. After the seemingly-bottomless money the oil giant spent on high-priced lawyers and PR firms, Chevron has actually gained nothing in its efforts to change the narrative of its toxic dumping in Ecuador. It failed to undermine the Ecuadorian people’s calls for justice. https://amazonwatch.org/news/2022/0426-steven-donziger-is-finally-free-onward-toward-justice-for-the-people-of-ecuador
2022-04-25 Steven Donziger Walks Free After 993 Days of ‘Completely Unjust’ Detention “He should have never been detained for even one day,” said an Amnesty International official, “as it has been clear the whole process against him has been in retaliation for his human rights work that exposed corporate wrongdoings.” Donziger walked free Monday after 993 days of detention stemming from his decades-long legal fight with Chevron, which deployed its vast resources in a campaign to destroy Donziger after he won a $9.5 billion settlement against the fossil fuel giant over its pollution of the Amazon rainforest. Donziger’s case has attracted global attention and outrage, with the United Nations high commissioner on human rights calling his prolonged detention a violation of international law. Lawmakers in the United States have also decried Donziger’s prosecution as an “unprecedented and unjust legal assault.” “Corporations must not be allowed to continue abusing the U.S. justice system to silence and intimidate human rights defenders or anyone else exposing their wrongdoing,” https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/04/25/steven-donziger-walks-free-after-993-days-completely-unjust-detention
2022-04-22 Daniel Ellsberg on the Existential Threat of Global Conflict “As the world has correctly perceived, this has the seeds of a regional nuclear war and all-out war between the US and Russia.” Arguably no human on earth has given more thought over the past 65 years to the possibilities of nuclear war—intentional or accidental—than Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Since Ellsberg joined the RAND Corporation as an analyst in 1958, he has accumulated a vast wealth of knowledge and perspective on how superpowers use their nuclear muscle to impose their will on the world, and on how their political and military elites strategize about conflicts in the nuclear era.
Now, in 2022, with Europe once more witnessing a catastrophic land war, with Putin having put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert, and with Ukrainian forces humbling Russia’s conventional army, Ellsberg is desperately concerned that things could spiral out of control, and the Great Powers could topple into the abyss. He is furious at the shortsighted policies pushed by George W. Bush’s administration, and continued by the administrations that came after, to expand NATO east onto Russia’s flank. He quotes Cold War theorist George Kennan’s warning that such an expansion was “a fateful error,” the most historic blunder since the end of the Cold War, arguing that it made it almost certain that a humiliated Russia would turn toward nationalism and militarism. In dangling the prospect of NATO membership before Ukraine’s government, even if NATO didn’t actually want the country as a member, Washington was, Ellsberg came to feel, deliberately tempting Russia to intervene. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/daniel-ellsberg-ukraine/
2022-03-01 Whistleblower System Doesn’t Work Joe Carson, a nuclear safety engineer, flagged waste, fraud, abuse and illegality at the Department of Energy again and again and again. His story should show Congress what needs to get fixed. Carson is not your typical whistleblower, who makes a revelation of wrongdoing and then deals with the fallout. Instead, he blew the whistle on waste, fraud, abuse and illegality at the Department of Energy, (DOE) and then did it again and again and again. And to make matters more difficult for him, he had to deal with the fallout not just from DOE, but from the governmental organizations set up to protect whistleblowers. Consequently, he has spent decades in court. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/01/john-kiriakou-whistleblower-system-doesnt-work/
2022-02-21 Whistleblowers accuse embattled Texas attorney general of misleading the public about corruption scandals The whistleblowers who sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after he fired them for accusing him of bribery and abuse of office are speaking out against him publicly for the first time since filing their lawsuit, in response to what they say are Paxton’s “numerous false and misleading public statements” on the campaign trail. https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/whistelblowers-ken-paxton-corruption-scandals/
2022-02-21 Massive Credit Suisse data leak reveals criminals, corrupt autocrats and human traffickers A whistleblower leak to German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and other media led to reporting on Sunday revealing that Credit Suisse—one of the world’s biggest private banks—knowingly accepted “corrupt autocrats, suspected war criminals and human traffickers, drug dealers and other criminals” as customers. Data on more than 18,000 bank accounts, holding more than $100 billion was leaked. The accounts included personal, shared and corporate accounts with opened as far back as the 1940s. https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/credit-suisse/
2022-02-20 Facebook misled investors about battling climate and COVID lies: SEC filings In complaints to the U.S. government, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen accused the tech giant of misleading investors about combating climate and Covid-19 misinformation, The Washington Post revealed Friday. Haugen has gained international attention for speaking out in the press and testifying to Congress. The former Facebook employee is represented by Whistleblower Aid, which filed the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaints earlier this month. https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/facebook-investors/
2021-10-24 Appeals court allows whistleblower lawsuit from former employees who accused Ken Paxton of bribery to proceed A state appeals court found Thursday that former deputies of Attorney General Ken Paxton who were fired after accusing the Republican official of abusing his office are protected under the state’s whistleblower law, allowing their lawsuit against Paxton to proceed. Paxton’s lawyers had argued in court that he’s exempt from the Texas Whistleblower Act because he’s an elected official, not a public employee. But the court upheld a previous lower court decision that denied Paxton’s attempt to dismiss the case. https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/ken-paxton-2655356289/
2021-10-19 Drone Whistleblower Thrown in Pen With Terrorists In a cruel act of revenge, the U.S. government sent Daniel Hale, who exposed U.S. drone civilian killings, to a maximum security prison where he is housed with convicted terrorists. https://www.blackagendareport.com/drone-whistleblower-thrown-pen-terrorists
2021-10-12 The Fake ‘Facebook Whistleblower’ Two different kinds of activities are being blurred by using the same word, writes Jonathan Cook. And a lot hangs on how we use the term. The enthusiasm with which much of the media and political establishment have characterised Frances Haugen as a “Facebook whistleblower” requires that we pause to consider what exactly we think the term “whistleblower” means.
