Truth Warriors: Daniel Ellsberg, Karen Silkwood, Bradley Manning and Glenn Greenwald

Daniel EllsbergDomestic Surveillance, data mining, warrentless wiretaps, Big Brother, more loss of privacy.  Seems like a new revelation every day about the US government snooping on the emails and phone calls of reporters, Verizon customers, internet activities of citizens at home and foreigners.

For now, as these stories unfold, I just want to say a word of thanks to reporters and whistleblowers who break these kind of stories.

I am feeling grateful for whoever told Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian and other reporters about the data mining.  Good reporter that he is, he’s shielding the identity of his source, saying only that it’s a reader who appreciated his previous work exposing this kind of overstepping of government power. A concerned employee of the National Security Agency tipped off the Washington Post with more information.

“Legal , but unnerving” is how our friend Ed Kilgore describes, these acts by the NSA and the Justice Dept.  Commonplace really, since 9/11, under the Patriot Act.  Both Congress and the courts have approved such actions, but there have been no public debates on these secret program.  Polls show Americans in general are not overly troubled by losing civil liberties in the name of national security.  The President said these activities have saved lives and are a difficult but fair balance of national security and personal privacy.

Progressive media and civil libertarians are outraged.  Maybe because this surveillance seems to be getting a little closer to home; it could be my local AP news reporters, my own Verizon phone being tapped, not some drone activity in Pakistan.

Karen SilkwoodOthers cynically say these data dragnets are no better or worse than how Google or Facebook troll our computer activity in order to tempt us with some targeted sales offer.  “Deborah, have we got a deal for you!”  Get used to it or get off line. 

Thankfully every nation has truth warriors.  That’s because every nation has governments or corporations who snoop, commit fraud, hide dangerous products, violate human rights, commit war atrocities.  And hopefully every nation has brave folks who risk job or security or even life to go public or go to a reporter with the truth.  

Some nations like the US have laws protecting reporters and their sources. (That’s the beef with the wiretapping of AP reporters – what happened to the shield laws?)  And we have some laws protecting whistleblowers from not losing their jobs if they tell their boss or a reporter about violations of safety or human rights or some fraud at their company.  Not great laws, but better than Myanmar I bet.

It was consumer activist Ralph Nader who coined the word “whistleblower” in the early 70’s, in reference to a referee calling a foul.  He wanted to counter the negative connotations of “snitch” or “informer.”

I say thanks to folks like Deep Throat, and Daniel Ellsberg who helped topple Nixon with revelations about Watergate and the publication of the Pentagon Papers. 

Bradley Manning Thanks to all the employees who blow the whistle on corrupt or secretive companies.   Like Karen Silkwood who organized her union of nuclear power plant workers to publicize their health risks from radiation.  And then died in a suspicious car accident on her way to talk with a reporter about her own serious medical condition.

It’s dangerous being a whistleblower and truth teller.  Just ask the family of Costa Rican turtle activist Jairo Mora, assassinated this past week. 

Or ask whistleblower/leaker Bradley Manning sitting in solitary confinement in a Kansas jail cell after leaking national security documents and videos to Wikileaks. 

Reporter Glenn Greenwald, who broke the data mining story in the Guardian this past week is another interesting truth warrior.  Different from Ellsburg, Silkwood and Manning in that he was simply doing his job, being a reporter.  But as dogged in his pursuit of abuse of power. 

Greenwald was a happy civil rights attorney in NY, so he says, uninvolved in politics at all until George W. Bush was elected and his attitude changed “completely.” He wrote in his first book, “How Would a Patriot Act?”:

Glenn Greenwald"Over the past five years, a creeping extremism has taken hold of our federal government, and it is threatening to radically alter our system of government and who we are as a nation. This extremism is neither conservative nor liberal in nature, but is instead driven by theories of unlimited presidential power that are wholly alien, and antithetical, to the core political values that have governed this country since its founding"; for, "the fact that this seizure of ever-expanding presidential power is largely justified through endless, rank fear-mongering—fear of terrorists, specifically—means that not only our system of government is radically changing, but so, too, are our national character, our national identity, and what it means to be American."

We here in the US were a bit puzzled and embarrassed that this story was broken by the Guardian newspaper, a liberal UK publication.  Where was the NY Times with its legacy of publishing the Pentagon Papers and the Wikileaks files? 

Well, we can take comfort that Glenn Greenwald is an American boy, one of their US correspondents.  He’s been influential for years on the liberal news site Salon.com.  He has been a big champion of Bradley Manning. Travels a lot but calls Rio de Janiero home, lives there with his Brazilian husband where their marriage is recognized and he has married visa status, which his husband could not get in the US.  Thanks, Glenn, for reporting the news. 

Just one last whistleblower story for the week, which includes a couple of the above mentioned folks.  Here in San Francisco we have a huge Gay Pride parade and other activities every year in late June (anniversary of the Stonewall riots.)  The organizers select parade grand marshals.  This year, Bradley Manning was selected as one of the grand marshals.  Of course he is in solitary confinement and on trial – can’t ride in a convertible down Market Street to adoring fans.  So area resident Daniel Ellsburg volunteered to take his place.   But then at the last minute the Pride organizers changed their minds.  They didn’t want to honor someone who some say put US military members in harm’s way,  including newly openly serving LGBT military.  Invitation rescinded. 

So there will be many protesters at the parade.  Not protesting homophobia or Prop. 8.  Protesting the parade organizers, saying Bradley Manning should be the grand marshal.

Lots to protest in America these days.

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Streeter

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Edward SnowdonSince Deborah submitter her column for this week, the Prism whistleblower has revealed himself. He is Edward Snowdon. The Guardian, the paper that broke the story, has extensive coverage on the new developments and on Snowdon himself. To access the reports click here. 

The Guardian says in the above link: Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations – the NSA. 

Dale Rominger