Another Whistleblower -- One Who Tried To Protect Other Whistleblowers -- Says The 'Official Channels' Are Worthless

from the an-empty-complaint-box-is-not-an-indicator-of-a-well-run-spy-agency dept

There are no safe routes for intelligence community whistleblowers. The proper channels are pretty much guaranteed to end your career. The same goes for the unofficial channels, which route through countries uninterested in complying with extradition requests.

The administration has prosecuted more than its share of whistleblowers over the last eight years. (In fact, its share of prosecutions outnumbers all those in previous presidential administrations combined.) Another whistleblower has come forward to provide details on… the government's treatment of whistleblowers.

John Crane, a former senior Defense Department official, details his firsthand experience with the government's zealous pursuit of previous NSA whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and William Binney. He was part of the "official channels" and actively fought to protect these individuals from government retaliation. As Mark Hertsgaard of The Guardian notes, Crane carried with him at all times two essential documents: a copy of the Constitution and a copy of the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989. These were often pulled out to settle disputes over treatment of whistleblowers.

According to Crane, these whistleblowers followed all of the correct protocols when expressing their concerns about warrantless domestic surveillance and the NSA's failure to move forward on communications it had collected from the terrorists who would go on to perform the 9/11 attacks. While this did budge the Congressional needle on a couple of NSA programs, it did nothing to protect the whistleblowers from FBI raids, criminal charges, and the end of their careers with the US government.

The person most instrumental in the prosecution of these whistleblowers was the DoD's general counsel, Henry Shelley. It was Shelley who stripped away the protections granted to whistleblowers in order to serve them up to a highly-irritated Bush White House.

According to Crane, his superiors inside the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s office were eager to help. Henry Shelley, the general counsel – the office’s top lawyer – urged that the IG office should tell the FBI agents investigating the Times leak about Drake and the other NSA whistleblowers.

Crane fought back, pointing out that whistleblowers are supposed to be protected (using the copy of the Whistleblower Act he always carried with him). Shelley was unimpressed by Crane's citation of applicable statutes and told him he was in charge and would do things his way.

There were no further discussions between Crane and Shelley. The next move was made by the DOJ, which sent the FBI after four NSA whistleblowers. Crane suspected Shelley had used information obtained from the Inspector General's office to identify the whistleblowers. Shelley refused to discuss the raids with Crane. Four months later, the FBI raided Thomas Drake's house based on an indictment that seemed all too familiar to Crane.

The complaint from Drake’s lawyers seemed to confirm his suspicion that someone in the IG’s office had illegally fingered Drake to the FBI. Worse, the indictment filed against Drake had unmistakable similarities to the confidential testimony Drake had given to Crane’s staff – suggesting that someone in the IG’s office had not simply given Drake’s name to the FBI, but shared his entire testimony, an utter violation of law.

Crane also claims the Inspector General's office told him to stonewall a FOIA request crucial to Drake's defense against the government's charges until after his trial. The IG's office also "accidentally" destroyed records related to Drake's retaliation complaint against the government. Crane was told by Shelley that this "wasn't a problem" and could continue not being a problem if Crane was a "good team player."

Crane -- like other whistleblowers and those who fight for them -- was forced out of his job. The Inspector General's second-in-command ordered him to resign in 2013. He's been fighting back ever since.

Crane filed a complaint against Shelley and Halbrooks, detailing many more alleged misdeeds than reported in this article. The Office of Special Counsel, the US agency charged with investigating such matters, concluded in March of 2016 that there was a “substantial likelihood” that Crane’s accusations were well-founded. The OSC’s choice of the term “substantial likelihood” was telling. It could have ruled there was merely a “reasonable belief” Crane’s charges were true, in which case no further action would have been required. By finding instead that there was a “substantial likelihood”, the OSC triggered a process that legally required secretary of defense Ashton Carter to organise a fresh investigation of Crane’s allegations.

Unfortunately, the investigation is back in the DOJ's hands because the Department of Defense -- like other government agencies -- isn't allowed to investigate itself. The DOJ is being entrusted with investigating yet another whistleblower's claims, but its history of zealous prosecutions suggests it's far more comfortable investigating the whistleblowers themselves.

John Crane was part of the "proper channels" for whistleblowers and, despite his best efforts, several whistleblowers were raided, indicted, and prosecuted. Crane himself was ousted from his position. The logical conclusion whistleblowers like Ed Snowden will reach is that the official channels are no less dangerous than the "unofficial" options. The latter option may be more unpredictable, but it gives whistleblowers a much better chance of being heard.