But the real problem with calling Haugen a “whistleblower” is indicated by the fact that she has been immediately propelled to the center of a partisan political row – yet another example of tribal politics that have become such a feature of the post—Trump era. Democrats see Haugen as a hero, blowing the whistle not only on overweening tech corporations that are taking possession of our children’s minds and subverting social solidarity but that are also fueling dangerous Trumpian delusions that paved the way to January’s riot at the Capitol building. Republicans, by contrast, view Haugen as a Democrat partisan, trying to breathe life into a liberal conspiracy theory — about Republicans. In their view, she is bolstering a leftwing “cancel culture” that will see wholesome conservative values driven from the online public square. https://consortiumnews.com/2021/10/12/the-fake-facebook-whistleblower/
2021-10-11 Whistleblower slams Capitol Police leaders for Jan. 6 ‘failures’ — accuses ex-USCP head of lying to Congress Nine months have passed since the January 6 insurrection, and new reporting continues to emerge about that event. According to NBC News reporters Julie Tsirkin and Teaganne Finn, a Capitol Police whistleblower recently sent a letter to members of Congress “accusing the agency’s two senior leaders of mishandling intelligence surrounding the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.” Tsirkin and Finn report, “In the letter, obtained by NBC News, the whistleblower accused Sean Gallagher, the USCP’s acting chief of uniformed operations, and Yogananda Pittman, its assistant chief of police for protective and intelligence operations, of significant ‘failures’ in the lead-up to and aftermath of the attack. The whistleblower accused Gallagher and Pittman of failing to take appropriate action ‘which directly contributed to the deaths and wounding of officers and civilians.'” https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/january-6-2655273095/
2021-10-05 In scathing Senate testimony, whistleblower warns Facebook is a threat to children and democracy Two days after a bombshell “60 Minutes” interview in which she accused Facebook of knowingly failing to stop the spread of dangerous lies and hateful content, whistleblower Frances Haugen testified Tuesday before U.S. senators, imploring Congress to hold the company and its CEO accountable for the many harms they cause. https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/facebook-testimony/
2021-09-27 Trump admin whistleblower says officials tried to ‘stifle’ warnings about Putin in the 2020 election Brian Murphy, who served as undersecretary for intelligence and analysis in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from 2018 until 2020, discussed the Russian government’s preference for Trump during an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos over the weekend — a preference that members of Trump’s administration didn’t want the intelligence expert to talk about, he said.
Murphy told Stephanopoulos, “In late 2019, early 2020, it was highly classified that President Putin had ordered all of the Russian services to denigrate all of the Democratic candidates and support then-President Trump. So, there was a push-on, across government, at the senior levels — the cabinet officials — to do everything possible to stifle, to get anything out to the American public or our overseers in Congress about that interference. https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/trump-putin/
2021-09-16 Why Is Julian Assange Being Tortured to Death? Assange is an advocate for whistleblowers, a promoter of information access and information security for everyone, not just governments and major government-connected corporations. He, with the help of information security specialists, codewriters, truthtellers and witnesses around the world, received and published material that embarrassed and exposed a number of powerful organizations, including the US government and its many cronies and beneficiaries. Why is he being tortured to death? Why is he still being subjected to new and experimental variants of BZ fresh from Porton Down, and deprived, not only of friends, relatives, and unsupervised access to his legal team, but to food and basic care? The short answer is that he is being held on behalf of the United States and he is being chemically and physically interrogated in Belmarsh (the British Gitmo) in order to reveal his private cryptographic keys, and the names and cryptographic information relating to others within the Wikileaks information network. https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-julian-assange-tortured/5689298
2021-09-09 How Chevron Used the Law and the FBI to Target Whistle-Blowing Lawyer Steven Donziger Human rights attorney Steven Donziger has now been under house arrest in his New York City apartment for two years. The reason for his detainment, as Lee Camp puts it in this clip from “Redacted Tonight,” is that Donziger made it his business to hold Chevron accountable for how the Big Oil megacorp “harmed, sickened and killed tens of thousands in Ecuador” and tried to avoid paying “billions of dollars” in restitutions.
Though in 2011 the lawsuit culminated in a historic $9.5 billion pollution judgment, Chevron brass subsequently focused on going after Donziger rather than paying the fee. In late July, he was hit with a six counts of criminal contempt, a conviction stemming in part from his refusal to turn over his computer and other devices, which he fought last month with a request for a new trial. His ongoing pre-trial detainment for a misdemeanor offense is unprecedented for any person without a prior criminal record in federal court.
