Tag: cia

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Espionage Act Journalism News

Jeffrey Sterling convicted of espionage on circumstantial evidence

In 2003, New York Times journalist James Risen called US government representatives to ask about a covert CIA operation to disrupt Iran’s nuclear programme. Eager to root out any information leak that doesn’t present the administration in a positive light, the government began investigating who Risen’s source or sources might be. The Times ultimately killed the story at the government’s request, but Risen published some of it in his 2006 book ‘State of War.’

Risen’s suspected source, Jeffrey Sterling, has now been convicted of nine felonies, including Espionage (see his indictment), for allegedly disclosing classified information. Sterling. a former CIA officer, had his security clearance revoked in 2001 and then was fired in 2002, after he filed an official complaint of racial discrimination.

Sterling’s defence has argued that the government could not even prove that Risen’s source was Sterling, let alone that the alleged disclosure constituted espionage. Much of the controversy surrounding the case centered on whether Risen would be forced to testify against his source or sources. Risen fought the subpoena, with fellow journalists and civil liberties condemning the notion that a reporter should have to give up his sources, but the government won an appeal and compelled him to testify. However, just before the trial commenced, the DOJ reversed course and decided not to call Risen to the stand.

Still, the case proceeded:only the second espionage case to go all the way to trial (the first was US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, now serving 35 years in jail). But the prosecution’s case against Sterling has been entirely circumstantial, as even the judge in his case, Judge Leonie Brinkema, conceded. As Marcy Wheeler writes for ExposeFacts, which has been covering the trial in depth:

The only evidence of phone calls between Sterling and James Risen immediately before Risen went to the CIA with a fully drafted story on the Merlin operation consists of 2 minutes and 40 seconds of calls, total, across 7 phone calls. Then there’s one email in which Sterling sent Risen a link to an unclassified article on Iran posted by CNN.

Two minutes and 40 seconds for what would likely have been a 1000-word story?

The government also failed to convincingly prove that Sterling, if involved, was Risen’s lone source for the information in question: as Wheeler writes, prosecution witness “FBI Agent Ashley Hunt, admitt[ed] she had not even tried to gather evidence from some of the other possible sources for Risen, and had not succeeded for others.”

The jury deliberated for days and initially returned to the judge undecided, but it ultimately convicted Sterling of all nine counts. The sentencing trial is scheduled for 24 April. Sterling could theoretically face more than 100 years in prison, though judges in similar cases usually sentence concurrently — still the potential sentence is many years of jail time.

Sterling’s conviction is another landmark in the Obama Administration’s ongoing, unprecedented, and speech-chilling war on disclosures of information and therefore on the journalism these sources make possible. Government Accountability Project’s Jesselyn Radack, a whistleblower lawyer and DOJ whistleblower herself, swiftly condemned the conviction: “I’m frankly appalled that the jury would convict based on a purely circumstantial case,” Radack told Foreign Policy, calling the decision “a new low in the war on whistleblowers.”

As Foreign Policy continues, “While she thought an appeal very likely, Radack said the conviction would both discourage government sources from disclosing important information to journalists and intimidate reporters who might otherwise try to dig up such stories.”

Just after the jury delivered its verdict in Sterling’s case, the Department of Justice issued a press release claiming that whistleblowers can be prosecuted “without interfering with journalists’ abilities to do their jobs.” Nothing can be further from the truth. There is already evidence that the US government’s persecution of truthtellers has already silenced those in government who are otherwise compelled to reveal evidence of abuse and wrongdoing. Guardian journalist Maggie O’Kane said in 2013 that she and her colleagues spent six months trying to speak to soldiers, but that all but one were too afraid to speak out after seeing what happened (from prison abuse to a massive charge sheet) to Chelsea Manning. This chilling effect hinders journalists’ ability to do their jobs and citizens’ ability to hold their governments accountable.

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Edward Snowden News

Citizenfour’s Escape to Freedom in Russia

By Ray McGovern, Courage Foundation Advisory Board

In early September in Russia, National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden told me about a documentary entitled Citizenfour, named after the alias he used when he asked filmmaker Laura Poitras to help him warn Americans about how deeply the NSA had carved away their freedoms.

