Trump, Pence and Biden won’t be punished — but Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner went to prison

By Jesselyn Radack – Kathleen McClellan: Salon.com

What happened to whistleblowers like our client Daniel Hale never happens to high-level government officials

We can now add Vice President Mike Pence to the list of former presidents and vice presidents who have had classified information found in their homes. While there are marked differences between Donald Trump intentionally keeping classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and refusing to cooperate with authorities, and Pence and Joe Biden’s apparent discovery of classified documents that inadvertently ended up in their homes — and were returned voluntarily and promptly — the commonality between these cases and others involving high-level officials is the lack of serious punishment.

Killing the messenger: Joe Biden’s disturbing hypocrisy on Julian Assange

By Ben Cohen: Salon.com

Ben & Jerry’s co-founder: Joe Biden stood up for press freedom as a candidate — but backtracked in the White House

Joe Biden may have broken the Espionage Act. It’s so broad that you may have, too

Trevor Timm — The Guardian

With President Joe Biden now embroiled in his own classified documents controversy, partisan commentators will surely have a field day playing the tired old game of “no, you endangered national security.” Instead, I’d like to focus on the real issues: the overly broad and often-abused Espionage Act and the massive, draconian secrecy system that does far more harm than good in the United States.

Key US Allies Collaborate On Espionage Laws Considered Harmful To Whistleblowers And Journalists

Richard Spence — The Dissenter — January 5, 2023

Ministers and security officials in Australia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom have coordinated with the United States to develop new espionage laws.

An Open Letter from Editors and Publishers: Publishing is Not a Crime

December 12, 2022

The U.S. government should end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.

Twelve years ago, on November 28th 2010, our five international media outlets – The New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and DER SPIEGEL – published a series of revelations in cooperation with Wikileaks that made the headlines around the globe.

Ohio authorities ignore Supreme Court to arrest journalist

Freedom of the Press Foundation — November 10, 2022

This post was originally published as part of our weekly newsletter. For more breaking news and analysis of the state of press freedom in the U.S., subscribe here.

The Quiet Merger Between Online Platforms and the National Security State Continues

By Branko Marcetic — Jacobin.com — November 09, 2022

The Department of Homeland Security is helping to coordinate tech company censorship efforts according to recent reporting. The line between tech firms and the national security state is only getting blurrier.

The CIA’s hypocrisy on ‘sources and methods’

Opinion by William Neuheisel – Responsible Statecraft — October 18, 2022

The Agency’s carelessness in protecting its own agents reveals the cynicism of the US government’s treatment of whistleblowers.

Reuters recently published new reporting on the story of one of the worst U.S. intelligence failures in decades. From approximately 2010 to 2013, dozens of CIA informants in China, Iran, and elsewhere were rounded up and executed, jailed, or flipped to double agents. In Iran and China, almost the entirety of the CIA’s network in two of its top-priority countries are reported to have been exposed.

Trump can’t declassify documents with his mind — but the whole system is badly broken

Opinion by Jesselyn Radack, Kathleen McClellan – Salon — October 20, 2022

Donald Trump has an indisputably delusional view of what it takes to declassify national security secrets, recently claiming that he, as president, could have declassified documents just “by thinking about it.” As much as Trump’s latest self-serving crazy makes for good late-night comedy fodder, it also reminds us how much absurdity the U.S. government has created in national security litigation. As attorneys for whistleblowers and media sources, our cases have been the breeding ground for abuse of the broken classification system.Beneath the public laugh-fest over Trump’s outlandish claims of telepathic declassification powers lies the implication that somewhere, somehow, there is a clear, fair process for doing so.

Glenn Greenwald’s bromance with Alex Jones: New low for a onetime Pulitzer winner

Once an independent muckraker, Greenwald has moved sharply rightward — but even so, this was embarrassing

By Eoin Higgins – Salon.com — October 7, 2022