Yesterday, Courage named Matt DeHart its third beneficiary, as Matt was deported from Canada back to the United States. Upon his return, Matt appeared before a judge in Buffalo and was ordered to be transferred to Tennessee for arraignment. This is a statement from NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, a member of the Courage Foundation’s Advisory Board.
It is a fundamental travesty of abject and abusive injustice that Matt DeHart is forcibly returned into the hands of his US torturers by compliant Canadian authorities, for unspecified violations of national security, facing pretextual criminal charges that stem from vague espionage suspicions and allegedly facilitating the disclosure of state secrets to others not authorized to receive them in order to make him an object lesson for those who would dare counter the narrative of the State. I know all too well what happens when one finds themselves in the crosshairs of the US government, is vindictively targeted as an Enemy of the State, has your life data framed, turned inside out, upside down and manipulated for their own ends to protect unaccountable and secret power, facing espionage charges and many decades in prison and as an accomplice and accessory for the ‘crime’ of promoting privacy, anonymity, non-attribution and critically vital disclosures in the public interest including state sponsored torture, war crimes, mass surveillance and secret government wrongdoing. We need to fully support Matt DeHart and his rights to vigorously defend himself as he faces the unmitigated and vengeful wrath of the US injustice system bowing to the punitive pathology of the national security state.