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Media Respond to State Department Firing Demand
Read more about the State Department seeking to fire me:
WUSA, Channel 9 in Washington DC
If you’d like to help, here are some ways you can help.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Fearing the Truth
Three more news sources have picked up on the sad story of the Obama Administration’s vicious use of the Espionage Act and other extra-legal actions to silence whistleblowers.The New American quotes ABC News’ Jake Tapper, the reporter that raised the whistleblower cases at a White House press conference. Tapper said “it’s not like they are instances of government employees leaking the location of secret nuclear sites. These are classic whistle-blower cases that dealt with questionable behavior by government officials or its agents acting in the name of protecting America.”
The New York Times also weighed in on the issue of government retaliation against whistleblowers:
The majority of the recent prosecutions seem to have everything to do with administrative secrecy and very little to do with national security.
In case after case, the Espionage Act has been deployed as a kind of ad hoc Official Secrets Act, which is not a law that has ever found traction in America, a place where the people’s right to know is viewed as superseding the government’s right to hide its business.
Indeed, the paper noted the irony that while former CIA Officer John Kiriakou is being prosecuted aggressively merely for leaking some information about waterboarding to journalists, “none of the individuals who engaged in or authorized the waterboarding of terror suspects have been prosecuted.”
The New American adds:
The administration doesn’t always rely on prosecution to teach whistleblowers a lesson. It has other ways of retaliating against them, as Foreign Service Officer Peter Van Buren learned when he wrote the book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. Van Buren is still employed by the State Department, but he has been stripped of his security clearance, transferred to what he calls “a meaningless telework position,” threatened with prosecution, and otherwise harassed. As a result, he writes, “a career that typically would extend another 10 years will be cut short in retaliation for [his] attempt to tell the truth about how taxpayer money was squandered in Iraq.”
The story of whistleblower retaliation also was featured on the Daily Kos, which included this quote from my NPR “All Things Considered” interview:
And I find that, yes, it is worth it, it was worth it, and it will be worth it to answer that level of hypocrisy and demand from that Secretary of State, Madam, why is your institution not allowing me the same rights that you’re bleating about for bloggers around the world? Why not here at home?
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Daily Kos: Fear the Noise of Democracy
The Daily Kos runs an article today comparing shamefully the tactics used in Korea to stifle bloggers that offend the government there with tactics used by the US State Department to accomplish the same goals.South Korea brought the recent charges under its National Security Law – which bans “acts that benefit the enemy” but fails to specify what those acts are. Apparently, tweeting satirical images, as a blogger there recently did, counts as “acts that benefit the enemy.”
“This is not a national security case; it’s a sad case of the South Korean authorities complete failure to understand sarcasm,” said Sam Zarifi, Asia-Pacific director of the human rights group Amnesty International. Of course, this week, the State Department proved it was equally unable to understand sarcasm, ordering me to remove the State Department Seal from a satirical blog I posted.
The article concludes by scolding Mrs. Clinton’s Department of State:
Stifling speech is the stuff of dictatorships, not democracies. If the U.S. is to be a leader in democracy, the State Department should take the lead and encourage free speech, even critical speech.
Our government, like the one in Korea, fears the noise of democracy and instead prefers the silence of compliance.
Read the entire piece on the Daily Kos.
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
Freedom is Not Free
The story of my interrogation by the State Department, over a link dating from August on my blog to a Wikileaks document already on the web (I was accused of disclosing classified information because of the link!) is all over the web.
If you have not read it at TomDispatch, or are a State Department employee blocked by a firewall from reading TomDispatch, you can still see the article on a growing number of mirrors:
American Conservative Magazine
warandpeaceinthemiddleeast.com
Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.
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