NOTE: FOR SEVEN NUMBERS THIS NEWSLETTER ON WHISTLEBLOWERS WAS PUBLISHED PERIODICALLY. TODAY AND HENCEFORTH IT WILL BE PUBLISHED ON (AT PRESENT PROPOSED) NATIONAL WHISTLEBLOWER’S DAY, JULY 30. SEE EXPLANATION BELOW.
“A people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” James Madison.
OMNI’s endowed fund at UA’s Mullins Library for the purchase of books and films on Victims includes books and films on corporations and on resistance to
OMNI NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL DAYS PROJECT
My blog: The War
Department and Peacemaking
Newsletters:
Index:
See: Wikileaks, Assange, Manning, Corporate Crime, Patriotism, Surveillance Newsletters.#3 AND #4 ARE BELOW. For 1 and 2 see newsletter url just above.
Contents
of #5
Wikipedia Whistleblowers
National Whistleblowers Center
Protect Federal Employee
Whistleblowers
GAP’S Bridging the Gap
GAP: Government Accountability
Project
OSHA and Whistleblowers
Greenwald, Documentary War on Whistleblowers
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now Programs on WB
More on Kiriakou
Contents
#6, May 22, 2013
Write, Call for John Kiriakou
GAP: Bridging
the Gap Spring 2013
Railway Whistleblowers Get
Federal Protection
US Government Quick Guide
Department of Labor Whistleblower
Regulations
Greenwald, Obama’s War on
Whistleblowers (one Google page)
Sibel Edmonds, Book , US
Contents
#7 June 26, 2013
OMNI Showing War on Whistleblowers Film June 26
Ann Wright on Obama Admin. vs.
Manning
GREENWALD
Dick: Greenwald’s War on Whistleblowers Film
Greenwald’s War on Whistleblowers
Greenwald on Whistleblowers and
Government Threats
EDWARD SNOWDEN
Leaker Snowden
Send Thanks to Snowden
Support for Snowden Around the World
Google Search
Bridging the Gap
Executive Director
Vance v. Rumsfeld, Tortured
Whistleblowers Sue
Contents
#8 July 30, 2013 National Whistleblower
Day
NWC Requests July 30 Be National
Whistleblower Day
NWC’s The Whistleblower’s
Handbook
Google Search for NWC
Greenwald, NSA’s Enhanced Cell
Phone Tapping
General Cartwright Reveals
Cybernet Warfare Against Iran
Pilger, Leakers vs. US Fascism
Amy Goodman Interviews Chris
Pyle, 1970s Whistleblower
Bunnatine Greenhouse: Iraqi Oil
Contracts Whistleblower
La Franiere, Crackdown on Leakers
Insider Threat Program: President
Obama’s Crackdown on Leakers
|
NWC
Requests that Obama and Congress Declare July 30th National Whistleblower Day
|
Official
Recognition Sought for Founding Fathers' Support of the First American
Whistleblowers of 1777
As set forth in today's op-ed piece by Stephen M. Kohn in the New York Times, "The Whistle-Blowers of 1777," ten sailors and marines contacted the Continental Congress with allegations that the Commander of the United States Navy had committed serious misconduct, including the torture of British prisoners.
Instead of retaliating against the whistleblowers or
attempting to cover up the misconduct, America's Founding Fathers provided
material support to the whistleblowers, and enacted America's first ever whistleblower law on July 30,
1778.
Copies
of the original documents from the Continental Congress are reproduced here.
Stephen M. Kohn, Executive Director of the NWC, issued
the following statement:
On
July 30th, 1778, the Founding Fathers expressed unanimous
and strong support for whistleblowers in enacting
Despite the severe financial strain of the budding republic,
Congress provided over $1,000 to ensure that the whistleblowers would have
the best legal assistance possible in defending their reputations and
freedoms from the retaliation they faced.
The Founding Fathers demonstrated the courage of their
convictions and established once and for all that exposing misconduct of the
highest-ranking government officials is at the heart of American democracy.
The contributions of modern day whistleblowers such as
Ernie Fitzgerald (billions in Department of Defense fraud); Bunnatine
"Bunny" Greenhouse (illegal no-bid contracts in Iraq); Sherron
Watkins, Cynthia Cooper, and Harry Markopolos (rampant fraud on Wall Street);
Bradley Birkenfeld (billions in fraud by UBS); Dr. Frederic Whitehurst (fraud
in forensic laboratories); Coleen Rowley, Jane Turner, and Sibel Edmonds (FBI
abuses) have been significant in the preservation of democracy. And the
list goes on. But unlike the Founding Fathers, our government has not
acknowledged the contributions of these patriots and heroes. Instead,
their contributions to the public interest have been officially censored.