When we spoke, Snowden seemed more accustomed to his current reality, i.e., still being alive albeit far from home, than he did in October 2013 when I met with him along with fellow whistleblowers Tom Drake, Coleen Rowley and Jesselyn Radack, as we presented him with the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence.

A year ago, the four of us spent a long, relaxing evening with Snowden – and sensed his lingering wonderment at the irony-suffused skein of events that landed him in Russia, out of reach from the U.S. government’s long arm of “justice.”

Six days before we gave Snowden the award, former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden and House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers had openly expressed their view that Snowden deserved to be on the “list,” meaning the “capture or kill” list that could have made Snowden the target of a drone strike. When I asked him if he were aware of that recent indignity, he nodded yes – with a winsome wince of incredulity.

This September, there was no drone of Damocles hanging over the relaxed lunch that the two of us shared. There were, rather, happier things to discuss. For example, I asked if he were aware that one of his co-workers in Hawaii had volunteered to Andy Greenberg of Forbes Magazine that Snowden was admired by his peers as a man of principle, as well as a highly gifted geek.

The co-worker told Greenberg: “NSA is full of smart people, but Ed … was in a class of his own. … I’ve never seen anything like it. … He was given virtually unlimited access to NSA data [because] he could do things nobody else could.”

Equally important, the former colleague pointed out that Snowden kept on his desk a copy of the U. S. Constitution to cite when arguing with co-workers against NSA activities that he thought might be in violation of America’s founding document. Greenberg’s source conceded that he or she had slowly come to understand that Snowden was trying to do the right thing and that this was very much in character, adding, “I won’t call him a hero, but he’s sure as hell no traitor.”

Snowden spoke of his former co-workers with respect and affection, noting that most of them had family responsibilities, mortgages, etc. – burdens he lacked. He told me he was very aware that these realities would make it immeasurably more difficult for them to blow the whistle on NSA’s counter-Constitutional activities, even if they were to decide they should. “But somebody had to do it,” said Snowden in a decidedly non-heroic tone, “So I guess that would be me.”

Following the intelligence world’s axiom of “need-to-know,” Snowden had been careful to protect his family and Lindsay Mills, his girlfriend, by telling no one of his plans. I found myself thinking long and hard at how difficult that must have been – to simply get out of Dodge without a word to those you love.

Perhaps he felt Mills would eventually understand when he explained why it was absolutely necessary in order to achieve his mission and have some chance of staying alive and out of prison. But, not having discussed with her his plans, how could he be sure of that?

And so, learning recently of the interim “happy-ending” arrival of Mills in Russia was like a shot in the arm for me. I thought to myself, it is possible to do the right thing, survive and not end up having to live the life of a hermit. Equally important, that reality is now out there for the world to see. What an encouragement to future whistleblowers – and to current ones, as well, for that matter.

Snowden was delighted when I told him that Bill Binney, the long-time and highly respected former NSA technical director, had just accepted the Sam Adams Award, which will be presented in 2015. It was Snowden’s own revelations that finally freed up Binney and other courageous NSA alumni to let the American public know what they had been trying, through official channels, to tell the overly timid representatives in Washington.

Seeing Citizenfour

Snowden was happy to tell me about the documentary, Citizenfour, explaining that during his sessions in Hong Kong with Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, and The Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill, Poitras seemed to have the camera always rolling during the eight days they shared in Hong Kong – including during the grand escape from the hotel. With a broad smile, Snowden said, “Ray, when people see my makeshift disguise, well, it is going to be really hard to argue that this thing was pre-planned!”

All I have seen so far is the trailer, but I have tickets for a showing Friday night when Citizenfour opens in Washington and other cities. With Snowden, I figured I could wait to witness the grand escape until I saw the film itself, so I avoided asking him for additional detail. Like: ”Don’t spoil it for me, Ed.”

I was encouraged to read, in one of the movie reviews, that the documentary does allude to the key role played by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in enabling Snowden’s escape. I had long since concluded that WikiLeaks’s role – and that of Sarah Harrison, in particular, was the sine qua non for success. I hope Citizenfour gives this key part of the story the prominence it deserves.