Filed Under: john crane, persecution, proper channels, thomas drake, whistleblowers, whistleblowing, william binney

Compare And Contrast: Treatment Of Thomas Drake & Hillary Clinton For Having Classified Info

from the double-standards dept

The Washington Post has a big story delving deep into how the Hillary Clinton email scandal happened, noting that Clinton just didn't want to give up her BlackBerry, even as the NSA told her repeatedly that it wasn't secure and there were serious risks involved. What's amazing, from the story, is how much everyone was focused on the BlackBerry side of things, and sort of skipped over the fact that she was using a private email account with the server set up in her basement. The WaPo article notes that for the first few months in her job as Secretary of State, the email server didn't even have basic encryption tools enabled. All of that is a travesty, and you should read the whole article to understand the issue more, but I wanted to focus in on a related issue: the high court/low court treatment of Hillary Clinton as compared to others. In particular, the situation with Thomas Drake, the NSA whistleblower.

Almost five years ago, we wrote about the Thomas Drake case, highlighting some key passages in an astoundingly thorough New Yorker piece by Jane Mayer, which ripped the government's case to shreds. That long article is also worth reading, but for this story, the key points are that Drake was getting on some people's nerves by complaining about the decisions the NSA was making in the wake of 9/11 -- moving towards using an expensive computer system that would suck up everyone's data, while he and others had worked on a much more cost-efficient system that would get better results and had built-in protections for civil liberties. Drake blew the whistle and provided information to a Congressional oversight staffer.

When a big NY Times investigative piece came out later revealing the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program, and the NSA tried to figure out who had leaked, they raided Drake's home. He hadn't been the leaker, but after ruffling through basically everything, they found that Drake had kept a few marginal classified documents:

Then, in April, 2008, the F.B.I. told him that someone important wanted to meet with him, at a secure building in Calverton, Maryland. Drake agreed to the appointment. Soon after he showed up, he says, Steven Tyrrell, the prosecutor, walked in and told him, “You’re screwed, Mr. Drake. We have enough evidence to put you away for most of the rest of your natural life.”

Prosecutors informed Drake that they had found classified documents in the boxes in his basement—the indictment cites three—and discovered two more in his e-mail archive.

The "classified" information in question was totally meaningless. There was unclassified stuff he had kept because he had given it to the Inspector General as part of his whistleblowing and had been told to keep it. And there was a schedule of meetings that was marked unclassified, but which the government claimed should have been classified. And another document that was declassified soon after:

“They had made me into an enemy of the state just by saying I was,” Drake says. The boxes in his basement contained copies of some of the less sensitive material that he had procured for the Inspector General’s Trailblazer investigation. The Inspector General’s Web site directs complainants to keep copies. Drake says that if the boxes did, in fact, contain classified documents he didn’t realize it. (The indictment emphasizes that he “willfully” retained documents.) The two documents that the government says it extracted from his e-mail archive were even less sensitive, Drake says. Both pertained to a successor to Trailblazer, code-named Turbulence. One document listed a schedule of meetings about Turbulence. It was marked “unclassified/for official use only” and posted on the N.S.A.’s internal Web site. The government has since argued that the schedule should have been classified, and that Drake should have known this. The other document, which touted the success of Turbulence, was officially declassified in July, 2010, three months after Drake was indicted. “After charging him with having this ostensibly serious classified document, the government waved a wand and decided it wasn’t so classified after all,” Radack says.

Because of those five documents, none of which ever should have been classified and one of which clearly was not... the Justice Department threatened Drake with thirty-five years in jail.

Drake was no longer charged with leaking classified documents, or with being part of a conspiracy. He is still charged with violating the Espionage Act, but now merely because of unauthorized “willful retention” of the five documents. Drake says that when he learned that, even with the reduced charges, he still faced up to thirty-five years in prison, he “was completely aghast.”

Okay. Got that? Thirty-five years because he "retained" five documents the government claims were classified.

Now, back to Clinton:

State Department and Intelligence Community officials have determined that 2,093 email chains contained classified information. Most of the classified emails have been labeled as “confidential,” the lowest level of classification. Clinton herself authored 104 emails that contained classified material, a Post analysis later found.

Before the server received a digital certificate marking the use of standard encryption, Clinton and her aides exchanged notes touching on North Korea, Mexico, Afghanistan, military advisers, CIA operations and a briefing for Obama.

Right. So Drake gets his home raided and faces 35 years for "retaining" 5 documents. And Clinton appeared to run classified documents through her unprotected home email server pretty much all the time. Now, it's likely that a lot of those 2093 emails involved "overclassification" situations that are all too common in government. And I'm certainly not making the argument that Clinton should necessarily face jail time (let alone 35 years or more) for the use of her own email server.

