Following the WikiLeaks scandal that circled around Bradley Manning and Julian Assange releasing vast quantities of classified information about military and government goings on in the Middle East, the United States became temporarily infatuated with whistleblowers and government secrets.
Manning and Assange were portrayed as both heroes and traitors in the fallout of their actions and have received ample coverage for their activities. These actions, and the actions of several others, sparked a controversy over just how whistleblowers are treated by the federal government.
President Barack Obama has always professed that more protection must be given to those who “blow the whistle” on corruption, waste and prejudice in the government. Obama has gone on record saying, “Often the best source of information about waste, fraud and abuse in government, is a government employee committed to public integrity, willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism ... should be encouraged rather than stifled.”
President Obama recently signed the Whistleblower Protection Act, which gives whistleblowers far more protections from the courts and the government so long as the information leaked was not classified.
The catch is that the Obama administration now catalogs vast amounts of information as classified, and should any information, no matter how egregious its concealment may be, be released to the public, those who leaked the information are tried under the Espionage Act of 1917 as a traitor.
Recently, decorated NSA employee Thomas Drake thought that the organization he worked for was engaging in fraud and was unlawfully obtaining private information from American citizens. He discovered what was called “Operation Trailblazer”, in which emails and other electronic mediums of communication were illegally acquired and searched for information.
Drake researched the matter and found that it was illegal, inefficient and expensive. He informed his superiors of the issue and was dismissed. He then took his information to the media and was decried as a mole by the Obama administration and tried for espionage.
The rest of those who were tried under the Espionage Act under the Obama administration are as follows: John Kiriakou let the world know about U.S. torture of suspected terrorists; Shamai Leibowitz let a potentially disastrous Israeli military strike against Iran be known; Stephen Jin-Woo Kim let the media know information about North Korea’s nuclear capability; Bradley Manning leaked massive amounts of information about U.S. activities in the Middle East; Jeffrey Sterling told The New York Times about a failed attempt to halt Iranian nuclear proliferation.
These names do not include those who were not fully charged under the Espionage Act and those who had their investigations dropped, such as Thomas Tamm, the first whistleblower about warrantless wiretapping.
This is a disturbing trend in Obama’s White House as more people have been tried under the Espionage Act in the course of his administration than any other president in history. While the validity and ramifications of some of the leaks mentioned may easily be brought into question, as with Manning, to try all of these individuals with espionage is clearly an abuse of this arcane and antiquated piece of legislation that has historically only been used as a political cattle prod against opponents.
The president has given the people contradictory messages by professing his support of whistleblowers and the protections that they deserve by promoting an open and honest government, while simultaneously charging all genuine whistleblowers with espionage and closing the government off further from transparency and honesty.
