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TWENTY YEARS COVERING THE MOVEMENTS CHANGING AMERICA

with DAVID GOODMAN an

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY NEW DELHI

- - -------J- ,·- INTRODUCTION: GOING TO WHERE THE SILENCE IS

, " .. - . ~ - - . . ·-

It was December 1995. I was at an underground safe house in Haiti

during the presidential election there, interviewing members of a

political party who feared for their lives. I got a phone call from

a colleague at the Pacifica Radio network, asking if I would be

interested in hosting a new daily news hour that we had been de-

veloping, covering the 1996 presidential election ... in the United

States. The importance of covering elections weighed heavily on

me, especially from Haiti, a country where people took incredible

risks simply to vote.

The political violence that had consumed Haiti since the US-

backed coup in 1991, which ousted democratically elected Presi-

dent Jean-Bertrand Aristide, had left thousands of Haitians dead.

Thousands more fled the Caribbean island nation , making the

dangerous trip, often in unsafe boats, to land on the shores of

2 DEMOCRACY NOW!

Florida. President Bill Clinton feared that this influx of refugees

from Haiti would lose him the crucial swing state of Florida. He

knew the only way to end the refugee crisis was to restore Aristide

to his presidency. So Clinton reversed his support of the Haitian

coup, and returned Aristide to power for the fifteen months that

remained in his term. In return, he forced Aristide to give up his

demand that he serve his full five years, since the coup had robbed

him of three of them. As the 1995 Haitian elections approached,

many Haitians were terrified, but went to the polls nevertheless.

Yet in the United States, where that kind of violence at the polls is

nearly unheard of, less than half of those eligible bother to vote in

presidential elections, and even fewer turn out for midterms.

Many have attributed low participation in US elections to

voter apathy. I have never believed this. The low turnout is directly

related to the many obstacles put in place that deter people from

voting (for example, holding elections on just one day when most

people are working, limiting hours that polling places are open, or

requiring photo identification that disproportionately disenfran-

chises poor people and people of color). And then there are those

who feel that there isn't a significant difference between the candi-

dates, or that money distorts the process so much that their vote

doesn't really count. Yet people are engaged in their communities

all over the country. If they aren't voting, what are they doing?

These were the questions we would ask while covering each state

primary-not to focus on polls but to focus on people at the grass-

roots and what they cared about.

On February 19, 1996, I began hosting Democracy Now!, the

only daily election news hour in public broadcasting. This was the

election in which President Bill Clinton ran against Republican

Senator Bob Dole of Kansas and Reform Party candidate Ross

Perot.

INTIBDUCTIIN: GIINC Tl WIEHE THE SILENCE II 3

Our hope was that the issues in the presidential race were im-

portant enough and listeners cared enough that they would tune in

to daily coverage that brought them voices and ideas not normally

heard in the corporate media.

That's how we started: giving a voice to the grassroots. When

the 1996 election wrapped up, with President Clinton easily re-

elected, we thought that Democracy Now! would wrap up as well.

But there was more demand for the show after the elections than

before. Why? There is a hunger for authentic voices-not the same

handful of pundits on the network shows who know so little about

so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong.

Twenty years later, after airing on nine community radio sta-

tions in 1996, Democracy Now! is broadcast on over 1,400 public

television and radio stations around the world and on the inter-

net. The show, which I have cohosted since the beginning with

the remarkable journalist Juan Gonzalez, is the largest public

media collaboration in the United States. Democracy Now! is

broadcast on Pacifica, community and college radio and televi-

sion stations, as well as on many NPR radio stations, and can be

seen on public access TV, PBS TV stations, and via satellite televi-

sion on Free Speech TV and Link TV. Millions access the program

at democracynow.org and by video and audio podcasts that are

among the most popular on the internet.

Early on, we learned that giving voice to those who are out-

side the mainstream comes with risk. In 1997, just a year after

Democracy Now! started, we dared to broadcast the commentary

of prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, who had been on Pennsylvania's

death row for fifteen years. As journalists, we didn't think this was

that daring. It's our job to go to where the silence is.

Abu-Jamal did not talk about his case. He talked about his

experience behind bars. Actually, bars behind bars, because he was

4 lfMICUCY NIWI

on death row. How rare to have a voice from one of the most con-

troversial spaces in the world.

A former journalist and Black Panther in Philadelphia, Abu-

Jamal was sentenced to death after having been convicted of the

1981 murder of a police officer. Abu-Jamal maintains he is inno-

cent of the charges, and an international solidarity movement has

grown around his case. Among those who have called for a new

trial have been the European Parliament and the late South African

President Nelson Mandela. Amnesty International and many other

human rights groups say Abu-Jamal never received a fair trial.

After almost thirty years on death row, in 2011 the US Court of

Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated Abu-Jamal's death sentence

on the grounds that it was unconstitutional; he is now serving a

sentence of life without parole.

Mumia Abu-Jamal has been an outspoken advocate for the

thousands of people on death rows around this country. He has

written articles for the Yale Law Review, among other publica-

tions. In 2014 he delivered a commencement address from prison

to his alma mater, Goddard College in Vermont. His popular book

Live from Death Row, published in 1995, is a collection of his

commentaries.

Working with Prison Radio's Noelle Hanrahan, we taped thir-

teen commentaries with Abu-Jamal in October 1996, and Democ-

racy Now! began airing the pieces in early February 1997. But

minutes before the first broadcast, the twelve stations in Pennsyl-

vania that are owned by Temple University and that aired Democ-

racy Now! pulled our show entirely and ended their contract with

the Pacifica Network. They said it was "inappropriate" to air the

commentaries of Mumia Abu-Jamal; his voice should not be heard

on the public airwaves. Temple is a quasi-public university, so for

IIITIIUCTIIII: HIIC Tl WIEIE TIE Ill.ENCE II 5

us it was not only an issue of freedom of the press but also an issue

of academic freedom.

When Temple University took us off the air, the reason it gave

was that listeners demanded more jazz. Being a jazz lover, this was

doubly insulting.

A tremendous outcry followed. The president of Temple re-

ceived more than a thousand calls, emails, letters, and faxes from

academic groups and activists all over the country. The Washing-

ton Post and the New York Times both framed it as a free speech

issue.

The day that Democracy Now! aired the first commentary,

we interviewed two representatives of the Society of Professional

Journalists (SPJ). (We'd also invited the Fraternal Order of Police

to come on, but the organization declined.) The SPJ said that the

commentaries were extremely important, and they were shocked

at what happened.

"I am outraged that administrators at Temple University de-

cided to silence an alternative voice," Steve Geimann, SPJ presi-

dent, said to the Washington Post. "SPJ, like Pacifica Radio, isn't

taking a stand on Abu-Jamal's guilt or innocence. This issue today

is all about allowing him-and other prisoners-the right to be

heard."

The problem for Jazz FM, the Temple station, was that it had

already sent out its program guide stating that Democracy Now!

was its most successful show and that it was using us as a model

for its other programs.

That's some model: air alternative voices and get kicked off

the air.

Temple University law school held a forum; it was packed. Stu-

dents protested. Nevertheless, Temple stuck by its decision. So did

I DEMOCRACY NOWI

we. Democracy Now! grew by leaps and bounds as station after

station began broadcasting the show.

One of the reasons that Abu-Jamal's commentaries broke new

ground is that you rarely heard voices from prison, because jour-

nalists were increasingly being blocked from going there. At the

time, Pennsylvania, along with Virginia, California, Indiana, and

Illinois, were among the states where journalists' access to jails

was heavily restricted.

Abu-Jamal has faced multiple ob tacles as he has tried to have

his voice heard. On August 12, 1999, Abu-Jamal called in to De-

mocracy Now! to comment on the release of sixteen Puerto Rican

political prisoners. As he began to speak, a prison guard yanked the

phone out of the wall. Abu-Jamal called back a month later and re-

counted that "another guard appeared at the cell door hollering at

the top of his lungs, 'This call is terminated!' I immediately called

to the sergeant standing by and looking on and said, 'Sergeant,

where did this order come from?' He shrugged his shoulders and

an wered, 'I don't know. We just got a phone call to cut you off.' "

Abu-Jamal actually first recorded his commentaries for Na-

tional Public Radio. Ellen Weiss, then the executive producer for

the news program All Things Considered, said, "He is a good

writer and brings a unique perspective to the air.'' She added that

the commentaries were a way for public radio to broaden its cov-

erage of crime and punishment.

But then the Fraternal Order of Police put enormous pressure

on National Public Radio. NPR decided to kill the series of com-

mentaries, though it had publicized them heavily.

We felt it was critical to air Abu-Jamal's commentaries on De-

mocracy Now! The commentaries touched on a broad range of

issues. He spoke of capital punishment being punishment for those

without capital. And he talked about "father hunger": the idea

INTRODUCTION: GOING TD WHERE THE SILENCE II 7

that so many young black men in prisons don't know their fathers.

