Monday, May 16, 2011

What He Said

In a just released, lengthy New Yorker article, Jane Mayer -- with the diligence and thoroughness she used to expose the Bush torture regime -- examines a topic I've written about many times here: the Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistleblowers generally, and its persecution of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake in particular (Drake exposed massive waste, excess and perhaps illegality in numerous NSA programs).

[...]

Thomas Drake is a hero who deserves a Medal of Honor. Instead, the Obama administration seeks to imprison him for decades while steadfastly protecting from prosecution -- or judicial review of any kind -- the high-level government officials who systematically broke the law.

[...]

Mayer's article is what I'd describe as the must-read magazine article of the month, and I encourage everyone to read it in its entirety.

[...]

When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as "often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government." But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks -- more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. The Drake case is one of two that Obama’s Justice Department has carried over from the Bush years.

[...]

"The Bush people have been let off. The telecom companies got immunity. The only people Obama has prosecuted are the whistle-blowers."

  Glenn Greenwald

And here’s the link.

And Mayer did not even include this quote about whistleblowers from candidate Obama: "Such acts of courage and patriotism . . . should be encouraged rather than stifled." Apparently, by "encouraged," he meant: "snuffed out with relentless prosecution and intimidation."

Newspeak.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated. There may be some delay before your comment is published. It all depends on how much time M has in the day. But please comment!