“So, I’m being prosecuted by a Chevron law firm that has locked me up, deprived me of my liberty,” Donziger says . “I later found out that a prosecutor from the law firm who’s benefiting from her relationship to Chevron, Rita Glavin”—who, as Reuters notes, is also defending former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as he faces multiple accusations of sexual harassment—”was using the FBI for various meetings with other Chevron lawyers who supposedly were the witnesses against me,” he says. “It’s totally unheard of.” https://www.mintpressnews.com/chevron-used-legal-system-fbi-to-target-whistleblower-steven-donziger/278426/
2021-09-07 Abortion bounty hunters in Texas aren’t ‘whistleblowers’ — they’re misogynistic vigilantes One of the many preposterous claims coming from supporters of the vicious new Texas law against abortion is that bounty hunters — who stand to gain a $10,000 reward from the state — will somehow be “whistleblowers.” The largest anti-abortion group in Texas is trying to attach the virtuous “whistleblower” label to predators who’ll file lawsuits against abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” a woman getting an abortion. https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/abortion-bounty-hunters/
2021-09-01 Whistleblower Hero: In Praise of Daniel Hale https://againstthecurrent.org/atc214/in-praise-of-daniel-hale/
2021-06-22 Whistleblowers accuse Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of distorting testimony to get their lawsuit dismissed “Whistleblowers say Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is distorting testimony to get their lawsuit dismissed” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/ken-paxton-2653495209/
2021-05-21 JOHN KIRIAKOU: Duping a Whistleblower What just happened to Daniel Hale is yet another injustice. https://consortiumnews.com/tag/whistleblower/
2021-05-10 WATCH: International Festival of Dissent, Whistleblowing and Accountability The one-day festival Saturday featured, among others, John Kiriakou, Jeffery Sterling, George Galloway, Max Blumenthal, Clare Daly, Jimmy Dore, Nils Melzer, and CN‘s Cathy Vogan and Joe Lauria. https://consortiumnews.com/2021/05/10/watch-international-festival-of-dissent-whistleblowing-and-accountability/
2021-05-04 68 Nobel Laureates Demand DOJ Probe Into Chevron’s Prosecution of Steven Donziger “A nation that wants to lead on climate issues can’t let multinational oil corporations pervert the democratic process and silence its critics,” said 1997 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jody Williams. Dozens of Nobel laureates on Tuesday demanded that the U.S. Department of Justice intervene immediately to stop the prosecution of human rights attorney Steven Donziger by a corporate law firm with ties to Chevron, which has relentlessly demonized Donziger since his legal team first won a multibillion dollar judgement against the oil giant in 2011 for polluting the Ecuadorian Amazon. “If the Department of Justice refuses to intervene in the prosecution of Steven Donziger, it would not only be a gross miscarriage of justice, it would also be an abandonment of their commitment to climate action.” —Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Winner. “We believe that a high-level review will reveal that the case clearly is a violation of Mr. Donziger’s rights and the rights of the affected communities in Ecuador,” wrote the Nobel laureates in a letter addressed to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. Donziger, whose federal trial without a jury is scheduled to start Monday, has endured 635 days of house arrest on a misdemeanor charge that carries a maximum sentence of six months if convicted. https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/04/68-nobel-laureates-demand-doj-probe-chevrons-prosecution-steven-donziger
2021-04-22 JOHN KIRIAKOU: Memo to Biden — What About the Other Whistleblowers? Darnella Frazier deserves national commendation. The same goes for Joshua Schulte, Daniel Hale and Darin Jones, all of whom are in dire straits right now. Darnella Frazier is a whistleblower. She’s an important one. Few Americans will know her name, but we should all be thanking her. Darnella is the 17-year-old who took the video of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd. That video has become the de facto official record of Floyd’s death. Where would we be without it? There’s a legal definition of whistleblowing, which many of you may be tired of seeing me write, but which nonetheless bears repeating. That definition is “bringing to light any evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety.” That’s exactly what Darnella Frazier did, and because of that, we are now — finally — debating national police reform in Congress. https://consortiumnews.com/2021/04/22/john-kiriakou-memo-to-biden-what-about-the-other-whistleblowers/
2021-04-06 Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale’s Guilty Plea Prosecuting journalists’ sources as spies under the Espionage Act chills news-gathering and hurts the public interest, press-freedom advocates warn. Press-freedom, peace and human-rights advocates are rallying behind Daniel Hale, the former intelligence analyst who blew the whistle on the U.S. government’s drone assassination program, and who pleaded guilty last week in federal court to violating the Espionage Act.
The Washington Post reports Hale, who was set to go on trial this week, pleaded guilty to a single count of violating the 1917 law that has been used to target WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange and whistleblowers John Kiriakou, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Jeffrey Sterling, Reality Winner and others. Hale was charged in 2019 during the Trump administration after he leaked classified information on the U.S. government’s targeted assassination program to a reporter, who according to court documents, matches the description of The Intercept founding editor Jeremy Scahill. He is the first person to face sentencing for an Espionage Act offense during the administration of President Joe Biden. https://consortiumnews.com/2021/04/06/drone-whistleblower-daniel-hales-guilty-plea/
2021-03-16 MI-5 Whistleblower Annie Machon Wins 2021 Sam Adams Award; Prof. Stephen Cohen to be Honored Whistleblower Annie Machon has won this year’s Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence award. The late Prof. Stephen Cohen of Princeton and New York University will also be honored for his service as a leading Russia specialist. Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5 recruited Machon as soon as she completed her studies at Cambridge University and she worked at MI-5 for six years during the early 1990s. When Machon learned the agency was secretly surveilling left-wing politicians and government officials with oversight responsibility for MI5 itself, she found herself not “ethically flexible” enough to ignore such abuses. Meanwhile, her partner and MI5 colleague, David Shayler, learned that more “ethically flexible” agents in MI6 (Britain’s CIA) were planning to assassinate Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi (a fate he was to meet many years later). Machon and Shayler ended up blowing the whistle on these and other abuses. https://consortiumnews.com/2021/03/16/annie-machon-wins-2021-sam-adams-award-prof-stephen-cohen-to-be-honored/
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2020-11-23 Biden & Hope for Whistleblowers Will the Biden administration be Obama II, using the Espionage Act to silence national security whistleblowers? Or will Biden support and defend those individuals who bring to light evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, or illegality? I don’t want to be overly optimistic, but I believe it will be the latter. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/11/23/john-kiriakou-biden-hope-for-whistleblowers/
2020-10-12 Proposed Reform to US Espionage Act Would Create Public Interest Defense Defendants would be able to testify about their reason for engaging in the prohibited conduct. “A defendant charged with an offense under section 793 or 798 [in the U.S. legal code] shall be permitted to testify about their purpose for engaging in the prohibited conduct,” according to a draft of the bill Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard introduced. Such a reform would make it possible for whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Reality Winner, Terry Albury and Daniel Hale to inform the public why they disclosed information without authorization to the press. The legislation called the Protect Brave Whistleblowers Act is supported by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. “If this long-overdue revision of the 1917 Espionage Act had been law half a century ago, I myself could have had a fair trial for releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971: justice under law unavailable to me and to every other national security whistleblower indicted and prosecuted since then,” Ellsberg declared. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/10/12/proposed-reform-to-us-espionage-act-would-create-public-interest-defense/
2020-06-20 After release of whistleblower Reality Winner, now attention on Assange, Hale and Snowden Winner was released for good behavior while in prison and will continue to remain under transitional custody for the remainder of her sentence. Meanwhile, activists and journalists are calling for attention to cases against Julian Assange, Daniel Hale and Edward Snowden.
