Whistle Blowers in the News

Every time I turn around, the Bush Administration outdoes itself with lies covered by gag orders, whistle blowers harassed and gagged from telling their stories, and I think at some point Bush's blank check will run out and America will hold him responsible. Then I look up and they've done something even more obviously inappropriate. And good people in ignorance, swayed by their propaganda, defend them as patriots.
Today is one such day. The Bush Administration has the gall to pursue the whistle blower that exposed their illegal surveillance of Americans.
Newsday.com

The Justice Department has opened another investigation into leaks of classified information, this time to determine who divulged the existence of President Bush's secret domestic spying program. The inquiry focuses on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said.


[...]Disclosure of the secret spying program two weeks ago unleashed a firestorm of criticism of the administration. Some critics accused the president of breaking the law by authorizing intercepts of conversations -- without prior court approval or oversight -- of people inside the United States and abroad who had suspected ties to al-Qaida or its affiliates. Bush, who publicly acknowledged the program's existence and described how it operates, has argued that the initiative is legal in a time of war.


The inquiry launched Friday is only the most recent effort by the Bush administration to determine who is disclosing information to journalists.


[...]It is unclear whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will recuse himself from the inquiry. He was White House counsel when Bush signed the executive order authorizing the NSA, which is normally confined to overseas operations, to spy on conversations taking place on American soil. For the past two weeks, Gonzales also has been one of the administration's point men in arguing that the president has the constitutional authority to conduct the spying.


"It's pretty stunning that, rather than focus on whether the president broke his oath of office and broke federal law, they are going after the whistleblowers," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Romero said a special prosecutor from outside the Justice Department needs to be appointed. "This confirms many of the fears about Gonzales' appointment -- that he would not be sufficiently independent from the president and that he would play the role of a crony," he said.


Duke University law professor Scott Silliman agreed that the Justice Department is taking the wrong approach. "Somebody in the government has enough concern about this program that they are talking to reporters," Silliman said. "I don't think that is something the Justice Department should try to prosecute." Douglas Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor, said the Justice probe is the next logical step because the NSA is alleging a violation of a law that prohibits disclosure of classified information. "The Department of Justice has the general obligation to investigate suspected violations of the law," Kmiec said. "It would be extraordinary for the department not to take up this matter."


[...]Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the Plame investigation was about "political gamesmanship." But, she said, the NSA leak probe is frightening. "In this case, there is no question that the public needed to know what the New York Times reported," she said. "It's much more of a classic whistleblower situation. The public needs to know when the government is engaged in things that may well be unconstitutional."


The surveillance program bypassed a nearly 30-year-old secret court established to oversee highly sensitive investigations involving espionage and terrorism. Administration officials insisted that Bush has the power to conduct warrantless surveillance under the Constitution's war powers provision. They argued that Congress also gave Bush the power when it authorized the use of military force against terrorists in a resolution adopted within days of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Meanwhile, Sibel Edmunds, an FBI whistle blower, has been trying to expose possible advanced warning of 9/11 activity, bribery of Republican leader House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) by foreign agents, illegal drug money finding it's way into campaign coffers but has been prevented from doing so by a Justice Department gag order saying her releases will jeopardize National Security. She supports the release of the NY Times and calls for more whistle blowers to come forward from the NSA to expose the operations of the illegal activity.
THE BRAD BLOG GUEST BLOGGER: Sibel Edmonds

Without whistleblowers the public would never know of the many abuses of constitutional rights by the government. Whistleblowers, Truth Tellers, are responsible for the disclosure that President George W. Bush ordered unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens. These constitutional lifeguards take their patriotic oaths to heart and soul: Rather than complying with classification and secrecy orders designed to protect officials engaging in criminal conduct, whistleblowers chose to risk their livelihoods and the wrath of their agencies to get the truth out. But will they be listened to by those who are charged with accountability?


