Former CIA director David Petraeus. (Reuters / Chris Keane)
Why should you be grateful to lying liar David Petraeus? The barely-there slap on the wrist he received for leaking classified information to his his mistress Paula Broadwell reveals how extreme the double standard of justice is for the handling of classified information.
Petraeus got a lenient sentence: probation and a fine. Others who have been convicted of leaking classified documents, but who are not formerly the head of the CIA, receive decades in prison.
#whistleblowers @Thomas_Drake1 @DanielEllsberg @JesselynRadack #Binney @KirkWiebe @raymcgovern @ColeenRowley pic.twitter.com/INWXSRTTco
— Kathleen McClellan (@McClellanKM) April 27, 2015
John Hanrahan at Expose Facts writes that on Monday, seven prominent national security whistleblowers "called for a number of wide-ranging reforms — including passage of the 'Surveillance State Repeal Act,' which would repeal the USA Patriot Act — in an effort to restore the Constitutionally guaranteed 4th Amendment right to be free from government spying."
Speakers said Petraeus's favorable treatment should become the standard applied to defendants who are actual national security whistleblowers, such as Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and Jeffrey Sterling (who has denied guilt but who nevertheless faces sentencing May 11 for an Espionage Act conviction for allegedly providing classified information to New York Times reporter James Risen).
In a news conference sponsored by the ExposeFacts project of the Institute for Public Accuracy at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., speakers included William Binney, former high-level National Security Agency (NSA) official; Thomas Drake, former NSA senior executive; Daniel Ellsberg, former U.S. military analyst and the Pentagon Papers whistleblower; Ray McGovern, formerly CIA analyst who chaired the National Intelligence Estimates in the 1980s; Jesselyn Radack, former Justice Department trial attorney and ethics adviser, and now director of National Security and Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project; Coleen Rowley, attorney and former FBI special agent; J. Kirk Wiebe, 32-year former employee at the NSA.
"Whistleblowers vs. "Fear-Mongering"–John Hanrahan" [exposefacts.org, HT: @thomas_drake1, @jesselynradack]