Winner was arrested on June 3, 2017, while she worked as an outsourced specialist for the National Security Agency (NSA) through Pluribus International Corporation, a federal intelligence contractor. Winner was charged with leaking classified documents to the press on an email phishing operation for electoral registration in Florida, reportedly by hackers based in Russia. Within hours of the publication of the leaked documents on the online alternative media platform, The Intercept, Winner was arrested for the leak. The Intercept was widely criticized for the manner in which the documents were published and is speculated by many, including Winner’s family, to have led to the arrest. Winner was later sentenced to a 63-month prison sentence in August 2018, nearly a month after she struck a plea bargain with the prosecutors. She was the first person to be charged under the infamous Espionage Act, under the administration of Donald Trump, and was imposed the longest prison sentence for a whistleblower by a civilian court in the US. https://peoplesdispatch.org/2021/06/20/after-release-of-whistleblower-reality-winner-now-attention-on-assange-hale-and-snowden/
2020-05-18 COVID-19: Trump Calls Legally Protected Whistleblowing a ‘Racket’ as Fired Scientist Rips President Dr. Rick Bright — who was fired from his post at Department of Health and Human Services last month — condemned the White House’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic as fatally slow, disjointed and inadequate, reports Jake Johnson. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/18/covid-19-trump-calls-legally-protected-whistleblowing-a-racket-as-fired-scientist-rips-president/
2020-05-18 Partisanship Aside, Trump Had Reason to Fire Michael Atkinson, Say Two Former CIA Whistleblowers The inspector general violated the law by protecting the “Ukraine whistleblower” and proved to be the enemy of real whistleblowers, say John Kiriakou and Pedro Israel Orta. Atkinson said under oath in January 2018 during his confirmation hearing that he would protect intelligence-community whistleblowers, specifically saying that he would “encourage, operate, and enforce a program for authorized disclosures by whistleblowers within the IC that validates moral courage without compromising national security and without retaliation.” But that’s not what happened.
Atkinson proved to be the enemy of real whistleblowers. Atkinson was quick to defend the “Ukraine whistleblower” who per the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel was not a whistleblower at all, as defined by the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA). https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/18/partisanship-aside-trump-had-reason-to-fire-michael-atkinson-say-two-former-cia-whistleblowers/
2020-05-15 Letter Demands Sweden Probe Misdeeds in Assange Case A Scandinavian activist group has opened signatures for an appeal to the Swedish government for “a full and transparent investigation” into a “possible disappearance of documents” and the “illegal destruction of evidence” in the Swedish prosecutors and police probe of sexual allegations against Julian Assange. The appeal also demands Assange’s release from Belmarsh prison in London where he is on remand in an extradition request by the United States on espionage charges for unauthorized possession and dissemination of classified material. It calls on Sweden to provide him asylum. The investigation the appeal seeks would also look into why Assange’s case appears to have exceeded a statute of limitations as well as into pressure British authorities brought to bear on a Swedish prosecutor against Assange. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/15/appeal-demands-sweden-probe-misdeeds-in-assange-case/
2020-04-16 ASSANGE EXTRADITION: Espionage Act Reform Bill Would Protect Journalists Like Julian Assange Kevin Gosztola reports on U.S. congressional legislation that would protect members of the press who solicit, obtain or publish government secrets. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/26/assange-extradition-espionage-act-reform-bill-would-protect-journalists-like-julian-assange/
2020-03-09 Whistleblowers Confront OPCW Leadership’s Attacks & Cover-up in Douma Two whistleblowing inspectors at the center of an Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) cover-up scandal are demanding that their suppressed findings get a fair, transparent, and scientific hearing. In formal letters to the OPCW director-general, the two veteran officials also refuted the OPCW’s leadership’s efforts to impugn their credibility. Both inspectors were part of the team that deployed to Syria to investigate allegations of a chemical weapons attack in the eastern Damascus suburb of Douma in April 2018. The U.S. government accused the Syrian government of a chemical attack, justifying missile strikes on the country by Washington and European allies. But the inspectors in Douma found evidence that raised serious doubts that a chemical attack ever occurred, and which pointed instead to the staging of the incident by anti-Assad extremists. Their findings were suppressed by OPCW leaders who re-wrote their initial report, then excluded the investigators from the ensuing process. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/03/09/whistleblowers-confront-opcw-leaderships-attacks-cover-up-in-douma/
2020-02-11 New Leaks Shatter OPCW’s Attacks on Douma Whistleblowers For the past year, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has been roiled by allegations that it manipulated an investigation to falsely accuse the Syrian government of a chemical weapons attack. An OPCW report released in March 2019 lent credence to claims by Islamist militants and Western governments that the Syrian military killed around 40 civilians with toxic gas in the city of Douma in April 2018. The accusation against Damascus led to U.S.-led military strikes on Syrian government sites that same month. But leaked internal documents published by WikiLeaks show that OPCW inspectors who deployed to Douma rejected the official story, and complained that higher-level officials excluded them from the post-mission process, distorted key evidence, and ignored their findings.
