Newly confirmed CIA director Mike Pompeo informed United States senators he would “aggressively seek to ensure we have the most effective programs for identifying insider threats.” It was a pledge to pursue the same anti-leaks policies that discourage whistleblowing that President Barack Obama’s administration pursued.

As President Barack Obama soared into office eight years ago, he promised, on his first day in the White House, to launch “a new era of open government.”

“The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears,” Obama said in a Jan. 21, 2009 memorandum.

Obama was urging the attorney general to issue new guidelines protecting The Freedom of Information Act. “In the face of doubt,” Obama proclaimed, “openness prevails.”

If one truly believes in American values, then one must also agree that Whistleblowers must be liberated, and freed immediately from earthly bondage, whether it be prison, home incarceration, vindictive prosecution/persecution by politically motivated government officials, disenfranchisement from voting or working, and all around pariah status in the United States, and in the rest of the world.

Not every individual who leaks or pilfers confidential information to reveal it to third parties can be considered a whistleblower, however.

By James Risen

WASHINGTON — If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the F.B.I. to spy on a journalist, he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama.

Mr. Trump made his animus toward the news media clear during the presidential campaign, often expressing his disgust with coverage through Twitter or in diatribes at rallies. So if his campaign is any guide, Mr. Trump seems likely to enthusiastically embrace the aggressive crackdown on journalists and whistle-blowers that is an important yet little understood component of Mr. Obama’s presidential legacy.

The Infrastructure and People behind Drone Killings
Cian Westmoreland

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.