Whistle-Blowers Deserve Protection NotPrison
Jesselyn Radackis national security and human rights director of the Government Accountability Project. She is the author of "Traitor: The Whistleblower and the 'American Taliban'."
Edward Snowden should not be prosecuted for mishandling classified information, and certainly not under the Espionage Act.
The Justice Department has led an unprecedented crackdown on “leakers,” who more often than not are whistle-blowers — public servants who expose fraud, waste, abuse and illegality. (And information that has been classified to cover up government wrongdoing has not been properly classified.)
I represent John Kiriakou and Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on two of the biggest scandals of the Bush administration — the use of torture, and secret domestic surveillance, respectively.
After disclosure of the warrantless wiretapping, the government retroactively legalized it and immunized the telecoms.
Torturers have been glorified in movies (which benefited from close government cooperation and a cascade of government leaks), written books divulging classified information (including sources and methods), and been given a pass by President Obama’s “look forward, not backward” policy.
Meanwhile, the government launched a series of Espionage Act prosecutions against the people in the intelligence and national security community who spoke out against the secret, dark side of U.S. conduct post 9/11.
The Espionage Act is a century-old law that is meant to go after spies, not whistle-blowers. The government dropped all the espionage charges against Kiriakou and Drake, but continues to use the Espionage Act as a blunt instrument to bankrupt, isolate, intimidate and silence whistle-blowers. Even when the government drops all felony charges against them, as it did in Drake’s case, the stigma of being labeled an “enemy of the state” is indelible.
As happens in every whistle-blower case, the government attacks the messenger rather than listening to the message. Whistle-blowers like Snowden are invariably smeared as being deviant misfits who are out for fame, profit, revenge, or self-aggrandizement. Already, Snowden has been called a “grandiose narcissist” and traitor, and he’s been public for 72 hours.
Focusing on Snowden is a distraction from the government’s law-breaking massive domestic surveillance program. Criminally prosecuting Snowden has little to do with Snowden’s alleged crimes and everything to do with making an example of him and sending the most chilling of messages to anyone even thinking about exposing government wrongdoing, especially criminality. There is no such crime as “leaking.” Snowden may have violated a secrecy agreement, which is not a loyalty oath but a contract, and a less important one than the social contract a democracy has with its citizenry.
A war on information that targets whistle-blowers and journalists is more characteristic of a totalitarian state than a free and open democratic society.
Edward Snowden Broke the Law and Should BeProsecuted
Ed Morrissey is the senior editor ofHotAir.com.
Since learning about Edward Snowden’s leaks from his work with the N.S.A., many want to turn the man into a hero for opening a vital national debate on the balance between security and liberty. President Obama himself said he welcomed this debate, even though it’s been apparent that his administration would rather have kept everyone in the dark about N.S.A. snooping on Internet and telecom data, just like the Bush administration. But we should not confuse the necessity of the debate with the sanctity to the person who prompted it.
The U.S. government allowed Snowden to achieve a position of trust in an area of vital interest to national security. Anyone who has held a clearance, as I did a few decades ago, gets routinely briefed on the necessity for maintaining security. Cleared personnel are also briefed on ways to blow the whistle on illegality, unethical behavior and other wrongdoing – through company management, through the agency that grants the clearance or, if need be, by going to Congress. None of these paths involve passing sensitive materials to the press.
Snowden may well have uncovered illegal and unconstitutional behavior. (It wouldn’t be the first time. The author Tim Weinerreminded us about Minaretin the 1970s, when the N.S.A. falsely claimed that its political snooping involved Americans only accidentally.) However, by leaking information about the behavior rather than reporting it through legal channels, Snowden chose to break the law, too. This law is intended to keep legitimate national-security data and assets safe from our enemies; it is intended to keep Americans safe.
The government should enforceallof its laws, and make sure that all other cleared personnel don’t exploit their positions of trust to settle personal grievances or score political points. Whatever the motive, national security leaks damage our ability to defend ourselves.
The Department of Justice needs to conduct a criminal investigation into Snowden’s activities. If he broke the law, which he appears to be publicly confessing, he should be prosecuted. So should anyone at the N.S.A. who broke the law, of course. Was Snowden theonlyperson involved in this leak? That’s another good reason for a criminal investigation. However, Glenn Greenwald and the other reporters involved should not be subjects of a criminal investigation.
Meanwhile, Congress needs to conduct its own inquiry into the N.S.A.’s activities, and think long and hard about the power it handed to the executive branch with the Patriot Act and FISA laws.