I'm just pointing out the seeming difference in treatment that someone like Drake gets, as a known "whistleblower" on government waste, as compared to Clinton, a front-runner for the Presidential nomination and a former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State.

Others have certainly noticed this double standard as well. Last summer, the ACLU called out this seeming unequal treatment, as did the Daily Beat, which referred to it as a double standard. Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald has -- quite reasonably -- gone even further, in pointing to Clinton's own comments on another situation involving classified emails: the case against Chelsea Manning. That involved the leaking of classified State Department cables while Clinton was Secretary of State. Clinton condemned Manning and insisted that the State Department had to be able to keep communications protected. And, yes, she said this at a time when her own emails were being run off a server in her home's basement.

Who knows what's going to happen with Clinton's email situation, but at the very least, the differential treatment she's received so far, compared to whistleblowers, should highlight just how ridiculous the treatment was for those whistleblowers. And it should reinforce the nature of the "high court/low court" distinction among the politically powerful. They get to avoid the kind of legal troubles the "little people" deal with.

Filed Under: classified information, clinton emails, confidential information, differential treatment, emails, high court, hillary clinton, low court, thomas drake, treatment, whistleblowers

Whistleblowers Band Together To Sue FBI, NSA And DOJ For Malicious Prosecution, Civil Liberties Violations

from the jury-trial-request-will-never-be-obliged,-that's-for-sure dept

This should be fun. A bunch of whistleblowers that were hounded, surveilled and prosecuted/persecuted by the US government are banding together to sue all the big names in domestic surveillance.

Thomas Drake, Diane Roark, Ed Loomis, J. Kirk Wiebe and William Binney have filed a civil rights lawsuit against the NSA, FBI, DOJ, Michael Hayden, Keith Alexander, Chris Inglis, Robert Mueller and a handful of others. They will be represented by Larry Klayman, who has some experience suing intelligence agencies.

The claims arise from the government's treatment of these whistleblowers after they started making noise about the NSA's surveillance programs. More specifically, the lawsuit points to the short-lived internet surveillance program THINTHREAD, which was ignored and abandoned in favor of something more expensive, but less protective of Americans' communications.

Plaintiffs worked in various roles on developing and perfecting a candidate program called THINTHREAD which was capable of performing the technical work desired by the NSA for surveillance of the internet efficiently, effectively, and at very low cost.

THINTHREAD was put into operation successfully but only on a demonstration basis. It was approved to demonstrate that it worked, but not officially commissioned for actual operational use.

Despite the Plaintiffs demonstrating that THINTHREAD actually worked, the NSA ignored THINTHREAD as a candidate for performing the desired surveillance of the internet and telephone communications, because THINTHREAD was inexpensive and highly effective, yet Lt. General Michael Hayden had made a corporate decision to “buy” externally rather than “build” internally the solution deemed necessary to harvest internet data.

$4 billion went into another program called TRAILBLAZER (THINTHREAD's internal development cost, by contrast, was only $4 MILLION), along with five years of development. In the end, TRAILBLAZER never worked properly and was abandoned by the NSA in 2006.

This wasteful "funneling" of funds to preferred government contractors was reported to the Dept. of Defense by four of the whistleblowers, under the heading of waste, fraud and misuse of taxpayers' money. The DoD wasn't happy. It issued a scathing internal report. But the NSA wasn't interested in having its faults pointed out. It sent the DOJ after the whistleblowers, using an unrelated leak of information about the NSA's expansive domestic surveillance programs to the New York Times as the impetus for a series of raids.

According to the filing, the raids were retaliatory. The government had already determined the plaintiffs had nothing to do with the leaks reported on by the New York Times. And it used faulty affidavits to justify the corresponding raids.

In fact, the affidavit for the search warrants are themselves based upon an illegal, warrantless phone tap and refer to a conversation illegally intercepted between Plaintiff Roark and Plaintiff William Binney, although misrepresenting the call’s contents. Further, the ultimate pretext for the search, a paper describing THINTHREAD at a high level that Binney had given the FBI, was falsely claimed by NSA to be classified. Thus, the search warrant affidavit is not only false but illegal.

The lawsuit also attempts to use the breadth and reach of known surveillance programs as proof the government knew the whistleblowers had nothing to do with the NYT leak.

Moreover, as later revealed by Edward Snowden, the NSA was even then, with the assistance of cooperating telephone and telecommunications companies, conducting mass interception and surveillance of all telephone calls within the domestic United States for the very purpose – at least so they claimed – of detecting both external and internal threats against the national security of the United States.

