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In reply to the discussion: Like it or Not, Bradley Manning is a Traitor [View all]cascadiance
(19,537 posts)Ask congressman Jerry Nadler, who has constantly tried to fix these bills so that they also protect whistleblowers, and has also try to reform the usage of "state secrets privilege" which GRATUITOUSLY has been used to protect the defense and intelligence departments from being brought to court not only by security whistleblowers like Sibel Edmonds, but also by victims of actions of these parts of government such as torture victims like Maher Arar.
This article talks about how the current whistleblower's protection act that you cite doesn't apply to intelligence community whistleblowers as they are "exempted" from its protection... Nadler had earlier fought to try to amend this to throw this exemption out but wasn't able to do so.
http://www.whistleblowersblog.org/2013/06/articles/whistleblowers-government-empl/terrorism/nsa-whistleblower-case-highlights-lack-of-protection-for-intelligence-employees/
Nadler explains very well to Truthout how State Secrets Privilege has been abused to prevent government accountability to both whistleblowers and victims of actions by the security state.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/2845%3Aone-on-one-with-rep-jerrold-nadler
And now when the government moreso than it has ever done in the past is going out and criminalizing whistleblowing, especially when brought against the security parts of our government, I'm sorry, what you say here is SIMPLY NOT TRUE! REAL protection for whistleblowers to do what they are trying to do and expose wrongdoing by these parts of government doesn't exist. Either such whistleblowing is rendered ineffective if the person wants to avoid going to prison (i.e. Sibel Edmonds) or they feel they need to leave the country or face heavy prison penalties like Snowden, Manning, and Kiriakou). The world that Daniel Ellsberg lived in that gave a whistleblower the opportunity to change things for the better really just doesn't exist today. Whether it is the justice department more aggressively punishing whistleblowers than other wrongdoers, or the press basically being more in the back pocket of the wealthy and government powers than they've been before has lead to this state of affairs that needs probably almost revolutionary change. I'm thinking something like a prolonged general strike and the large pain it will create before things change if people get pushed in to the corner enough might be what it takes to force those in power to be answerable for the institutionalized lawbreaking they are doing against our constitution.
As I said, if you talk to whistleblowers, and I've talked personally to at least one or two of them, they would echo what I'm saying here. This current state of affairs of our government's current DISFUNCTION when it comes to providing transparency and protection for those who want to report wrongdoing in its intelligence areas IS the reason why someone like Snowden left the country. If we didn't have the recent history if many whistleblowers being pushed aside like Sibel Edmonds, Russell Tice, and Bradley/Chelsea Manning, I imagine that perhaps he might have gone Daniel Ellsberg's route and stayed and fought it here. I wonder if Ellsberg might have left the country too if he had to release the Pentagon Papers in today's current environment then, in order for the public to hear his allegations.