Top NSA Watchdog Who Insisted Snowden Should Have Come to Him Receives Termination Notice for Retaliating Against a Whistleblower

Until just a few months ago, George Ellard occupied a position of trust as top watchdog of the National Security Agency, America’s principal collector of signals intelligence. Ellard was not only NSA’s Inspector General, but an outspoken critic of Edward Snowden, the former contract employee who leaked hundreds of thousands of classified emails to publicly expose the agency’s domestic surveillance program.

The watchdog wing of Congress has quietly launched an investigation into the “integrity” of the Pentagon’s whistleblower protection program. The previously unreported investigation, started in late October, expands on an ongoing effort by the Department of Justice on this same issue.

The Government Accountability Office, which serves as the investigative arm of Congress, has been looking into the extent to which Department of Defense whistleblower policies “meet executive branch policies and goals,” reassure employees of their rights to raise concerns “without fear of reprisal,” and require officials to report to Congress, among several other areas of concern.

Intelligence chief James Clapper this week published a new training curriculum on whistleblower rights for all federal employees and contractors with access to classified information, even as critics point out that effective recourse for reporting problems remains limited.

The four-part course fulfills a promise Clapper made in the fall of 2015 and is designed to train all government employees, from analysts in intelligence agencies to Postal Office workers, in reporting “illegality, waste, fraud, and abuse while protecting classified national security information,” according to a blog post shared on the intelligence community’s Tumblr page, IC On The Record.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Once an employee of the powerful CIA, Jeffrey Sterling now sits behind bars at a federal prison in Colorado. He bides his time by reading and writing and working at the facility’s recreational center.

Nearly two years after Sterling was found guilty of leaking government secrets to a reporter, the 49-year-old maintains that he is innocent. Sterling is now pinning his hopes for an early release on a federal appeals court, which will soon consider whether to reverse his convictions.

National Geographic – Host Richard Bacon discusses government surveillance with journalist Jeremy Scahill, spy master James Woolsey, and whistleblower Cian Westmoreland.

By Chelsea Manning, Medium. December 1, 2016 Every day, I can feel the slow terror of us going backwards. Repression. People losing their heath care. People being stopped from voting. People being blocked from speaking, and exercising their rights. I fear the horrible consequences that are facing a lot of us in the coming days, […]

By Jeffery Sterling

At FCI Englewood, a federal prison, as I wait for my appeal to be heard, I am looking back on the presidency of Barack Obama. A supporter recently sent me a subscription to New York Magazine and the first issue I received, ironically, features the eight years of the Obama presidency, under the title “Hope and What Came After.” I was immediately struck by the title used to name the series of pieces about and from Obama on his tenure, because the same title could be used for my experience during the Obama years. Obama’s election, for many reasons, meant and embodied hope for me; what came afterward was anything but. As his presidency draws to an end, I can only hope that the change will once again have an impact on my life, maybe this time for the better.

Obama says he ‘can’t’ pardon Snowden. But one of his attorneys hasn’t given up hope.
By Steven Nelson

President Barack Obama told German journalists last week that he can’t pardon Edward Snowden unless he physically submits to U.S. authorities. Those familiar with American law know there’s no such restriction and interpret “can’t” as meaning “won’t.”

Dear President Obama:

On your first day in office, you embraced the goals of ensuring the public’s trust and strengthening our democracy in a memorandum on transparency and open government. As your administration winds down and our democracy faces strong headwinds, we urge you to take the following important steps to empower citizens, Congress, and the courts to protect our system of separated powers and make sure that our government continues working as the founders intended.

Murtaza Hussain
November 20 2016