Leakers are ignored whistleblowers

Those who leak are ignored whistleblowers, who have followed legal regulations for reporting illegal activity.

Edward Snowden leaked documents to Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian, who shared them with New York Times, Guardian, and Der Spiegal as well as Barton Gellman at the Washington Post.

The New York Times published a story in December 2005 that the Bush Administration was wiretapping Americans without warrants.

Chelsea Manning gave documents to Wikileaks, who shared them with New York Times, Guardian, and Der Spiegal.

Daniel Ellsberg gave the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times.


These are all famous leakers, people with inside access to national security secrets, who when they saw abuse, shared it with the public through the press.

But it is not that simple. There was a long process that lead to their decisions to go to the press in order to get the story out.

I have pointed out many times that those who leak to the press are ignored whistleblowers.

Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Daniel Ellsberg had worked in defense and at RAND for many years
consulting with Air Force generals during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis (Brothers, pg 172)

he was writing intelligence reports on Vietnam for the Department of Defense in the summer of 1965 (Young pg 168)

Ellsberg was knowledgable about the Vietnamese countryside, working with Robert Komer at CORDS in 1966 (Young pg 212)

Ellsberg was once an advisor to Henry Kissinger (Young 259)

Robert McNamara tasked Leslie Gelb with coordinating the Pentagon Papers report. (Young pg 211)

HERE.... In mid 1969 Ellsberg and 5 RAND colleagues wrote a letter to Nixon protesting the President's war policy. (Young 259)

Ellsberg first gave the Pentagon Papers to Senator Fullbright in November 1969, but Congress was unsure what to do with them, especially after the Secretary of Defense refused to declassify them. (Young 259)

In 1964 Ellsberg had served as government spokesman at the very first anti war teach-in. (Young, 259)

Ellsberg told Seymour Hersh that he had served 15 years, a system that lies automatically from top to bottom to protect a cover-up murder. (Young 259)


For the long story of how the Pentagon Papers made their way slowly to the New York Times, listen to the Democracy Now! program here. It was a long process to get the story out to the public in the New York Times.

And there is also the effort by the government to discredit whistleblowers:

Nixon called the Pentagon Papers the "Kennedy/Johnson Papers" as a way to link the war politically to Democrats (Young 260)

Ellsberg was to be prosecuted for releasing the actual documents, while E Howard Hunt, one of the Watergate Burglars, was tasked with forging cables that would tie President John F Kennedy to the murder of [South Vietnam prime minister] Diem. (Young pg 261) see more on Diem here

Erlichman said Ellsberg "was a fanatic, known to be a drug abuser" (quoted in Young, 261 but Brothers pg 370 corroborates Ellsberg's LSD use day RFK was killed)
but of course I will add that there was no problem with Ellsberg for 15 years, until he broke with govt policy, as is always the case with insiders who turn against wrong policies.


Ellsberg has done many interviews and debates since the Snowden revelations came out.



EDWARD SNOWDEN

Going through official channels achieved nothing Boing Boing quoting NYT interview 

he discovered flaws in the software of the C.I.A.’s personnel Web applications that would make them vulnerable to hacking. He warned his supervisor, he said, but his boss advised him to drop the matter and not rock the boat. After a technical team also brushed him off, he said, his boss finally agreed to allow him to test the system to prove that it was flawed.

 Daily Tech

Reportedly his supervisor found strong evidence that he had been trying to break into systems and files that he did not have access to (top-secret security access, after all, is relatively limited as at most agencies you only have access to the data you're working directly with).  Combined with his increasingly standoffish behavior, his supervisor wrote a derogatory report in his personnel file (called a "derog" in federal government jargon) and convinced CIA officials to relieve him from his post and ship him back home to the U.S.

Former NSA top executive and Whistleblower Thomas Drake, who was prosecuted as a spy for his whistleblowing activies, agrees with Snowden, writing (bold is my emphasis)

The NSA programs that Snowden has revealed are nothing new: they date back to the days and weeks after 9/11. I had direct exposure to similar programs, such as Stellar Wind, in 2001. In the first week of October, I had an extraordinary conversation with NSA's lead attorney. When I pressed hard about the unconstitutionality of Stellar Wind, he said:

"The White House has approved the program; it's all legal. NSA is the executive agent."

