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The Chaos Communication Congress (29C3), which organizers describe as “an annual four-day conference on technology, society and utopia,” began on December 27. Yesterday, this blog featured Tor software developer and WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum’s talk. Later in the day, three United States whistleblowers gave presentations, which should be considered required viewing.
Jesselyn Radack, who blew the whistle on ethics violations in the case of John Walker Lindh when she was an ethics adviser under Attorney General John Ashcroft, describes what led to her resignation and whistleblowing.
Lindh was interrogated and tortured. FBI agents went ahead with an interrogation without proper authorization. Ashcroft made public statements when a criminal complaint was filed that he had not chosen to be represented by a lawyer and his rights had been “scrupulously guarded.” Radack knew this all to be lies.
“Our first glimpse of torture in the United States and nobody flinched. He was naked, blindfolded, gagged, duct taped to a board. He had a bullet in his leg, no medical treatment,” Radack declares. “He was found nearly dead and this is how we treated an American, which can give you a little insight into how we treat people who have the misfortune of being an Arab or Muslim in our country.”
The pivotal moment for her was when she realized the Justice Department was concealing work on the case from her. A judge had issued a court order for all communications but only handed over two of her emails. She went to a hard copy file to look for her emails, which included an assessment that the FBI had committed an ethics violation in its interrogation and torture of Lindh. Those emails were missing.
“My heart sank,” Radack states. “I literally felt sick. They were seeking the death penalty for this person and the relevant evidence had not made it to the court, evidence that would have a bearing on whether or not his confession would be admissible against him.”
She was eventually able to recover the missing emails. Under the Whistleblower Protection Act, which ultimately gave her no protection, she handed over evidence of misconduct and wrongdoing to Newsweek. She had no idea what would happen as the ”full force of the entire Executive Branch of the United States government” was unleashed.
Radack was forced out of her job at a private law firm, fired from another job after the government told them she was a criminal, placed under criminal investigation but never told what for and no charges were ever brought against her, referred to a state bar based on a secret report that she didn’t have access to, which made it very hard to fight the secret charges and she was put on a “No Fly” list.
The experience led to her deciding to dedicate her life to representing whistleblowers.
In addition to sharing her own whistleblowing experience, she speaks about the role of technology helping whistleblowers. Technology helped her get emails from the Justice Department, which at the time was prosecuting Enron for destroying evidence and obstructing justice.
Before she came to the conference, she met with WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange. She states that he solidified her belief as “whistleblower myself and and as a lawyer for whistleblowers that WikiLeaks is one of the only safe ways in the world to get large amounts of information out to the public anonymously on a mass scale. The government realizes this and is therefore very threatened by WikiLeaks.”
And, after that, she continues:
The war on terrorism should not be a war on ethics, integrity, technology and the rule of law. Stopping terrorism should not include terrorizing whistleblowers and truth tellers who raise concern when the government cuts corners to electronically surveill, torture and assassinate its own people. And it is not okay for a president to grant himself the power to play prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner of anyone on the entire fucking planet.
Employees should never have to choose their conscience over their careers and especially their freedom, Radack concludes.
Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on government misconduct and illegalities at the National Security Agency, speaks after Radack and describes what it was like to see the rise of the Surveillance State after the September 11th attacks. He compares the rise to the Stasi secret police in East Germany, which operated under the motto, “To know everything.”
In the Cold War, everything was suspect. “Today in the post Cold War era,” Drake states, “I do find myself asking myself and others, how can an open and vibrant democracy exist next to a secret security state?”
Drake faced the prospect early that he could be indicted and sentenced to prison for life if he did not cooperate. He was charged under the Espionage Act, as part of an escalating government trend to turn whistleblowers and truth tellers into criminals.
In the few days after 9/11, “I had people coming to me in private extremely concerned saying, Tom, why are they taking equipment that we normally use to monitor foreign nations and we’re now redirecting it against our own people?” he recounts. He learned the secret surveillance program was authorized by the White House and, as President Richard Nixon said, “If the President says it’s okay, it’s legal.”
“All hell broke loose within the government” when Eric Lichtblau and James Risen wrote a story for the New York Times on the warrantless wiretapping program at the NSA. A criminal leak investigation was launched of which he became subject. FBI agents raided his home and applied immense pressure to him for two and a half years trying to get him to plead out. It was a nightmare.
He concludes, “Besides fearing for the future of the United States I do fear the creation of a universal wiretap record of a person’s life—the ability to have vast access to databases and on the fly be able to profile anybody at anytime anywhere.”
Finally, William Binney, a former NSA technical director who was raided and subject to investigation like Thomas Drake, speaks.