A national day of recognition is essential to honor
both the courage of the Founding Fathers in 1777 and the continuing
contributions of Americans who have had the courage to, in the words of
America's first whistleblower law, ‘give the earliest information to Congress
or any other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds, or misdemeanors.'
The
full story of this untold historic episode was first set forth in The Whistleblower's Handbook:
A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing What's Right and Protecting Yourself.
Links:
|
|
The
Whistleblower's Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing What's Right and
Protecting Yourself
|
|
|
I wrote to NWC and about the UBS WB
June28, check out the others
1.
National Whistleblowers Center - Father of UBS Whistleblower ...
whistleblowers.nonprofitsoapbox.com/index.php?option=com...
The National Whistleblower Center
2.
National
Whistleblowers Center -
Washington - Local Business ...
https://www.facebook.com/pages/National-Whistleblowers.../432227111...
Today the National Whistleblower Center
3.
National
Whistleblowers Center |
MSPB Watch
mspbwatch.net/tag/national-whistleblowers-center/
Nov 27, 2012 – Posts about National Whistleblowers Center
4.
National
Whistleblower Center -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Whistleblower_Center
The National
Whistleblower Center (NWC) is a nonprofit,
nonpartisan, tax exempt, educational and advocacy organization, founded and
operated by the ...
5.
National Whistleblower Assembly - C-SPAN Video Library
www.c-spanvideo.org/program/293679-1
May 24, 2010
... of whistleblower protections held the
first day of a two-dayassembly to ... protections for people
who ...
Greenwald With a Look at the Next NSA Bombshell
lenn Greenwald previewed a
yet-to-be-published document about the National Security Agency surveillance
program during a speech at the Socialism 2013 Conference in
Speaking
via Skype (hence the blurry photo above), Greenwald said the Guardian is planning to publish a document
showing that new technology allows the
National Security Agency to direct one billion cell phone calls every day into
its data repositories.
"What we are really talking about
here is a globalized system that prevents any form of electronic communication
from taking place without its beings stored and monitored by the National Security
Agency," Greenwald told the liberal crowd. "It doesn't mean they're
listening to every call. It means they're storing every call and have the
capacity to listen to them at any time."
In his speech, Greenwald excoriated the press for criticizing former contractor Edward
Snowden's decision to leak the NSA documents, saying a climate of fear
permeates investigative journalism and cripples the mainstream reporters'
ability to speak truth to power.
“In their
minds, the only kinds of leaks that are bad are leaks that the government
doesn’t want disclosed to the public,” Greenwald said. “The only thing that is
journalism to them is when they carry forth the message that has been implanted
in their brains by the political officials whom they serve. And I think this
behavior highlights the true purpose of establishment journalism more
powerfully than anything I or anybody else have ever written.” . . . .
http://vaccineliberationarmy.com/2013/07/06/ed-snowden-war-on-whistleblowers/
Beyond Snowden: US General Cartwright has been indicted for espionage
21st Century Wire Tuesday, 02 July 2013
While the world focuses on Washington’s pursuit of NSA whistleblower
Ed Snowden, another much more high ranking member of the US power structure has
been indicted for espionage this week…
US General James Cartwright was regarded by Washington insiders as ‘Obama’s General’, and now he’s facing prosecution for blowing the whistle on ‘Operation Olympic Games’ which planted the Stuxnet and Flame viruses in Iranian nuclear facilities in order derail Iran’s civilian nuclear program. At closer examination, it appears that Cartwright’s revelations didn’t so much harmUS
interests per say, but they hindered Israeli ambitions towards a war with Iran
US General James Cartwright was regarded by Washington insiders as ‘Obama’s General’, and now he’s facing prosecution for blowing the whistle on ‘Operation Olympic Games’ which planted the Stuxnet and Flame viruses in Iranian nuclear facilities in order derail Iran’s civilian nuclear program. At closer examination, it appears that Cartwright’s revelations didn’t so much harm
Understanding Leaks
is Understanding the Rise of a New Fascism.
Tuesday, 25 June 2013 09:41 By John Pilger, Truthout | Op-Ed
Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the National
Security Agency, prepares to testify before the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence on Capitol Hill, in
In
his book, Propaganda,
published in 1928, Edward Bernays wrote: "The conscious and intelligent
manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important
element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of
society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of
our country."
The
American nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays invented the term "public
relations" as a euphemism for state propaganda. He warned that an enduring
threat to the invisible government was the truth teller and an enlightened
public.
In
1971, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leaked US government files known as The Pentagon Papers, revealing
that the invasion of Vietnam
Speaking
about the National Security Agency (NSA), Senator
Church said: "I know the capacity
that there is to make tyranny in America
On 11
June, following the revelations in The Guardian by NSA contractor Edward
Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg wrote that the US had now entered "that
abyss."