Abu-Jamal mused on the irony of being a father figure to those

prisoners, despite the fact that he couldn't be a father to his own

children or grandchildren. He wrote:

"Here, in this restrictive place of fathers without their children

and men who were fatherless, one senses and sees the social costs

of that loss. Those unloved find it virtually impossible to love, and

those who were fatherless find themselves alienated and at war

with their own communities and families."

There's a reason why our profession is the only one explicitly

protected by the US Constitution: journalists are supposed to be

the check and balance on power, not win popularity contests. The

United States has 5 percent of the world's population but 25 per-

cent of the prisoners. It's the job of journalists to put our micro-

phones between the bars and broadcast the voices of those inside.

ROOTS

I come originally from Pacifica Radio, which was founded in 1949

by a man named Lew Hill. He was a war resister who came out of

the compulsory work camps for conscientious objectors in World

War II. Hill said we need a media outlet that's not run by corpora-

tions that profit from war, but run by journalists and artists.

As George Gerbner, the late dean of the Annen berg School for

Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder

of the Cultural Environment Movement, which advocates greater

diversity in the media, would say, we need a media "not run by

corporations that have nothing to tell and everything to sell that

are raising our children today."

The first Pacifica station was KPFA, launched in Berkeley,

I IEMICIACY NIWI

California, in 1949. In 1959 KPFK went on the air in Los Angeles,

and in 1960 WBAI started broadcasting in New York. In 1970

KPFT went on the air in Houston, and WPFW came to the air-

waves in Washington, DC, in 1977.

What happened to KPFT says a lot about how independent

media threatens the status quo. It was the only radio station in the

country whose transmitter was blown up. In May 1970, just two

months after KPFT began broadcasting, the Ku Klux Klan dyna-

mited the station's transmitter, knocking it off the air for several

weeks. The explosion came in the middle of Ario Guthrie's antiwar

song, "Alice's Restaurant," just as he was singing, "Kill, kill, kill,"

as he spoofed the draft. Not long after the transmitter tower was

rebuilt and the station returned to the air, the Klan blew it up again

with fifteen times the dynamite used the first time, knocking the

station off the air for more than three months. Jimmy Dale Hutto,

the Grand Dragon of the local Ku Klux Klan, who was convicted

of the bombing, said blowing up KPFT was his proudest act.

When KPFT finally went back on the air for the third time in

January 1971, it was a national event. PBS broadcast its rebirth on

television. Arlo Guthrie came back to Houston to pick up where

he was so rudely interrupted: he finished singing "Alice's Restau-

rant" live on the air.

The Klan leader understood how dangerous independent media

is. Because when you hear someone speaking for themselves-

whether it's a Palestinian child or an Israeli grandmother, or an

uncle in Afghanistan or an aunt in Iraq-it challenges the stereo-

types that fuel the hate groups. It's not that you have to agree with

what you hear. How often do we agree even with our family mem-

bers? But you begin to understand where they're corning from.

That understanding is the beginning of peace.

INTRODUCTION: GOING TO WHERE THE SILENCE IS 9

I believe the media can be the greatest force for peace on Earth.

Instead, all too often, it is wielded as a weapon of war. That has to

be challenged.

I come from the radio network where Chris Koch worked.

Koch was sent by WBAI as the first American journalist to cover

the war from North Vietnam. What he saw there changed him.

The American people were being led to believe that the United

States would prevail against the Vietcong. Koch saw something

very different, and he dared to talk about it in his reports for

Pacifica.

"When Koch returned home to the United States from that first

trip in 1965, he became one of the first US journalists to conclude

America should withdraw from Vietnam, and his own countrymen

were not nearly as easy to get along with as those he met in North

Vietnam," reported a Vietnamese news agency in 2012.

Koch recalled, "When I lectured at a university in Plattsburgh,

New York, they had to lead me out the back door because people

were getting very angry, beginning to shout at me. In Denver, Colo-

rado, they really got angry. They began coming on the stage. I had

to climb out a window in the back of the room and get in my car.

Americans were not ready to listen to what I had to say."

When he returned from North Vietnam, Koch was interviewed

by ABC, CBS, and NBC. None of the national networks ran the

interviews. Koch didn't have official permission to go where he

went and say what he saw. He was too controversial. That's why

we need a media that is independent.

The first book I wrote was with my brother, journalist David

Goodman, called The Exception to the Rulers. That's what the

media should be: the exception to the rulers.

Our next book was called Static. Even in this high-tech digital

11 IEMICUCY NIWI

age with high-definition television and digital radio, still all we get

is static: that veil of distortion, lies, misrepresentations, and half-

truths that obscure reality.

We need the media to give us the dictionary definition of static:

Criticism. Opposition. Unwanted interference.

We need a media that covers power, not covers for power.

We need a media that is the fourth estate, not for the state.

And we need a media that covers the movements that create

static and make history. That is the power of independent media.

That is a media that will save us.

BREAKING GROUND AND BREAKING NEWS

In 1999 we headed to Seattle to cover one of the first meetings

of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The corporate media

had barely mentioned the WTO, a powerful, secretive body es-

tablished in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1995 with the strong sup-

port of President Bill Clinton. It can overturn local laws in the

name of "free trade"-or, more accurately, corporate-managed

trade. As with the Trans-Pacific Partnership today, a trade agree-

ment among twelve Pacific Rim countries and the United States,

WTO trade bureaucrats from nearly 150 countries, as well as from

many corporations, were saying, in effect, you can pass your laws

in your democratically elected legislatures to protect workers or

the environment, but supranational bodies such as the WTO can

throw out those local laws on the grounds that they are barriers

to trade and thus "WTO-illegal." This means that everything from

Thailand putting a warning on cigarettes, to the requirement that

genetically modified food be labeled, could be overturned.

INTIIIICTIIN: HINC Tl WIEIE TIE SILENCE II 11

Tens of thousands of people from around the world descended

on Seattle to show this shadow corporate government how people

feel when their democracy-and their jobs, environment, and right

to participate-is stolen out from under them. They were religious

people, trade unionists, doctors and nurses, students, environmen-

talists, and steelworkers in a global uprising against corporate

power.

As all this was about to unfold, activists confronted a dilemma:

What media would cover their actions? Protesters knew that the

corporate media would belittle or misrepresent them-or ignore

them completely.

Democracy Now! cohost Juan Gonzalez also works at the

New York Daily News as a news columnist. When he asked his

editors to send him to Seattle to cover the WTO, they responded,

"The what?"

The Daily News is one of the largest city newspapers in the

country. But in the end, it wasn't the media behemoth, the Daily

News, that sent him, but his other DN-the nonprofit Democracy

Now! As this major global protest erupted, the Daily News called

Juan repeatedly for reports from the front lines. His editors were

proud that their reporter was on the scene, scooping the other

New York papers. Privately, they kept asking him, "How did you

know this was going to happen?"

A new kind of media was rising up. People came together with

pens and pencils, tape recorders and video cameras, and estab-

lished an Independent Media Center (IMC).

Tens of thousands of marchers were tear-gassed and shot with

rubber bullets and pepper spray. The mayor of Seattle declared

martial law for the first time since World War II. The city estab-

lished "no-protest zones."

1Z DEMOCRACY NDWI

As the corporate media networks scrambled to buy plane

tickets and book hotel rooms from which to cover the protest,

this new independent media movement had already swung into

action. When CNN, citing police sources, denied that protesters

were being shot with rubber bullets, the IMC's new website at

www.indymedia.org was showing photographs of people picking

up rubber bullets by the handful. As one person carrying a video

camera would get tear-gassed and arrested, he or she would hand

that camera to someone else. The Democracy Now! team spent

many long hours in the streets with journalists from the IMC,

being gassed and harassed by police dressed in futuristic black

body armor as we documented the explosion of anticorporate glo-

balization activism onto the world stage.

People are hungry for uniiltered, real-time coverage from

real people's perspectives. So hungry for the truth that during the

"Battle of Seattle," there were more hits on indymedia.org than on

CNN's website.

The Battle of Seattle resulted in over six hundred arrests and

the eventual failure of the WTO talks in America's largest export

city, then home to Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks. Se-

attle police chief Norm Stamper resigned within days. Ten years

later, Stamper admitted on Democracy Now! that he'd made some

of the worst decisions of his career that week, among them "not

vetoing a decision to use chemical agents, also known as tear gas,

against hundreds of nonviolent demonstrators."

He now sounds more like the WTO protesters whom his forces

tear-gassed: "We're now reaping what we have sown in the form

of unbridled globalization and unfettered free trade ... It's time

for all of us in this country, as we attempt to pull ourselves out

of this global economic meltdown, to really take a look at what

INTIODUCTIIN: GDING TD WIEIE TIE SILENCE II 11

issues of social and economic justice mean within the context of

globalization."

