Whistleblowers

‘I’ve Never Regretted Doing It’: Daniel Ellsberg (1931–2023)

June 17, 2023 David Smith, Portside. Educate! Daniel Ellsberg, History, Wars and Militarism, Whistleblowers

When the police arrived, a 13-year-old boy was photocopying classified documents. His 10-year-old sister was cutting the words “top secret” off each page. It seemed their dad, Daniel Ellsberg, had been caught red-handed. But the officers were responding to a false alarm and did not check what Ellsberg and his young accomplices were up to. “It was a very nice family scene,” the 90-year-old recalls via Zoom from his home in Kensington, California. “It didn’t worry them.” So night after night the photocopying went on, the crucial means that allowed strategic analyst Ellsberg to leak the Pentagon Papers, a secret report that exposed government lies about the Vietnam war.

Monopolies, Prosecution Of Assange Drive Drop In US Press Freedom Rank

May 9, 2023 Mark Taylor-Canfield, Truthout. Educate! Censorship, Journalism, Julian Assange, Media, Monopolies, Press Freedom, Whistleblowers

CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin interrupted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a Washington Post-sponsored World Press Freedom Day event on May 3, taking the stage where a Post journalist was interviewing Blinken. Benjamin demanded that the U.S. and United Kingdom free imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. A group of men in suits, presumably Secret Service agents, immediately charged onto the stage and forcibly removed Benjamin and another activist who joined her. Blinken, however, failed to address either Assange’s persecution or the U.S.’s continued decline in press freedom after the disruption.

Biden Slams Arrest Of US Journalist In Russia But Pursues Assange

May 2, 2023 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Joe Biden, Journalism, Julian Assange, Russia, Whistleblowers

May 3, 2023, will mark the 30th anniversary of World Press Freedom Day, which the United Nations established to remind governments about the need to respect their commitment to freedom of the press. But as the Biden administration proclaims the centrality of press freedom globally, its hypocrisy in pursuing journalist and publisher Julian Assange is stunning. The Biden administration recently expressed outrage that Russia arrested journalist Evan Gershkovich of The Wall Street Journal, a United States citizen based in Moscow, for practicing journalism. Gershkovich is now incarcerated in Russia, facing espionage charges that could garner him 20 years in prison.

Corporate Media Are The Anti-Wikileaks

April 18, 2023 Elizabeth Vos, Consortium News. Educate! Julian Assange, Media, Whistleblowers, Wikileaks

It was impossible to imagine four years ago when WikiLeaks Editor Julian Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London and thrown in Belmarsh Prison that corporate media, which had smeared Assange, could stoop to new lows of government servitude. But it has now happened with the arrest of Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, for allegedly leaking top secret government documents. The leaks exposed a number of significant lies told by both the U.S. government and corporate media about the ongoing war in Ukraine. Among many items of interest, the documents revealed that U.S. Special Forces as well as NATO forces are on the ground in Ukraine; that Ukraine is significantly unprepared for its planned spring offensive; as well as evidence of U.S. spying on its allies and António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations.

Politicians Demand US Drop Assange Charges On Anniversary Of Arrest

April 14, 2023 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Resist! Australia, Brazil, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Julian Assange, Mexico, United Kingdom (UK), Whistleblowers

Elected politicians in Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and the United Kingdom signed on to letters to United States Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding that the Justice Department drop the charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. A letter of opposition signed by four members of the U.S. House of Representatives, including Representative Rashida Tlaib, who initiated the letter, was prepared. However, it had not yet been sent to Garland at the time of publication. The letters were timed to mark the fourth anniversary of Assange’s arrest and detention. On April 11, 2019, Ecuador President Lenin Moreno expelled Assange from the country’s London embassy.

Assange Completes Four Years In United Kingdom Jail

April 13, 2023 Anish R M, People's Dispatch. Resist! Australia, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Julian Assange, Whistleblowers

April 11 marks four years since Julian Assange was forcibly dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2019 and put under arrest. Ever since his imprisonment, the Wikileaks founder has spent much of his time in the high-security prison in Belmarsh under judicial remand, without any charges or conviction, fighting a prolonged extradition process. The extradition request from the United States began under the administration of former president Donald Trump, and continues under the present Joe Biden administration. From recent revelations, it is understood that the US attempt to prosecute Assange has been going on since at least the Barack Obama administration.

Daniel Ellsberg Is Calling On All Of Us To Work To Avert Nuclear War

March 16, 2023 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. Educate! Anti-War, Daniel Ellsberg, Nuclear War, Wars and Militarism, Whistleblowers

The legendary Daniel Ellsberg has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In a March 1 email to friends, Dan wrote, “I’m sorry to report to you that my doctors have given me three to six months to live … it might be more, or less.” He will turn 92 on April 7. Dan displayed uncommon courage in 1971 when he publicized the 7,000-page top-secret Pentagon Papers while working at the Rand Corporation. As a consultant to the Department of Defense, Dan drafted Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s plans for nuclear war. In his book, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, Dan wrote that the Pentagon Papers exposed the “secrets five presidents had withheld and the lies they told” about U.S. decision-making in Vietnam.

How Comrades Revealed The Existence Of Cointelpro

March 12, 2023 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! COINTELPRO, FBI, Racism, Whistleblowers

On March 8, 1971 a group of 8 activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania and removed every document they could find. Calling themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI, they knew there was FBI infiltration and disruption of the antiwar movement and they were looking for proof to present to the public. They discovered far more than they anticipated. The burglars had all been politically active and some participated in the theft of records from draft board offices. After planning for months they successfully removed documents, copied them and began sending them to newspapers and to politicians who had liberal reputations.

