Salon/Greenwald: Obama's whistleblower war suffers two defeats

[markpkessinger]

Obama's whistleblower war suffers two defeats

By Glenn Greenwald

The Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistleblowers suffered two serious and well-deserved defeats. The first occurred in the prosecution of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who was accused of multiple acts of espionage, only for the DOJ to drop virtually all of the charges right before the trial was to begin and enter into a plea agreement for one minor misdemeanor. Today, The Washington Post -- under the headline "Judge blasts prosecution of alleged NSA leaker" -- reports that the federal judge presiding over the case "harshly criticized U.S. prosecutors’ treatment of a former spy agency official accused of leaking classified material."

As the transcript of Drake's sentencing hearing published by Secrecy News reflects, Judge Richard Bennett of the U.S. District Court for Maryland was infuriated by two aspects of the DOJ's conduct: (1) after the Bush DOJ executed a search warrant of Drake's home in 2007, the Obama DOJ -- 2 1/2 years later -- finally indicted him, meaning he had to live with that cloud of criminal uncertainty over his head for that outrageously lengthy period of time; and (2) despite dropping all of the serious charges right before the trial was about to begin, the DOJ demanded that Drake be forced to pay a $50,000 fine as "a deterrent" (on top of the tens of thousands of dollars he spent in legal fees until he had no money left and had to use public defenders, as well as the fact that he was five years away from earning a federal pension when he was fired and ended up working at an Apple Computer store to support his family); to justify the requested fine, the prosecutor cited a $10,000 whistleblowing prize Drake was awarded earlier this year.
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Read full article at: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/30/whistleblowers/index.html

[pacalo]

1. I'm completely stumped by the war on whisteblowers. If one believes whistleblowing is wrong,

then would that person also believe that federal/state regulation is wrong, too? Both actions serve to protect the public from harm.

[WhiteTara]

3. He didn't clean the DOJ of *ites and

they are there doing their dirty work.

[pacalo]

4. That, combined with the hands-off-Bush attitude & the *continuation* of Bush tactics

makes me feel certain something is going on beneath the surface. Bribery? Blackmail? Threats?

The rightwingers buying up all the media, ruining the lives of whistleblowers, going after investigative journalists. It all adds up to fear of being exposed, perhaps.

[chill_wind]

6. There were lots of good alleged anti-Bush lawyers assembled at the OLC

at one time. I don't think David Dayen's list even names half of them at the OLC and DOJ that have departed in the last couple years, numerous of them high-ups appointed by Obama. (Emptywheel bloggers kept a running chronicle for a while.) Sure, maybe some of them had only agreed to short stint or wanted to spend more time with family, but all of them? Maybe some day someone will write a book about what's gone on under Holder. (ie How Yoo was allowed to walk. No prosecutions of anybody for the destruction of the CIA tapes. Why Holder is making the war on drugs/medical marijuana the centerpiece of his reign.) None of them have so far, AFAIK.

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/07/21/dream-team-at-olc-dismantled-as-marty-lederman-leaves-executive-branch/

[sabrina 1]

2. Excellent, at least some parts of our system are still working.

[chill_wind]

5. Good news that we still have some fair and courageous judges.

The rest of the piece is worth reading for the comments also about (and by) James Risen and his situation.

[ProSense]

7. Would that be the "Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistleblowers"

that was launched by the Bush administration?

What Greenwald and others who make the "war on whistleblowers" claim always fail to mention is that Obama is cleaning up Bush's mess here. NYT:

<...>

Describing for the first time the scale of the Bush administration’s hunt for the sources of The Times article, former officials say 5 prosecutors and 25 F.B.I. agents were assigned to the case. The homes of three other security agency employees and a Congressional aide were searched before investigators raided Mr. Drake’s suburban house in November 2007. By then, a series of articles by Siobhan Gorman in The Baltimore Sun had quoted N.S.A. insiders about the agency’s billion-dollar struggles to remake its lagging technology, and panicky intelligence bosses spoke of a “culture of leaking.”

Though the inquiries began under President Bush, it has fallen to Mr. Obama and his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to decide whether to prosecute. They have shown no hesitation, even though Mr. Drake is not accused of disclosing the N.S.A.’s most contentious program, that of eavesdropping without warrants.

<...>

Under President Bush, no one was convicted for disclosing secrets directly to the press. But Lawrence A. Franklin, a Defense Department official, served 10 months of home detention for sharing classified information with officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., a top aide to Mr. Cheney, was convicted of perjury for lying about his statements to journalists about an undercover C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame Wilson.

The F.B.I. has opened about a dozen investigations a year in recent years of unauthorized disclosures of classified information, according to a bureau accounting to Congress in 2007.

<...>

Bush launched the investigations and now Obama is cleaning up the mess. Drake's home was raided and he was terminated from his position during the Bush administration.

So what's the spin: Absolve Bush for launching the investigations, add a qualifier for Bush's convictions and repeat often: "Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistleblowers"

It's bullshit!

Had Bush not launched these investigation, Obama wouldn't have to go through the process of cleaning up these loose ends.

[Luminous Animal]

9. It was Obama's DOJ that brought Drake up on charges. You simply cannot deny that.

Obama's DOJ wasn't cleaning up the Drake case, it invigorated it.

[girl gone mad]

8. k & r