AN INDEPENDENT REPORTER'S RAP SHEET

As reporters, we shouldn't have to get a record for putting things

on the record. But here's my rap sheet for covering the news during

the last twenty years:

1998: Detained with Democracy Now! producer Jeremy Scahill

at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland while covering

nuns and priests from the pacifist Plowshares movement

who threw blood on a B-1 bomber used to bomb Iraq

in 1996. Several hundred thousand people had come to

the base for an air show. We were released many hours

later after being investigated by the judge advocate gen-

eral (JAG) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),

among other levels of law enforcement. Our tape was con-

fiscated but returned months later following legal action.

1999: Detained and deported by Indonesia twice while trying

to reach Indonesian-occupied East Timor to cover a UN

independence referendum.

2003: Arrested in front of the White House on International

Women's Day with writers Maxine Hong Kingston, Alice

Walker, Terry Tempest Williams, Honor Moore, and oth-

ers while covering their protest against the impending

Iraq War.

2008: Arrested at the Republican National Convention in Saint

Paul, Minnesota, when demanding that police release

14 IEMOCRACY NOWI

Democracy Now! producers from custody. They had been

filming antiwar protests.

2009: Detained by Canadian border guards while driving into

Canada to speak about press freedom at the Vancouver

Public Library and the University of Victoria.

Government crackdowns on journalists are a threat to democ-

racy.

A disturbing example of this is what happened at the 2008 Re-

publican National Convention, where police were systematically

targeting journalists. In Saint Paul, the press was free to report on

the official proceedings of the Republican National Convention

but it was much more difficult to report on the police violence

and mass arrests directed at those who had come to petition their

government: to protest.

The Republican National Convention began on Labor Day.

The Democrats had held their convention the week before, in

Denver. Protests against war took place all week there, as Barack

Obama prepared to accept his party's nomination. On the first day

of the Republican National Convention, an even larger antiwar

march took place. Ten thousand people joined in the march in

Saint Paul, including local families, students, veterans, and con-

cerned citizens from around the country. The protesters greatly

outnumbered the Republican delegates.

There was a festive feeling as people gathered under a blue

sky. Later in the day, after the march, as the crowd dispersed, the

police-clad in full body armor, with helmets, face shields, batons,

and canisters of pepper spray-charged. They forced marchers,

onlookers, and working journalists into a nearby parking lot, and

then surrounded the people and began handcuffing them.

Democracy Now! producer Nicole Salazar was videotaping.

INTIIHCTIIN: HINS TD WIEIE TIE SILENCE IS 15

Her tape of her own violent arrest is chilling. Police in riot gear

charge her, yelling, "Get down on your face!" You hear her voice,

clearly and repeatedly announcing "Press! Press! Where are we

supposed to go?" She was trapped between parked cars. Suddenly

she was hit from the front and behind. The camera dropped to the

pavement amid Nicole's shouts of pain and shock. Her face was

smashed into the pavement, and she was bleeding from her nose

as an officer rammed a boot or knee into her back. Another officer

was pulling on her leg. The police threw Democracy Now! senior

producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous up against the wall and kicked

him in the chest, and he was bleeding from his arm.

I was at the convention, interviewing delegates on the floor of

the Xcel Energy Center when senior producer Mike Burke called

my cell phone. He said that police had beaten and arrested Sharif

and Nicole. Filmmaker Richard Rowley of Big Noise Films and

I raced on foot to the scene. Out of breath, we arrived at the park-

ing lot. I went up to the line of riot police and asked to speak

to a commanding officer, saying that they had arrested accredited

journalists.

Having just come from the convention floor, I had, in full

view around my neck, my credentials that allow me to interview

presidents, vice presidents, Congress members, and others. Within

seconds, the riot police grabbed me, pulled me behind the police

line, pushed me onto a car, forcibly twisted my arms behind my

back, and handcuffed me, forcing me up against a wall and then

onto the ground. The rigid plastic cuffs dug into my wrists. I saw

Sharif across the parking lot. I demanded that the police take me to

him. Standing next to each other in handcuffs, we kept repeating

that we were journalists, whereupon a Secret Service agent came

over and ripped our credentials from our necks. I was taken to the

Saint Paul police garage, where cages were set up for protesters.

18 DEMICRACY NIWI

Nicole and Sharif were taken to jail, facing felony riot charges.

I was charged with obstruction of a peace officer.

If only there was a peace officer in the vicinity.

There was an outcry as news spread of our arrest. Thousands

of phone calls, emails, faxes, and tweets were directed at city of-

ficials, demanding our release. I was let go after a number of hours.

Sharif's and Nicole's release took longer, but they did get out. I

returned to the convention center, where I was ushered to the NBC

skybox, to be interviewed about my arrest. Afterward, an NBC

reporter came up to me and asked, "Why wasn't I arrested?"

I said, "Oh, were you out covering the protesters too?"

"No," he replied.

"I don't get arrested in the skyboxes either," I said.

Journalists have a special job. We have to cover the conven-

tion floor to question the delegates and politicians. We have to

get into the corporate suites to see who is paying for the conven-

tions. And we have to get out on the streets where the uninvited

guests are-sometimes thousands of them. These protesters have

something important to say as well. Democracy is a messy thing.

And it's our job to capture it all. During the week of the 2008 Re-

publican National Convention, more than forty journalists were

arrested.

At these conventions, dissent is threatened by a massive array

of paramilitarized police, operating under the US Secret Service,

granted jurisdiction over the "National Special Security Events"

that the conventions have been dubbed. Corporations pay millions

to the host committees, earning exclusive access to lawmakers and

candidates. The host committees in turn indemnify the city, which

means that police can operate with impunity, all but guaranteeing

injuries, unlawful arrests, and expensive civil litigation for years to

IIITIIIICTIIII: CIIIIC Tl WIEBE TIE IILEIICE II 17

come. More than just a campaign-finance loophole that must be

closed, this is a national disgrace.

We brought a lawsuit against the Saint Paul and Minneapolis

police departments and the Secret Service. The lawsuit took sev-

eral years, but we ultimately won a $100,000 settlement, and an

agreement that officers would receive training in First Amendment

rights of the media and the public.

Throughout the convention week of 2008, one of the twenty-

five original typeset copies of the Declaration of Independence was

on display at Saint Paul City Hall-not far from where crowds

were pepper-sprayed, clubbed, tear-gassed, and attacked by police

with concussion grenades. As the clouds cleared, it is instructive to

remember the words of one of the Declaration's signers, Benjamin

Franklin:

"Those who would give up essential liberty to obtain a little

temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

8/11

By chance, Democracy Now! was slated to begin a daily televi-

sion broadcast the week of September 11, 2001. It would air on

the public access station Manhattan Neighborhood Network. We

were operating from Downtown Community Television Center

in a converted hundred-year-old firehouse, the closest national

broadcast to what would become Ground Zero. Our small studio

was in the garret. Yes, we did slide down the brass fire pole when

in a hurry, but that is another story.

September 11, 2001, was mayoral primary day in New York.

At that time, we broadcast live at 9:00 a.m. EST. (We now air at

18 DEMOCRACY NDWI

8:00 a.m.) The first plane hit the World Trade Center at 8:47 a.m.,

the second at 9:03 a.m. We were preparing our show and didn't

know what had happened.

We were doing a special segment that day on the connection

between terror and September 11-that is, September 11, 1973. In

Chile, this was the day that democratically elected Chilean Presi-

dent Salvador Allende died in the palace as the forces of General

Augusto Pinochet-sadly, the US-backed, ITT-backed Pinochet

forces-seized power and ruled that country for seventeen years,

killing thousands of Chileans and other Latin Americans.

No, this wasn't the first time that September 11 was connected

to terror. Consider Guatemala, where anthropologist Myrna Mack,

a vocal critic of the government, died at the hands of Guatemalan

security forces on September 11, 1990-US-backed Guatemalan

forces.

Then there was September 11, 1977. Steve Biko, founder of

the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, was beaten

severely in the back of a van by pro-apartheid forces-US-backed

pro-apartheid forces. He died early the next morning.

And there's September 11, 1971, in Attica, New York. From

September 9 to 13, prisoners rose up to protest conditions at the

Attica State Correctional Facility. New York Governor Nelson

Rockefeller called out a thousand state troopers and members of

the National Guard on September 13. Under a cloud of tear gas,

they stormed the prison and opened fire, killing forty-three men-

prisoners and guards-and injuring hundreds more.

There's also September 11, 1988, in Haiti. On that date, at

least thirteen people were murdered when the St. Jean Bosco

church was attacked and burned by a group of former secret po-

lice while the charismatic priest named Jean-Bertrand Aristide was

INTIIIICTIIN: HINC Tl WIEIE TIE SILENCE II 11

preaching. Aristide would soon be elected president. On the fifth

anniversary of the massacre, September 11, 1993, in the midst of

the US-backed coup that had ousted Aristide, Haitian businessman

Antoine Izmery, an Aristide ally, led a memorial procession and

was assassinated.