The Whistleblowers Law of Congressional Hearings holds that the higher ranking the official who testifies the less the likelihood that the truth will be revealed. With this in mind, it is impossible to proceed to the viscera of what happened to whom and when without asking those who are charged with putting policy decisions into the actual stream of practice. High officials have perverse incentives to hide what is done in their orders by the employees below them. It is indispensable that Congress reach deep inside the National Security Agency and other agencies, seeking out employees at the operational level to determine how the President’s illegal order was carried into action. To assure that this occurs, we need for people with information from the agencies involved to come forward and ask to be interviewed by Congress. The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition calls on people with knowledge of unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens to contact NSWBC and let us know that they are willing to provide congress with information and testimony. Anonymity, if desired, will be scrupulously honored.


[...]Now is the time to come forward, not to reveal legitimately classified information, but to make yourselves available as witnesses and to serve the true supervisor of us all: the Constitution. Ordinarily one would expect the congress to be the guardian of our freedom by living up to its storied role as a check and balance to the President and the Executive Branch. But for four years, members of our Congress in supposed oversight committees were aware of illegal spying on American citizens. Co-opted by an unscrupulous commitment to secrecy and the state, intelligence oversight committees in Congress must step out of the way for a People’s hearing on the matter of presidentially ordered illegal surveillance. Congress must engage in a broad, public hearing of these matters.


Accountability, in the end, always comes down to the public’s right to know, the right to have the most basic knowledge about what its servants are doing with its money and its authority. [...]Citizens cannot make informed choices if they do not have the facts. Public servants should not be forced to choose between career and conscience, between commitment to oath and commitment to colleagues, and if we live by our words, laws, and principles they will not have to. Protecting all employees of the People are that:

• Their higher loyalty is to the Constitution and the rule of law;


• Information may never be classified as secret merely because it is embarrassing or incriminating, or to cover up criminal and unlawful conduct;


• There is no agreement that public servants may sign that will require them lie to the Congress or courts;
• 
  
• The United States’ Code of Ethics for Government Service explains carefully and clearly in an assured voice that "Any person in government service should put loyalty to the highest moral principles and to the Country above loyalty to persons, party, or Government department."

Contact: Sibel Edmonds-Director, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, sedmonds@nswbc.org

Meanwhile, a Bush appointed federal judge who has a checkered past and who has not reported his income sources as required by law, has "randomly" been assigned to both the continuing Edmunds' case and the other major whistle blower case in the courts, indictment of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Libby in the Valerie Plame leak scandal. Randomly? I wonder just how probable that random assignment was?
The NarcoSphere

What do two of the biggest national-security news stories of the century — the Valerie Plame leak scandal and the legal case of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds — have in common? They both are being presided over by the same federal judge in the District of Colombia, Reggie Walton, a Bush appointee to the federal court and a man who appears to have a few well-kept secrets of his own.


[...]We already know that Walton has been a Bush-team insider for years. He grew up on the hardscrabble side of life in a steel town in Pennsylvania, and by his own admission was arrested three times as a teenager and even witnessed a stabbing while participating in a street fight. After beating the odds and making it through law school, he rose quickly in the Washington legal establishment, earning an appointment from former President Reagan to a District of Colombia Superior Court judgeship. He was later taken under the wing of the self-styled man of virtue William Bennett, serving as a top gun in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy during Bennett’s tenure there. Then, in 2001, current President Bush appointed him as a federal judge in the District of Columbia. So it would be natural to suppose that Walton has some loyalty to the Bush administration, but that alone is not proof of bias with respect to the Edmonds and Valerie Plame-related cases.


[...]“Walton was the original judge on my case (the Supreme Court case), when we filed our case (in District Court in Washington, D.C.) in July 2002,” Edmonds says. “Another judge was assigned to it, then, mysteriously and with no reason, it was transferred to another judge, and then again, a few weeks later, it was transferred to Walton. “Walton is now assigned to my (new) case, … another random one.”


So Judge Walton seems to be in a critical role in serving as the point man in the federal judicial system for two explosive cases — the Edmonds civil case and Libby’s criminal case — both of which have vast implications for the White House and for the country in general. So shouldn’t we know who’s buttering Walton’s bread in terms of financial backing? Why have ethics rules mandating such disclosures, if the information is not disclosed in cases, such as these, where the stakes are so high? Well, it seems, at least according to the only document that Judicial Watch could shake loose in its public-records quest, that Walton doesn’t think so. His financial disclosure statement, the one released for public inspection through Judicial Watch, is completely redacted, every line of it.

Sibel Edmund articles