Friends,
The Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore will do its annual Interdependence Day visit
to the National Security Agency. We will depart at 10:15 AM on July 4 for
Fort Meade, and then vigil at the NSA from 11 AM to noon. We will then
have a 6 PM potluck picnic. RSVP to me at 410-323-1607 or mobuszewski2001 at
comcast.net. I will inform you as to where we are meeting to carpool to
the NSA and the site of the picnic. We will support Reality Winner and
call out for her immediate release, and the dismissal of all charges against
this courageous whistleblower. Join us to get to know better the government
agency which is keeping close attention to you.
Kagiso,
Max
Don't
leak lightly
Before The
Intercept even published its bombshell story Monday, proving that
Russian hackers sought to interfere in the U.S. election last year, the
25-year-old woman who allegedly provided the classified information to the
online news outlet was in federal custody, having been grabbed by agents at her home in
Georgia over the weekend after a trip to the grocery store.
Her parents told media that their daughter, a
federal contractor with the unusual name of Reality Winner, is, understandably,
terrified. She now faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on
charges she willfully retained and transmitted national defense information.
If she did it, the federal government certainly
has the right — and arguably the duty — to prosecute, even though thinking
people should agree that releasing the information was in the public interest,
particularly given the penchant of this administration to dismiss claims of
Russian interference in November's presidential election, not to mention
outright lie on a regular basis. In fact, data leaks may be the best defense
against President Trump's alternative facts.
Still, Ms. Winner's case is a cautionary tale
for would be leakers and journalists. The risks are extremely high, and both
she and The Intercept appear to have been sloppy in their efforts. According to
an affidavit in support of a search warrant for Ms. Winner's home and car, the
journalists outed her as a potential source when, prior to publication, they
told a government agency that the classified material was mailed from
Augusta, Ga., where Ms. Winner lives, and they later provided the NSA a copy of
the document, which had markers on it that led investigators to determine it
had been printed and "hand-carried out of a secure space."
It turns out only six people had ever printed
the document; among them was Ms. Winner, who also used her work computer to
communicate with The Intercept. (At the time she allegedly handed over the
document, she had been on the top-secret-clearance job less than three months.)
She was also an outspoken critic of the president, regularly denouncing him via
Twitter under the handle @Reezlie; messages posted this year include
the hashtags #NotMyWall, #notmypresident and #TrumpIsA[c-word].
Contrast this scenario with that of Thomas Drake, the
former NSA employee who was accused under President Obama of felony espionage,
dragged through hell, and ultimately convicted of a misdemeanor computer violation.
When he discovered mismanagement and waste
within the NSA after 9/11, he tried to blow the whistle through internal
channels and communication with Congress. When that got him nowhere, he decided
to go to the press in 2005, but only after conducting significant research on
the potential consequences — and his information wasn't even classified. He
chose a reporter he admired, Siobhan Gorman, who was then working at The
Baltimore Sun; set up an encrypted e-mail account and began corresponding with
her anonymously for more than a year before revealing his identity in February
2007. He also laid out ground rules for their relationship from the get go,
which included protecting his identity and that he was never to be a story's
sole source.
He thought at most he would lose his job for
this, and yet the government went after him criminally, eventually charging him
with all they had in 2010, after years of negotiations. I covered the case as a
reporter as it made its way through federal court, ending in a stunning
embarrassment for the Department of Justice, which dropped all 10-counts
against him days before trial in June 2011, and accepted a plea bargain, in
which Mr. Drake admitted "exceeding the authorized use of a
computer."
By then, his world had been turned upside down,
his bank account largely drained, and his reputation trashed. Yet he would have
done it all over again.
"Accountable government requires people to
stand up, and if it means telling truth to power at risk, that's a necessary
part," he told me a few months later.
I hope Ms. Winner — and The Intercept —
understood what she was in for. While there is honor in sacrificing yourself
for the greater good, there's no reason to be rash about it.