But September 11, 2001, is a date no one will ever forget. Al-

most three thousand people were incinerated in an instant. We'll

never actually know how many people died that day, as those who

go uncounted in life go uncounted in death: the homeless around

the World Trade Center, and the undocumented workers who may

have been there that day.

We stayed in the firehouse for four days. We were located in-

side the evacuation zone and feared that if we left, we would not

be allowed back in. And we knew we needed to keep broadcasting.

We saw people interviewed on other TV networks calling for re-

venge. But we saw very quickly that was not the general sentiment

of people on the ground.

Photographs were pasted on every lamppost and every park

bench with messages that read, "Have you seen my wife, last

seen near Tower One?" "Have you seen my son, last seen in

Tower Two?"

Those images connected us with people all over the world who

suffer from terror-such as the mothers who walked the Plaza de

Mayo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, bearing photos of their children

who vanished during that country's US-backed "dirty war" in the

1970s and 1980s. "Mothers of the disappeared," they are called.

The women's signs read, "Have you seen my son? Have you seen

my granddaughter?"

September 11 united Americans with people around the world

who have been victims of terror. Sadly, all too often, if those

I

:

I

I

I

20 DEMOCRACY NDWI

civilians were killed or bombed or tortured by a US ally, or by the

US itself, the media coverage is often qualified. From Iraq, to Haiti,

to Syria, to Yemen, to Afghanistan, if the media even reports on the

atrocities, excuses are made: "It's more complicated than that ... "

"Collateral damage is part of war ... " And so on.

But in the case of 9/11, there was a collective revulsion at the

mass killing, as there should have been. The model of media cover-

age was to find the families who had lost loved ones, tell us their

stories, give us their names. Those are the details that dignify a life;

that's what makes us feel the loss. The portraits of grief, the profiles

of children left without a parent, the deeds of unsung heroes-this

kind of reporting should be the model for how all atrocities are

covered. Whether it's a US bombing of a Doctors Without Borders

hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, or the stories of millions of refu-

gees fleeing their homes in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya, when

people learn of others' pain, they are moved to act.

HOPE AND MOVEMENTS

What gives me hope? It's the movements.

Movements often start with a courageous act of resistance.

These are not isolated acts. They are inspired by past movements.

And they inspire future ones.

Take Jonathan Butler, an African American graduate student

at the University of Missouri, also known as Mizzou. In the fall of

2015, African American students at the university staged weeks of

demonstrations against what they called a lax response to racism.

Then Butler decided to put his body, and perhaps his life, on the

line: he launched a hunger strike that he said would end only with

the resignation of University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe.

INTHHCTION: GOING TO WIIERE THE SILENCE II

Butler laid out the grievances of African American students in

a letter that he issued at the start of his hunger strike: "In the past

90 days alone we have seen the MSA (Missouri Students Associa-

tion) President Payton Head being called the n-word on campus,

graduate students being robbed of their health insurance, Planned

Parenthood services being stripped from campus, #Concerned

Student1950 peaceful demonstrators being threatened with pep-

per spray, and a matter of days ago a vile and disgusting act of

hatred where a MU student drew a swastika in the Gateway resi-

dential hall with their own feces."

Butler was inspired and empowered by the Black Lives Mat-

ter movement and the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014,

following the police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Af-

rican American teenager. (See chapter 8, "When the Killer Wears

a Badge.") Butler was among a group of Mizzou students who

drove two hours back and forth to Ferguson to join the protests.

He had never seen African Americans engage in mass protest in

this way. "It was monumental in terms of how it influenced me,"

Butler said. The Mizzou protests, he explained, were part of "the

post-Ferguson effect."

Mizzou students set up a campus encampment in support of

Butler's action. They dubbed themselves Concerned Student 1950,

a reference to the year that the school's first black student enrolled.

The administration also faced opposition from graduate students

who fought to win back their health coverage and activists who

denounced a move to sever ties with Planned Parenthood under

Republican pressure.

Then some powerful allies joined the fight. On November 7,

2015, a number of African American University of Missouri foot-

ball players tweeted a photo of thirty African American team mem-

bers linking arms alongside the statement "The athletes of color

DEMOCRACY NOW!

on the University of Missouri football team truly believe 'Injustice

Anywhere is a threat to Justice Everywhere.' "They were quoting

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The Mizzou football players announced they would no longer

take part in any football activities until President Wolfe resigned or

was removed "due to his negligence toward marginalized students'

experience." White players, the coach, and the athletic department

quickly came out in support of the team.

The Mizzou football team is the center of power at the univer-

sity. College football is a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Mizzou-

which was cutting health care for graduate students as it invested

$72 million in a new football stadium-stood to lose $1 million

for every football game it forfeited, and the next game was days

away. The football coach is paid $4 million per year-nearly nine

times as much as the college president.

As sports commentator Dave Zirin observed on Democracy

Now!, African American students comprise about 7 percent of the

student body but almost 70 pe.rcent of the football team-these

players, thus, "are at the fulcrum of the political, economic, social,

and psychological life of campus, but none of those billion-dollar

gears move at all if they choose not to play."

The pressure on President Wolfe snowballed. The following

day, members of a "Concerned Faculty" group at the University

of Missouri voted to stage a walkout, and the Missouri Students

Association, representing twenty-seven thousand undergraduates,

called on Wolfe to resign.

On November 9, 2015, the president announced that he was

resigning, along with the chancellor of the campus in Columbia,

Missouri, R. Bowen Loftin. Michael Middleton, an African Ameri-

can civil rights attorney and former vice chancellor of the univer-

sity, was named interim president.

lffllllCTIIN: CIINC Tl nw TIE SILENCE II

Concerned Student 1950 continued its activism, calling in a

statement for "detailed plans to address issues such as minority

student enrollment; faculty, staff and administration recruitment;

and health resources for students."

Jonathan Butler ended his hunger strike when Wolfe resigned.

He insisted that what brought about change "was not me alone. It

was these people that I'm standing here on the stage with. It was

the black community. It was the black faculty. It was the other fac-

ulty. It was the Forum on Graduate Rights. It was the people with

Planned Parenthood. It was everybody who chose to stand up in

this time who made this possible."

The uprising at the University of Missouri ignited Yale Univer-

sity, which held a march in solidarity with the Mizzou students.

Yale students also raised questions about systemic racism on their

own campus, which led Smith College to protest, then Colum-

bia, Princeton, Stanford, and Ithaca College, among many others.

#BlacksOnCampus was trending everywhere. In January 2016, the

Ithaca College president, Tom Rochon, resigned as well.

"WE CANNOT REWRITE HISTORY, BUT WE CAN RIGHT HISTORY"

More than fifty years have passed since Bloody Sunday, that semi-

nal event in US civil rights history when African Americans and

their allies attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala-

bama, demanding the right to vote. The date was March 7, 1965.

As soon as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, they

were violently attacked by the Alabama State Police, beaten with

nightsticks and electric cattle prods, set upon by police dogs, and

tear-gassed. They were chased off the bridge, all the way back

t4 IEMICUCY NIWI

to Selma's Brown Chapel AME Church, where the march began.

News and images of the extreme and unprovoked police violence,

in contrast to the conduct of the six hundred marchers, who prac-

ticed disciplined nonviolence, spread across the globe. Within

months, President Lyndon Johnson would sign the 1965 Voting

Rights Act, responding to the public outrage and the pressure ap-

plied by a skillfully organized mass movement.

In March 2015, the Democracy Now! team went to Selma to

cover Bloody Sunday's fiftieth anniversary. Over a hundred thou-

sand people came to Selma for the occasion. They came to march

across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Pettus was a US senator from

Alabama. But he was also the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan,

and a Confederate general who was captured three times and es-

caped.

On March 21, 1915, a motion picture was screened for the

first time inside the White House. President Woodrow Wilson sat

down to watch D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. The silent

film, considered one of the most nakedly racist of all time, falsifies

the history of post-Civil War Reconstruction, depicting African

Americans freed from slavery as dominant, violent, and oppressive

toward Southern whites.

President Wilson said of the film, "It's like writing history with

lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true." The film

would serve as a powerful recruiting tool for the Ku Klux Klan.

One hundred years later, in January 2015, another film was

screened at the White House, this time at the invitation of the first

African American president. The film was Selma. Director Ava

DuVernay watched it with the first couple. She told me, "It was

beautiful to be in the White House in 2015 with a film like Selma,

knowing that in 1915, the first film to ever unspool at the White

House was The Birth of a Nation."

INTHDHCTION: GOING TO WHEIE TIE SILENCE IS

Selma highlights the story of Dr. Martin Luther King and a

young John Lewis, then the twenty-five-year-old leader of the Stu-

dent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and one of the march

organizers in 1965. Lewis would go on to be a longstanding mem-

ber of Congress. On that Bloody Sunday in 1965, after Lewis told

the Alabama troopers that the six hundred marchers were going to

stop and pray, the state troopers didn't hesitate: they assaulted the

protesters with full force. They fractured Lewis's skull.

