{"id":183890,"date":"2012-10-22T20:59:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T01:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/10\/22\/another-whistleblower-persecution\/"},"modified":"2012-10-22T20:59:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T01:59:00","slug":"another-whistleblower-persecution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/10\/22\/another-whistleblower-persecution\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Whistleblower Persecution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And this time, it&#8217;s to ensure that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emptywheel.net\/2012\/10\/20\/the-us-attorney-for-cia-scrambles-to-cover-up-cias-torture-again\/\">absolutely no one will ever reveal who amongst us are the torturers<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Bmaz just wrote a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emptywheel.net\/2012\/10\/20\/the-kiriakou-conundrum-to-plea-or-not-to-plea\/\">long post<\/a>  talking about the dilemma John Kiriakou faces as the government and his  defense lawyers attempt to get him to accept a plea deal rather than go  to trial for leaking the names of people\u2013<a href=\"http:\/\/cryptocomb.org\/\">Thomas Donahue Fletcher<\/a> and Deuce Martinez\u2013associated with the torture program.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">I\u2019d like to look at four more aspects of this case:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: blue;\">The timing of this plea deal\u2013reflecting a realization on the part of DOJ that their efforts to shield Fletcher would fail<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: blue;\">CIA\u2019s demand for a head<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: blue;\">The improper cession of a special counsel investigation to the US Attorney for Eastern Virginia<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: blue;\">The ongoing efforts to cover-up torture<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The CIA panicked because the subjects of CIA torture were learning the identities of their torturers. DOJ did an investigation to see whether any crime had been committed, and determined it hadn\u2019t. CIA then started politicizing that decision, which led to Fitzgerald\u2019s appointment.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Fitzgerald confirmed what DOJ originally determined: the defense attorneys committed no crime by researching who their clients\u2019 torturers were.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">But along the way Fitzgerald gave the CIA a head\u2013John Kiriakou\u2019s\u2013based partly on old investigations of him. And, surprise surprise, that head happens to belong to the only CIA officer who publicly broke the omerta about the torture program.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">This entire case was an attempt to punish someone to restore the omerta on CIA\u2019s illegal activities.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For a bigger picture, I would recommend <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nieman.harvard.edu\/reports\/article\/102806\/The-Big-Chill.aspx\">Dan Froomkin&#8217;s analysis of the Obama administration&#8217;s war on whistle blower<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Our country desperately needs to enshrine the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Constitution_of_Sweden#Public_access_to_governmental_documents\">Swedish concept of Offentlighetsprincipen<\/a> (openness) into our constitution, and soon, or our representative democracy is going to quickly turn into a sham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And this time, it&#8217;s to ensure that absolutely no one will ever reveal who amongst us are the torturers: Bmaz just wrote a long post talking about the dilemma John Kiriakou faces as the government and his defense lawyers attempt to get him to accept a plea deal rather than go to trial for leaking &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183890"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}