After months of virtual silence, the OPCW has responded with an internal inquiry that lambasts two veteran officials who raised internal objections, attacking their credibility and qualifications. The OPCW’s self-described “independent investigation” describes the pair as rogue, low-level actors who played minor roles in the Douma mission and lacked access to crucial evidence. In a briefing to member states, OPCW Director General Fernando Arias dismissed them as disgruntled ex-employees. The two “are not whistle-blowers,” Arias said. “They are individuals who could not accept that their views were not backed by evidence.”https://consortiumnews.com/2020/05/18/partisanship-aside-trump-had-reason-to-fire-michael-atkinson-say-two-former-cia-whistleblowers/
2020-01-12 Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling, Who Went Through Kafkaesque Trial, Wins 2020 Sam Adams Award Ray McGovern reviews the case of CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling, who spent more than two years in jail, and the decision to award him the 2020 Sam Adams award. With his Sam Adams award, Sterling brings to five the number of award recipients imprisoned for exposing government abuse (not counting 2013 Sam Adams laureate, Ed Snowden, who was made stateless and has been marooned in Russia for over six years). Worst still, Julian Assange (2010) and Chelsea Manning (2014) remain in prison, where UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer says they are being tortured. The Sam Adams Award recipient in 2016, John Kiriakou, having served his own two-year prison term for speaking out against U.S. torture, will be among those welcoming Sterling at Wednesday’s award ceremony. Both were subjected to the tender mercies of Judge Leonie Brinkema— widely known as the “hanging judge” of the gallows-friendly Eastern District of Virginia, where Assange has also been indicted under the same World War I Espionage Act used to convict Sterling. https://consortiumnews.com/2020/01/12/whistleblower-jeffrey-sterling-who-went-through-kafkaesque-trial-wins-2020-sam-adams-award/
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2019-12-11 When Anti-Immigrant Mania Endangers Public Safety By deporting the whistleblower and witness to the New Orleans hotel collapse, the Trump administration runs roughshod over common sense. https://prospect.org/justice/when-anti-immigrant-mania-endangers-public-safety/
2019-11-27 JOHN KIRIAKOU: The Press Should Not Be Shielding FBI Malfeasance The Washington Post and others just adhered to the Justice Department’s own policy of protecting their own while wrecking the lives of those who have the guts to stand up to them. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/27/john-kiriakou-the-press-should-not-be-shielding-fbi-malfeasance/
2019-10-18 All the President’s Whistleblowers The history of government whistleblowing in the U.S. is fraught with charges of espionage, inadequate protections, and real hardships for those who speak out. https://prospect.org/justice/all-the-presidents-whistleblowers/
2019-10-08 Protect the Whistleblowers—and All Workers Who Speak Out These government officials—like airport and oil rig workers, like Harvey Weinstein’s employees—need legal protections when they see something wrong. he president hopes to silence the whistleblowers, saying the original complaint is a “Democratic hoax” and comparing the whistleblower’s sources to spies, even casually floating the word “treason.” His aides follow suit: Stephen Miller claimed the original whistleblower is part of the “deep state”—a new spin on the classic description of the “disgruntled” employee. https://prospect.org/impeachment/protect-whistleblowers-workers-speak-out/
2019-10-03 MoveOn’s Phony New Campaign for ‘Protecting Whistleblowers’ In the last decade, MoveOn — which says it has an email list of 8 million “members”— has refused to do any campaigns to help Manning, Drake, Snowden, Kiriakou or Sterling, writes Norman Solomon. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/10/03/moveons-phony-new-campaign-for-protecting-whistleblowers/
2019-10-00 Whistleblower Ramsey Orta still in prison. https://socialism.com/fs-article/whistleblower-ramsey-orta-still-in-prison/?
2019-09-30 JOHN KIRIAKOU: What was this CIA Officer Thinking? The news is dominated by “the whistleblower,” the CIA officer who reported to the CIA Inspector General (IG) that President Donald Trump may have committed a crime during a conversation with the president of Ukraine. I’ve been fascinated by the story for a couple of reasons. First, as a whistleblower and a former CIA officer, I know what must have been going through the guy’s mind as he was coming to the decision to make a report on the president of the United States. That is, if he is a real whistleblower.
If he’s a whistleblower, and not a CIA plant whose task it is to take down the president, then his career is probably over. Intelligence agencies only pay lip service to whistleblowing. A potential whistleblower is supposed to go through the chain of command as the current whistleblower did. If an employee has evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety, he is supposed to go to the Inspector General. The IG, then is supposed to go to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). And when the DNI investigates and finds the complaint credible, he then takes it to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. That sounds straightforward, but it’s not. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/09/30/john-kiriakou-what-was-this-cia-officer-thinking/
2019-09-27 MSM Defends CIA’s ‘Whistleblower,’ Ignores Actual Whistleblower While championing a CIA agent who should be considered an operative until proven otherwise, much of the press is ignoring the plight of Chelsea Manning, who exposed actual U.S. war crimes, writes Caitlin Johnstone. “The whistle-blower who revealed that President Trump sought foreign help for his re-election and that the White House sought to cover it up is a CIA officer who was detailed to work at the White House at one point, according to three people familiar with his identity,” The New York Times reports. “The man has since returned to the CIA, the people said. Little else is known about him.”