I feel it is an equal honor to spend time with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy whenever I’m in London. In early September, Assange was a welcoming host and we had a long chat over dinner while I was en route to Russia via London and Berlin. (I had been invited to present at the U.S.-Russia Forum in Moscow later last month and stayed there an extra day in order to visit with Snowden.)

I had been unaware of Citizenfour before visiting Assange. The film came up spontaneously when I volunteered to him that the safe extrication of Snowden from Hong Kong sits atop my gratitude list of the many things he has accomplished. That drew a very broad smile and some words about the world’s most powerful country and intelligence service, “and we still got him out!”

Assange shared how important it was not only to rescue Snowden himself but, in so doing, to provide for potential whistleblowers some real-life proof that it is possible to do the right thing and avoid spending decades in prison where WikiLeaks’ most famous source Chelsea Manning now sits. This was among the main reasons why WikiLeaks cashed in so many chips in its successful effort to bring Snowden to safety. It was surely not because Assange expected Snowden to share reportable information with WikiLeaks. He gave none.

Assange was in good spirits and hoping for some break in the Kafkaesque situation in which he has found himself for several years now (receiving asylum in Ecuador’s Embassy to avoid arrest in Great Britain and extradition to Sweden for questioning regarding alleged sexual offenses).

A Stop in Berlin

I also planned to spend a few days in Berlin to coincide with the NATO summit in Wales (Sept. 4-5). On Aug. 30, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity sent a Memorandum to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, warning her about the dubious “intelligence” adduced to blame Russia for the troubles in Ukraine. Our memo had some resonance in German and other European media, but I was saddened to find the media in the UK and Germany as co-opted and Putin-bashing as the U.S. media.

It was 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. What I said in my various talks and interviews on NATO’s reneging on its promise to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev not to move NATO one inch eastward, once Germany was reunited, seemed to come as a major revelation to most listeners.

“Really?” was the predominant reaction when I explained that 25 years ago there was a unique, realistic chance for a Europe “whole and free” (in words then used by President George H. W. Bush and Gorbachev) from Portugal to the Urals. Instead, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia was excluded. NATO crept steadily east toward Russia’s border.

And last February, the U.S. and EU orchestrated a coup d’état in Kiev to foster Ukraine’s “European aspirations” to cast its lot with the West and dislodge itself from Russia’s sphere of influence. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Whys Behind the Ukraine Crisis.”]

The squandering of a historic chance for lasting peace in Europe remains atop the list of severe disappointments encountered during my professional life. The fact that, to this day, so few seem aware of what happened, and who was – and is – to blame, is also a major frustration.

In Berlin, consolation and affirmation came in renewing friendships there and getting to know others – many of them expatriates. First and foremost among the latter is Sarah Harrison, the main figure in executing WikiLeaks’s plan to get Snowden out of Hong Kong and onward to Latin American via Moscow, where his planned journey has so far stalled.

Because the U.S. Justice Department charged Snowden with espionage and the U.S. State Department revoked his passport, his stay in Moscow ended up being quite a long one. But Harrison stayed on for as long as seemed necessary to accompany and support Snowden, as well as to be able to testify to the fact that the Russians were not using anything like “enhanced interrogation techniques” on him.

I had last seen Harrison in Moscow at the Sam Adams Award presentation to Snowden; it was great to have a chance to chat with her over a long lunch.

Flying home from Moscow, having had lunch there with Edward Snowden, lunch in Berlin with Sarah Harrison, and dinner with Julian Assange in that little piece of Ecuadorian territory in London, what came first to mind was Polonius’s advice to Laertes: “Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.”

But then, above the din of the jet engines, came a more familiar and more insistent voice. It was that of Jane Fahey, my Irish grandmother, who for some reason seemed 33,000 feet closer than usual: “Show me your company, and I’ll tell you who you are!” she would say, often – very often. I think my grandmother would be as pleased with my “company” as I am – and as grateful.

This piece first appeared at ConsortiumNews.com.