Therefore, through those phone and internet records, the Defendants had actual evidence at the time of the false affidavit and retaliatory searches and seizures that none of the Plaintiffs had communicated with the The New York Times or other journalists, except that Plaintiff Drake on his own had spoken confidentially with regard to public and /or unclassified information to the Baltimore Sun.

The end result of the FBI, NSA and DOJ's actions in response to whistleblowing (largely performed through proper channels) is a host of alleged civil liberties violations and other abuses, starting with the violation of 1998's Whistleblower Protection Act. From there, the whistleblowers allege violations of their First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, along with malicious prosecution, intentional infliction of emotional distress and abuse of process.

It will be interesting to see where this goes. The government likely won't be able to dismiss the suit quickly, but the plaintiffs are going to run into a ton of immunity claims that will be buttressed by invocations of national security concerns. Their lawyer -- Larry Klayman -- has occasionally displayed his inability to distinguish between actionable claims and conspiracy theories, a tendency that doesn't improve the plaintiffs' chances of succeeding. But of all the outcomes I imagined for the stories of Drake, Binney, et al, taking these agencies on directly in federal court wasn't one of them.

Filed Under: chris inglis, diane roark, doj, ed loomis, fbi, j. kirk wiebe, keith alexander, larry klayman, michael hayden, nsa, retaliation, robert mueller, surveillance, thinthread, thomas drake, trailblazer, whistleblowers, whistleblowing, william binney

Judge Looking Into Alleged Destruction Of Exculpatory Evidence By Pentagon In Thomas Drake Prosecution

from the but,-but-he-broke-the-rules!-[breaks-doc-destruction-rules] dept

More government malfeasance is being alleged in the all-over-but-the-Genius-Bar-employment prosecution of whistleblower Thomas Drake. Documents directly related to his whistleblowing efforts -- ones that would possibly have helped him fight the administration's efforts to punish him for supposedly-protected activities -- were allegedly destroyed by the Department of Defense.

Two government watchdog agencies are investigating whether the Pentagon inspector general destroyed evidence improperly during the high-profile leak investigation of former National Security Agency senior official Thomas Drake.

“DOD OIG’s handling of documents . . . is within the scope of an ongoing inquiry by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC),” Raymond Hulser, the chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, wrote to U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephanie Gallagher in a letter dated June 11. “In the event that OSC finds evidence of criminal conduct during the course of its work, it will refer that evidence to the Department of Justice for appropriate action.”

Succinctly put, the "proper channels" for whistleblowing were used by Thomas Drake, who was prosecuted under the Espionage Act. The missing files are related to his attempt to utilize those proper channels. Obviously, following procedures can't really be considered "espionage." The government's case against Drake fell apart, resulting in Drake pleading guilty to a single "unauthorized computer use" charge. But the case went on long enough that it drained Drake's personal savings and his revoked security clearance pretty much barred him from further government employment, leading to his current position as an employee of an Apple store.

The government’s handling of documents first became an issue during the evidence-gathering stage of Drake’s prosecution, when his criminal defense lawyers sought records related to his whistleblower cooperation with the Pentagon inspector general’s office in order to defend him.

At the time, the Justice Department told the judge that most of the “hard copy documents” related to the Pentagon inspector general’s office audit that Drake had cooperated with couldn’t be provided to the defense because they’d been destroyed “pursuant to a standard document destruction policy.”

Drake’s current lawyers, who didn’t represent him in the criminal case, told the court in a letter in April that they learned otherwise while representing Drake in his recent whistleblower claim against the NSA.

Drake’s lawyers wrote that the Pentagon inspector general’s office destroyed the documents “outside of normal policy and to impede . . . the criminal case.”

Even if these documents do somehow materialize, there's not much they can do other than vindicate Drake's actions. It won't rebuild his personal finances or return him to his former government position. In fact, even if evidence of wrongdoing is uncovered, it's likely to result in no meaningful actions. The court itself can't do much more than refer the findings to the Department of Justice, which has already noted that it is looking into these allegations. But to what end? Proof of deliberate destruction of evidence is the sort thing routinely wrist-slapped by the DOJ and the administration, both of which will probably allow the DOD to investigate itself and offer various plans to prevent future malfeasance, should it somehow manage not to clear itself of any wrongdoing.

If evidence of document destruction comes to light, the only practical purpose it will serve is to further illustrate how rigged the "justice" card game is -- what with prosecutors playing with incomplete, marked decks provided to them by "victims" of government whistleblowing.

