The Obama Justice Department (on April 15th 2010)* announced that it has secured a ten-felony-count indictment against Thomas Drake, an official with the National Security Agency during the Bush years.
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(T)he DOJ alleges "that between approximately February 2006 and November 2007, a newspaper reporter published a series of articles about the NSA," and it claims "Drake served as a source for many of those articles, including articles that contained classified information."
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Although the indictment does not specify Drake's leaks, it is highly likely (as Shane also suggests) that it is based on Drake's bringing to the public's attention major failures and cost over-runs with the NSA's spying programs via leaks to The Baltimore Sun.
salon.com
Bold text and some editing* done by the diarist
The indictment of Thomas Drake has NOTHING to do with the illegality of the Bush warrantless wiretapping program, rather, it has to do with Drake's uncovering of major failures and cost over-runs within the domestic spying program. As Greenwald writes . . .
I used to write post after post about how warped and dangerous it was that the Bush DOJ was protecting the people who criminally spied on Americans (Bush, Cheney Michael Hayden) while simultaneously threatening to prosecute the whistle-blowers who exposed misconduct. But the Bush DOJ never actually followed through on those menacing threats; no NSA whistle-blowers were indicted during Bush's term (though several were threatened ). It took the election of Barack Obama for that to happen, as his handpicked Assistant Attorney General publicly boasted yesterday of the indictment against Drake.
salon.com
Bold text added by the diarist
Wait, wait, wait! If Obama's DoJ is prosecuting crimes from the Bush era isn't that an act of "Looking backwards, not forward"? ( and yes, revealing state secrets, even if done for the good of the public as whistleblowers do, is still illegal. )
Why doesn't Obama's dictate that we "Look Forward, Not Backward," protect this NSA whistle-blower from prosecution at least as much as the high-level Bush officials who criminally spied on American citizens? Isn't the DOJ's prosecution of Drake the classic case of "Looking Backward," by digging into Bush-era crimes, controversies and disclosures?
salon.com
Bold text added by the diarist
So prosecuting a Bush/Cheney era whistleblower who uncovered waste and incompetence is important enough to "Look backwards on", but not the lies and war crimes that lead us to war in Iraq based on evidence derived from illegal torture?
And what effect will this move by the Obama DoJ have?
As Lucy Dalglish, Executive Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Presss, told the NYT today: "The whole point of the prosecution is to have a chilling effect on reporters and sources, and it will."
salon.com
When the Bush/Cheney administration came down on whistleblowers the left was outraged and loud about it. But now, almost total silence.
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