Du Vernay put the march into historical context. "Selma is a

story of justice and dignity. It's about these everyday people. That's

what I loved about it. It was about the power of the people," she

told me. The story is also about Dr. King, who played a central

role in organizing the marches after Bloody Sunday. He wasn't

there in that initial march when Lewis was beaten down with so

many others. But King led a second march two days later, and

ultimately led the march that ended in a rally of 25,000 people

on the steps of the State Capitol in Montgomery on March 25,

1965. It was there that King delivered his famous "How Long,

Not Long" speech.

Du Vernay told me, "There's been no major motion picture re-

leased by a studio-no independent motion picture in theaters with

King at the center in the fifty years since these events happened-

when we have biopics on all kinds of ridiculous people. Nothing

on King? No cinematic representation that's meaningful and cen-

tered. It was just something I couldn't pass up."

Selma gained national attention. All over the country, students

in middle schools and high schools could watch the movie for free.

I think that inspired what happened on March 7, 2015, when so

many people of all ages and races came out to reenact the crossing

of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

But when it came time for the Oscars in 2015, Ava DuVernay

2B DEMOCRACY NOWI

was not nominated for best director, prompting a furor on social

media under the Twitter hash tag #OscarsSoWhite. The follow-

ing year, outrage mounted when the nominations were announced

for the 2016 Academy Awards. Not one African American was

nominated in any of the lead categories, which include best actors,

best supporting actors, best picture, and best director. A 2012 sur-

vey conducted by the Los Angeles Times found that Oscar voters

are 94 percent white and 76 percent male, with an average age

of sixty-three. In response to the national outcry, Cheryl Boone

Isaacs, the first African American president of the Academy of

Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, announced that the Academy

would double the number of women and members of color by

2020.

As for Selma, some critics called Ava DuVernay's portrayal

of President Lyndon Johnson unfair-saying he'd led the voting

rights movement, and yet she had shown him as a reluctant sup-

porter of voting rights.

DuVernay responded, "I'm not here to rehabilitate anyone's

image or be a custodian of anyone's legacy. We have to work with-

out permission, especially as women in the industry. Who are we

asking for permission to do what we want to do? That should be

eradicated. You need to set a path and start walking."

Around the time that I interviewed Ava DuVernay at the an-

nual Sundance Film Festival in Utah, another real-life modern

drama was unfolding in South Carolina. It concerned a group

of civil rights activists called the Friendship Nine. In 1961 these

young African American men sat at a whites-only lunch counter

in Rock Hill, South Carolina. They were arrested and sentenced to

thirty days hard labor in a county prison camp.

In January 2015, the chief administrative judge for South

INTRODUCTION: HING TD WHERE THE SILENCE IS t7

Carolina's Sixteenth Judicial Circuit, John C. Hayes III, over-

turned their convictions. The judge addressed the activists, now

elderly men, saying, "We cannot rewrite history, but we can right

history."

Judge Hayes closed a circle: he is the nephew of the judge

who'd sentenced the men fifty-four years earlier.

A few weeks after the Friendship Nine were convicted in

1961, South Carolina hoisted a Confederate battle flag over its

statehouse. The flag would fly over the capitol or on its grounds

for fifty-four years. It would take another nine people, known as

the Beautiful Nine, victims of a horrific crime, to force the flag

down forever. These were the eight African American parishio-

ners and their pastor, Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who were

murdered by a white supremacist in the historic Mother Emanuel

AME Church in Charleston. (See chapter 9, "'This Flag Comes

Down Today.'")

I went back and looked at the front page of the New York

Times on March 8, 1965, the day after Bloody Sunday. Next to

the top headline, "Alabama Police Use Gas and Clubs to Rout Ne-

groes" and a photo of John Lewis and others being beaten by state

troopers, captioned "Crushing Voter Demonstration," was another

headline about the first US Marines sent to Vietnam.

John Lewis eloquently linked racism at home and militarism

abroad when he declared, "President Johnson sent soldiers to Viet-

nam, but he can't send federal troops to protect us in his own

country, in Selma."

From the civil rights movement of half a century ago, to com-

munities confronting police brutality today under the banner of

Black Lives Matter, from the antiwar movement of the Vietnam

War years to the peace movement today, broad movements are

H IEMICUCY NIWI

making valuable linkages across issues, demanding change. This is

ultimately the hope.

How to capture the remarkable journey of the first two decades of

Democracy Now!?

That was the challenge in writing this book. I found the an-

swer by going back to our original mission: go to where the silence

is and give voice to the movements that are shaping our world.

That mission was eloquently captured by my colleague Juan

Gonzalez when he was inducted into the New York Journalism

Hall of Fame in November 2015, the first Latino journalist to re-

ceive the honor. Juan said of his quarter-century as a columnist:

I figured my modest contribution would be ... not writing about

outcast neighborhoods, but from them. Not simply to entertain

but to change. Not after the fact, but before it, when coverage

could still make a difference .

. . . I have tried to use as many of my columns as possible

to probe the injustices visited upon the powerless. Yes, the rich

and famous are also victims on occasion. But they have so many

politicians, lobbyists, lawyers, gossip columnists and even edito-

rial writers ready to jump to their defense that they'll always do

fine without my help.

I prefer the desperate unknown reader who comes to me be-

cause he or she has gone everywhere else and no one will listen.

More often than not I come across unexpected gems, human be-

ings whose tragedies illuminate the landscape and whose cour-

age hopefully inspires the reader to believe that there is indeed

some greater good served by a free press than just chronicling

or influencing the ouster of one group of politicians by another.

IIITUIICTIIII: HIIIC Tl WIElf DE IILEIICE II H

This book celebrates some of the people and movements who

have been making history during our first twenty years. This is

not an exhaustive history, nor is it intended as a "greatest hits"

of Democracy Now! This book is just our way of giving back by

celebrating some of the ordinary heroes who have done extraordi-

nary things to make the world a better place.

CHAPTER 2

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the US government embarked

on war abroad and mass surveillance at home. In this national

security state, torture, spying, and the killing of innocent civilians

became normalized. These abuses would have continued unknown

and unchecked were it not for the courageous whistleblowers who

unmasked what was taking place in America's name. This is the

story of the modern-day patriots who are defending democracy, at

great personal cost.

Tucked away on a side street in one of London's toniest neigh-

borhoods, just across the street from the sprawling department

store Harrods, sits a Victorian-style brick apartment building. A

white oval plaque indicates that the building is home to the Em-

bassy of Ecuador. As my Democracy Now! colleagues and I ap-

proach the building, we see the ever-present police outside. Soon

71 DEMICRACY NIWI

after walking into the embassy, British police officers in the foyer

speak to embassy security, saying they want to see our identifica-

tion. Under the Vienna Convention, authorities of the host nation

may not enter a foreign embassy or question its staff, who enjoy

diplomatic immunity.

We choose to ignore the request.

The police want to know who has come to speak with one of

the world's most famous whistleblowers, Julian Assange. The Aus-

tralian internet activist founded WikiLeaks in 2007 and remains its

editor. WikiLeaks is an independent nonprofit media organization

that publishes leaked information-often secret, and often from

government sources. The group says its goal "is to bring important

news and information to the public ... One of our most important

activities is to publish original source material alongside our news

stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth."

To the US government, though, revealing information without

permission can be tantamount to terrorism.

In April 2010 WikiLeaks released a US military video that it

named Collateral Murder. The video, taken from an American

helicopter gunship flying over Baghdad, captures graphically the

killing of at least a dozen Iraqi civilians. Then, in July, WikiLeaks

released the Afghan War Logs: more than ninety thousand secret

US military communications that laid out the official record of the

violent invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the scale of civil-

ian deaths, and likely war crimes. In October the site released more

than 390,000 similar military records from the Iraq War.

The magnitude and pace of the leaks brought unprecedented

global attention to WikiLeaks. As its public face, Julian Assange

became, almost overnight, a primary target of the Obama adminis-

tration and a number of other governments around the world, and

the subject of the wrath of a broad swath of the US establishment.

THE WHllnEILOWEH n

In the midst of this, in mid-August 2010, Assange was invited

to Sweden to give several talks about WikiLeaks. There, he ad-

mits, he had sex with two women on separate occasions. Based

on analysis of police reports that followed, which are redacted, at

least one of the two women later tried to contact Assange, wanting

him to get tested, for assurance that he did not give her a sexually

transmitted disease. Unable to reach Assange, they both went to

the police for help. Duty Prosecutor Maria Haljebo Kjellstrand

received the report and issued an arrest warrant for Assange, for

questioning involving suspicion of rape, unlawful coercion, and

sexual molestation.