It was made clear to me that the original intent of government was to gain access to all the information it could without regard for constitutional safeguards. "You don't understand," I was told. "We just need the data."

continued

Stellar Wind was a highly secret program that, without warrant or any approval from the Fisa court, gave the NSA access to all phone records from the major telephone companies, including US-to-US calls. It correlates precisely with the Verizon order revealed by Snowden; and based on what we know, you have to assume that there are standing orders for the other major telephone companies.

 continued

I took my concerns up within the chain of command, to the very highest levels at the NSA, and then to Congress and the Department of Defense. I understand why Snowden has taken his course of action, because he's been following this for years: he's seen what's happened to other whistleblowers like me.By following protocol, you get flagged – just for raising issues. You're identified as someone they don't like, someone not to be trusted.

AND AFTER TRYING TO TELL NSA IG AND CONGRESS ABOUT ABUSE FOR YEARS, Thomas Drake was ignored for too long.

I reached a point in early 2006 when I decided I would contact a reporter.

 NYT writes Edward Snowden is a WhistleBlower NYT


Chelsea Manning (formerly known as Bradley Manning) 

Wikileaks source for Afghan War Logs, Iraq War Logs, Diplomatic Cables, Collateral Murder Video

For extensive coverage of Manning and Wikileaks and the Trial against them by the US Government, see Alexa O'brien at her Website


Here is the Manning Chat with convicted hacker Adrian Lamo, who turned Manning in after Manning admitted to leaking documents to Wikileaks published by WIRED

(12:15:11 PM) bradass87: hypothetical question: if you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time… say, 8-9 months… and you saw incredible things, awful things… things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC… what would you do?
(12:16:38 PM) bradass87: or Guantanamo, Bagram, Bucca, Taji, VBC for that matter…
(12:17:47 PM) bradass87: things that would have an impact on 6.7 billion people
(12:21:24 PM) bradass87: say… a database of half a million events during the iraq war… from 2004 to 2009… with reports, date time groups, lat-lon locations, casualty figures… ? or 260,000 state department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective?

Here are excerpts from Manning's statement to the court explaining her actions

I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the [Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as well as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan. 

 Manning speaks about trying to give documents to several newspapers

At my aunt’s house I debated what I should do with the SigActs, in particular whether I should hold on to them or disclose them to a press agency. At this point I decided that it made sense to expose the SigAct tables to an American newspaper. I first called my local newspaper, The Washington Post, and spoke with a woman saying that she was a reporter. I asked her if the Washington Post would be interested in receiving information that would have enormous value to the American public. Although we spoke for about five minutes concerning the general nature of what I possessed, I do not believe she took me seriously. She informed me that the Washington Post would possibly be interested, but that such decisions were made only after seeing the information I was referring to and after consideration by the senior editors.
I then decided to contact the largest and most popular newspaper, The New York Times. I called the public editor number on the New York Times website. The phone rang and was answered by a machine. I went through the menu section for news tips. I was routed to an answering machine. I left a message stating I had access to information about Iraq and Afghanistan that I believed was very important. However, despite leaving my Skype phone number and personal email address, I never received a reply from The New York Times.
I also briefly considered dropping into the office for the political commentary blog Politico, however the weather conditions during my leave hampered my efforts to travel. After these failed efforts I ultimately decided to submit the materials to the WLO [WikiLeaks Organization]. I was not sure if the WLO would even actually publish the SigAct tables. I was concerned that they might not be noticed by the American media. However, based upon what I had read about the WLO through my research described above, this seemed to be the best medium for publishing this information to the world within my reach.

Chelsea Manning writes to TIME Magazine for Thanskgiving, what she is thankful for here



So those who go to the press, which is legally protected to publish government secrets under the 1st Amendment, and does so all the time,  only do so after either going through the legal internal chains to report abuse, as Jeffrey Toobin and NSA defenders in Congress and the Intelligence Community say Snowden should have done, or after being ignored over a long period of time, usually several years, or waiting for policies to change.

