Whistleblowers

Whistleblowers
  • Manning2

    As Bradley Manning Hearing Concludes, Military Prosecutors Say WikiLeaks Disclosures Aided al-Qaeda

    December 23, 2011 | Story

    Lawyers made their closing arguments Thursday in the military pretrial hearing for accused Army whistleblower Bradley Manning, which will determine whether he should face a court-martial for allegedly leaking classified video and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. "[The defense] suggested that the original classification authorities for this classified information that Bradley Manning is accused of releasing actually take the stand and be put under oath next time, because they keep saying that there is a risk to national security, and he would like to see them go under oath, and they would probably perjure themselves if they did," says Firedoglake blogger Kevin Gosztola, who was present at Manning’s hearing. He notes that the prosecution "linked Bradley Manning to aiding al-Qaeda... That essentially is criminalizing national security journalism... What they’re saying is anybody who puts this information on the internet—if you do a report on a drone strike, if you do a report on anything related to military operations, and then al-Qaeda reads it, then you could be accused of aiding the enemy." [includes rush transcript]

  • Private_bradley_manning_

    Bradley Manning: Famed Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg on Alleged WikiLeaks Soldier’s 1st Day in Court

    December 16, 2011 | Story

    Alleged U.S. Army whistleblower Private Bradley Manning is scheduled to make his first court appearance today after being held for more more than a year and a half by the U.S. military. Manning is suspected of leaking hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks in the biggest leak of classified U.S. documents in history. We’re joined by perhaps the nation’s most famous whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, and go to Ft. Meade, Maryland, for a brief update on a rally in support of Manning outside the base where he’ll appear. Noting that the WikiLeaks revelations helped spark the Arab Spring and in turn the Occupy Wall Street movement, Ellsberg offers this qualified praise, if Manning indeed committed the leak of which he stands accused: "The Time magazine cover gives protester, an anonymous protester, as 'Person of the Year,' but it is possible to put a face and a name to that picture of 'Person of the Year.' And the American face I would put on that is Private Bradley Manning." [includes rush transcript]

  • Vanburen_iraq_we_meant_well

    State Dept. Veteran Peter Van Buren Defies U.S. Censors to Recount Failed Reconstruction in Iraq

    November 30, 2011 | Story

    In "We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People," State Department official Peter Van Buren provides a first-hand account of the faltering and often misguided attempts at reconstruction in Iraq undertaken by the U.S. government. Van Buren published the book after rebuffing heavy State Department pressure to redact a number of passages. Van Buren joins us to discuss the failed efforts he witnessed in Iraq and his struggle to tell his story to the world. "The State department is very much like the Mafia," Van Buren says. [includes rush transcript]

  • "War Is a Racket" By Amy Goodman

    July 27, 2011 | Blog Post

    Military contract whistleblower Bunny Greenhouse’s legal win is welcome, but U.S. taxpayers are out $5 trillion for the wars of Bush and Obama. Why isn’t war a central issue in the U.S. debt talks?

  • Halliburton_button

    EXCLUSIVE: Fired Army Whistleblower Receives $970K for Exposing Halliburton No-Bid Contract in Iraq

    July 26, 2011 | Story

    Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, the former chief oversight official of contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, has reached a $970,000 settlement six years after she was demoted for publicly criticizing a multi-billion-dollar, no-bid contract to Halliburton—the company formerly headed by then-Vice President Dick Cheney. Greenhouse had accused the Pentagon of unfairly awarding the contract to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root. Testifying before Congress in June 2005, she called the contract the worst case of government abuse she had ever witnessed in her 20-year career. Just two months after that testimony, Greenhouse was demoted at the Pentagon, ostensibly for "poor performance." She had overseen government contracts for 20 years and had drawn high praise in her rise to become the senior civilian oversight official at the Army Corps of Engineers. With the help of the National Whistleblowers Center, Greenhouse filed a lawsuit challenging her demotion. In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, Greenhouse announces that a settlement has been reached in what is seen as a major victory for government whistleblowers. We’re also joined by Greenhouse’s attorney, Michael Kohn, and by Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center. [includes rush transcript]

