On June 19, 2016
© By John Arkelian
Those who seek to keep the truth from the people are unfit to govern that people. In an egregious abuse of process, the Espionage Act is being used to prosecute whistleblowers in the United States. Under the Obama Administration, there have been nine prosecutions under that Act – three times more than under all other American Presidents combined. It’s a shameful and deeply troubling record. Instead of using the Act for the purpose for which it exists – to prosecute spies – it is being grotesquely misused to crush whistleblowers and those who leak classified documents to the people. Thomas Drake, a former senior executive at the National Security Agency, says that the U.S. government has decided ‘that whistleblowers should be extinct’ – and it is utterly ruthless about attacking (and crushing) those few brave patriots who dare to expose wrongdoing by the state. As Jesselyn Rodack, a former Department of Justice attorney, has said, “[They] are trying to cover-up some of our worst sins as a country, whether it was a war crime or… secret domestic surveillance or… torture. [An Espionage Act prosecution] is the most serious charge that can be leveled against an American. It’s saying, ‘You are an enemy of the state.’”
But the state has it wrong: By committing noxious crimes like torture, imprisonment without trial, search without warrant, the use of secret ‘evidence’ before secret pseudo-courts, rendition, mass surveillance, and assassination by drones, and then by hiding those crimes from the people, it is the state which makes itself into an enemy of the people. Rodack says, “I’m fighting to have my September 10th country back.” Even those who reveal such state malfeasance not to the press but to Congress have been hunted down and attacked as though they were the proverbial ‘public enemy number one.’ Drake says that ‘the primary objective of national security is to now trump the Constitution.’ Former CIA officer John Kiriakou says, “I’m not sure anymore exactly who the good guys are. So much has changed since September 11th in our country that what a decade ago would have been insanity, in terms of policy, is now the norm. And, it’s as though if you don’t buy into the policy, you’re an enemy.” Kiriakou took a stand against water-boarding – because it is torture and “because we’re Americans and we’re better than that.” Simply confirming a name put to him by a journalist who contacted him, landed Kiriakou with an Espionage Act charge – with the ironic result, as Rodack has pointed out, that “[he] is the only CIA agent who will be going to prison with respect to torture, and he didn’t torture anybody!”
The administration of Barack Obama has proven itself unworthy to govern, because it has shown itself ready, willing, and downright eager, as Drake says, to punish people ‘for simply standing up and telling the truth.’ And it has done so by the grossly improper ‘nuclear option’ of treating leaks and whistle-blowing as though they were espionage. Their ruthless suppression of truth-tellers is at sharp odds with their oath to protect the Constitution. Those whom we elect to govern our country in our name and on our behalf are sworn to obey the letter and the spirit of the law. We entrust them with a vital responsibility. When they deviate from that course, we should celebrate those who shine the light of day on the secret dirty abuses that hide in the murk and which threaten, if left unchallenged, to subvert our most precious rights and to undo liberty’s priceless legacy.
John Arkelian is an award-winning author and journalist with a background in international and constitutional law, criminal prosecutions, and diplomacy.
Copyright © 2016 by John Arkelian
Note: Quoted passages above are from the excellent documentary film, “Silenced: The War on Whistleblowers,” produced by Daniel J. Chalfene & James Spione (© 2014 Morninglight Films Inc.) which was broadcast on “The Passionate Eye” on CBC News Network in March 2015.