The circumstances of the case are clouded in controversy. As-

sange's lawyers were subsequently allowed to see, but not make

copies of, text messages that one of the women sent from the po-

lice station. One message, as written down by the lawyers after

being shown it, read "[I] did not want to put any charges on JA

but ... the police were keen on getting a grip on him." Another

message, sent hours later after charges had initially been filed, read

(as related by the lawyers), "chocked [sic] when they arrested JA

because [I] only wanted him to take a test." Assange's lawyers have

attempted to obtain the entire text message archive taken by the

police, but have been denied by the Swedish authorities for years.

The next day, Chief Public Prosecutor Eva Finne reviewed the

cases and decided quickly to cancel the arrest order, saying in a

press release, "I consider that there is no reason to suspect that

he has committed rape." On suspicion of sexual molestation and

coercion, however, the investigation continued, and Assange was

questioned by police on August 30.

Two days later, on September 1, another prosecutor, Marianne

Ny, got involved and resurrected the case. Through his lawyer, As-

sange made himself available for questioning for four weeks, to

78 DEMOCRACY NDWI

no avail. He then asked for and was granted permission to leave

Sweden in order to give a talk in Berlin. The day he left, Prosecutor

Ny issued an arrest warrant for him. Assange returned to London,

which prompted Ny to issue a European Arrest Warrant, or EAW.

According to journalist John Pilger, EAWs are "a draconian prod-

uct of the 'war on terror' supposedly designed to catch terrorists

and organized criminals. The EAW had abolished the obligation on

a petitioning state to provide any evidence of a crime. More than a

thousand EAWs are issued each month; only a few have anything

to do with potential 'terror' charges ... Many of those extradited

face months in prison without charge. There have been a number

of shocking miscarriages of justice, of which British judges have

been highly critical." 1

Ny sought Assange's extradition to Sweden for questioning,

even though there were never any formal charges made against

him. Assange offered to meet the Swedish authorities in their

embassy in London, or in Scotland Yard, but was refused. Even

though he had not been charged with any crime, he was placed

under house arrest in England from 2010 to 2012 as he contested

the warrant. He had to wear an electronic ankle shackle so that his

whereabouts could be monitored constantly, and he was under a

nightly curfew.

It was in the middle of this period, on the weekend of July 4,

2011, that I flew to London to interview Assange at a public event

hosted by the Frontline Club, a war correspondents' organization

there. Two venues had agreed previously to host the event, only to

cancel abruptly. Exceeding all expectations, and after days of rain,

more than two thousand people streamed into East London's his-

toric Roxy Theatre on a sunny Saturday afternoon to hear Assange

speak. The event had a firm end time, though, as he had to race to

THE WHISnEBLOWERS 78

catch the last train in order to report to the police and return to

the home of the Frontline Club's founder, Vaughan Smith, where

he was confined for curfew each night.

On May 30, 2012, the UK Supreme Court ruled against As-

sange's attempt to have the EAW invalidated and upheld his extra-

dition to Sweden.2 Despite the fact that he had one further ground

for appeal, the wheels were in motion to extradite him. The terms

of the EAW treaty required that he be extradited within ten days.

Then, four days later, in a highly unusual move, US Secretary of

State Hillary Clinton visited Sweden to meet with the foreign min-

ister and minister of defense. It was the first visit to Sweden by a

US secretary of state in thirty-six years. 3 The publicly stated reason

for her visit, ironically, was to discuss "internet freedom," but the

timing, so close to Assange's potential return there as a prisoner,

was susp1c10us.

In early 2012 WikiLeaks began posting documents from an-

other massive leak. These were emails from a private intelligence

firm called Stratfor. Someone had leaked more than five million

Stratfor emails to WikiLeaks. One of them contained the first proof

that the United States was developing a case against Assange. The

firm's vice president for intelligence, Fred Burton, wrote in a Janu-

ary 26, 2011, email: "Not for Pub-We have a sealed indictment

on Assange. Pls protect." If an indictment had been issued in secret,

then Assange could have found himself in US custody shortly after

landing in Sweden. He feared he would be charged with espionage,

especially since the Obama administration had already invoked

the espionage law against whistleblowers more times than all pre-

vious US administrations combined.

On June 19, 2012, two weeks after Clinton's visit to Sweden,

Assange, believing that the United States was intent on putting

BO DEMOCRACY NOWI

him behind bars, fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He

appealed to that country's government for political asylum, which

it granted. He has been there ever since, a prisoner inside the em-

bassy, denied even the hour of time outside that most prisoners

are guaranteed. If he so much as steps outside the embassy's front

door, he will be arrested.

"Julian would have gone to Sweden a long time ago had he

gotten a guarantee from Sweden that they will not forward him

to the United States for standing trial on the espionage charges,"

said Assange's attorney, Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the

Center for Constitutional Rights. Ratner explained: "Sweden has

never been willing to give that guarantee. And Sweden has a very

bad reputation of complying with US demands, whether it was

sending some people from Sweden to Egypt for torture or whether

it's guaranteeing people who are asylees in Sweden that they won't

be deported."

Assange has other reasons to fear for his safety if he is sent to

the United States. So many public figures have called for Assange's

assassination that a website was created to catalog the threats.

Former Arkansas governor, perennial presidential candidate, and

former Fox News commentator Mike Huckabee said, "Anything

less than execution is too kind a penalty."

Prominent conservative political commentator Bill Kristal said,

"Why can't we use our various assets to harass, snatch, or neutral-

ize Julian Assange and his collaborators, wherever they are?"

Assange told me, "The US case against WikiLeaks is widely

believed to be the largest-ever investigation into a publisher. It is

extraterritorial. It's setting new precedents about the ability of the

US government to reach out to any media publisher in Europe

or the rest of the world, and try and achieve a prosecution. They

say the offenses are conspiracy, conspiracy to commit espionage,

TIE WHIITLEBLIWERI 11

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, computer hacking, conversion,

stealing government documents." The espionage charges, if they

materialize, could carry the death penalty.

In May 2015 the Swedish Supreme Court, in a 4-to-1 vote,

declined to quash the arrest warrant lodged against him in late

2010. Justice Svante Johansson, dissenting, wrote that Assange's

de facto detention, with both house arrest and his asylum in the

embassy, was "in violation of the principle of proportionality."

There is no technical or legal reason why prosecutors cannot

question Assange while he is in the Ecuadorian Embassy, either in

person or via video. Yet Marianne Ny has proven intransigent-to

the point that the statute of limitations for the coercion and mo-

lestation accusations expired in August 2015. The rape accusation

still stands, though, and won't expire until 2020.

"WE HAVE NO RIGHTS"

Sitting across from me in the conference room of the small em-

bassy that has served as his home, refuge, and jail for over three

years, Assange described the Kafkaesque netherworld he inhabits:

"We have no rights as a defendant because the formal trial hasn't

started yet. No charges, no trial, no ability to defend yourself ...

[You] don't even have the right to documents, because you're not

even a defendant."

Despite Assange's failure to have his Swedish arrest warrants

quashed, the Svea Court of Appeals, one of Sweden's highest courts,

admonished Marianne Ny for declining to question Assange in the

Ecuadorian Embassy. The court noted that "the investigation into

the suspected crimes has come to a halt and considers that the fail-

ure of the prosecutors to examine alternative avenues is not in line

Bt DEMOCRACY NDWI

with their obligation-in the interests of everyone concerned-to

move the preliminary investigation forward."

Western governments have failed so far to prosecute Julian

Assange in court, but they continue to persecute him. In October

2015 the British government refused Ecuador's request to grant

him "safe passage" out of the Ecuadorian Embassy so that he

could go to a hospital for an MRI. Assange's doctor said that he

has constant, severe shoulder pain that requires a Magnetic Reso-

nance Imaging scan to diagnose. Assange's lawyer Carey Shenk-

man said, "By claiming that Mr. Assange must give up his asylum

in order to receive medical treatment, the UK government is forc-

ing him to choose between the human right to asylum and the

human right to medical treatment. No one should ever have to

face that choice."

This is not the first time that Assange was denied medical care

as a result of being trapped in the embassy. The Italian magazine

L'Espresso obtained a tranche of emails from the Swedish govern-

ment as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

In one exchange, Paul Close, an attorney with the UK's Crown

Prosecution Service, wrote to Marianne Ny, "By chance I heard

the BBC World Service radio report earlier this morning about his

health ... There is no question of him being allowed out of the Ec-

uadorian Embassy, treated and then allowed to go back. He would

be arrested as soon as was appropriate."

When I interviewedJulianAssange in May 2015,1 was shocked

by how his condition had deteriorated in the year since I had seen

him last. His skin was pale from years without sunlight, match-

ing his prematurely white hair, which was long and tied back. But

Assange's resolve remains unbroken, and the leaks he originally

sought to publish when he founded WikiLeaks in 2007 are still

reaching the light of day.

