McClatchy: Intelligence, Defense Whistleblowers Remain Mired in Broken System
This extensive report details the legal system’s failure to protect defense and intelligence whistleblowers since 9/11. According to McClatchy, more than 8700 national security employees and contractors have filed whistleblower retaliation claims with the Pentagon inspector general since the 9/11 attacks, and less than 20 percent of them have been investigated. GAP Legal Director Tom Devine is quoted, along with GAP clients Thomas Drake (NSA whistleblower) and Franz Gayl (Marine Corps whistleblower).
Key Quote: “Only someone with a martyr complex would submit themselves to this system,” said Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, an advocacy group that’s helped whistleblowers since 1977. “We advise intelligence whistleblowers to stay away from established channels to defend against retaliation. In our experience they’ve been a Trojan horse, a trap that ends up sucking the whistleblower into a long-term process that predictably ends up with the whistleblower as the target.”
Huffington Post: Why Jeffrey Sterling Deserves Support as a CIA Whistleblower
This piece discusses the selective prosecution of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling, who faces a federal indictment for allegedly releasing classified information about a CIA operation that provided flawed nuclear weapon blueprints to Iran in 2000. Meanwhile, top officials who have leaked classified information remain protected from scrutiny. GAP has co-sponsored a petition urging the government to drop all charges against Sterling.
On Christmas Eve, the NSA released hundreds of pages of redacted reports detailing times when agents improperly collected private data. A result of a Freedom of Information Act request from the ACLU, the records reveal that the NSA collected emails, phone records, and other data about U.S. citizens or foreign nationals in the U.S. in violation of the law. GAP National Security & Human Rights Director Jesselyn Radack explains that these revelations would never have been possible without the disclosures of NSA whistleblower and GAP client Edward Snowden.
Key Quote: “The ACLU only knew what to ask for because of the Snowden leaks,” [Radack] said. “There’s been semantics games with the NSA not using regular definitions for words like ‘collection’ and ‘analysis,’ which makes it very difficult to find the documents we’re looking for. Now, at least we have a road map and we know names of specific programs to ask about.”