Snowden’s
revelation that Washington Indonesia
Fred Branfman, the antiwar activist who exposed the
"secret" destruction of tiny Laos
In
the new American cyber power, only the revolving doors have changed. The
director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen,
was adviser to Condaleeza Rice, the former secretary of state in the Bush
administration who lied that Saddam Hussein could attack the US Iraq
Control and dominance are the two words that make sense of
this. These are exercised by political, economic and military designs, of which
mass surveillance is an essential part, but also by insinuating propaganda in
the public consciousness. This was Edward
Bernays’s point. His two most successful PR campaigns were convincing
Americans they should go to war in 1917 and persuading women to smoke in
public; cigarettes were "torches of freedom" that would hasten
women’s liberation.
It is
in popular culture that the fraudulent "ideal" of America Hollywood US
When
I showed my own film, The War
on Democracy, to a major, liberally-minded US Iraq
The
power of truth tellers like Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden
is that they dispel a whole mythology carefully constructed by the corporate
cinema, the corporate academy and the corporate media. WikiLeaks is
especially dangerous because it provides truth tellers with a means to get the
truth out. This was achieved by Collatoral
Murder, the cockpit video of an US Apache helicopter allegedly leaked by
Bradley Manning. The impact of this one video marked Manning and Assange
for state vengeance. Here were US
airmen murdering journalists and maiming children in a Baghdad
A DAILY INDEPENDENT GLOBAL NEWS HOUR
with Amy Goodman
& Juan González
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Chris Pyle, Whistleblower on Domestic Spying
in 70s, Says Be Wary of Attacks on NSA’s Critics
RELATED STORIES
·
·
TOPICS
GUESTS
Chris Pyle, author of four books. His most recent is Getting Away with
Torture. In 1970, he disclosed the military’s spying on civilian politics
and worked for three congressional committees to end it, including Senator
Frank Church’s Select Committee on Intelligence. He teaches constitutional law
and civil liberties at Mount
Holyoke College
RELATED
Exclusive: National Security Agency Whistleblower William
Binney on Growing State Surveillance
Apr 20, 2012 | STORY
Part 2: Former NSA Employee
Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack on Obama Admin. Whistleblower Crackdown
Mar 26, 2012 | STORY
NSA Whistleblower
Thomas Drake Prevails Against Charges in Unprecedented Obama Admin Crackdown
Mar 21, 2012 | STORY
Exposed: Inside the NSA’s Largest and Most Expansive
Secret Domestic Spy Center in Bluffdale, Utah
Mar 21, 2012 | STORY
LINKS
See
all of Democracy Now!’s NSA coverage
DONATE →
This is viewer supported news
As NSA director
General Keith Alexander blasts the leaks that exposed widespread surveillance
of Americans, we’re joined by Chris Pyle, a former military instructor who
exposed the CIA and Army’s monitoring of millions of
Americans in the 1970s. Pyle discovered the Army and CIA were spying on millions of Americans
engaged in lawful political activity while he was in the Army working as an
instructor. His revelations prompted Senate hearings, including Senator Frank
Church’s Select Committee on Intelligence, ultimately leading to a series of
laws aimed at curbing government abuses. Now teaching constitutional law and
civil liberties at Mount
Holyoke College
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in
its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We want to go on to the National Security Agency director, General
Keith Alexander, who testified before Congress Wednesday, a week after a
trove of secret documents about his agency’s widespread surveillance program
stunned the nation and sparked heated debate. During his testimony, Alexander
denied claims he has personal wiretapping abilities at the agency and insisted
phone data collection has helped prevent dozens of terrorist attacks. He
refused to publicly answer questions about how the NSA had made the transition to collecting
phone records of Americans. Alexander also said he hoped for greater
transparency around the surveillance programs, but he argued some secrecy helps
the agency’s mission. He was also asked about the impact of the NSA leaks. This was his response.
GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER: Great harm has already been done by
opening this up. And the consequence, I believe, is our security is
jeopardized. There is no doubt in my mind that we will lose capabilities as a
result of this and that not only the United States, but those allies that we
have helped, will no longer be as safe as they were two weeks ago. And so, I am
really concerned about that. I’m also concerned that, as we go forward, we now
know that some of this has been released. So what does it make sense to explain
to the American people so they have confidence that their government is doing
the right thing? Because I believe we are, and we have to show them that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The disclosure of the secret NSA surveillance program was based on
information leaked by Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who most recently worked
inside the NSA’s Hawaii U.S. Hong Kong ] as a location
misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to
reveal criminality."