Filed Under: defense department, evidence, nsa, thomas drake

Separate And Unequal: Gen. Petraeus Facing Mild Wrist Slap For Leaking Eight Books Full Of Classified Info To His Mistress

from the granted-Most-Favored-Leaker-status dept

The administration still wants to punish whistleblowers and leakers, but only if it can do it with logic borrowed from Animal Farm. When it comes to prosecution, some leakers are more equal than others.

John Kiriakou -- who exposed a single CIA operative's name while exposing its waterboarding tactics -- spent more time in jail than former CIA director Leon Panetta, who has spent (at last count) a grand total of 0 days locked up for leaking tons of classified info to Zero Dark Thirty's screenwriter, Mark Boal.

Of course, some leaks just aren't leaks, at least not according to the government. Kiriakou's were wrong. Panetta's were right. And Kiriakou spent three years in prison for a lesser "crime."

Thomas Drake faced a potential 35-year sentence for his exposure of wasteful NSA spending. The government's case against him self-imploded, however, resulting in a guilty plea to a misdemeanor and no jail time.

General Petraeus, who leaked classified information to his mistress, is in line to receive the lightest of wrist slaps for his indiscretion: two years probation and a $40,000 fine. The lightness of the sentence suggested by government prosecutors belies the extent of Petraeus' wrongdoing.

What he handed over to his mistress far surpasses anything the above whistleblowers "leaked."

While he was commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus “maintained bound, five-by-eight inch notebooks that contained his daily schedule and classified and unclassified notes he took during official meetings, conferences and briefings,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina writes in a statement of fact regarding the case...

All eight books “collectively contained classified information regarding the identifies of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings… and discussions with the president of the United States.”

The books also contained “national defense information, including top secret/SCI and code word information,” according to the court papers. In other words: These weren’t just ordinary secrets. This was highly, highly classified material.

On top of that, he lied to the government about these books, first in the form of a sworn statement...

Petreaus retained those Black Books after he signed his debriefing agreement upon leaving DOD, in which he attested “I give my assurance that there is no classified material in my possession, custody, or control at this time.” He kept those Black Books in an unlocked desk drawer.

And again to investigating FBI agents.

In an interview on October 26, 2012, he told the FBI:

(a) he had never provided any classified information to his biographer, and (b) he had never facilitated the provision of classified information to his biographer.

Simply lying to the FBI has consequences far greater than those Petraeus will face. But that's because he's General Petraeus and you're not -- as 22-year-old Kirstie Barratt recently discovered.

United States Attorney Bill Nettles stated today that Kirstie Elaine Philome Barratt, age 22, of Fort Mill, South Carolina was sentenced to 24 months’ imprisonment today after earlier pleading guilty to making a false statement to a federal agent, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001. United States District Judge Joseph F. Anderson, Jr. imposed the term of imprisonment, which will be followed by a 3 year term of supervised release. In October, Barratt plead straight up to the charge without a plea agreement. Barratt also may face deportation as a result of her guilty plea. During the sentencing hearing, Judge Anderson granted the government’s motion for an upward departure from the federal guidelines sentencing range of 0 to 6 months, noting that this was a “rare” case and that Barratt “knowingly placed a law enforcement officer’s life in jeopardy” by her false statement.

Petraeus was a trusted member of the military and the CIA. And he turned over eight books worth of classified info to his biographer/mistress just because she asked. But because he's part of the administration's arbitrarily-selected "in crowd," and because he didn't embarrass the government as much as he embarrassed himself, he's facing a sentence of nearly nothing. His suggested punishment will have zero effect on his current position at a top equity firm and his life will suffer none of the disruptions Kiriakou and Drake experienced. He'll be $40,000 poorer -- and with "deterrents" like these being deployed -- none the wiser.

What's most disgusting about Petraeus' cakewalk of a proposed sentence is that he himself took a hypocritical hardline stance on leaking after Kiriakou's sentencing.

When John Kiriakou pled guilty on October 23, 2012 to crimes having to do with sharing a single covert officer’s identity just days before Petraeus would lie to the FBI about sharing, among other things, numerous covert officers’ identities with his mistress, Petraeus sent out a memo to the CIA stating,

"Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy."

Yeah. "Oaths matter." Except when you're the one uttering them, right? Apparently, a "requisite degree of secrecy" means stashing eight books full of classified info in an unlocked desk drawer and handing them out to your clandestine SO in hopes of keeping your knob biography as polished as possible.

