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I took over the responsibility of following civil liberties, digital freedom and, to some extent, national security stories here at Firedoglake exactly one year ago when I began to publish posts to The Dissenter. And seeing how it is an anniversary, it is worth celebrating some of the successes so far that FDL members and readers helped make possible:
—Covered the inception of the Occupy Movement: On September 17, I began to live blog Occupy Wall Street. This expanded into live blogging the Occupy movement as hundreds of encampments sprung up around the country. The Dissenter was one of the few news blogs that had coverage of Occupy Wall Street’s attempt to start a movement. Live blogging happened every day until 2012 started then coverage shifted into regular reports on the movement. (And, coverage inevitably inspired others to regularly report on Occupy action in their communities regularly.)
—Toured Occupy camps in the United States & helped with the launch of Occupy Supply: Beginning in October, I started to tour Occupy encampments. I did a tour in the Midwest in the final weeks of October. I did a tour of encampments in the New England states in the days right before Thanksgiving. At each of these encampments, Firedoglake made donations through an Occupy Supply campaign that was launched to ensure the Occupy movement survived winter. (Occupy Supply is now helping the movement stay cool in the hot, hot, hot summer.)
—Earned respect of some notable whistleblowers for coverage of “leaks” and the War on Whistleblowing: In the past year, I have had the privilege of interacting with NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, and DoJ whistleblower Jesselyn Radack. They helped me realize that the postings on whistleblowing have a nonpartisan (or even trans-partisan) quality that those who have engaged in whistleblowing respect. I also realized—through my reporting—the fact that this blog gives coverage to important issues related to whistleblowing, which the media often twists or ignores, is critically important.
—Transformed this blog into the go-to place for the latest and most in-depth coverage of the case of Pfc. Bradley Manning: I was credentialed to cover Manning’s Article 32 hearing in December. Since then, I have been regularly traveling to Fort Meade in Maryland to cover each pre-trial hearing. My coverage led to invitations to appear on “Democracy Now!”, Free Speech Radio News, WBAI’s “Out-FM,” “The Young Turks” on Current TV, and RT‘s “The Alyona Show.” I co-authored a book with The Nation‘s Greg Mitchell titled Truth & Consequences: The US vs. Bradley Manning. I even had the privilege of participating in a panel event with Chase Madar, author of The Passion of Bradley Manning, and artists Ted Hearne and Mark Doten that aired on CSPAN2′s “Book TV.”
The inaugural post at The Dissenter, the welcome post I wrote, foreshadowed how this blog would gain its notoriety over the next year. The photo I included was of a Manning supporter holding a sign. The kinds of stories I said this blog would cover included the US government’s ongoing war on WikiLeaks and the current and historic repression of dissent. However, I did not know The Dissenter would become a respectable source for the latest on whistleblowing issues.
There are some things I intended to do that were discontinued or never happened. I started to do a regular “Notes on Civil Liberties” post that appeared here every day with links to news items on civil liberties/digital freedom issues. That fell by the wayside as I focused on putting out stories each day. I did not publish many guest posts (which is something I would like to change). There was no weekly podcast with the latest news and updates on WikiLeaks. Though I had produced such a podcast throughout Spring 2011, I focused on writing to The Dissenter. (At the moment, I would like to start up some kind of regular podcast, but I am not sure what it would cover and how regularly it would be produced.)
What I wrote on Day 1 remains true today:
…The government is going after Palestinian and Colombia solidarity activists, raiding the homes of people who helped to organize a massive antiwar march at the 2008 Republican National Convention and subpoenaing activists to appear before a grand jury. The government is harassing and intimidating activists who organize in support of accused whistleblower to WikiLeaks, Pfc. Bradley Manning. And, they are allowing agencies like the FBI, an agency that has grown into a massive domestic spy agency, to exercise more and more intrusive surveillance powers each and every day.
This blog has a great burden and responsibility. In the aftermath of 9/11, a bipartisan consensus has formed among mainstream politicians and once again presented the nation with a calculated assault on civil liberties in the name of national security. All people who write, publish and comment here at this blog will be part of challenging this continued attack that did not end when President George W. Bush left office at all.