So there you have it. A mysterious stranger from the lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, assassinating, coup-staging, warmongering, psychopathic CIA was working in the White House, heroically provided the political/media class with politically powerful information out of the goodness of his heart, and then vanished off into the Langley sunset. Clearly there is nothing suspicious about this story at all. In all seriousness, even to call this spook a “whistleblower” is ridiculous on its face. You don’t get to call someone from U.S. intelligence a whistleblower unless they are actually whistleblowing on U.S. intelligence agents. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/09/27/msm-defends-cias-whistleblower-ignores-actual-whistleblower/
2019-09-26 After Hearing, Schiff Vows to Continue Investigating Whistleblower Complaint The House Intelligence Committee chair will “be working through the recess” to get more information on President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. https://prospect.org/power/schiff-vows-investigate-whistleblower-complaint/
2019-09-18 Meet the climate whistleblowers muzzled by the White House From weakening vehicle emissions to blocking warnings about how coastal parks could flood or the impact on the Arctic, the Trump administration is accused of muzzling climate science. Here six whistleblowers and former government scientists describe being sidelined by the administration – and why they won’t be quiet. https://thebulletin.org/2019/09/meet-the-climate-whistleblowers-muzzled-by-the-white-house/#post-heading
2019-09-14 Why Is Julian Assange Being Tortured to Death? https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-julian-assange-tortured/5689298
2019-06-27 A WHISTLEBLOWER POINTED TO ICE ABUSE OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT. NOW PRESSURE MOUNTS FOR CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION AN ADVOCACY GROUP that represents whistleblowers sent a scathing letter Thursday to the House and Senate committees overseeing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, calling on the congressional bodies to investigate abuses by ICE and the executive branch’s failure to hold the agency accountable. https://www.parkindymedia.org/a-whistleblower-pointed-to-ice-abuse-of-solitary-confinement-now-pressure-mounts-for-congressional-investigation/
2019-04-13 Letter of Support for Reality Leigh Winner Clemency https://standwithreality.org/action-to-take/letter-of-support-for-clemency/
2019-03-18 Another Whistleblower in Solitary Confinement Last year I wrote about a whistleblower from New England who took direct action to save a child’s life and who paid for it with his freedom. Marty Gottesfeld is now serving 10 years in prison for trying to save Justina Pelletier from abuse at the hands of her doctors at Children’s Hospital in Boston. An investigation by The Boston Globe found that Children’s Hospital had done this before, to other parents. Indeed, in the previous 18 months, the hospital had removed at least five other children from their parents for “medical child abuse,” something that hospital staffers called a “parentectomy.” The story drew the attention of Marty Gottesfeld, a computer-security expert. He was appalled at the treatment to which Justina and her family were being subjected and he decided to act. He initiated a denial of service attack against the Children’s Hospital computer system and against the Wayside Youth and Family Support Network, where Justina was later moved.
Justina’s parents kept up the pressure on the hospital, the state, and the judge overseeing the case. Justina and her sister were able to smuggle out a 45-second video in which she implored the judge to let her go home to her family. It was clear that after 16 months in a psychiatric ward her problems were not “in her head.” They were in her genes. The original Tufts doctor was right. Justina had mitochondrial disease. The judge finally reversed his decision and sent her home.
Prosecutors, however, focused on Gottesfeld and he was soon arrested. His case was assigned to Judge Nathaniel Gorton, the same judge who oversaw the harsh case against privacy pioneer Aaron Schwartz, who eventually committed suicide under the weight of his spurious federal charges. Gorton is known as a hanging judge; he proved that with Gottesfeld’s sentence. Gottesfeld has tried to make good use of his time since he entered the “justice” system. He has reported on waste, fraud, abuse, and illegality in the Justice Department; he’s written about the corruption and conflict of interest of his judge; and he has spoken out against intolerable prison conditions. His punishment has been swift and severe.