In June 2001, Binney retired because he could no longer tolerate the corruption between employees and private contractors, the incestuous relationship where security was being traded for money.
Binney learned about a program called Stellar Wind, where the NSA was spying on Americans. He knew it was pointless to go to heads of the NSA because he knew the people running it. He went to the House Intelligence Committee because they were supposed to, under Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other intelligence laws, monitor any spying on citizens. He told them and all they did is send someone to talk to then-NSA director Michael Hayden. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss did nothing. Nancy Pelosi, a ranking member of the Committee, did nothing about violations being committed because she was “co-opted into the program” and agreed not to push for Bush’s impeachment if she was kept informed of covert programs.
Binney says, “AT&T was providing 320 million records a day of US citizens talking to other US citizens.” And, “You can quickly build a communities on virtually everybody in the country.” There were no limits. This extended to all the people of the world.
He also recounts what happened during an FBI raid. Binney was asked if he could inform on a crime. They wanted information on Drake but what he said was that there was this Stellar Wind program and Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, CIA director George Tenet and Hayden were all involved. Only one agent there listening to him was cleared for the program. Binney explains he was the one who signed the warrant and all he could do is look at the floor while he described violations of Americans’ privacy, etc.
“They were trying to keep me quiet,” Binney says. “They put the guns on me and my family because they wanted to keep me quiet.”
There’s also a profound anecdote he shares involving James Bamford, a journalist known for his work on the operations of the NSA. He submitted a FOIA request for documents the government was using to prosecute Drake and got documents the NSA had stamped “Top Secret” after drawing a pencil line through the word, “Unclassified.” They gave it to Bamford and he took it into the judge and showed it to him. It was proof Drake was being setup and framed, which is a felony. They should have been charged but nobody was charged with any crime for trying to set him up.
It is an excellent trio of talks. I strongly encourage you to watch all 1 hour and 22 minutes.
36 Comments
I will watch this.
You know journalists often want people to be whistleblowers so they can get a story, but they can’t really protect them given today’s surveillance state.
And, if you aren’t technologically savvy you can be tracked. And if you ARE technologically savvy, they can notice that too!
I will also point out that private corporations have been used to stop funding going to WikiLeaks. That is a very powerful method that the government used, but it wasn’t the government’s rules that they evoked to stop the money flowing. It was their own Terms of Service.
The conservatives should be screaming about this as well, but since it’s not their ox getting gored, they don’t care.
However we might want to consider figure out how to use those tricks on right wing organizations, you know like the superPACs that spent millions of dollars subverting democracy.
The endless abuses and selective enforcement in any aspect of what passes for a democratic government (“How,” one might increasingly wonder?) are really hardly even surprising any more. It is fairly astonishing we are still able to hear about it or watch it on the intertubes. And knowing, well, it gives us a sense of, um, knowing, I guess. Lovely.
It is hardly surprising that young and internet literate have become so jaded and disgusted, much less those of us who already lived the years of COINTELPRO and such like that, but had the idea we might change it somehow, and turn the arc of justice towards the people, as it were.
I want to say Never. Give. Up. and I do. But our options seem small and rather insignificant.
Kevin, at the end of the day, do you think that knowing what we know, we should feel optimistic? Do you?
There’s nothing anyone of us can do about it. This country is a fascist state and most Americans are comfortable with that. The elections are jokes. You get a “choice” between two assholes who fully support police state policies.
Become a billionaire and then you can buy influence.
What I don’t understand.. or maybe I do… what are they alleging is the NSA doing? Is it that they are lawless in how they behave… or are they behaving this way because there is some sort of fascist agenda.
We know the government has been sold to the corporations, the MIC and so on… Is this a sort of false money making security threat that they don’t want to reveal?
Why the surveillance state… not that I doubt it… But what is the agenda the national security state is protecting or advancing?
This is true… but the wheels are coming off. Soon the people will get antsy and what next? No… Americans have not protested as the Greeks or the Spaniards… but they are still a bit more distracted by smart phones and sports and Brittany Spears… But that’s coming to an end. The economy is crashing… I don’t expect people to sit still shivering in the cold, hungry and homeless… Something will happen.
This whole video is well worth watching. What’s remarkable is that these people are not tangential 2nd or 3rd tier whistleblowers. These are central, key employees of the national surveillance apparatus. The talk skews a little to the geeky side – the audience is technical people – but this is vital information.
“..what are they alleging is the NSA doing?”