Thank you to all who regularly read this blog, commented, followed, tracked and shared daily postings. Not only do I appreciate those who have engaged with me in my reporting, but I also appreciate those who made contributions to Firedoglake to support my coverage of Bradley Manning and the Occupy movement in the past year.
Also, when I began here at FDL, I believe I had around 2,000 to 2,500 followers on Twitter. I now have over 8,000 so I must acknowledge the people on Twitter who regularly follow what I do and give me great support each and every day.
I encourage you to leave any comments or suggestions on what you would like to see covered or produced by The Dissenter during the blog’s second year in the comments thread below. And I will be at Fort Meade tomorrow reporting on the latest motion hearing in Manning’s court martial.
55 Comments
Kevin, I have but one request of you:
More, please.
You are one of the finest, most-courageous journalists it has ever been my pleasure and great good fortune to encounter.
Jeff Kaye is a very, very hard act to follow.
And you have done so … most admirably well.
Thank you.
DW
Yay Kevin! So glad you’re here.
May you have a long and illustrious career – *clink* !
I’m not following Jeff Kaye. Kaye worked with me and then he decided it was too much (which I understand). He had his job and work at Truthout to do.
Now, Marcy Wheeler was here before me. She’s amazing and I would say a tough act to follow. She continues to be prolific in her coverage of civil liberties/national security issues.
I read your stuff a lot. You’re doin’ good. Keep it up.
Happy Anniversary!
Keep the good work coming Kevin!
Nice year, Kevin. You inspire me~
Hau`oli la Ho’omana’o…!
Please keep up the awesome work, Kevin…! *g*
The accomplishments have been …
Thank you for enriching this place and our lives, Kevin. You’ve done remarkable work. Looking forward to another year of terrific accomplishments.
pphhttt to youse
…substantially greater than yours.
As a whistleblower, your coverage is very much appreciated. My suggestion would be for you to explore some of the institutions in the federal whistleblower community – whistleblower agencies, nonprofits, and the retaliating agencies (and their protectors in the Justice Department, who take over when a case gets to federal court). There is a lot there to explore in an otherwise murky area that is critical for government accountability. Just keep your independence and maintain an objectively critical eye about anyone you interact with. As a non-whistleblower, your perspective on these issues is crucial.
Kevin, thank you for your efforts. I’m a registered Republican who loves FDL because of your non-ideological, good government posts.
I’m torn on PFC Manning. My dad blew open the Gulf of Tonkin hearings with a very simple and 100% honest LTTE of the New Haven Register in the mid-60s. He explained that the incident was a lie. (He mistook the names of two of the three ships and the Navy hung its hat on that slipup, painting my dad as crazy and a traitor.) Regardless, he waited until after he was done before he spoke with Fulbright and blew the whistle on LBJs lie. And Russ Feingold even noted that the law is the law. So I’m far from happy with what he did. But the reality is that the USG routinely engages in coverups to make particular individuals look good.
Heck, when the D / R argument is between the best foreign policy being assassination vs. torture, the USG — and many of our elected officials — does seem to have gone off the deep end. And the way Manning is being treated is, at a minimum, unnecessary.
The only way to end the corruption of our government is to get out the message, as you are doing. I hope that as technology moves forward, you, FDL and others leverage it to break the stranglehold that TV has on America.
Thank you again.
- Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801
hooray!
I don’t comment very often but are very grateful you have the space and the clarity and energy to do this so well! Without your brain and actions right in the front line of things putting all this down and working out the ramifications, folks like the National Whistleblowers would have much less energy behind them. Stories like this would be far less likely to come out at all. You and FDL nurture a culture where whistleblowers can speak their mind and then realize, ‘Yes! there are others out here and we are many and we have the courage of our convictions to keep pressing forward!’
Yes!
thank you!
??? you been talking with karenb????
getting manning out of solitary confinement.
Like DW said at the top of the comments, just keep it coming. You’re doing great journalism in a country where doing great journalism is, instead of being rewarded, too often punished. My only request would be to shame/convince other journos into following your courageous and principled lead. If there were more journalists who did their job this country would be a far, far better place.