This administration is severely hypocritical, but seemingly no more so than in its treatment of whistleblowers. There are those who will be persecuted and punished and those whose similar indiscretions will be waved away by government prosecutors. The problem is: you may not know which of these faces of the administration you'll be facing when you decide to start blowing the whistle. Chances are -- given this administration's track record -- it will be the vindictive, angry administration that continually hopes to "send a message" with each new whistleblower/leaker prosecuted.

Those on the inside of the military/industrial/surveillance supercomplex -- who leak under the name of "anonymous official" to aid filmmakers, deploy talking points or steer narratives -- will never see this side of the two-faced administration. Their leaks are more equal than others.

Filed Under: cia, classified information, david petraeus, doj, fbi, john kiriakou, leaking, lying, punishment, thomas drake, wrist slap

White House Accidentally Reveals CIA's Top Spy In Afghanistan

from the and-snowden-is-the-problem? dept

For all the exaggerated talk of how much "damage" Ed Snowden has done, he hasn't actually revealed the names of any spies or put them in any danger. No, that's the White House's job. An apparent slip-up meant that the White House distributed a list of people at a press briefing in Afghanistan that clearly identified the CIA's top spy in the country.

The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.

The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country.

Perhaps even more incredible is that, at first, the White House denied there was a problem with the list, until someone apparently figured out what happened:

In this case, the pool report was filed by Washington Post White House bureau chief Scott Wilson. Wilson said he had copied the list from the e-mail provided by White House press officials. He sent his pool report to the press officials, who then distributed it to a list of more than 6,000 recipients.

Wilson said that after the report was distributed, he noticed the unusual reference to the station chief and asked White House press officials in Afghanistan whether they had intended to include that name.

Initially, the press office raised no objection, apparently because military officials had provided the list to distribute to news organizations. But senior White House officials realized the mistake and scrambled to issue an updated list without the CIA officer’s name. The mistake, however, already was being noted on Twitter, although without the station chief’s name.

Meanwhile, back in the US, the guy who blew the whistle on the CIA's waterboarding program is sitting in jail for "revealing" a CIA agent's name, when he actually did much, much less (simply confirming to a reporter the name of someone that reporter might want to talk to about a story). But, as double standards tend to go, I would imagine no one will be going to jail over this much more serious leak. After all, whoever fucked up and put it in the list probably hasn't blown the whistle on a program like the US torturing people.

Obviously, mistakes happen, but it's fairly incredible how the same people will brush off "mistakes" like this one, while going absolutely crazy over claims that John Kiriakou or Thomas Drake or Ed Snowden somehow caused a tremendous amount of "harm" despite no evidence to actually support those claims.

Filed Under: afghanistan, cia, defense department, dod, ed snowden, john kiriakou, leaks, press office, thomas drake, white house

Intelligence Community Villifies Whistleblowers Like Snowden, While Barely Mentioning Actual Spies

from the which-one-is-more-of-a-threat dept

There have been plenty of efforts by defenders of the intelligence community (including the Department of Justice) to publicly destroy the reputations of various whistleblowers, from Thomas Drake to John Kiriakou to Chelsea Manning to Ed Snowden. All of them were whistleblowers, with most leaking important information to the press. Yet they were all charged as spies under the Espionage Act, and the intelligence community and its defenders went out of their way to claim that they were the equivalent of the worst spies around, putting national security in danger, and often questioning if they were really working for foreign powers. Yet, as (former FBI agent, now defender of civil liberties) Mike German points out, it's odd how the very same people seem noticeably quiet concerning actual spies who handed sensitive information directly into the hands of adversarial governments.

So how come most people have never heard of Jeff Delisle? He is, after all, an admitted Russian spy who compromised US signals intelligence for almost five years before his arrest in 2012 and whose dismissal from the Canadian military was revealed in court last week.

Don’t blame Canada; American officials have been strangely silent on the matter. As part of his duties as an analyst assigned to an “intelligence fusion centre”, Delisle had access to a top-secret US Defense Intelligence Agency database – part of the intelligence-sharing arrangement among the so-called “Five Eyes”, the US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. He volunteered his services to Russian intelligence as an embassy walk-in, then used thumb drives to steal classified material that he disseminated to his spymasters through a shared email account. He was prosecuted in Canada, and sentenced to 20 years in prison – 15 fewer than Manning received.

As German notes, Delisle isn't a one-off situation either.

Delisle isn’t the only spy you never heard of. Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Ana Montes spied for Cuba for 17 years before her 2001 arrest. Former US Marine Leandro Aragoncillo spied on behalf of the Philippines for five years while serving as an aide to Vice President Cheney and then an FBI analyst, before his 2005 arrest.