Tricia Bishop is The Sun's deputy
editorial page editor. Her column runs every other Friday. Her email is tricia.bishop@baltsun.com;
Twitter: @triciabishop.
Lessons for would-be leakers from Thomas Drake
Six
months after the U.S. Department of Justice dropped its espionage case against
former NSA employee Thomas Drake in 2011, I sat down with him for a three-hour
interview. He described living under a shadow for years once the government
discovered he had been corresponding with a Baltimore Sun reporter beginning in
2005, wearing down his bank account to defend himself against false claims,
turning down various plea deals and fearing the eventual public indictment,
which came in 2010 — and went a year later after it became clear the government
had no case against him. By then, he was working retail at an Apple store in
Bethesda, and qualified as indigent in the eyes of the law.
Here are some highlights from the discussion
that would-be leakers — and the media itching to assist them — would do well to
consider:
On the risk of going public:
"To contact the press, given the nature of
this investigation, was fraught with significant peril, any contact. It's one
thing if you're the White House, it's one thing if you're the director of the
NSA... but for an employee to contact the press in an unauthorized manner — it
doesn't matter with classified, unclassified [information] is an administrative
violation, so you could be sanctioned, you could be reprimanded, you could lose
your job."
On efforts to get him to plead
guilty:
"The last thing I was going to do was plea
bargain the truth, and the last thing beyond that was to plea bargain to
something I didn't do, it didn't matter what the pressure was. If I could be
silenced, given my position at the NSA, I was quite senior, it would send an
extraordinarily dangerous message."
On the
financial cost of defending himself, first privately through negotiations with
the Justice Department, then publicly after the indictment, which he had been
told could cost as much as $3 million to defend:
"I did not have any more resources... there
were individuals within at least two [law] firms who were willing to take the
case on pro bono, they recognized what was at stake for the country, but their
firms wouldn't let them. Why? Conflict of interest, they were representing
large defense contractors or very well-placed people in government. They didn't
want to jeopardize those relationships.... I was now in a place financially
where I may qualify as indigent for representation by the federal public
defenders' office, that's a formal process. You can imagine how it feels to
fill out paperwork in which the court acknowledges that you're now
indigent."
On taking a retail job at an Apple
store in Bethesda to pay the bills:
"It's one of the silver linings in this
whole case... where else could I apply for something part-time that would be
another way to anchor some kind of normalcy in my life, and also kind of put me
out in the community. I knew I was damaged goods in terms of my company."
On the government's attack on his
reputation:
"In the end, when all else had failed, and
[prosecutors] were unable to prevail with the judge, and it was just Kafkaesque
for me, it truly was a hall of mirrors, when it came to what the prosecution
was [doing], they just kept coming up with these novel, these novel approaches.
In the end, they went personal, they really went personal... The entire case
was always a frame job... There's this whole meme that I was a traitor, I was
truly an enemy of the state, I really was, and I was going to be punished. I
was going to send the most chilling of messages."
On what he would have done
differently:
"I would have never cooperated with the FBI
at all under any circumstances."
On personal responsibility:
"The secrecy agreement is not an oath to
protect wrongdoing, it's not an oath to cover up. It's not an oath to use
secrecy as an excuse.... You're exposed to information that looks like crimes,
you're exposed to information that violates Geneva conventions, you're exposed
to information that violates lawful orders, you're seeing wrongdoing going on,
even if it has the veil of secrecy on it, . . . What do you do? And you have a
conscience, what do you do? ... Look the other way?"
On whether he has regrets:
"There's that Star Trek movie, where [Dr.
Spock] sacrificed his life for the crew, and his best friend. Capt. Kirk, is
standing outside, 'Spock why did you do this?' The needs of the many or the few
outweigh the needs of the one. I say that quite emotionally, I had to consider
the future. Was I willing to take the hit? Yeah, I was... there's an
accountability as a public servant to provide for the common defense and the
general welfare."
— Tricia Bishop
Copyright © 2017, The Baltimore Sun, a Baltimore Sun Media Group
publication
No comments:
Post a Comment