Marty was placed in solitary confinement and is now scheduled to be transferred to something called a Communications Management Unit (CMU). A CMU puts onerous controls on a prisoner’s ability to communicate with the outside world. He has been covering Justice Department malfeasance for years now at such sites as The Western Journal, Red State, World News Daily, and now The Intercept. But CMU placement will deny him any access to the press whatsoever. It will silence him. This is, of course, a violation of his constitutional right to freedom of speech. But the Justice Department has only to say that Marty’s journalism is a “threat to the continuing operation of the institution” to justify this loss of rights. Solitary confinement makes everything even worse. https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/18/another-whistleblower-in-solitary-confinement/
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2018-10-16 How the FBI Silences Whistleblowers Speaking truth to power has ruined Darin Jones, a former FBI contract specialist who reported evidence of serious procurement improprieties. He should be the last federal whistleblower victimized, writes John Kiriakou. The problem is that we are the exception to the rule. Most whistleblowers either suffer in anonymity or are personally, professionally, socially and financially ruined for speaking truth to power. Darin Jones is one of those people. He’s one of the people silenced in Barack Obama’s war on whistleblowers. And he continues to suffer under Donald Trump. https://consortiumnews.com/2018/10/16/how-the-fbi-silences-whistleblowers/
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2017-02-23 Whistleblowers and the NRC: Do as I say, not as I don’t Workers at nuclear power plants form the front line of nuclear safety: They are the ones most likely to detect safety problems when they arise. For example, it was nuclear power plant workers who reported that reactors were being operated with broken and impaired safety equipment at the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear plants in New Jersey in 2004. And it was plant workers who alerted officials in 2013 to a security manager who permitted unqualified individuals to hold security positions at the Palisades, Michigan, nuclear power plant. And it was plant workers who discovered extensive corrosion of the reactor vessel head at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in 2002, in which a small amount of cooling water that had been leaking from the reactor vessel over an extended period of time had corroded away nearly six inches of the metal vessel, leaving only a quarter-inch-thick layer. Had that thin layer been breached, the rapid loss of cooling water through the opening could have caused an accident worse than Three Mile Island. https://thebulletin.org/2017/02/whistleblowers-and-the-nrc-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-dont/#post-heading
2016-09-26 CIA Whistleblower Kiriakou Honored for Integrity The U.S. government gives free passes to officials who commit war crimes but imprisons whistleblowers who tell the truth, a fate that befell CIA’s John Kiriakou for disclosing torture. But he was honored by some ex-intelligence officers, reports Ray McGovern. Former CIA official John Kiriakou, who spent two years in prison for revealing the truth about White House-sanctioned torture, became the 15th recipient of the Sam Adams Award for Integrity at a ceremony at America University. Last year, PEN Center USA, a human rights and freedom of expression organization, honored John Kiriakou, with its “First Amendment” award. It has since become clear that while John Kiriakou sat in prison, Senate Intelligence Committee investigators were uncovering heinous details about torture by the CIA from its own original banality-of-evil cables, which showed that CIA and others had lied in claiming torture “worked.” https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/26/cia-whistleblower-kiriakou-honored-for-integrity/
2016-09-21 Journey to No FEAR: 9/11 The final stage of the battle to pass the No FEAR Act, designed to protect those who blow the whistle on discrimination in the federal civil service, was overshadowed by the events of 9/11/01. Yet it was a near-miraculous victory, drawing together perhaps the strangest set of bedfellows in U.S. political history to confront “the outrageous abuse that is taking place in the federal government and its impact on national and international policy.” https://www.blackagendareport.com/journey_to_nofear_911_part2
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2015-06-25 War on Whistleblowers, After Obama The war on whistleblowers has injected fear of prosecution into all honest communications between national security officials and reporters, meaning that the public instead gets a steady diet of U.S. government lies, propaganda and self-serving rhetoric, a problem addressed by John Hanrahan. https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/25/war-on-whistleblowers-after-obama/
2015-06-25 Was Race a Factor in Sterling Case? President Obama’s war on whistleblowers grinds on with ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling dispatched to a federal prison in Colorado, far from his home and family. In Sterling’s case, there’s also the disturbing issue of race, as Norman Solomon explains. Last week CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling went to prison. If he were white, he probably wouldn’t be there. Sterling was one of the CIA’s few African-American case officers, and he became the first to file a racial discrimination lawsuit against the agency. That happened shortly before the CIA fired him in late 2001. The official in Langley who did the firing face-to-face was John Brennan, now the CIA’s director and a close adviser to President Barack Obama. https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/25/was-race-a-factor-in-sterling-case/
2015-05-12 Punishing Another Whistleblower Just weeks after ex-CIA Director David Petraeus got a no-jail-time wrist-slap for divulging secrets to his biographer/lover, ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling got 42 months in prison for allegedly alerting a U.S. journalist to a dubious covert op, a double standard of justice, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern. Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling was a whistleblower who was then targeted by the U.S. legal system for retaliation, which now includes a 42-month prison sentence. His real “crime” was going to the Senate Intelligence Committee to report on a dubious and dangerous covert operation that involved giving doctored nuclear-bomb blueprints to Iran.
Ahough Sterling’s action was “within proper channels,” the move made Sterling a dead duck inside the CIA, which doesn’t want any of its employees to do that and it appears neither do the members of the congressional “overlook” committees who would prefer not to know such things. So, when the account of the Iran scam appeared in James Risen’s 2006 book, State of War, the CIA and the Justice Department went after Sterling although the leak might well have come from someone on the Senate committee or elsewhere, not Sterling https://consortiumnews.com/2015/05/12/punishing-another-whistleblower/
2015-03-25 Journalists Who Hate Whistleblowers A disturbing trend in mainstream U.S. media is how many “star” journalists side with the government in its persecution of whistleblowers and even disdain fellow reporters who expose secret wrongdoing, an attitude that is destroying what’s left of American democracy, as John Hanrahan explains. https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/25/journalists-who-hate-whistleblowers/