But we don't really hear about those folks. And, as German points out, they actually caused a lot more damage. And that leads one to the inevitable conclusion. The anger about Snowden and the others has little to do with national security. It's much more about the uncomfortable reality that these whistleblowers are shining a very bright spotlight on questionable policies that were approved of and supported by these politicians:

If the US government’s crusade against Snowden reflected a genuine concern about leaks that do serious harm to the our nation’s security – rather than a public relations response to disclosures about controversial surveillance activities – one would expect to hear the names Delisle, Montes and Aragoncillo brought into the discussion as well. And often.

When spies reveal information to foreign powers, however, there are no angry tirades in Congress – no vote-grabbing tactics – that might draw public attention to this counter-intelligence failure. The silence helps them avoid uncomfortable questions about whether such broad information-sharing was really in our national security interests, or whether our intelligence agencies were negligent.

I think to some extent it goes further. Defenders of the intelligence community understand spies who sell out to other countries. It's part of the espionage game. Whistleblowers, however, they don't understand at all. It makes them uncomfortable in a very different sense. They're used to keeping secrets. The idea of "going public" with something goes against basically their entire life's work. And, even worse, whistleblowers reflect directly back on them in a way that spies selling out to other countries don't. Spies who give information to foreign governments aren't making any kind of comment on those who didn't do that. Whistleblowers, on the other hand, are by default highlighting exactly what the rest of the intelligence community has been doing and the fact that no one else was willing to step up and call out obvious wrongs.

And that's why they freak out so badly when true whistleblowers come along and treat them worse than actual spies and double agents.

Filed Under: ed snowden, nsa, outrage, spies, surveillance, thomas drake, whistleblowers

Former NSA Insiders Ask President Obama To Let Them Brief Him On Everything Wrong With The NSA

from the that-would-be-interesting dept

As pretty much everyone has been sending over, a bunch of former NSA and intelligence community insiders who later went on to become whistleblowers (many of whom were then attacked or even prosecuted for their whistleblowing) have written quite an astounding open letter to President Obama, requesting that he allow them to brief him on the problems of the NSA. The letter goes a bit overboard on the rhetoric (which actually pulls away from its important underlying message, unfortunately), but the key points are clear. From what they've seen, they know that not only have the NSA's efforts violated the 4th Amendment and been ineffective, they have actually made it more difficult for the NSA to do its job properly.

What we tell you in this Memorandum is merely the tip of the iceberg. We are ready – if you are – for an honest conversation. That NSA’s bulk collection is more hindrance than help in preventing terrorist attacks should be clear by now despite the false claims and dissembling.

Much of the letter repeats things that were reported in the past, specifically in Jane Meyer's incredible New Yorker story about Thomas Drake (who signed this letter) from nearly three years ago. It talks about THINTHREAD, the program developed by William Binney (also signed on to the letter) as a system for sorting through information without violating the 4th Amendment, or the NSA's mandate. As was detailed both in Meyer's article, and again in this letter, THINTHREAD, which was developed prior to 9/11 for just a few million dollars, had built in a bunch of privacy and anonymity controls, but would also ease information sharing when necessary and appropriate. However, rather than use it, the NSA director at the time, Michael Hayden, chose to go with a plan from some outside defense contractors, costing billions of dollars, which didn't bother protecting the 4th Amendment or people's privacy. When the folks behind THINTHREAD reported this level of waste to the Inspector General, they were investigated, leading to various bogus charges against Drake (almost all of which were eventually dropped).

In the letter, Drake also discusses how, as the NSA exec in charge of figuring out the beset technology to fight against terrorism, he tried to get THINTHREAD reinstated. He also was asked to prepare a briefing for then head of the House Intelligence Committee, Saxby Chambliss (who's now a staunch NSA defender on the Senate Intelligence Committee) about why 9/11 happened. His initial report noted that the NSA knew all about the hijackers, but failed to share the info. He wasn't allowed to give that report.

At a SIGINT Leadership Team meeting in February 2002, SIGINT chief Maureen Baginski directed me to lead a NSA Statement-for-the-Record effort for a closed-door hearing scheduled by Sen. Chambliss for early March to discuss what NSA knew about the 9/11 hijackers and their plotting before 9/11.

As indicated above, the highly embarrassing answer was that NSA knew a great deal, but had not shared what it knew outside of NSA.

After a couple of weeks Baginski rejected my draft team Statement for the Record report and removed me from the task. When I asked her why, she said there was a ‘data integrity problem’ (not further explained) with my draft Statement for the Record. I had come upon additional damaging revelations. For example, NSA had the content of telephone calls between AA-77 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar in San Diego, CA, and the known al-Qaeda safe house switchboard in Yemen well before 9/11, and had not disseminated that information beyond NSA.