TIE WIIITLEILIWEH II

COLLATERAL MURDER

The Collateral Murder video-the first of the prominent US mili-

tary leaks that WikiLeaks released in 2010-was part of a massive

transfer of classified information allegedly provided by an Ameri-

can soldier serving in Iraq. That soldier was known at the time as

Bradley Manning. Private Manning was ultimately arrested and

tried in a court martial proceeding and was convicted. Immedi-

ately after the verdict was announced, Manning stated publicly

that she had begun a transgender transition, and changed her

name to Chelsea Manning.

I say that the information was "allegedly provided" because

after being arrested, Manning was held in harsh solitary confine-

ment at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia for close

to a year. Thus, any confession that Manning might have given

while at the marine base was made under what amounts to tor-

ture and should be viewed as coerced. Manning's confinement that

prompted an investigation by Juan Mendez, the UN Special Rap-

porteur on Torture. Mendez concluded, "I believe Bradley Man-

ning was subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment

in the excessive and prolonged isolation he was put in during the

eight months he was in Quantico."

The original video was recorded on July 12, 2007, by a US

Apache helicopter gunship flying over New Baghdad, an area of

Baghdad, and includes audio of the helicopter's radio transmissions.

The stark, grainy black-and-white video shows a group of men in

an open square in Baghdad leading two Reuters employees, to show

them an area that had been recently bombed. The Reuters staffers,

photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, are

shown, each carrying a camera with a telephoto lens. A US soldier in

84 DEMOCRACY NOWI

the helicopter says: "Okay, we got a target fifteen coming at you. It's

a guy with a weapon." There is much back-and-forth between two

helicopters and ground troops in armored vehicles nearby:

"HAVE FIVE TO SIX INDIVIDUALS WITH AK-47S. REQUEST PERMISSION TO

ENGAGE."

"ROGER THAT. UH, WE HAVE NO PERSONNEL EAST OF OUR POSITION. SO,

UH, YOU ARE FREE TO ENGAGE. OVER."

The helicopter circles around, with the crosshairs squarely in the

center of the group of about eight men. WikiLeaks and its partner

for this story, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, added

subtitles to the video, as well as arrows indicating the Reuters em-

ployees.

The helicopter opens fire with machine guns, killing most of

the men instantly. Noor-Eldeen runs away, and the crosshairs fol-

low him, shooting nonstop until he falls, dead.

The radio transmission continues: "All right, hahaha, I hit

'em ... " And then: "Yeah, we got one guy crawling around down

there."

Chmagh, seriously wounded, can be seen dragging himself

away from the other bodies. A voice in the helicopter, seeking a

rationale to shoot, says: "Come on, buddy. All you gotta do is pick

up a weapon ... If we see a weapon, we're gonna engage."

A van pulls up, and several men, clearly unarmed, come out

and lift Chmagh to carry him to medical care. The soldiers on

the Apache seek and receive permission to "engage" the van and

opened fire, tearing apart the front of the vehicle and killing the

men. The weapon used is a 30-millimeter machine gun, which can

pierce armor.

TIE WNISnEBLIWEH 15

With everyone in sight apparently dead, US armored vehicles

move in. When a vehicle drives over Noor-Eldeen's corpse, an ob-

server in the helicopter says, laughing, "I think they just drove over

a body."

The troops discover two children in the van, who, miracu-

lously, have survived. One voice on the military radio requests per-

mission to evacuate them to a US military hospital. Another voice

commands them to hand over the wounded children to Iraqi police

for delivery to a local clinic, ensuring delayed and less-adequate

treatment.

One of the soldiers on the ground was Ethan McCord, who

rushed to the scene of the slaughter and helped save the two chil-

dren injured in the attack. He ran cradling a boy's bloody body in

an effort to get him to a hospital.

Today McCord suffers from PTSD; he has also attempted sui-

cide.

McCord told Democracy Now! that he sought mental health

counseling after rescuing the wounded children. "I went to my

staff sergeant and asked to see mental health, so that I can talk

about my feelings. They told me I needed to suck it up and that

there would be repercussions if I was to go see mental health, and I

would be charged with malingering. And I was rather shocked that

just by me needing to speak to somebody about what was going on

and what I was feeling could constitute a crime in the army." Mc-

Cord is the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary about this

attack, Incident in New Baghdad. He received death threats for

speaking out against the Iraq War and he now champions soldiers

suffering from PTSD.

The radio transmissions show not only the utter callousness of

the soldiers, laughing and swearing as they kill, but also the strict

procedure they follow, ensuring that all of their attacks are clearly

II IEMICUCY NIWI

authorized by their chain of command. The leaked video is a grim

depiction of how routine the killing of civilians has become and is

a stark reminder of how necessary journalism is-and how dan-

gerous it is in practice.

After its two employees were killed, Reuters demanded a full

investigation. Noor-Eldeen, despite his youth at the age of twenty-

two, had been described by colleagues as one of the preeminent

war photographers in Iraq. Chmagh, forty, was a father of four.

The US military inquiry into the attack that killed these twelve

civilians cleared the soldiers of any wrongdoing. Reuters's requests

for the video under the Freedom of Information Act were repeat-

edly denied for years. Despite the Pentagon's whitewash, the attack

was brutal and might have involved a war crime, since the people

attempting to rescue Chmagh were protected under the Geneva

Conventions. WikiLeaks says it obtained the video "from a num-

ber of military whistleblowers."

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a marine vet-

eran who trained soldiers on the laws of war, told me: "Helicopter

gunners hunting down and shooting an unarmed man in civilian

clothes, clearly wounded ... that shooting was murder. It was a

war crime. Not all killing in war is murder, but a lot of it is. And

this was."

When WikiLeaks published the Iraq War Logs in October

2010, we learned of another attack by the same Apache helicopter

unit in February 2007, five months before the Collateral Murder

attack. There is no video of this earlier event, but evidence exists

in the form of a single report, one of close to a half million records

leaked from both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, dating between

2004 and 2010.

Here is an excerpt, which details the final moments of two

lives, as they flee a vehicle, attempt to surrender then run to a

THE WHISTLEBLDWERS 87

building, and are blown to pieces by the helicopter called Crazy-

horse 18. The acronym AIF is military jargon meaning "Anti-Iraq

Forces":

221233FEB07: CRAZYHORSE 18 REPORTS AIF GOT INTO A DUMP TRUCK

HEADED NORTH, ENGAGED AND THEN THEY CAME OUT WANTING TO

SURRENDER.

221239FEB07: CRAZYHORSE 18 CLEARED TO ENGAGE DUMP TRUCK. 1/227

LAWYER STATES THEY CAN NOT SURRENDER TO AIRCRAFT AND ARE

STILL VALID TARGETS.

221250FEB07: CRAZYHORSE 18 REPORTS THEY MISSED WITH HELLFIRE

AND INDIVIDUALS HAVE RAN INTO ANOTHER SHACK.

221303FEB07: IH6 APPROVES CRAZYHORSE 18 TO ENGAGE SHACK.

221303FEB07: CRAZYHORSE 18 REPORTS ENGAGED AND DESTROYED

SHACK WITH 2X AIF. BOA IS SHACK/ DUMP TRUCK DESTROYED.

Perhaps if the public had been able to read these logs earlier, then

maybe the killing would not be allowed to continue with impu-

nity. If that war crime-the killing of people with their hands in

the air, trying to surrender-had gotten the exposure immediately

after it happened, then perhaps the perpetrators would have been

brought up on charges, or at least investigated. With that increased

scrutiny, what happened five months later in New Baghdad might

never have happened, and Saeed Chmagh, Namir Noor-Eldeen,

and the ten other people with them might be alive today.

WikiLeaks released the War Logs along with three mainstream

media partners: the New York Times, the Guardian of Britain, and

88 DEMOCRACY NDWI

the German news magazine Der Spiegel. The reports were writ-

ten by soldiers on the ground immediately after military actions

and represent a true diary of the Afghan and Iraq wars from that

five-year period, detailing everything from the killing of civilians,

including children, to the growing strength of the insurgencies in

each country, to Pakistan's support of the Taliban.

After these documents were released, Assange told me, "Most

civilian casualties occur in instances where one, two, ten, or twenty

people are killed-they really numerically dominate the list of

events ... The way to really understand this war is by seeing that

there is one killed after another, every day, going on and on."

Assange described a massacre in an Afghan village, what he

called a "Polish My Lai," a reference to My Lai, a notorious 1968

massacre by US troops during the Vietnam War that was exposed

by journalist Seymour Hersh. On August 16, 2007, Polish troops

returned to an Afghan village where they had suffered an impro-

vised explosive device (IED) roadside bomb that morning. The

Poles launched mortars into the village, striking a house where

a wedding party was under way. Assange suspects that the Poles,

retaliating for the IED, committed a war crime, concealed in the

dry bureaucratic language in the report:

"Current Casualty list: 6x KIA (lx male, 4 female, one baby)

3x WIA (all female, one of which was 9 months pregnant)."