Categories
News Whistleblowing

Obama: “If you blow the whistle, you should be thanked”

“If you blow the whistle, you should be thanked. You should be protected for doing the right thing. You shouldn’t be ignored and you certainly shouldn’t be punished.”

These were the surprising words of President Obama on 7 August 2014, as he signed a $16 billion bill to improve veterans’ access to medical care. The bill followed a report from the Department for Veterans’ Affairs, which confirmed many of the complaints whistleblowers had been making – waiting lists were indeed being manipulated to hide how long veterans were having to wait for medical appointments.

The White House again praised whistleblowers this week, responding to a letter sent by the Society of Professional Journalists and 37 other journalism and open government groups urging the Obama Administration to be more transparent. The letter from White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest claims that the Administration has “made important progress” in “protecting whistleblowers” and “disclosing previously classified information.” Earnest cites the 2012 Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act as evidence that the Administration has “fought for and won better protections for whistleblowers.”

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But the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act that the White House claims offers better protections for whistleblowers is limited. While the Act was recognised as a step forward by whistleblower organisations like the Government Accountability Project (GAP) and the National Whistleblowers Centre, GAP also recognised its limitations. Blowing the whistle within official channels does not guarantee public disclosure of the information and does little to facilitate what Yochai Benkler has called “accountability leaks… that challenge systemic practices.”

At any rate, it is not the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act for which this Presidency is likely to be remembered but the intelligence whistleblowers who have faced severe reprisals on its watch. The Obama Administration, famously, has initiated eight prosecutions under the Espionage Act –  more uses of the 1917 Act than all previous US presidents combined. Former NSA employees Thomas Drake and Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle on mass surveillance; former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who blew the whistle on US torture and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan; and former CIA official John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on US torture, are among the intelligence whistleblowers who have been charged with the Espionage Act during Obama’s Administration.

Ray McGovern, a former CIA senior analyst, founder of whistleblower group Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), responded to Obama’s comments saying, “President Obama is giving hypocrisy a bad name.”

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McGovern, who is also a member of Courage’s advisory board, said:

Obama’s record speaks for itself; he has prosecuted more than twice as many whistleblowers – for espionage, no less – than all former presidents combined. As for those whose crimes have been whistle-blown upon, like those who did the torture, Obama continues to call them ‘patriots’. Former CIA operative John Kiriakou, who opposed torture, sits in a Pennsylvania prison because he revealed the name of one of the torturers.

Too bad Kafka is dead.

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Legislation News Whistleblowing

Yochai Benkler outlines public accountability defence for whistleblowers

Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler has published ‘A Public Accountability Defence for National Security Leakers and Whistleblowers,’ highlighting the value that leaks of national security information bring to American democracy and emphasizing the need for a legally permissible defence for those who bring this information to light. He outlines such a defence for what he calls “accountability leaks”, acknowledging that current law defines the term “whistleblower” too narrowly. If Benkler’s proposed defence were practiced today, Chelsea Manning might have avoided such a harsh prison term, and Edward Snowden might feel safe to return home.

Benkler has previously explained how WikiLeaks, as a legitimate journalistic outlet, helped other media outlets perform a vital check on government in ‘A Free Irresponsible Press: WikiLeaks and the Battle for the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate.’ He expanded on that article while testifying at Chelsea Manning’s trial.

In his new piece, Benkler argues that rather than technological change, a legitimacy crisis has spurred the last decade’s spate of national security leaks documenting systemic abuse:

The post-9/11 War on Terror and its attendant torture, rendition, indefinite detention, civilian collateral damage, and illegal domestic spying created a crisis of conscience for some insiders in the national security establishment. A consideration of the actual cases of
the past decade suggests that it is this loss of legitimacy of decisions that likely underlies the increase in these kinds of systemic leaks.

Although “[c]riminal liability for leaking and publishing classified materials is usually discussed in terms of a conflict between high-level values: security and democracy”, Benkler proposes “that the high-level abstraction obscures the fact that “national security” is, first and foremost, a system of organizations and institutions, subject to all the imperfections and failures of all other organizations.” Therefore, “it would be naïve beyond credulity to believe that the CIA, NSA, FBI, and Pentagon are immune to the failure dynamics that pervade every other large organization.”