  • Davidhouse_manning_button

    Exclusive: David House on Bradley Manning, Secret WikiLeaks Grand Jury, and U.S. Surveillance

    July 11, 2011 | Story

    On the eve of the extradition hearing for WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange in London, we spend an exclusive hour with David House, who co-founded the Bradley Manning Support Network after U.S. Army Private Manning was arrested for allegedly releasing classified U.S. military documents to WikiLeaks. House refused to testify last month in Alexandria, Virginia, before a grand jury hearing on WikiLeaks and the disclosure of thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables. Democracy Now! spoke to House at the Frontline Club in London about the significance of WikiLeaks, how he helped found the Bradley Manning Support Network, his visits with Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, the federal surveillance he and his associates have come under, and his experience before the grand jury. “In my mind, this reeks of the Pentagon Papers investigation,” says House. “Richard Nixon’s [Department of Justice] 40 years ago attempted to curtail the freedoms of the press and politically regulate the press through the use of policy created around the espionage investigation of the New York Times. I feel the WikiLeaks case we have going on now provides Obama’s DOJ ample opportunity to continue this attempt to politically regulate the U.S. media.” [includes rush transcript]

  • Play_radack

    Inside Obama’s "Orwellian World" Where Whistleblowing Has Become Espionage: The Case of Thomas Drake

    May 18, 2011 | Story

    National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake faces 35 years in prison on espionage charges for alleged unauthorized “willful retention” of five classified documents. “Espionage is the last thing my whistleblowing and First Amendment activities and actions were all about,” Drake said recently in a public speech. "This has become the specter of a truly Orwellian world where whistleblowing has become espionage." According to The New Yorker, the Obama administration has used the Espionage Act of 1917 to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national security leaks—more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous administrations combined. We play excerpts of Thomas Drake’s first public comments and talk to former Justice Department whistleblower, Jesselyn Radack. [includes rush transcript]

  • Greenwald

    Glenn Greenwald: Obama’s Comments on Bradley Manning Mark "Amazing Amount of Improper Influence" in WikiLeaks Case

    April 29, 2011 | Story

    Military officials have announced alleged whistleblower U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning, who is suspected of leaking classified U.S. documents to WikiLeaks, has been cleared to be held as a medium-security prisoner at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he was just transferred. Up until last week, Manning was held in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement at a Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. His treatment at Quantico was condemned by Amnesty International and led to a probe by a torture expert at the United Nations. We speak to Salon.com legal blogger and constitutional law attorney Glenn Greenwald, who revealed in December that Manning was being subjected to detention conditions likely to inflict long-term psychological injuries. [includes rush transcript]

  • Wiretapping

    DOJ Drops Probe of Whistleblower Who Exposed Bush-Era Domestic Spying, Thomas Tamm: "The Bottom Line Is I Don’t Think I Ever Broke the Law"

    April 28, 2011 | Story

    In a national broadcast exclusive, we speak with Thomas Tamm, the former U.S. Justice Department attorney who helped expose the Bush administration’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping program that intercepted private email messages and phone calls of U.S. residents without a court warrant. On Tuesday, news broke that the Justice Department dropped its long-running criminal investigation of Tamm. The relatively quiet end to the investigation into Tamm’s warrantless wiretapping leak marks a sharp contrast to the controversy his information generated during the second half of the Bush administration about whether the government had overstepped its legal authority in response to the 9/11 terror attacks. [includes rush transcript]

  • Ralph_daniel

    Ralph Nader and Daniel Ellsberg: We Need to See Courage and Mobilization Here as Well as the Middle East

    March 18, 2011 | Blog Post

    As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have virtually disappeared from mainstream media coverage, Democracy Now!’s Juan Gonzalez has a wide-ranging conversation with Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and longtime consumer advocate Ralph Nader about the ongoing U.S. military occupation of these countries, the treatment of WikiLeaks accused whistleblower Bradley Manning, and how this connects to the attack on worker rights in Wisconsin and beyond. Protests against the occupations and the treatment of Manning are planned for this weekend. [includes rush transcript]