The letter goes on in great detail about the misleading claims by NSA defenders -- which we've discussed in the past -- that 9/11 could have been prevented if the bulk metadata collection was in use at the time.

It is unlikely that President Obama will respond to this in any manner. Over the past decade, the government worked hard to try to discredit Binner, Drake and the two other signatories, Edward Loomis and Kirk Wiebe (who both worked on THINTHREAD with Binney). Still, it's a powerful letter highlighting, yet again, how dysfunctional the NSA and the intelligence community are, how much of what they do seems to be driven by the corporate interests of defense contractors, and how little they seem to care about privacy or the Constitution.

Filed Under: barack obama, edward loomis, kirk wiebe, michael hayden, nsa, thinthread, thomas drake, william binney

Obama's Simply Wrong: Whistleblower Protections Would Not Have Applied To Snowden

from the that's-not-true dept

During the Q&A portion of today's President Obama press conference, reporter Chuck Todd asked Obama about Ed Snowden and whether he was a "patriot," after Obama announced some reforms and even directly made clear that those who support civil liberties and greater transparency "love their country" and are "patriots." Except, Obama said that he does not think Snowden is a patriot, in part because he had signed the Whistleblower Protection Act and extended the protections to the intelligence community. This is laughable on a variety of levels, including the Obama administration's actions against other whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and William Binney, who did go through official channels, and then were subject to ridiculous investigations and (with Drake) totally trumped up charges on a bogus unrelated issue.

But there's a bigger point: Snowden actually is not covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act, entirely contrary to President Obama's claims. That's because the act does not cover contractors, such as those who worked for the NSA via Dell or Booz Allen like Snowden did. After the Snowden revelations came out, the Obama administration admitted that it was "looking at" ways to extend the protections to contractors, but at this time (and at the time that Snowden leaked) they do not cover him.

In other words, there were no legal protections under the Act, contrary to Obama's claims, and (worse) it's not as though the government has a history of respecting such whistleblower protections in the first place. Why bother when you can just trump up some other charges on those same people as punishment? Remember that this is the very same Obama administration that has directly declared that anyone leaking documents is aiding the enemy.

Filed Under: barack obama, contractors, ed snowden, official channels, thomas drake, whistleblower protection act, whistleblowers

How The US Government Destroys The Lives Of Whistleblowers

from the there's-a-process? dept

One of the things we've heard over and over again from defenders of the NSA surveillance program is that Ed Snowden is somehow "not a whistleblower" because he could have just gone through "the proper channels" to alert people to abuse internally at the NSA. Of course, to most people, that seems quite laughable. They know what happens. The Washington Post has an article detailing how the government has destroyed the lives of various whistleblowers from within the intelligence community, who chose to go through "the proper channels" to voice their complaints. It's not pretty.

One of those discussed is Thomas Drake, whom we've written about often. He's now been reduced to working at an Apple store, because the government has more or less black-balled him, such that he can't get a job utilizing his actual skills. Bizarrely, he tells the story of Attorney General Eric Holder, who was in charge of the case against him that collapsed completely as it went to court, coming in to shop for a new iPhone:

Last year, he was working when he spotted an unlikely customer: Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who came in to check out iPhones.

Drake introduced himself and asked: "Do you know why they have come after me?"

"Yes, I do," Holder said.

"But do you know the rest of the story?," he asked.

Holder quickly left with his security detail, Drake said.

They cover others, like Richard Barlow, who blew the whistle on the CIA lying to Congress about whether or not Pakistan could use some F-16s it was about to buy from the US to hold (and potentially launch) nuclear weapons. He went through the proper channels to alert officials of the mistake and three days later he was fired. Even though a GAO report vindicated Barlow and said his statements were reasonable and that he was clearly fired as a retaliatory move, he was unable to get another job in the government saying his "record was smeared." He now lives out near Yosemite Yellowstone in a mobile home and refers to himself as "seriously damaged, burned-out intelligence officer" who now suffers from PTSD.

The article has a few more stories like this one. Principled people who blew the whistle, and even when they were later vindicated, it made it impossible to get their jobs back or new jobs (or, in some cases, even to get money owed to them).

And people wonder why Snowden chose the path that he did? Sure, the other countries where he may end up don't have great track records either, but the US now has a well-established track record of doing serious harm to whistleblowers, especially within the intelligence community.

Filed Under: doj, ed snowden, eric holder, intelligence, leaks, nsa, thomas drake, whistleblowers