Benkler explains how secrecy precludes accountability, rendering whistleblowing essentially inevitable — and necessary to keep massive organizations in check.

Secrecy insulates self-reinforcing internal organizational dynamics from external correction. … Some leaks, however, provide a critical mechanism for piercing the national security system’s echo-chamber, countering self-reinforcing information cascades, groupthink, and cognitive biases that necessarily pervade any closed communications system. It is this type of leak, which exposes and challenges core systemic behaviors, that has increased in this past decade, as it did in the early 1970s. These leaks are primarily driven by conscience, and demand accountability for systemic error, incompetence, or malfeasance. Their critical checking function derives from the fact that conscience is uncorrelated with well-behaved organizational processes. Like an electric fuse, accountability leaks, as we might call them, blow when the internal dynamics of the system reach the breaking point of an individual with knowledge, but without authority. They are therefore hard to predict, and function like surprise inspections that keep a system honest. By doing so, these leaks serve both democracy and security.

Rather than embrace these disclosures as vital and valuable, the government has cracked down harder than ever before on leakers and, to some extent, journalists who publish secret information. Benkler encourages countering this crackdown with a defence that whistleblowers could use in court:

To address this threat, I propose that Congress adopt a new Public Accountability defence as a general criminal defence, on the model of the necessity defence. The defence would be available to individuals who violate a law on the reasonable belief that by doing so they will expose to public scrutiny substantial violations of law or substantial systemic error, incompetence, or malfeasance even where it falls short of formal illegality. It is most important to the leakers themselves, but would also be available to journalists and others who participate in disseminating the leaked information.

He details what this defence would require:

(a) reasonable belief that exposure discloses a substantial violation of law or substantial systemic error, incompetence, or malfeasance,
(b)mitigation to avoid causing imminent, articulable, substantial harm that outweighs the benefit of disclosure, and
(c) communication to a channel likely to result in actual exposure to the public

Perhaps recognizing how the Espionage Act has been interpreted in the US to allow potential for harm to monopolize courtroom debate to the exclusion of discussion of the documents’ value, Benkler notes: “The significance of the disclosed violations is the most important factor, and could dominate the outcome even where other elements, in particular harm mitigation, are weaker.”

Benkler realises that such a defence is just one part of a range of necessary support measures: “full whistleblower protection would require more robust protections to avoid “punishment by process,” most importantly a private right of action against abusive prosecutors and an attenuation of the prosecutors’ qualified immunity.”

In the full article, Benkler explains in more detail how valuable national security leaks are, using bulk data collection since 11 September 2001 as an example. He further details his proposed whistleblower defence, and, finally, recounts 22 instances of leak prosecutions since World War II.

Categories
News Whistleblowing

CIA spying on its own “internal channels” for whistleblowers

McClatchy reports that the Central Intelligence Agency may be “intercepting the communications of officials who handle whistleblower cases.” The Senate Intelligence Committee’s classified 6,000-page report into the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation programme is still yet to be published and the Committee has already accused the agency of illegally spying on that probe.

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Now it has emerged that the CIA retaliated against an official who cooperated with the Senate investigation, and Senate members emailed one another to accuse the agency’s inspector general of failing to investigate that retaliation – and the CIA has obtained at least one of those emails.

As McClatchy writes, “The email controversy points to holes in the intelligence community’s whistleblower protection systems and raises fresh questions about the extent to which intelligence agencies can elude congressional oversight.” If the Senate cannot investigate the CIA independently and free of retaliation fears, who can? How can intelligence agencies be held accountable if they even intercept communications into their own operations?

From internal channels to insider threats

It is already difficult enough for government employees in the US to come forward with their concerns. If intelligence community officials fear reprisal, they have even less incentive to expose wrongdoing through internal channels. US Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Wyden have publicly warned that if public employees are committed to blowing the whistle and internal channels are compromised, it is to be expected that some will anonymously seek other ways to voice their misgivings.