Senator Ron Wyden considered for a long time leaking NSA abuse on the Senate Floor, and is legally allowed to do so under the Senate Rules

http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/317319-wyden-considered-disclosing-nsa-secrets-on-senate-floor

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a longtime critic of the National Security Agency's (NSA) surveillance programs, told Rolling Stone that he considered disclosing classified information on the Senate floor prior to the leaks by former contractor Edward Snowden.
The Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution shields members of Congress from prosecution for statements that they enter into the Congressional Record.

And then there are "official leaks" by Administration officials, which makes the govt look good--I guess since no documents are released to the press, this is OK, as it happens all the time with no consequences WaPo story

“Shihata is among the few remaining members of al-Qaeda’s old guard,” said a U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of not having authorization to talk publicly about the movements of the al-Qaeda figures.

CSM story

A senior U.S. law enforcement official said Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was taken alive overnight in the beach resort town. The official was not authorized to discuss the arrest and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin is retiring now after 40 years in Congress. Before he was elected himself, he served another US Congressman.  Harkin was fired when he saw abuse in Vietnam and went to Life Magazine with the pictures.  He was told at the time that "he would never work in DC again."

Here he talks about "not always trusting what your government tells you about 'the enemy'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3GrKX1jATXA

https://www.harkin.senate.gov/issue/protection/

Senator Harkin's commitment to human rights came into focus in 1970, when he went to Vietnam as a young Congressional staffer on a "fact finding" mission. Unfortunately, when Harkin stumbled on some horrifying cases of abuse, many delegation members did not want to face the facts. Harkin went to Con Son Island, where the South Vietnamese government was keeping hundreds of political prisoners in "tiger cages" in the ground, shackled and living in unspeakable squalor. When he returned to the States, despite the objections of his superiors, Harkin spoke out. His photographs of the tiger cages were published in Life magazine, and for his courage, he was fired.

 http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/resources/torture/luce.html

The Tiger Cages
In 1970, President Nixon sent a delegation of ten Congressmen to Viet Nam to investigate pacification. A part of their mandate included a visit to a prison in South Viet Nam as a way to be allowed to visit a prison where U.S. POWs were held in the North.
Tom Harkin, then an aide to the congressional group, convinced two of the Congressmen to investigate stories of torture in the Tiger Cages off the coast of Viet Nam (the French built them in 1939 to hold political opponents; similar ones in French Guinea became famous in the movie Papillion, starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman). The congressman requisitioned a plane for the 200-mile trip to Con Son Island. I was asked to go as an interpreter and specialist in Vietnamese prisons. At that time I was working for the World Council of Churches.
On the way out Frank Walton, the U.S. prison advisor, described Con Son as being like "a Boy Scout Recreational Camp." It was, he said, "the largest prison in the Free World."
We saw a very different scene when we got to the prison. Using maps drawn by a former Tiger Cage prisoner, we diverted from the planned tour and hurried down an alleyway between two prison buildings. We found the tiny door that led to the cages between the prison walls. A guard inside heard the commotion outside and opened the door. We walked in.
The faces of the prisoners in the cages below are still etched indelibly in my mind: the man with three fingers cut off; the man (soon to die) from Quang Tri province whose skull was split open; and the Buddhist monk form Hue who spoke intensely about the repression of the Buddhists. I remember clearly the terrible stench from diarrhea and the open sores where shackles cut into the prisoners' ankles. "Donnez-moi de l'eau" (Give me water), they begged. They sent us scurrying between cells to check on other prisoners' health and continued to ask for water.
The photos that Harkin, today a U.S. Senator from Iowa, took were printed in Life Magazine (July 17, 1970). The international protest which resulted brought about the transfer of the 180 men and 300 women from the Cages. Some were sent to other prisons. Some were sent to mental institutions.

Harkin we will miss you and your courage

He wrote about the experience in a cover story for The Progressive in October 1970 called “Vietnam Whitewash: The Congressional Jury That Convicted Itself.” He said he couldn’t ignore the voices of the prisoners in the tiger cages begging him to tell their stories. And he also said: “One man can stand up and make a difference.”

If only Snowden, Manning, were senators at the time they spoke out........