After watching the videos Kevin has posted here the last two days, check out Glenn Greenwald’s talk at the Socialsim 2012 conference, Challenging the Surveillance State. Parts 2,3 & 4 will be available at this link also. Thanks Kevin for linking these latest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VCTvs7UXa4
Your question wasn’t addressed to me, BG, but I’ll put my two cents in anyway.
I’m not optimistic; then again, I’ve never been an optimist by nature.
Having said that, I think we should resist as much as we can as long as we can and, as Molly Ivins would say, have as much fun as we can doing it.
When I got arrested, I felt a sense of exultation — I had never done something like that before, and I had to confront my fears to do it. That made me feel pretty damn good.
I’m guessing your arrest made you feel much the same way. Each of us has to decide how much we can do while keeping our lives in equilibrium. To you and to everyone in here, I say: figure out what that point is for you and go for it.
What they are alleging the NSA is doing is hoovering up every telephone call we make and receive, every e-mail we send and receive and every web search we conduct.
To the extent we become a source of irritation to the government, this information can be leaked to publically embarrass us or, if behavior is uncovered that doesn’t dot every i and cross every t of the laws, be used to bring criminal prosecutions against us.
Even if those things aren’t done, the mere knowledge that we’re under the microscope can shrivel up our sense of privacy and comfort.
This is, of course, a flagrant and chronic violation of the Fourth Amendment, ongoing since about 2002. As the renewal of — I believe it’s called the FISA Amendments Act — a few days ago shows, this is a wholly bipartisan process. Bipartisanship is supposed to be a good thing, of course, but don’t tell me that in this case.
Hope that answers your question.
We saw where family-values conservatives, including the constitution-blabbing tea baggers, stood Friday with the FISA extension vote and denial of even weak amendments.
Bottom line is they either vote to protect the top 2 percent, or vote to try and destroy Obama. In this case, they sided with the 2 percent and helped Obama get what he wanted.
What we have now — this endless war on terrorism — is worse than the cold war. Back then, any progressive was feared to be a socialist or communist and the Republicans expanded the fear mongoring by lumping long-haired hippies, draft dodgers, women’s libbers and tree huggers into the group of suspected commies.
That helped give growth to the white working male club, outfitted with pickup trucks, guns, and full of race and women hating. They felt safe in numbers and knew nobody would call them a tree hugging commie.
Then 911 came along, giving the war mongering cold war types like Cheney and Rumsfeld and yes, Diane Feinstein, a new weapon to create an even colder war — this never-ending and undefined war on terror.
Now, in this new age of technology, everybody is a suspect. Simple emails can’t be sent without wondering who else is going to steal it. There is no such thing as a private phone conversation — even on a cell phone. And any political activity quickly raises red flags with the government and its surveillance contractors, who proudly gather whatever warrantless information they can get their hands on.
Simply put, there is no more privacy, and anything you say can and will be used without you — without due process.
Whistleblowers should be treated with royalty. Instead, they are regarded as traitors. The only bright spot is there are a whole lot more of us than them. Definining the “them” and how to turn it back on them is the million dollar question. If someone has the answer, be careful. You’re being watched!
My guess is the surveillance state is designed to gather anything and everything on everyone — which will mean tons of useless material that could never be sorted through, but could be tagged to raise red flags and used to protect the top 2 percent from the rising insurrection by using harassment, blackmail, extortion and arrest against any one of us who gets too much under their skin.
It should be fun to watch when the top 2 percent start using this junk on each other.
Bingo. It’s a question I’ve spent some time thinking about. Where do you draw the lines? In what seems like a prior lifetime, the Democrats were more or less the good guys and the Republicans were the bad guys.
Who are the good guys now? A coupla Democrats? Some independents? Intellectuals who may not agree with us on all issues but at least see Constitutional government being shredded, as we do? How many of us are there? What can we do? Etc., etc. etc.
To find people who target whistleblowers, one need look no farther than Firedoglake. Firedoglake’s MSPB Watch smears whistleblowers (including Jess Radack), attacks organizations that support whistleblowers, laughingly exposed a whistleblower’s identity, and violates site rules. But, no one at Firedoglake seems to care. Why is that?
To be sure, I was told be the head IT guy at my college that *all* internet traffic passing through the college servers is forwarded to “Homeland Sescrutiny” for eternal archiving and searching. So I make sure I stream all the FDL I can while at work.
Present your evidence.
I just finished watching the video on YouTube. Wow. Just wow.
What courageous and principled people Jessalyn Radack, Thomas Drake and William Binney are.
And what a bunch of corrupt double-dealers our government (members of both parties) is. Creepy stuff.
I believe that we have a choice. We can choose optimism or we can choose well-founded pessimism. Well-founded pessimism will likely be debilitating and may further cement demoralization. It is likely to lead us to further contribute to the rot in society because we will find ourselves developing coping mechanisms to get by.