Thanks for linking to the NYT story on the FDA surveillance operation against their own scientists. I need to give this greater attention, but, unfortunately, that’ll be difficult with the Manning motion hearing this week. Of course, that does not mean I could not come back and hit it again a week from now, especially if it receives little attention.
Thank you all for the praise and encouragement. Every comment inspires me to work even harder and double my efforts to bring you exceptional coverage of stories.
What delighted me most about The Dissenter– and there has been so much to like–was the posts on OpBart. I can’t remember if it was called a Liveblog, but I remember wondering why more actions had not been blogged like that before. And then when I saw occupy was getting liveblogged, I was a permanent fan. Ok, that’s not entirely true. I became a fan of that Kevin person from MyFDL diaries first, but I didn’t know those diaries would become The Dissenter.
Congratulations for the very, very well deserved success.
Kevin is an activist in the finest sense of the word. He knows that changing the course of history — and that’s clearly his goal — takes time.
Ending the reign of The Authoritarians and The Aristocrats… and returning to an age of republicans and democrats (lower case r, lower case d) will not happen overnight. And it won’t happen in a year. But he’s laying the groundwork for what will hopefully come to be… a more transparent government.
If we fail, we’ll be giving our children and grandchildren a future in which they will not be citizens. They will be subjects.
Keep up the fight Kevin!
i’m in awe of your ability to keep abreast of complex situations, report in a way that makes the issues understandable and stand up for what’s right and true in the face of formidable opposition. we need you informing and inspiring us. thank you, dear one.
Amen! Well said.
A central problem with getting other journalists on board with real reporting is that they are eternally worried about access. If they ask a real question or write a real story, that could diminish their access. Or their bosses might spike the story due to fear of upsetting a major ad buyer. That’s basically what happened with Cenk at MSNBC.
My view is that many small town papers should stop looking for kids with a Bachelor or Master. They should hire high school kids who have connections in their hometown… kids who have the trust of the people they cover. From there, journalism could improve with those kids building their reputation for maintaining the secrecy of their sources.
…and I’d like to claim the title as your biggest fan of all your blog commenters, although I suspect there is probably a lot of competition for the title.
Diminished access is another way of saying that asking real questions can destroy your reputation as a journalist. Nice irony.
Kevin, you are intrepid! Well done, and thank you!
Well, they are rightfully afraid of being exposed as being frauds or sycophants.
>gah< I *am* grateful you do what you do.
I'm not extra excited about the FDA story, though it does look interesting. We'll see how it turns out. But by you existing here and doing this, putting out so much material thru the Dissenter, whether on the Manning case or Occupy, wikileaks etc., along with DDay needling Schneiderman on Wall street and the housing industry or Marcy on all the torture and war stuff,and many others, FDL has fostered a space in our culture where the dissenter, the whistleblower must at last be acknowledged and heard. Bradley Manning's case and your work on it is a such a tremendous spearpoint in this effort – just to let the whistleblowers be heard – and you go to all the hearings and put yourself out there suing for the right to inform us… it's just a really big compelling story by itself and moves the concept of what whistleblowing is for and why it is so damn important, forward. Not small potatoes.
All of these things, they all have the substance of turning popular opinion around. If only people would take the time to read and listen and find out. One of my hopes remains that with enough people like you and the rest of FDL and many others out there doing what you do, more will be able to hear. And stand up and act accordingly.
Sure, lots of people are talking about tipping points of mass opinion and they will all summer. But with enough of these topics being peeled up and exposed it will become impossible for more to ignore.
Thank you for helping grow this culture and working so diligently in the front lines of it all. This is how movements grow.
Kevin, your reporting has most certainly been in depth and thorough. Keep it up.
Many, such as Jane explained about Ezra, are frauds. Perhaps most reporters, as with most pols, join the group with good intentions. But far too many succumb to the lure of easy money. Lucky for us, we have the likes of Jane, Kevin and Cenk. They’re not in it for the money or the fame. They’re in it for the right reasons. And that makes them unstoppable
… though definitely fatiguable. 
Given the choice between having Obama or Gosztola on my side… the choice is easy.
They are all sycophants with few exceptions…! 8-(
Here’s a real eye-opener in regards to Syria… Covering Syria: The information war…
It’s almost too easy to extrapolate from it…!
