Boing Boing » whistleblowers

Portraits of "Americans who tell the truth"

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:28:52 +0000

Artist Robert Shetterly's ongoing series of portraits of "Americans Who Tell The Truth" includes a recently-unveiled painting of John Kiriakou, the former CIA agent and counterterrorism adviser who became a torture whistleblower and was sentenced today to 30 months in prison:

Even if torture works, it cannot be tolerated -- not in one case or a thousand or a million. If their efficacy becomes the measure of abhorrent acts, all sorts of unspeakable crimes somehow become acceptable. I may have found myself on the wrong side of government on torture. But I’m on the right side of history. …There are things we should not do, even in the name of national security. One of them, I now firmly believe, is torture.

There's a book, too. More about the project here. Bradley Manning is among the more recent news figures who is also included in the series.

Ex-CIA officer Kiriakou, who fought torture, sentenced in leak case

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:14:55 +0000

John C. Kiriakou, a former CIA officer whom the government spent five years trying to convict for disclosing classified information, was today sentenced to 30 months in jail.

He is the first CIA officer in history to face prison for a leak.

From the NYT report by Michael S. Schmidt:

The judge, Leonie M. Brinkema, said that in approving the sentence, she would respect the terms of a plea agreement between the former C.I.A. agent, John C. Kiriakou, and prosecutors, but “I think 30 months is way too light.”
The judge said “this is not a case of a whistle-blower.” She went on to describe the damage that Mr. Kiriakou had created for the intelligence agency and an agent whose cover was disclosed by Mr. Kiriakou. Before issuing the sentence she asked Mr. Kiriakou if he had anything to say. When he declined, Judge Brinkema, said, “Perhaps you have already spoken too much.”

And the Justice Department's War on Whistleblowers steamrolls ever forward.

On the support website for Kiriakou, who has also worked as a consultant for CBS News, a statement explaining the guilty plea:

Last month I decided to plead guilty to one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in exchange for the government dropping all other charges against me. The decision to plead guilty was the most difficult decision of my life. I am glad to now have the certainty of being home with my children in 30 months. Thank you for your support at this difficult time for me and for my family. I wish I could thank each and every one of you individually, as your support has meant the world to me. Knowing I had supporters like you saved me at the most difficult times.

Ex-Officer for C.I.A. Is Sentenced in Leak Case - NYTimes.com (HT: @kgosztola.)

NYT profile of John Kiriakou: first CIA officer to face prison for leaks

John Cusack and Jonathan Turley in conversation: the future of leaks, and of Wikileaks

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 20:58:09 +0000

At the Huffington Post, actor and activist John Cusack has a conversation with George Washington Law School professor and constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, and Kevin McCabe, a pal of Cusack. The three discuss "WikiLeaks' impact on transparency, the government's response, and the comparison to the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg."

By way of background: Cusack, Ellsberg, and I are on the board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a new organization that helps crowd-fund independent journalism outlets working for transparency and accountability in government. The first group of four beneficiary organizations includes the National Security Archive, MuckRock News, and The UpTake and WikiLeaks; more will follow in subsequent rounds.

"WikiLeaks was extralegally cut off from funding after two Congressmen successfully pressured Visa, Mastercard and PayPal into refusing to do business with the journalism organization in late 2010," writes Cusack. "We hope that the Freedom of the Press Foundation will become a bulwark against these types of unofficial censorship tactics in the future."

In their HuffPo roundtable, Cusack and Turley explore some of the legal principles and historic precedents related to the Wikileaks case.

"What Assange did was a massive release of material that showed the breathtaking dishonesty by the US government and governments around the world," says Turley. Is this, or should it be, a crime?

Pentagon tried to prevent publication of Afghanistan corpse abuse photos

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 03:45:06 +0000

The Los Angeles Times this week published photographs of US soldiers in Afghanistan posing with the mangled bodies of Afghan men believed to be suicide bombers.

Government officials were quick to condemn the behavior. But today, news that the Pentagon sought to prevent the publication of these images, in a dispute that stretched on for weeks with LA Times editors.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta today said, “The reason for that is those kinds of photos are used by the enemy to incite violence, and lives have been lost as the result of the publication of similar photos.”

Only 2 of of the images were published. 16 more were received by the war correspondent who wrote the piece; the paper will not release them.

“They are just awful,” he said, calling the two that were published “the least gruesome.”

Photo: A soldier from the Army’s 82nd Airborne with a dead insurgent’s hand on his shoulder. (Los Angeles Times / April 18, 2012)