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by Christopher Pyle, who first exposed
domestic spying in the 1970s here in the U.S. Pyle discovered the CIA was spying on millions of Americans
engaged in lawful activity while he was in the Army and worked as an
instructor. After he left, he wrote about the Army’s vast and growing spy
operations. His article from 1971 began, quote, "For the past four years,
the U.S. Army has been closely watching civilian political activity within the United States Mount
Holyoke College Chicopee ,
Massachusetts
SHOW FULL TRANSCRIPT ›
BUNNATINE GREENHOUSE
Fired Army Whistleblower Receives
$970K for Exposing Halliburton No-Bid Contract in Iraq
Mrs. Greenhouse will speak about her work as a public servant, and her commitment to preserving integrity, honesty and accountability in government contracting. Mrs. Greenhouse stood alone in opposing the approval of a highly improper multi-billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the reconstruction of Iraqi Oil. In return for her courage she was retaliated against and removed from her position as the Procurement Executive, the highest-ranking civilian-contracting official at the Army Corps of Engineers. Her case continues today.
Tags: Bunnatine Greenhouse, Government Ethics, Press Releases, Government Ethics, Government Contractor Fraud
Dispute over Whistleblower Access to Federal Court Intensifies
 |
"We
urge every American to read Bunny's letter and to TAKE ACTION! ," said Stephen M. Kohn, NWC
Executive Director. "This is not a Democrat or Republican
issue. This is not a partisian issue. This is an issue that goes to
the heart of accountability and oversight. In the House of
Representatives Democratic leader Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) joined with
his republican colleague Todd Platts (R-PA) to introduce an effective
whistleblower law that would give Bunny Greenhouse her day in court , The
Senate should follow this bi-partisian lead and ensure that the promises made
to whistleblowers during the 2008 election campaign are fulfilled."
NWC
Press Release: Greenhouse's Most Recent Letter Causes A Stir
Read a 12-part series on the
Whistleblower Protection Blog analyzing
the Senate Whistleblower Bill.
Voice
of America
Don't be fooled by Bunnatine H. Greenhouse's nickname.
"Bunny" might have a soft and cuddly side, but it's her
watchdog self that got her in trouble.
When Greenhouse blew the whistle on noncompetitive
multibillion-dollar contracts to Kellogg Brown & Root, then a Halliburton
subsidiary, for work in Iraq
Bunny Greenhouse and her attorney, Michael D. Kohn, were
interviewed on Federal News Tonight on News Channel 8 on June 2, 2009.
Within hours of testifying in Congress, Ms. Greenhouse received an
email from the Army Corps Chief of Staff demanding pre-clearance of any
testimony Greenhouse may wish to present to Congress. Ironically,
Greenhouse's testimony was presented before the House Committee on Oversight
and Government Reform about legislation aimed at protecting whistleblowers from
just this kind of action.
Tags: Bunnatine Greenhouse, Press Releases, National Security, Government Ethics,Government Contractor Fraud
" I
urge you to contact your Senators and
let them know that whistleblower protection is a critical part of the stimulus
package for protection of the public trust. I urge you to contact your Representatives and tell them to hold strong -- and
refuse to cut whistleblower protections from the bill. Federal employees,
like me, who risk their careers to protect taxpayer money need to be
protected."
Click here to
learn more about Bunny Greenhouse.
·
Meet Iraq
Tags:SHARON LAFRANIERE, “LEAK SCORECARD SPURS CRACKDOWN.” NYT. ADG (7-21-13), 11A.
Math
Behind Leak Crackdown: 153 Cases, 4 Years, 0 Indictments
Michael
Reynolds/European Pressphoto Agency
James
E. Cartwright is the focus of an investigation into the disclosure of
information about cyberattacks against Iran
By SHARON
LaFRANIERE
Published: July
20, 2013 364 Comments
·
Soon after President
Obama appointed him
director of national intelligence in 2009, Dennis C.
Blair called for a
tally of the number of government officials or employees who had been
prosecuted for leaking national security secrets. He was dismayed by what he
found.
Related
·
Court Tells Reporter to Testify in Case of Leaked C.I.A.
Data (July 20, 2013)
Guardian,
via Reuters
The
charges filed last month against Edward J. Snowden, the former National
Security Agency contractor, are the seventh leak-related prosecution brought by
the Justice Department.
Jose
Luis Magana/Associated Press
Pfc.
Bradley Manning, who gave secret documents to WikiLeaks, has been cited by
Edward J. Snowden as an inspiration.
Stephen Jin-Woo
Kim, a
State Department adviser and another target of a leak inquiry.
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their
thoughts on this article.
In the previous four years, the record showed, 153
cases had been referred to
the Justice Department. Not one had led to an indictment.
That scorecard “was pretty shocking to all of
us,” Mr. Blair said. So in a series of phone calls and meetings, he and Attorney
General Eric
H. Holder Jr. fashioned
a more aggressive strategy to punish anyone who leaked national security
information that endangered intelligence-gathering methods and sources.
“My background is in the Navy, and it is good
to hang an admiral once in a while as an example to the others,” said Mr.