I choose optimism. All those who resist the Surveillance State or National Security State or systems of control in general deserve to be praised. Their stories need to be told so people can find hope and perhaps be inspired to follow in their footsteps.
I agree with what Drake says, “Besides fearing for the future of the United States I do fear the creation of a universal wiretap record of a person’s life—the ability to have vast access to databases and on the fly be able to profile anybody at anytime anywhere.”—But he also says he does not think this is a future we cannot prevent from happening if enough of us become aware and take action now.
Present your evidence. Otherwise, the next time I see this message—which you sent to me once in email form already—I will treat it as spam.
Thanks for this excellent post!! The bravery of these folks is inspiring.
Deep Harm is realleging false statements. However, both she and I were admonished by FDL mods not to rehash personal conflict on this site, under penalty of banishment. Accordingly, this will be my only comment on the matter.
Thanks Kevin.
With Binney’s talk, the crony capitalist aspect of paying contractor’s to do things less well and more intrusively for much more $$ stood out.
Papantonio & Kennedy have a good discussion on whistle blowers, which touches on Lincoln’s and Nixon’s involvement. Apparently, Nixon’s playbook is still around.
Thanks Kevin.
what is frightening to me is not so much that they can collect all this data, or even misconstrue the data (bad as all that is), but that they will purposefully manipulate the data to mean what they want it to mean.
“What they are alleging the NSA is doing is hoovering up every telephone call we make and receive, every e-mail we send and receive and every web search we conduct.”
I’m just tickled that in this context hoovering does double-duty as a synonym for vacuuming and as a reference to J. Edgar Hoover (who apparently hoovered up all the wiretapped phone calls, bugged room conversations, intercepted mail, and voyeur snapshots he could get his political-leveraging hands on — warrant or no).
By the way, for those who haven’t watched the video yet, the first segment (by Jesselyn Radack) is exceptionally clear, concise, and well organized; the second segment (by Thomas Drake) is long on generalizations and conclusions and short on the details of his specific case; and the third segment (by William Binney), while quite meaty, is more geared to IT specialists than to civil libertarians in general. Sad to say, none of what they said surprised me in the least, except possibly their ultimate technical (if not practical and financial) victories.
I sent you my email address and telephone number, Kevin, but you haven’t responded. One has only to read the interlinked websites, here, here, here, and here, here, to get an idea of the antipathy toward the Project on Government Oversight, the Government Accountability Project, the Whistleblower Support Fund, the NOFEAR Coalition. Some of criticisms are justified, I think; but others I know are based on misleading claims and innuendo. My observations are based on more than a decade of volunteer work with whistleblowers, whistleblower groups and NGOs like the Whistleblower Support Fund. One doesn’t put in that kind of effort without a strong and sincere commitment to helping whistleblowers.
What troubles me most is the way MSPB Watch goes after whistleblowers (here, here, here and here), who have disagreed with MSPB Watch’s goals or tactics. MSPB Watch has even published the identity behind this username, here, after I contradicted claims he made on Firedoglake. (Additional documentation that has been published has since gone “private” or disappeared.)
What you won’t find online are the emails in which MSPB Watch and associates repeatedly insult, accuse and threaten whistleblowers. I’ve been on the receiving end of those emails, and I know how unfair, even cruel, they can be. MSPB Watch accuses NGOs of being “goons.” I don’t see that. What I see is MSPB Watch and associates using public and private intimidation to try to control the speech of others. It’s fine to hold NGO’s accountable, but not when one relies on misrepresentation to make one’s case and harassment to gather a following.
Whistleblowers sacrifice a lot in protecting the public. Many lose their jobs, their homes and their marriages. They endure threats, smears and emotional abuse. Many suffer chronic illnesses. They do not deserve to be harassed because they refuse to march in MSPB Watch’s parade. I have no desire to infringe on MSPB Watch’s speech. I just want MSPB Watch to show respect and humanity for those who don’t share his views.
If I have ever, in fact, broken a Firedoglake rule, no one has said which rule that is. I was agreeable to a truce, but when you and your associate immediately began sending me nasty emails, I concluded that nothing had changed.
These posts are slanderous and inappropriate. You’ve been told not to drag personal conflict into here. My posts on firedoglake (and while they were up on my site, which are down for no other reason than I’ve moved on) include primary source documents for all to see and make up their mind. This is not the place to fight GAP/POGO’s fight for them.
Here’s the last message I received from management.