2015-02-04 Convicting Sterling to Chill Whistleblowing In the cause of protecting government secrets, the CIA and Justice Department made an example of ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling by convicting him of exposing a dubious covert operation without presenting clear-cut evidence that he did, a chilling message to others, notes Norman Solomon. The leak trial of CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling never got near a smoking gun, but the entire circumstantial case was a smokescreen. Prosecutors were hell-bent on torching the defendant to vindicate Operation Merlin, nine years after a book by James Risen reported that it “may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA.” That bestselling book, State of War, seemed to leave an indelible stain on Operation Merlin while soiling the CIA’s image as a reasonably competent outfit. The prosecution of Sterling was a cleansing service for the Central Intelligence Agency, which joined with the Justice Department to depict the author and the whistleblower as scurrilous mud-throwers. https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/04/convicting-sterling-to-chill-whistleblowing/
2015-01-21 Jesus as Whistleblower Christian churches typically present the religious mythology about Jesus, as the supernatural Son of God who was sacrificed on the cross as atonement for man’s sins. But there is a more historical Jesus who instructed the poor about the injustices they faced and died for it. https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/21/jesus-as-whistleblower/
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2014-06-25 Unanimous Supreme Court Backs Whistleblowers over White House Objections In an important ruling, the nation’s highest court shot down an Obama administration attempt to shield governments from whistle-blowing employees. Nevertheless, the decision “still sends a chilling message” because it fails to adequately protect whistleblowers’ jobs. https://www.blackagendareport.com/content/unanimous-supreme-court-backs-whistleblowers-over-white-house-objections
2014-06-07 An Appeal for More Whistleblowers As more and more secrecy envelopes the U.S. government with millions of hidden records concealing both past and present there is no practical alternative for democracy but to fight back with “unauthorized” disclosures, as Norman Solomon explains in an appeal for more whistleblowers. Blowing the whistle on wrongdoing creates a moral frequency that vast numbers of people are eager to hear. We don’t want our lives, communities, country and world continually damaged by the deadening silences of fear and conformity. https://consortiumnews.com/2014/06/07/an-appeal-for-more-whistleblowers/
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2013-10-13 Snowden Accepts Whistleblower Award Though former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been indicted for leaking secrets about the U.S. government’s intrusive surveillance tactics, he was honored by a group of former U.S. intelligence officials as a courageous whistleblower during a Moscow ceremony, reports ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern who was there. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, from his asylum in Russia, accepted an award on Wednesday from a group of former U.S. intelligence officials expressing support for his decision to divulge secrets about the NSA’s electronic surveillance of Americans and people around the globe. https://consortiumnews.com/2013/10/10/snowden-accepts-whistleblower-award/
2013-06-26 RUN SNOWDEN RUN! Dirty Lies, Dirty Wars, Dirty Secrets Whistle-blowing can consist of more than simply telling a newspaper about wrongdoing by the State. Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange join the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, in opposing the rule of the unjust. “Some whistleblowers survive, others are murdered or imprisoned, but all are eventually destroyed.” https://www.blackagendareport.com/content/run-snowden-run-dirty-lies-dirty-wars-dirty-secrets
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2012-08-22 Scared and Silent: Censoring the Truth Under Obama Legacies are built around what is known about a presidency. However, President Obama is amassing a legacy of secrets kept and whistleblowers punished. “The Obama administration has been after Wikileaks since that organization released classified military reports and diplomatic cables showing evidence of US war crimes in Iraq.” https://www.blackagendareport.com/content/scared-and-silent-censoring-truth-under-obama
2012-05-30 Posing a Direct Threat to the 1964 Civil Rights Act: The Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act Embedded in a bill that purports to “enhance” protections for whistleblowers is a poison pill: provisions that would roll back the 1964 Civil Rights Act by effectively denying due process to minority complainants in the federal workforce. “The No FEAR Institute, Net-We and the National Whistleblower Center have vowed to fight this betrayal of the goals of the civil rights movement through public education.” Sadly, however, “civil rights is not a priority under this administration.” https://www.blackagendareport.com/content/posing-direct-threat-1964-civil-rights-act-whistleblower-protection-enhancement-act
2012-03-21 Activists Back on the March Against the EPA Whistleblowers achieved their greatest legislative victory in modern times in a fight against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Now headed by a Black woman, Lisa Jackson, the EPA continues to put corporate interests over people’s health and welfare. “Women whistleblowers in general and Black women whistleblowers in particular seem to fall under the knife of the black woman leading the EPA.” https://www.blackagendareport.com/content/activists-back-march-against-epa
2012-02-22 Obama Shoots the Messengers, Attacks Whistleblowers Barack Obama campaigned under a banner of transparency in government, but has proven to be the most secrecy-fixated president of all time. Across the breadth of the bureaucracy, there is a mania to hide the facts from the people. “Senior leaders of the Department of Defense intentionally and consistently misled the American people and Congress about success in the Afghan War.” Public employees labor in fear. “These agencies are corrupt and we are still on the bus fighting like Rosa.” https://www.blackagendareport.com/content/obama-shoots-messengers-attacks-whistleblowers
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2011-11-16 Whistleblowers Honored on Nov. 21 In recent decades, information — the lifeblood of democracy — has often been cut off from the American body politic on “national security” grounds or because insiders feel it wouldn’t be “good for the country.” To counter that benighted view, a group of ex-U.S. intelligence officials honors brave whistleblowers, this year Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack. Our country’s need for courageous whistleblowers is now. That is mostly why Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) publicly honors people who have spoken truth, and suffered the consequences, as Sam Adams, my former analyst colleague at CIA, did on Vietnam.
So that is why, this year, we are honoring Thomas Drake, who was a senior official at the National Security Agency where he observed serious waste, fraud and violations of the constitutional rights of Americans, and Jesselyn Radack, a Justice Department lawyer who objected to the abusive treatment of John Walker Lindh, dubbed the “American Taliban” during the early days of the Afghan War. [See details below.] https://consortiumnews.com/2011/11/16/whistleblowers-honored-on-nov-21/
2011-10-25 Whistleblowers Do the higher-ups ever take responsibility for what their subordinates do? Somehow I missed the movie The Whistleblower, an action film about a woman in the UN peacekeeping forces who tries to hold her male colleagues and superiors accountable for sexual coercion and abuse of girls, boys, and adults they are supposed to be protecting. Movie director [Larysa] Kondracki also noted that top officials in U.N. headquarters should be scrutinized just as carefully as peacekeepers for their moral and legal conduct. “This is not just about peacekeepers on the ground. We have videos of high-level diplomats walking around U.N. headquarters with people they purchased,” she said during the forum. If that’s true, what hope is there for undoing the problem on the ground? https://prospect.org/civil-rights/whistleblowers/
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Whistleblowers – Alternative Media
Government/Corporate Censorship and Attacks on Whistleblowers are Meant to Hide Horrible Truths
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