Blair, who left the administration in 2010. “We were hoping to get somebody and
make people realize that there are consequences to this and it needed to stop.”
The Obama administration has done its
best to define those consequences, with an aggressive focus on leaks and
leakers that has led to more than twice as many prosecutions as there were in
all previous administrations combined. It also led to a significant legal victory on Friday when a federal appeals court
accepted the Justice Department’s argument that the First Amendment does not
protect reporters from having to reveal the sources suspected of leaking
information to them.
In tracing the origins of this effort, present
and former government officials said the focus on leaks began at the
administration’s highest levels and was driven by pressure from the
intelligence agencies and members of Congress.
An unprecedented cascade of disclosures,
including hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables made public by
WikiLeaks, according to these officials, gave the search for leakers a growing
sense of urgency, while technological advances made the job of finding them
easier. And prosecutors — until recently — were given more latitude to comb
through journalists’ records to hunt for suspects.
The charges filed last month against Edward J. Snowden,
the former National Security Agency contractor now holed up in a Moscow
Supporters of the crackdown — even those with
qualms about seeking evidence from journalists — say a culture of leaking must
be reined in to protect covert sources and high-risk intelligence operations
and reassure allies that it is safe to share intelligence.
“Somebody finally said this has got to stop,”
said John D. Negroponte, a former diplomat and director of national
intelligence under George W. Bush. “Maybe if there are more prosecutions, it
will.”
But critics argue that the Cartwright case,
and now the appeals court ruling, show how the antileak campaign has gone too
far, producing a chilling effect on news gathering without deterring leakers.
Mr. Snowden has said he was inspired by the deeds of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who
is facing a court-martial after divulging the diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.
“I think it has gotten away from them,” said
Morton H. Halperin, who served in national security or diplomatic positions in
three previous administrations. “If the president doesn’t fix this, I think his
claim that he understands the importance of balancing the First Amendment
against claims of national security will lack any credibility.”
Implicitly at least, Mr. Holder seemed to
acknowledge some of the criticism this month when he restored and bolstered longstanding Justice
Department restraints on
seeking evidence from journalists. He said those restrictions “will help ensure
the proper balance is struck when pursuing investigations into unauthorized
disclosures.”
Mr. Holder’s move came in response to a
torrent of criticism after the revelations this spring that prosecutors had
secretly subpoenaed the phone logs for more than 20 phone lines of The
Associated Press in one leak inquiry and two days of phone logs of a Fox News
reporter, James Rosen, in another investigation aimed at a State Department
adviser, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. Prosecutors also obtained a court-ordered search
warrant for Mr. Rosen’s e-mails by identifying him as a criminal co-conspirator
of Mr. Kim’s.
But Mr. Holder’s conciliatory message was
seemingly undermined by the Justice Department’s success in overturning a lower
court’s ruling that a reporter for The New York Times, James Risen, had a First
Amendment right to refuse to reveal his sources in the trial of a former C.I.A.
analyst, Jeffrey Sterling. Mr. Sterling was charged in 2010 with disclosing
classified information to Mr. Risen about a covert operation to deceive Iranian
scientists described in Mr. Risen’s 2006 book, “State of War.
Mr. Risen has previously vowed to go to jail
to protect his sources. On Saturday he said in a statement, “I remain as
resolved as ever to continue fighting.”
The targeting of General Cartwright in the
investigation of disclosures about cyberattacks on Iran
The closest parallel would be the case against
I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney who
was convicted in 2007 of lying to a federal grand jury and to F.B.I. agents
investigating the unmasking of a covert C.I.A. operative to a newspaper
columnist.
“The Cartwright case stands alone,” said
Steven Aftergood, who studies government secrecy for the nonprofit Federation
of American Scientists. “It is a sign that the administration is not backing
off its antileak crusade. It is still going full tilt.”
General Cartwright has not commented on the
reports that he is being investigated, but his lawyer, Gregory B. Craig, has
said any suggestion that his client betrayed his country is “preposterous.”
President Bush also faced damaging leaks
during his tenure. But his Justice Department prosecuted only one official
under the Espionage Act for disclosing national security secrets, a Pentagon
analyst first investigated in 2004 and convicted in 2006. As a conservative,
President Bush would have faced a greater public backlash had he sought to
imprison leakers, said Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior scholar with the Hudson
Institute, a conservative-leaning research organization.
Mr. Bush “was not willing to spend the
political capital,” Mr. Schoenfeld said. “This president is very hawkish on
this.”
So far, the Obama administration has won two
felony convictions for unauthorized disclosure of national security secrets.
Private Manning has also pleaded guilty to 10 offenses and is now being tried
in military court on others. A fourth felony prosecution crumbled, producing a
minor misdemeanor conviction, and Mr. Holder has privately said he regrets
pursuing it.
