Title: The Heat: Crackdown on whistleblowers in the US Pt2
Show: CGTN America
Date: 2016-06-07
URL: https://youtu.be/r2oKRg0cVw4
Duration: 9.1:00

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[00:00] welcome back to the show we're talking about the crackdown on whistleblowers and those who leak sensitive government information in the United States let's get back to our panel killeen you know and Barack Obama came to office he was seen as the great liberal hope on day one in the office he said that this would be a new era of openness seven and a half years later more people have been prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act by this administration than all previous presidents combined has this president president barack obama undermined the

[00:31] whistleblower system i would say so one of the points here is that before Barack Obama the legal experts did not think that the Espionage Act of 1917 that was passed back during World War one in order to actually address true spies most legal experts did not believe that that applied that you couldn't even use that statute to prosecute a

[01:01] whistleblower who was acting in the public interest and that is the reason why there were so few there was Daniel Ellsberg but there was very few prosecutions now Barack Obama's team decided that they would use that all 1917 Espionage Act which as Bradley moss explains does not have a defense for acting in the public interest it does not actually have a whistleblower defense to it and that is the problem if Edward Snowden was allowed to argue that

[01:32] he wanted to reveal unconstitutional acts on the part of the government or serve public safety etc I would have no problem in telling Edward Snowden to come back and face trial but I'm sexually that old luck and Barack Obama is the problem for using that law right and cook if we look at how the law is applied is it applied fairly because we get the case of the former director of the CIA David Petraeus who leaked classified documents to his girlfriend Paula Broadwell he got a fine and

[02:03] probation if that had been somebody else precisely right go ahead well I was just going to say a good example um you know if any of us had done with Hillary Clinton did we'd already be in jail there's no question look at the fervor they use to go after Thomas Drake and they couldn't even substantiate that anything Thomas Drake ad was classified now here's a kicker and why Snowden did

[02:34] what he did and this is for Bradley also a new whistleblower has emerged from the former Pentagon IG office he was there when the complaint we filed in 2004 arrived at that Pentagon's IG office he has information very strongly suggestive that senior personnel in the AG's office gave our names including Tom Drake to the Department of Justice thus violating

[03:07] a strict policy of confidentiality for whistleblowers what I'm trying to say Anand is why did Snowden do what he did because he saw the injustice and the breakdown that happened to us and one comment on Bradley's comments while I understand there's no provision counting for purpose or intent Snowden had no time in a secure environment too closely go through carefully all the documents

[03:39] he leaked he took a chance that he'd get some good stuff and some wrongful stuff it wasn't an intent to spread it all over the place and indeed the media was cautioned not to do so and there's still a lot of stuff that hasn't been put out in public so I think that's a debatable issue brettly I'll say is as far as I recall the way edwards known described it he went through it methodically he took months together some it's not the old days of Daniel Ellsberg we have to copy by hand piece by piece every document he sticks of the USB Drive a

[04:12] USB piece into his laptop and he's downloading the tens of thousands of documents as far as he had explained it dating back to jun 2013 he methodically determined what he wouldn't would not give to glenn greenwald and the others now he has said he's told them okay you apply best judgment that this the disciple tours public that's my but the law doesn't care the law says if you leak it doesn't matter if he never gets public ever gets published that's in the ettes the end of it well let's get back to how the law is applied and let's look at another case here John Kiriakou former CIA analyst was sent to prison because unique the

[04:43] name of CIA operative who was in his view torturing prisoners now what has happened the end result of this is that kyriacou was punished the man who allegedly carried out the torturing goes unpunished it's lovely phrase called prosecutorial discretion uh and in terms of John Kerry aku yeah unfortunately for him he was already probably on the do Jays radar cuz he had gone public in actually in CIA's defense originally justifying the torture techniques they were originally used he did an interview

[05:14] with ABC in 2007's was already on the radar for having leaked classified information there but when he got indicted it was for disclosing the identity of a covert official Russian not only under the Espionage Act that's the intelligence identities Protection Act you cannot do that end of discussion but isn't that doesn't that go to colleens point is you can't cover him something illegal by saying that it's not classified unfortunately there was a court ruling in a for sale a camera but the court in ruling of time I head on in US District Court in DC a few years ago where they challenged that idea that you

[05:45] couldn't classify something that was itself illegal they were doing this relating to the Bush administration's original surveillance program court rejected that argument said no that's not the way the executive order reads it's not whether or not the underlying conduct was illegal it's whether or not the decision to classified itself was illegal okay I want to get to another case cooling the Obama Justice Department threatened in New York Times reporter with imprisonment if he didn't testify against a CIA whistleblower that CIA officer was charged with providing ricin James ricin was the name of the

[06:15] new york times reporter with information let's take a listen to what ricin had to say the government wants to crack down on anyone who dissents or blows the whistle or talks in any way that the White House of the CIA or the NSA or any of these agencies doesn't like and so they then they they these agencies go to the Justice Department to do their bidding to start to try to punish people who have spoken out that

[06:47] was James ricin talking on the heat last year he was talking to me but cooling doesn't that send a chilling message to whistleblowers and more especially doesn't that tell us something about what this administration thinks of the media absolutely and it also points out the double standard that we were just talking about speaking of disclosing CIA covert identities it looks like some of the emails that Hillary Clinton was holding and sending on her unsecured

[07:20] private server included the identities the real identities of covert CIA operatives and as mr. Moss just explained there is a law that that prohibits giving out the identities now what will we see here as he said prosecutorial discretion will mean that the double standard that in all likelihood Hilary Clinton will get off with a with a slap on the wrist at best and poor Geoffrey sterling it's

[07:50] prosecuted as well as many other you know many other whistleblowers have been prosecuted because they don't have the power in Jeffrey Sterling's case he had filed an EE all for yo complaint for discrimination because he's black and that may have been the thing that they were looking at two so people at the lower echelons do not enjoy this privilege and I I think it's a sad case sad day in the United States when you can classify information to cover up

[08:20] illegal ed and the part of the same officials okay good I've got about 30 seconds Edward Snowden is calling for eintrag protection for whistleblowers he said that going to the press is probably the best chance of whistleblower has if he or she wants to get out information does Snowden have a point here he does but even that's dangerous on on we know the NSA and other government intelligence agencies are keen to watch reporters and with whom they speak in

[08:52] order to ferret out potential whistleblowers and sources of information that's very embarrassing to the government so we have a huge issue here that needs to be addressed