Truly meaningful whistleblower protections need to include the option of a legitimate channel for confidential disclosures… However, if potential whistleblowers believe that disclosing waste, fraud or abuse means putting a target on their backs for retaliation, they will be intimidated into silence. The failure to provide such protected alternatives could result in whistleblowers choosing to make unprotected disclosures in public forums, with potential negative consequences for national security.

The CIA’s illegal monitoring of whistleblower communications has been seen as part of the Obama Administration’s Insider Threat programme, which categorically treats leaks of classified information about wrongdoing as aiding America’s enemies. Introduced in an October 2011 executive order as a direct response to US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s disclosures, the programme covers “virtually every federal department and agency”, including those who are not concerned with national security matters.

A series of reports by McClatchy over the past year describe a range of measures designed to encourage public officials to report on colleagues who they perceive to be exhibiting unusual behaviour. The programme has taken profiling to extreme lengths: late last year it was revealed that the personal details of 5,000 US citizens who had purchased a book on defeating polygraph tests had been retained on the off-chance that they might apply for a job in a federal agency at some point in the future.

This new controversy about the Insider Threat programme exacerbates an already deeply problematic situation for potential whistleblowers within the US intelligence community. Recent public statements by officials responsible for whistleblower protection within the NSA display a reluctance to take complaints seriously, suggesting that within that agency at least, officials see their role as containing rather than engaging with the concerns of employees.

“Don’t bother me with this”

In a recent interview for PBS, the NSA’s former General Counsel Vito Potenza admitted that he would have dismissed Thomas Drake’s criticisms of US warrantless wiretapping:

If he came to me, someone who was not read into “The Program,” right, and not a part of what we were doing and told me that we were running amok essentially and violating the Constitution and it was in that timeframe when there was an awful lot going on and we were all worried about the next [terrorist] attack, there’s no doubt in my mind I would have told him, you know, go talk to your management. Don’t bother me with this. I mean, you know, the minute he said, if he did say you’re using this to violate the Constitution, I mean, I probably would have stopped the conversation at that point quite frankly. So, I mean, if that’s what he said he said, then anything after that I probably wasn’t listening to anyway.

Drake subsequently blew the whistle to the media, and before the government’s case collapsed just days ahead of trial, he was facing an Espionage Act charge that could have imprisoned him for decades.

Similarly, Edward Snowden made enquiries within the NSA about the legality and morality of that agency’s mass, unchecked surveillance. He spoke up at least ten separate times — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has in fact released one of Snowden’s emails. When he was ignored, Snowden was compelled to give documents detailing the NSA’s spying programs to investigative journalists.

In February this year, NSA Inspector General George Ellard, the official responsible for dealing with whistleblower communications, outlined his likely response to a complaint about the collection of US call data:

Ellard was asked what he would have done if Snowden had come to him with complaints. Had this happened, Ellard says would have said something like, “Hey, listen, fifteen federal judges have certified this program is okay.” (He was referring to the NSA phone records collection program.)

“I would also have an independent obligation to assess the constitutionality of that law,” Ellard stated. “Perhaps it’s the case that we could have shown, we could have explained to Mr. Snowden his misperceptions, his lack of understanding of what we do.”

Insufficient security or insufficient democracy?

The Insider Threat programme and the stated attitudes of the very officials responsible for facilitating internal channels draw a picture of a US administration that is deeply hostile, not only to disclosure of government information, but to internal criticism of its activities from those charged to carry them out.

Famously, President Obama has overseen the prosecution of more Espionage Act cases than all previous presidents combined. The majority of those cases concern individuals trying to blow the whistle on wrongdoing. Within their number include cases, like that of Thomas Drake, where employees have tried to make their case within the ‘official channels’ ostensibly created to facilitate internal whistleblowing.

It is ironic that the United States has responded to disclosures of illegality and abuse, not by subjecting its programmes to democratic input or ensuring that future whistleblowers have better options, but by cracking down on those who speak up and the journalism they enable. The US administration has treated whistleblowers as an issue of insufficient security rather than insufficient democracy.

Categories
Edward Snowden News

Former NSA director says Edward Snowden “blew the whistle” on US spying