In June, Mr. Holder said his department’s record
number of leak prosecutions was a logical legal response to an increase in both
the number and seriousness of leaks. But in interviews, former prosecutors and
other administration and Congressional officials offered a different
perspective.
Though the Justice Department issued no
explicit directive to pursue leakers more vigorously, according to these
officials, the climate in which leaks were judged changed markedly as a new
team of national security officials joined the Obama administration and quickly
ran head-on into what it saw as distressing lapses in controlling state secrets.
“There was a lot of pressure to use every
possible investigative tool,” said one senior former prosecutor who spoke on
the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak for the
Justice Department.
According to Mr. Blair, the effort got under
way after Fox News reported in June 2009 that American intelligence had gleaned
word from within North Korea United States
In subsequent meetings and phone calls, Mr.
Blair said, he and Mr. Holder, who declined a request for an interview, agreed
that leaks were flourishing partly because the government was too passive in
addressing them. Of 153 referrals to the Justice Department of national
security leaks during President Bush’s second term, only 24 had led to F.B.I.
investigations. In half of those cases, investigators had identified suspects,
but none of them had faced charges, although two investigations were in an
advanced stage and ultimately produced indictments in 2010.
Mr. Holder’s “attitude, the same as mine, was
to speed up the process and make it more effective,” Mr. Blair said. “So, yes,
that would mean more aggressive prosecution.”
The Justice Department imposed a tight
deadline to decide whether to open criminal inquiries into leaks, shortening to
just three weeks a review process that had often dragged on for months. Leaks
considered unworthy of prosecution were marked for administrative inquiries. Underscoring
the administration’s determination, Robert M. Bryant, Mr. Blair’s national
counterintelligence executive, was put in charge of stanching leaks.
The White House has kept a careful distance
from the Justice Department prosecutions, but President Obama seemed unwavering
in his support for them. When government transparency advocates told him in
March 2011 that chasing whistle-blowers was sullying his record, the president
disagreed, saying some disclosures had been very damaging to national security.
And members of Congress continuously clamored for a tougher approach. At a closed
hearing in December 2009, members of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, led by Dianne Feinstein,
Democrat of California, scolded Mr. Holder, Mr. Blair and the F.B.I. director,
Robert S. Mueller, saying they had not adequately protected national security
secrets.
“A tipping point was reached in 2009,” said one knowledgeable Senate
aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not an official
spokesman. “There was an official change of policy.”
Mr. Blair said, “We had to do 50 push-ups and
promise to do better.”
Past overreaching notwithstanding, the Cartwright investigation suggests that
zeal has not waned.
The inquiry was prompted by a detailed account
of a series of United States- and Israeli-led cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear
program, in a June 2012 article in The New York Times and in a
book published days
later, both by David E. Sanger, a Times reporter. Part of the operation, called
Olympic Games, was revealed two years earlier because of a programming error,
but much of it remained highly classified, setting off an aggressive search for
the source or sources of Mr. Sanger’s information.
Lucy A. Dalglish, a media lawyer and the dean
of journalism at the University
of Maryland
“They are not going to give up on national
security investigations, and they are still going to go after reporters’
information if they think they need to,” she said.
Ashley Southall
contributed reporting.
A
version of this article appeared in print on July 21, 2013, on page A1 of
the New York
Obama's Plan to Crack Down on Whistleblowers Leaked
Thursday, 11 July 2013 09:14 By Marisa Taylor and Jonathan S Landay, McClatchy Newspapers |
Report, RSN
(Photo: Adrian Gray / Flickr)
The
techniques are a key pillar of the Insider
Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which
millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk
persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could
face penalties, including criminal charges.
Obama
mandated the program in an October 2011 executive order after Army Pfc. Bradley
Manning downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents from a classified
computer network and gave them to WikiLeaks, the anti-government secrecy group.
The order covers virtually every federal department and agency, including the
Peace Corps, the Department of Education and others not directly involved in
national security.
Under
the program, which is being implemented with little public attention, security
investigations can be launched when government employees showing “indicators of
insider threat behavior” are reported by co-workers, according to previously
undisclosed administration documents obtained by McClatchy. Investigations also
can be triggered when “suspicious user behavior” is detected by computer
network monitoring and reported to “insider threat personnel.”
Federal
employees and contractors are asked to pay particular attention to the
lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors – like financial troubles, odd working
hours or unexplained travel – of co-workers as a way to predict whether they
might do “harm to the United
States
Over
the years, numerous studies of public and private workers who’ve been caught
spying, leaking classified information, stealing corporate secrets or engaging
in sabotage have identified psychological
profiles that could offer clues to possible threats. Administration
officials want government workers trained to look for such indicators and
report them so the next violation can be stopped before it happens.