What Dan Ellsberg Means

March 7, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News. Educate! Dan Ellsberg, Journalism, Media, Whistleblowers

I have never met Daniel Ellsberg. A mutual friend, Rob Johnson, the executive director of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, in New York, proposed to introduce us several times but the occasion never presented itself. It does not matter. I know Dan Ellsberg as one knows someone by way of the work he or she has done, and what that work has meant in one’s life. Another friend, a dear one, wrote a note from Gadsden, Alabama, last Thursday with the subject line, “Ellsberg dying.” This was thoughtful, as this friend unfailingly is, because Twitter has censored my account and I cannot read anything on it unless someone sends an item I am able to open.

Silencing Another Jailed Whistleblower

February 2, 2023 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Health Care, Marty Gottesfeld, Whistleblowers

I’ve written extensively about whistleblower and “hacktivist” Marty Gottesfeld, who was given a draconian 10-year sentence for initiating a directed denial-of-service attack on the fundraising website of Boston Children’s Hospital to protest its treatment of a young girl who’d been forcibly taken from her parents at the insistence of doctors at the hospital. The doctors maintained that the girl, Justina Pelletier, was a victim of parental abuse. It turned out they were wrong. Instead, she suffered from a rare genetic disorder, which Children’s Hospital had misdiagnosed. But it was Gottesfeld who became the bad guy and the government’s target. The doctors who had snatched a little girl from her parents and then accused her parents of unspeakable crimes against their own child, remain free and working at the hospital.

Washington DC: Belmarsh Tribunal Calls For Assange’s Release

January 21, 2023 People's Dispatch. Educate! Belmarsh Tribunal, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Julian Assange, Whistleblowers

On Friday, January 20, progressive groups in the United States will be hosting the third Belmarsh Tribunal in the capital, Washington DC. The 17-member Belmarsh Tribunal is hosted by Progressive International along with the Wau Holland Foundation. The DC Tribunal will be held at the National Press Club, close to the US Capitol building, which houses the US Congress. The Club was where Assange first screened Collateral Murder over a decade ago. Collateral Murder is 39 minutes of unedited, leaked footage from a gun cam that showed a US military drone attacking Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, a suburb of Baghdad, and killing 12 civilians. The Tribunal was formed in October 2021 and named after the high-security prison near London where Assange has been held since 2019. He has spent most of this time there under judicial remand, awaiting the conclusion of his extradition trial.

Ellsberg, Donziger Among Those Demanding Freedom For Daniel Hale

December 17, 2022 Julia Conley, Common Dreams. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Daniel Hale, Human Rights, Whistleblowers

Anti-war and First Amendment advocates are among those ramping up pressure on President Joe Biden to commute the 45-month prison sentence of Daniel Hale, a former Air Force intelligence analyst and Pentagon employee who disclosed documents regarding the U.S. drone assassination program and was convicted last year of violating the Espionage Act. Human rights attorney Steven Donziger and political activist Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked classified information about the U.S. war in Vietnam to the New York Times five decades ago in what became known as the Pentagon Papers, are scheduled to join Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) at a press conference Thursday morning where they plan to appeal to the president and highlight what the congresswoman called Hale's "courageous" and "patriotic" actions.

Worldwide Human Rights Day Rallies For Assange

December 11, 2022 Consortium News. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Julian Assange, Whistleblowers

Supporters of imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange are using the occasion of Human Rights Day this Saturday to demand that the British government refuse to extradite him to the United States. Assange is waiting on his application for appeal before the High Court of England and Wales against the home secretary’s decision to send him to the U.S. where he faces 175 years in prison for publishing truthful information about U.S. crimes and corruption. Supporters gathered in London on Saturday for a vigil at 2 pm GMT in front of high-security Belmarsh Prison, where Assange has been languishing for nearly four years on remand. A rally took place in Washington in front of the British Embassy from 1 to 3 pm EST at 3100 Massachusetts Ave. NW.

Daniel Ellsberg: Indict Me Too

December 8, 2022 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange, Whistleblowers

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has told the U.S. Justice Department and President Joe Biden that he is as indictable as WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange for having unauthorized possession of classified materials before they were published by WikiLeaks and that he would plead “not guilty” because the Espionage Act is unconstitutional. Ellsberg revealed this week to the BBC interview program Hard Talk that Assange had given him the files leaked by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to keep as a backup before they were published by WikiLeaks in 2010. Assange has been charged with violating the Espionage Act for possession and dissemination of classified information and faces 175 years in a U.S. prison if he is extradited from Belmarsh Prison in London.

‘Free Julian Assange!’ Say Latin America’s Leftist Leaders

December 8, 2022 Ben Norton, Multipolarista. Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Julian Assange, Latin America, Whistleblowers

Latin America’s leftist presidents are leading the campaign to free Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks journalist has the support of Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Honduras’ Manuel Zelaya. A movement is growing in Latin America to demand the freedom of political prisoner Julian Assange, the Australian journalist persecuted by the United States for his work exposing its war crimes. Most of the major leftist leaders in Latin America have called for Assange to be released from the maximum-security British prison where he has been held since 2019 and subjected to torture.

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