Obama's Rhetoric and Whistle-blowers

When one party dramatically expands the powers of the Executive, Legislative or Judicial branches because those branches are run by "our guys", then when "their guys" get into these offices, they inherit more power, bigger government, and expand it even further themselves.

This is just one example of the pure double-speak of politics. First, we have Obama's campaign promise, available on their Gov't website, Change.gov under "Ethics":

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

Now Obama is chasing after the biggest whistleblower since the Pentagon Papers and will prosecute Specialist Bradley Manning for leaking to WikiLeaks.org the infamous "Collateral Murder" video and supposedly an immense amount of State Department cables (estimated at 260,000).

Check out this Anti-war Radio interview with Daniel Ellsberg- the US Military Analyst who was prosecuted for espionage leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, which arguably help lead to the Vietnam War's closure- and his comments regarding Obama's attack on whistleblowers as the largest in US presidential history.

One of my favorite liberal writers, Glenn Greenwald, posted a sweet article extending his look into the aggressive DOJ shutdown of whistleblowers under the Obama regime. He opens his article with this:

The Obama administration's war on whistleblowers -- whose disclosures are one of the very few remaining avenues for learning what our government actually does -- continues to intensify. Last month, the DOJ announced it had obtained an indictment against NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who exposed serious waste, abuse and possible illegality. Then, the DOJ re-issued a Bush era subpoena to Jim Risen of The New York Times, demanding the identity of his source who revealed an extremely inept and damaging CIA effort to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program.

Obama's campaign and early presidential rhetoric states clearly, "Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government." And yet, when Thomas Drake seeks to "expose serious waste, abuse and possible illegality", the Obama DOJ attacks to silence him.

Greenwald goes on to quote from a Politico article, Justice Department cracks down on leaks, by Josh Gerstein, which talks of the prosecution of FBI linguist Shamai Leibowitz, who was just awarded the "longest ever" prison sentence for leaking national security secrets to the media (a blogger) being the third such whistleblower to be sentenced in US history!

I think it is amazing that the judge in the Shamai Leibowitz case who issued the sentence, Justice Williams, had no clue what the documents leaked actually said. The top of page three of the article on Politco says:

“It was a very, very serious offense,” Williams said. However, in an unusual admission, Williams went on to say that while he assumed that the disclosures had a serious impact on national security, he really didn’t know because he wasn’t privy to what information was disclosed and what impact it had.

“The court is in the dark,” the judge said. “I’m not a part and parcel of the intricacies of that. ... I don’t know what was divulged, other than some documents.”

Conclusion

Just to recap, the judge who issued the longest sentence in US history for whistleblowing, did so absolutely blind, during the reign of the "Transparency President" who promised to strengthen federal whistleblower laws to protect the very people he is indicting.

Obama is change, but without the hope.

All of the vile, anti-civil liberty actions of the Bush administration, all of the threats and shouts against the whistleblowers during the reign of W, all of it together never amounted to a single indictment against any of them. Yet, in the first half of the Obama regime, we have 3 such subpenas: Drake, Liebowitz and Risen, with the arrest of Manning as well.

Let me allow Glenn Greenwald to conclude this post with an extended quote.

It's true that leaking classified information is a crime. That's what makes whistleblowers like Drake so courageous. That's why Daniel Ellsberg -- who literally risked his liberty in an effort to help end the Vietnam War -- is one of the 20th Century's genuine American heroes. And if political-related crimes were punished equally, one could accept whistle-blower prosecutions even while questioning the motives behind them and the priorities they reflect. But that's not the situation that prevails.

Instead, here you have the Obama DOJ in all its glory: no prosecutions (but rather full-scale immunity extended) for war crimes, torture, and illegal spying. For those crimes, we must Look Forward, Not Backward. But for those poor individuals who courageously blow the whistle on oozing corruption, waste and illegal surveillance by the omnipotent public-private Surveillance State: the full weight of the "justice system" comes crashing down upon them with threats of many years in prison.