“In
past espionage cases, we find people saw things that may have helped identify a
spy, but never reported it,” said Gene Barlow, a spokesman for the Office of
the National Counterintelligence Executive, which oversees government efforts
to detect threats like spies and computer hackers and is helping implement the
Insider Threat Program. “That is why the awareness effort of the program is to
teach people not only what types of activity to report, but how to report it
and why it is so important to report it.”
But even the government’s top
scientific advisers have questioned these techniques. Those experts say that
trying to predict future acts through behavioral monitoring is unproven and
could result in illegal ethnic and racial profiling and privacy violations.
“There
is no consensus in the relevant scientific community nor on the committee
regarding whether any behavioral surveillance or physiological monitoring
techniques are ready for use at all,” concluded a 2008 National Research
Council report on detecting terrorists.
“Doing
something similar about predicting future leakers seems even more speculative,”
Stephen Fienberg, a professor of statistics and social science at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh
The
emphasis on individual lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors comes at a time when
growing numbers of Americans must submit to extensive background checks,
polygraph tests and security investigations to be hired or to keep government
or federal contracting jobs. The U.S.
While
the Insider Threat Program mandates that the nearly 5 million federal workers
and contractors with clearances undergo training in recognizing suspicious
behavior indicators, it allows individual departments and agencies to extend
the requirement to their entire workforces, something the Army already has
done.
Training
should address “current and potential threats in the work and personal
environment” and focus on “the importance of detecting potential insider
threats by cleared employees and reporting suspected activity to insider threat
personnel and other designated officials,” says one of the documents obtained
by McClatchy.
The
White House, the Justice Department, the Peace Corps and the departments of Health
and Human Services, Homeland Security and Education refused to answer questions
about the program’s implementation. Instead, they issued virtually identical
email statements directing inquiries to the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, declined to comment or didn’t respond.
Caitlin
Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said in
her statement that the Insider Threat Program includes extra safeguards for
“civil rights, civil liberties and privacy,” but she didn’t elaborate.
Manning’s leaks to WikiLeaks, she added, showed that at the time protections of
classified materials were “inadequate and put our nation’s security at risk.”
Even
so, the new effort failed to prevent former National Security Agency contractor
Edward Snowden from taking top-secret documents detailing the agency’s domestic
and international communications monitoring programs and leaking them to The
Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers.
The
initiative goes beyond classified information leaks. It includes as insider
threats “damage to the United
States
McClatchy
obtained a copy of the document, which was produced by an Insider Threat Task
Force that was set up under Obama’s order and is headed by Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper and Attorney General Eric Holder. McClatchy also
obtained the group’s final policy guidance. The White House, the Justice
Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined
requests for both documents, neither of which is classified.
Although
agencies and departments are still setting up their programs, some employees
already are being urged to watch co-workers for “indicators” that include
stress, divorce and financial problems.
When
asked about the ineffectiveness of behavior profiling, Barlow said the policy
“does not mandate” that employees report behavior indicators.
“It
simply educates employees about basic activities or behavior that might suggest
a person is up to improper activity,” he said.
“These
do not require special talents. If you see someone reading classified documents
they should not be reading, especially if this happens multiple times and the
person appears nervous that you saw him, that is activity that is suspicious
and should be reported,” Barlow said. “The insider threat team then looks at
the surrounding facts and draws the conclusions about the activity.”
Departments
and agencies, however, are given leeway to go beyond the White House’s basic
requirements, prompting the Defense Department in its strategy to mandate that
workers with clearances “must recognize the potential harm caused by unauthorized
disclosures and be aware of the penalties they could face.” It equates
unauthorized disclosures of classified information to “aiding the enemies of
the United States
All
departments and agencies involved in the program must closely track their employees’
online activities. The information gathered by monitoring, the administration
documents say, “could be used against them in criminal, security, or
administrative proceedings.” Experts who research such efforts say suspicious
behaviors include accessing information that someone doesn’t need or isn’t
authorized to see or downloading materials onto removable storage devices like
thumb drives when such devices are restricted or prohibited.
“If
you normally print 20 documents a week, well, what happens if the next week or
the following week you have to print 50 documents or 100 documents? That could
be at variance from your normal activity that could be identified and might be
investigated,” said Randy Trzeciak, acting manager of the Computer
Emergency Response
Team Insider
Threat Center
at Carnegie Mellon University
“We’ve
come up with patterns that we believe organizations might be able to consider
when determining when someone might be progressing down the path to harm the
organization,” said Trzeciak, whose organization has analyzed more than 800
cases and works with the government and private sector on cyber security.
But
research and other programs that rely on profiling show it remains unproven,
could make employees more resistant to reporting violations and might lead to
spurious allegations.
The
Pentagon, U.S.