My chief concern is for the welfare of individuals who lack the resources of big NGOs to defend themselves. The issues I raised are fair, documented and presented in good faith. They do not, as far as I know, violate any site rules. The “source documents” you mention include personal correspondence from whistleblowers that were never intended for publication, and those are presented in a negative context that extends to material posted on other websites you run and emails you send to who knows how many people. That kind of thing can leave people feeling emotionally raped and it’s no less damaging when the material is distributed across several locations rather than one. You’re a bright person with impressive skills. Please use them for good–not to hurt not people who have been very badly hurt already. That’s all I have to say. Now, I’ll move on.
Your comments have been flagged for removal. You were on notice as of Dec. 10 not to engage. If you want to lodge a complaint, send an email.
I asked Kevin to take down your comments but he refused, so here goes (very briefly):
You make several false accusations. You say I threatened and made misrepresentations, but point to none. You cry over the welfare of individuals who don’t have the NGOs to defend themselves, but the “individuals” we’re talking about are outspoken former whistleblowers-turned-activists who decried the exploitative ways of the NGOs in private (which you once did) but then try to clamp down any grassroots efforts to expose them and get them to change. Hence, when I am confronted with a number of activists who engage in bad faith attempts to thwart NGO accountability, it’s particularly cynical when they’ve previously joined in the private bitching sessions against them. So yeah, those emails go up. Privacy (on public issues of concerns, no doubt) gets forfeited when one chooses to say one thing in public and another in private. If I sued the NGOs and subpoenaed you, you (and your emails) wouldn’t be able to hide behind privacy. This is no different.
This isn’t about my “parade.” It’s about holding activists’ and NGOs’ feet to the fire so they live up to their professed values. You decided to be an activist. Criticism comes with the territory when you fall short of certain ideals.
The comments in this post remind me of how the FBIs CoIntelPro operation worked against perceived domestic threats during the 1970s.
While the whistleblower community is comprised of many well-meaning activists and a majority of walking wounded, its core leadership appears to be comprised of a few weak followers of sociopathic handlers. Credible (albeit naïve) celebrities like Serpico and Wigand are called to attract WBs who soon find themselves neutralized like flies on flypaper. Politicians like Sheila Jackson-Lee provide limited empowerment to exploit these groups for their own political aggrandizement.
In the end, these corporate-funded groups waste time arguing in blogs like this, leaving potential members and supporters as weak and ineffectual as the corporate sponsors intended. The story of Semmelweis illustrates how this works – you’ll see some familiar names associated with some of the new WB flavors of the week too.
Good to have this petty squabble between MSPB Watch and Deep Harm out in the open. I have zero tolerance for this foolishness. There is much at stake in the world and I will not allow The Dissenter to become a regular forum for this grudge.
Reconcile or do not bother commenting here at all.
Ah yes, the old pox on both your houses. Nevermind the facts, fairness, or even good housekeeping.
This is a topic in which I am deeply interested, so thank you so much for the post. I wouldn’t mind seeing this feud hashed out since I am not familiar with it and it might help me understand why whistleblowers fare so poorly (apart from the obvious). If the organizations designed to assist them might have sabatours in their ranks that is important to know. Heaven knows that would be SOP for TPTB.
Maybe one or the other could post outside Kevin’s work?
That’s exactly what I do, at mspbwatch.net and my diary page. Which is why my name got dragged into this by Deep Harm, who was trying to defend the very orgs that keep whistleblowers downtrodden in the name of helping them.
I was familiar with the general stories of Jesselyn Radack and Thomas Drake, but I do not recall reading or hearing about William Binney’s story before.
I also didn’t realize Thomas Drake started at the NSA on 9/11/01 (at least that is what I think Drake states during his talk).
I thought Radack and Binney provided more background to the story than Drake so that someone unfamiliar with their stories could understand the craziness they were facing. Drake was a bit more circumspect and I think someone coming to his story for the first time would not be able to follow the jumps in the talk.
Nevertheless, Drake and Binney both made clear that all Americans (and world citizens) were/are being recorded/wiretapped–not just presumed terrorists. The other profoundly disturbing detail was that the connections software was being used to generate kill lists–something which we’ve heard about with respect to drone attacks on nameless people whose monitored data fit the profile of terrorists (so called “signature strikes”).
What ever happened to the DOJ employees who did erase Radack’s email files and backup files in an attempt to railroad John Walker Lindh in a criminal trial? Radack’s emails would have been exculpatory evidence for John Walker Lindh’s defense. The same question for those NSA employees who re-classified the nonclassified information that Drake had at home in order to charge Drake with possessing “classified” information. Where are those investigations? And who protected those government actors’ malevolent deeds?