On Wednesday, April 23, two prominent figures in the ongoing debate over constitutional privacy rights in the face of the growing national security surveillance state will speak at West Chester University (WCU). The event is part of the Government Accountability Project’s (GAP) collegiate program, the American Whistleblower Tour: Essential Voices for Accountability, which brings whistleblowers to universities nationwide.

After journalists began publishing articles based on the disclosures of National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden last June, an intense debate over the balance between civil liberties and national security has enveloped governments and civil society around the world. This Tour stop features a moderated panel that will explore the challenges facing intelligence agency whistleblowers when they seek to expose wrongdoing and violations of law.

American Whistleblower Tour:
Essential Voices for Accountability in the National Security Era
Wednesday, April 23
12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Sykes Theater, West Chester University

The panel features NSA whistleblowers Bill Binney and Thomas Drake, and is moderated by GAP National Security & Human Rights Counsel Kathleen McClellan. For more on each participant, see below. This Tour stop is sponsored by GAP and the WCU College of Business & Public Affairs, and the WCU Departments of Criminal Justice, Political Science, Public Policy and Administration, Computer Science, Philosophy, and Peace and Conflict Studies.

“The WCU presentation will show students the challenges intelligence whistleblowers face by speaking the truth, as well as how much our society depends on these employees-of-conscience to protect the public interest,” stated GAP Senior Fellow and American Whistleblower Tour Director Dana Gold.

Speakers

  • Bill Binney is a former NSA crypto-mathematician who worked for the agency for almost 40 years, leading a team of technical analysts to create a revolutionary information processing system called ThinThread that could efficiently and cost-effectively analyze massive amounts of information while protecting Americans’ privacy. He spoke up when NSA leadership ignored ThinThread in favor of Trailblazer, a vastly more expensive, intrusive and (eventually) inoperable program. He blew the whistle to Congress on the mismanagement and waste of funds, but saw no change take place. In retaliation for communicating with oversight bodies, Binney was demoted to a different position. Shortly afterwards he retired, but he continued to take action despite increasing retaliation, which included an FBI raid on his home. Binney and his colleague J. Kirk Wiebe first revealed the NSA’s massive domestic spying program, Stellar Wind, which intercepts domestic communications without protections for U.S. citizens. An expert on the dangers associated with the increasing power of the national security state, Binney has appeared in numerous media outlets and is a frequent public speaker.
  • Thomas Drake is a former senior executive with the NSA, a CIA analyst, and an armed forces veteran. While at the NSA, he blew the whistle on multi-billion dollar programmatic fraud, waste and abuse; the critical loss and suppression of 9/11 intelligence; and Stellar Wind’s dragnet electronic mass surveillance and data-mining, conducted on a vast scale by the NSA, with the approval of the White House, after 9/11. Drake argued that Stellar Wind violated the Constitution and eroded our civil liberties while weakening national security. In April 2010, he was charged by the Department of Justice with 10 felonies under the Espionage Act and faced 35 years in prison. All 10 original charges were dropped in July 2011 and Drake pled to a misdemeanor count of exceeding the authorized use of a government computer with no fine or prison time. He is the 2011 recipient of the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, and with Jesselyn Radack the co-recipient of the 2011 Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence Award and the 2012 Hugh M. Hefner 1st Amendment Award.
  • Kathleen McClellan is GAP’s National Security & Human Rights Counsel. She supports national security and intelligence community whistleblowers, with a focus on the issues of torture, surveillance, excessive secrecy, and political discrimination. She has represented whistleblowers from the NSA, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security, advocating for their interests in forums that include Offices of Inspectors General, the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB), Office of Special Counsel and federal courts.

About the Tour

GAP’s Tour educates the public – particularly university students – about whistleblowers and whistleblowing. This event is free to all. A full description of the Tour can be found at www.WhistleblowerTour.org.

This Tour stop at WCU is the tenth stop to be held this academic year. Previous 2013-14 stops have included Florida International University, American University, West Virginia, Auburn, Princeton, Syracuse, Temple, USC and Stanford. GAP secures some of the most prominent whistleblowers in American history for its Tour. Previous whistleblower presenters have included Frank Serpico (NYPD), Daniel Ellsberg (the Pentagon Papers) and Sherron Watkins (Enron).

Goals of the Tour include raising awareness about the vital role whistleblowing has in our democracy, preparing America’s youth for ethical decision-making, countering negative connotations associated with whistleblowing, connecting prospective whistleblowers to available resources, and encouraging academic studies of whistleblowing.