“We
are back to the needle-in-a-haystack problem,” said Fienberg, the Carnegie
Mellon professor.
“We
have not found any silver bullets,” said Deanna Caputo, principal behavioral
psychologist at MITRE Corp., a nonprofit company working on insider threat
efforts for U.S.
Different
agencies and departments have different lists of behavior indicators. Most have
adopted the traditional red flags for espionage. They include financial stress,
disregard for security practices, unexplained foreign travel, unusual work
hours and unexplained or sudden wealth.
But
agencies and their consultants have added their own indicators.
For
instance, an FBI insider threat detection guide warns private security
personnel and managers to watch for “a desire to help the ‘underdog’ or a
particular cause,” a “James Bond Wannabe” and a “divided loyalty: allegiance to
another person or company or to a country besides the United States
A
report by the Deloitte consulting firm identifies “several key trends that are
making all organizations particularly susceptible to insider threat today.”
These trends include an increasingly disgruntled, post-Great Recession
workforce and the entry of younger, “Gen Y” employees who were “raised on the
Internet” and are “highly involved in social networking.”
Some
government programs that have embraced behavioral indicators have been
condemned as failures. Perhaps the most heavily criticized is the
Transportation Security Administration’s Screening of Passengers by Observation
Techniques, or SPOT, program.
The
program, which has cost $878 million and employs 2,800 people, uses “behavior
detection officers” to identify potential terrorists by scrutinizing airline
passengers for signs of “stress, fear or deception.”
DHS’
inspector general excoriated the program, saying in a May 2013 report, “TSA
cannot ensure that passengers at United States
Interviews
and internal complaints obtained by The New York Times quoted TSA officers as
saying SPOT has led to ethnic and racial profiling by emphasizing certain
profiles. They include Middle Easterners, Hispanics traveling to Miami
Another
problem with having employees report co-workers’ suspicious behaviors: They
aren’t sure which ones represent security threats.
“Employees
in the field are not averse to reporting genuine security infractions. In fact,
under appropriate conditions they are quite willing to act as eyes and ears for
the government,” said a 2005 study by the Pentagon’s Defense Personnel
Security Research
Center
Even
so, the Pentagon is forging ahead with training Defense Department and
contractor managers and security officials to set up insider threat offices,
with one company emphasizing how its course is designed for novices.
“The
Establishing an Insider Threat Program for Your Organization Course will take
no more than 90 minutes to complete,” says the proposal.
Officials
with the Army, the only government department contacted by McClatchy that
agreed to discuss the issue, acknowledged that identifying potential insider
threats is more complicated than relying on a list of behaviors.
“What
we really point out is if you’re in doubt, report, because that’s what the
investigative personnel are there to do, is to get the bottom of ‘is this just
noise or is this something that is really going on?’” said Larry Gillis, a
senior Army counterintelligence and security official.
The
Army implemented a tough program a year before Obama’s executive order after
Maj. Nidal Hasan, a U.S.-born Muslim, allegedly killed 13 people in a 2009
rampage at Fort Hood , Texas
Gillis
said the Army didn’t want a program that would “get people to snitch on each
other,” nor did it want to encourage stereotyping.
“We
don’t have the luxury to make up reasons to throw soldiers out,” Gillis said.
“It’s a big deal to remove a soldier from service over some minor issue. We
don’t want to ruin a career over some false accusation.”
But
some current and former U.S.
These
current and former U.S.
“Anyone
is an amateur looking at behavior here,” said Thomas Fingar, a former State
Department intelligence chief who chaired the National Intelligence Council,
which prepares top-secret intelligence analyses for the president, from 2005 to
2008.
Co-workers,
Fingar said, should “be attentive” to colleagues’ personal problems in order to
refer them to counseling, not to report them as potential security violators.
“It’s simply because they are colleagues, fellow human beings,” he said.
Eric
Feldman, a former inspector general of the National Reconnaissance Office, the
super-secret agency that oversees U.S.
“The
answer to it is not to have a Stasi-like response,” said Feldman, referring to
the feared secret police of communist East Germany
CORRECTION: A story about the Obama administration's Insider
Threat Program gave the wrong name and title for Deanna Caputo, the principal
behavioral psychologist at MITRE Corp.
(forwarded by David Druding)
Contents of #3 Jan. 31, 2012
GAP: Government Accountability Project
Employment Law Group
FDA Illegal Surveillance of Whistleblowers
Contents of #4
GAP: Government Accountability Project
Sirota: Executive Branch War on Whistleblowers
John Kiriakou
Kiriakou’s Book, Reluctant Spy
Pentagon Fails Its Whistleblowers
Hedges: Obama versus Whistleblowers
Public Citizen
NSA
Misc. via Google
END WHISTLEBLOWERS AND
LEAKERS NEWSLETTER #8
