2011-01-19 Churchill Club - Obama has declared war on whistleblowers

Before Obama there were three indictments.

Obama has brought five in these two years.

If he brought it against Assange, if he did, it would be six,

it would be twice as many as all previous Presidents put together.

And what’s going on here?

Well it’s part of a policy of generally, use of state secrets privilege,

against dismissing lawsuits

being totally secretive, not being at all forthcoming on freedom of information in terms of,

of these areas.

So it’s part of a policy.

But why more than others, I don’t,

I would be interested to hear anybody’s suggestion.

In fact I think you were [unintelligible] asked, yeah, right Peter…

Why is it that Obama is pressing this so strongly?

This is before Wikileaks, remember, except for Bradley.

The previous four were before Wikileaks

and two of them were for acts undertaken under Bush

which Bush had not indicted.

Uh, Thomas Drake and… Shamai Leibowitz, who’s in prison now.

So in other words this, “We’re not looking back,”

applies to the myriad crimes

of the Bush administration, torture, aggressive war,

warrantless wiretapping…

crimes that strike at the heart of our Constitution

as well as domestic law.

No looking back on those.

The only looking back is on whistleblowers.

Drake and Leibowitz

revealing what they thought were great wasteful practices or…

so there’s a war on whistleblowers.

To me, and again, why Obama so much, I have a hypothesis, and really

this is just very speculative,

I think he’s more, feels more vulnerable

to whistleblowers

than either his predecessor, because he’s doing many

of the same things, one of the great secrets in the cables

released is how little difference there is

from 2008 to 2009, they’re the same practices, the same torturing,

not that much difference, but Bush was proud of it.

He did it, he did it secretly at first, it was all covert at first,

but when it came out, “Torture? We don’t torture, what we do, we do,

and I don’t apologize for it.

NSA warrantless wiretapping? No problem!”

I think Obama’s a little more embarrassed about all that coming out,

that he’s, that he’s acting in the same lines that he has,

a new war that he’s escalating, adding to Bush’s war in Afghanistan,

and he really wants to do what all Presidents have always wanted to do,

shut down leaks that they don’t control, leaks they don’t make,

but I think he’s, I think he’s really doing it more aggressively

than any previous President, and specifically

he’s doing it by treating the Act that I was charged under

as an Official Secrets Act, as an Act that criminalizes all leaks.

And if he gets a conviction, of any of these people,

not just Manning or Assange, if he gets Drake, or Kim,

if they go up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court takes it

and doesn’t notice that it’s un-Consititutional,

which is not a bad bet,

earlier Courts would almost surely have called it un-Constitutional,

this one might not.

And if he gets that, he has a very broad Official Secrets Act,

and from then on, all he has to do to find out who is

the source of any leak, one day to the next,

with a clear-cut crime,

is to call in the reporter whose byline is on the head of that column and say,

“We’re not charging you with anything, we’re not against the press,

we’re for the press. Just who committed the crime?"

And if the person can’t take the Fifth Amendment,

he or she is not being charged with anything,

they just either tell, or they go to jail indefinitely for contempt.

Judith Miller lasted 85 days, and some of them will last longer,

but a lot of them won’t, and from then on,

no source will have any basis for assuming,

or hoping that their,

their name for whistleblowing will be anonymous,

their only recourse will be Wikileaks, so Wikileaks matters.