Kevin, in an effort at increasing your readership… maybe you could get in on the ground floor? Frankly though, my *guess* is that Microsoft is more about the Corporatization, than the democratization, of America.
*heh* I guess that frees up NBC to go into full tilt, Obamabot mode, not that they weren’t already there…!
Congratulations, and keep on “keepin’ on”.
Yes, Kevin was not following me in any way, and events unfolded as he said. If he was replacing anyone, in some sense, it was Marcy.
So, congratulations to Kevin on one year of The Dissenter. Keeping a blog going is very hard work, indeed, and Kevin has shown he can keep up with the best of them.
I’d like to think, though I’ve bowed out, I did contribute to The Dissenter in some small way in those first six months or so, including articles on how the politics around a possible UK torture inquiry was unfolding; exposing the “forgotten history” of David Petraeus; reporting on the use of indeterminate sentences to coerce confessions at California Supermax prisons; keeping up with the long-standing controversy over the American Psychological Association’s support for psychologists in national security interrogations; exposing Adweek’s hit piece on Harper’s Scott Horton and his award-winning investigation into three purported Guantanamo “suicides”; and the very well-received article, “Unemployment is Killing People,” among others.
I really wish I had the time and tenacity to keep up the pace I started with at The Dissenter. But I am glad Kevin remains at the helm, and has made the blog a very important place on the net for those looking for a progressive point of view.
Looking forward to year two, Kevin!
Day-um, Rose. You done hit the nail on the head here. Other than maybe setting the record for long-winded verbosity and arm-wrenching back-patting, this Dissenter-y has achieved exactly bupkis.
Hell, Bradley Manning may be out of jail before good ‘ol Kev runs out of things to say.
I’m looking forward to all your continued efforts too, Jeff…!
My apologies, Kevin, I truly thought that Jeff was at Dissenter.
Nonetheless, I am very glad that you are here.
DW
Ah, Jeff, as I said in my comment above, I am glad that Kevin is here and that you were here.
And I appreciate it every time that you return.
My appreciation and great respect to both of you …
And to Marcy Wheeler, always, as well.
DW
Yes, I should’ve acknowledged your contribution. It was a privilege to have my work appearing alongside yours during the time that you were publishing here.
Kevin, thank you for your great reporting.
blessings and congratulations. You’ve been great in your dissenter role. May God continue to give you strength and wisdom to keep telling the stories we need to know. keep it up!
Happy first anniversary here, Kevin. Without reporters & actual journalists like yourself providing clarity and balance to what the corporate-owned media provide, the level of frustration and despair about our global socio-political situation would be even worse. Cheers, to you!
Congratulations on an incredible first year, Kevin. You’ve accomplished so much in such a short time.
I was over at boilingfrogspost.com and Sibel was sending people over to FDL to read your post.
Thank you for your hard work and clear vision.
Happy anniversary & congratulations ! What can I say ? “Go Kevin & Jeff”.
the work that you guys is great and one of many reasons I am proud to be a member of FDL!
You are doing a great job and providing a great service to the community at FDL and the larger universe. Happy one year anniversary. (Thanks go out to Jeff too. Nice article on “impact of unemployment”.)
Keep going.
TomThumb
Ah. Jumped in to see how the hearing was getting started. I see as usual media is flaking out on something else the parasites want people to hear.
Regarding your anniversary…
I told you so! (big grins)
Looking forward to many more years of excellent reporting. I also look forward to you being on tv with Bill Moyers. Did I say Bill? Yes, I did!
My sincere congratulations on your first year of The Dissenter! In my perception, you are one of the finest journalists in the world today. Your passion and your dedication are truly inspiring. I look forward to reading and enjoying your work far into the future!
Happy Anniversary! It has been a fast year. We are all the better for having you here with your excellent reporting. Thank you.
A year already?! Thanks, Kevin, for a job very well done. You are one of the few true journalists in the U.S. today, and you have my utmost admiration. I’m looking forward to reading your columns for many years to come.
You’re doing a great job. Thanks so much.
I read your posts everyday and have developed a deep respect for your work.