The tens of thousands of classified reports are dense with KIAs

(killed in action) and WIAs (wounded in action). The reports docu-

ment over sixty-six thousand civilian deaths in Iraq and thousands

more in Afghanistan. Prisoner abuse-including bruising, burns,

and frequently death-is often attributed to either Iraqi or Afghan

army units, but with no proof that the overseeing US authorities

took any real action. Other entries describe Task Force 373, a US

TIE WIIIIlEILIWEH II

Army assassination unit that allegedly captured or killed people

believed to be members of the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

Following the WikiLeaks revelations, the Obama adminis-

tration ran for cover. National Security Advisor General James

Jones condemned the disclosure of classified information, saying

it "could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and

threaten our national security." White House press secretary Rob-

ert Gibbs said, "There's no broad new revelations in this."

The disclosures in this historic leak were not a threat to the

lives of American soldiers, but to a policy that puts those lives

at risk. With public support waning, this massive leak of docu-

ments strengthened the call for an end to the wars in Iraq and

Afghanistan.

Assange told me, "We are transparency activists who under-

stand that transparent government tends to produce just govern-

ment. That is our modus operandi behind our whole organization:

to get out suppressed information into the public where the press

and the public and our nation's politics can work on it to produce

better outcomes."

A GLOBAL "APOLOGY TOUR"

In November 2010 WikiLeaks began a rolling release of more than

a quarter-million classified US State Department diplomatic cables,

dating from as far back as 1966 up to early 2010. This became

known as Cablegate. The contents of these cables, which included

details of how the United States was making deals with dictators,

proved highly embarrassing to the US government and sent shock

waves around the world.

II IEMICUCY IIIWI

One cable revealed how the United States had made a deal

with President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen to cover up the use of

US warplane and cruise missile attacks inside Yemen against al-

leged terrorist targets. "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours,

not yours," President Saleh told General David Petraeus in 2010. 4

Yemen's deputy prime minister, Rashad al-Alimi, joked at the

meeting that he had just "lied" by telling parliament that bombs

on supposed Al Qaeda targets in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa were

American made but deployed by Yemen.

The United States had good reason to want to cover up its at-

tacks in Yemen: they were killing innocent people. On December 17,

2009, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) launched a

cruise missile attack on the Yemeni village of al-Majalah. The Ye-

meni government initially took credit for the strike, saying that it

had targeted an Al Qaeda training camp. But it was later revealed

through WikiLeaks cables that it was in fact a US attack. Inves-

tigative journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy

Scahill reported extensively on this attack in his book and Oscar-

nominated film Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield.

Among the first to arrive at the scene of the bombing was Ye-

meni tribal leader Sheikh Saleh bin Fareed, at the time a member

of the Yemeni parliament. He went there to investigate who was

behind the bombing. He says the victims were Bedouin villagers,

not Al Qaeda members. Sheikh Fareed told Democracy Now!:

It was unbelievable ... They told us that they were training

fields, there were huge storage, stores for the ammunition and

arms. When we reached there, we found nobody at all except

those poor Bedouin people who live just across the road from

the main road. And, of course, we have to collect all the bodies

THE WHISTLEBLOWERI

and bury them in the village after that. And I challenge anybody

in the United States of America, especially the American govern-

ment, to prove that there was anybody from Al Qaeda at that site

at all, when they bombed it with about seven huge rockets from

the navy in the sea.

81

Sheikh Fareed said that this and other missile attacks in Yemen

"turned the people to be completely against the American govern-

ment. And they should really think twice about it, and they should

stop it."

In January 2011 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton embarked

on what she called an "apology tour" to Middle East leaders. Her

tour included a visit to Yemeni President Saleh, who would be

toppled the following year in the wave of prodemocracy protests

known as the Arab Spring.

Clinton told reporters, "I think I will be answering concerns

about WikiLeaks for the rest of my life, not just the rest of my

tenure as Secretary of State." 5

She joked, "I've told my team that I want to get one of those

really sharp-looking jackets that rock 'n' roll groups have on tours.

And I could have a big picture of the world, and it could say 'The

Apology Tour.' "

Clinton's apologies did not stop the flow of WikiLeaks expo-

ses. In 2011 a Cablegate release exposed details of an alleged 2006

massacre by US troops in the Iraqi town of Ishaqi, north of Bagh-

dad . Eleven people were killed, including a woman in her seventies

and a five-month-old infant. In the initial investigation, US mili-

tary spokesmen insisted that a member of Al Qaeda in Iraq "had

been seized from a first-floor room after a fierce fight that had left

the house he was hiding in a pile of rubble." 6

82 DEMOCRACY NDWI

But the confidential State Department cable released by

WikiLeaks told a different story: "Neighbors said the US troops

had approached the house at 2:30 a.m. and a firefight ensued. In

addition to exchanging gunfire with someone in the house, the

American troops were supported by helicopter gunships, which

fired on the house ... US forces entered the house while it was still

standing ... The American forces gathered the family members in

one room and executed 11 persons, including five children, four

women, and two men. Then they bombed the house, burned three

vehicles, and killed their animals." 7 Iraqi TV aired grisly footage

of the aftermath.

Citing attacks like these, the Iraqi government said it would

no longer grant immunity to US soldiers there. The Obama admin -

istration promptly ended negotiations with the Iraqi government

about keeping US troops in Iraq past a 2011 deadline.

The impact of the WikiLeaks disclosures has been far reaching.

Among the diplomatic cables released were those detailing US sup-

port for the corrupt Tunisian regime. The revelations helped fuel

the uprising there and sparked the Arab Spring.

Noting that Time magazine named "The Protester" as its 2011

Person of the Year, Daniel Ellsberg said that Chelsea Manning

should be the face of that protester, since the leaks for which she

was accused "sparked the uprising in Egypt ... which stimulated

Occupy Wall Street and the other occupations in the Middle East

and elsewhere. So, one of those 'persons of the year' is now sitting

in [jail]."

Manning is now serving thirty-five years in prison for her dis-

closures. In an opinion piece in the New York Times, she wrote,

"I believe that the current limits on press freedom and excessive

government secrecy make it impossible for Americans to grasp

fully what is happening in the wars we finance."

TIE WlllnEILIWEH 13

TRAITOR OR PATRIOT?

In January 2013 journalist and filmmaker Laura Poitras received

an email that turned into a five-month exchange with a whistle-

blower. One of the emails read in part,

Laura,

At this stage I can offer nothing more than my word. I am a senior

government employee in the intelligence community. I hope you

understand that contacting you is extremely high risk ... This will not be

a waste of your time.

The writer went on to explain technical procedures to encrypt

electronic communications, and continued:

In the end, if you publish the source material, I will likely be immediately

implicated. This must not deter you from releasing the information I will

provide.

Thank you, and be careful.

Citizen Four

Citizen Four was the code name that the whisdeblower chose.

Earlier, this person tried to communicate with journalist Glenn

Greenwald, who was then reporting for the Guardian. Green-

wald didn't respond, in part because he didn't know how to use

the encryption standards demanded by the whistleblower. Poi-

tras did, and later recruited Greenwald and Barton Gellman of

the Washington Post to help, given the great volume of material

14 IEMICUCY NIWI

the source promised. The Guardian assigned Ewen MacAskill to

help as well.

Poitras and Greenwald followed the source's instructions and

traveled to Hong Kong, where a face-to-face meeting was to take

place. The Washington Post considered the venture too risky and

refused to send Gellman. The duo met with their source for the

first time on June 3, 2013. The meeting, in a hotel, had all the ele-

ments of a cloak-and-dagger story. They were to look for a man

holding a Rubik's Cube. They were instructed to ask him when the

restaurant would open. He would tell them, but advise them that

the food was bad. After making contact, they went to his hotel

room. On camera, he identified himself: Edward Snowden.

Snowden was a twenty-nine-year-old former CIA staffer and

analyst for the private consulting furn Booz Allen Hamilton,

which does extensive defense and intelligence work. He proceeded

to provide the journalists with one of the most, if not the most,

significant leaks in US history, providing documentary evidence

that the US government, primarily the National Security Agency

(NSA), was conducting massive, unconstitutional, global surveil-

lance. Perhaps most controversially, the NSA was spying on all,

or almost all, US citizens. Snowden had collected the trove of files

over time, it appears, even applying for and obtaining specific jobs

and assignments that he knew would grant him access to more key

documents.

Snowden's historic leak revealed what he calls an "architecture

of oppression": a series of top-secret surveillance programs that

went far beyond what had been publicly known. The first was an

order from the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court request-

ing that a division of the phone company Verizon hand over "all

call detail records" for calls to or from the United States and loca-

tions abroad, or all calls within the United States, including local

TNE WlllnEBLDWEH 85

calls. Another document was a slide presentation revealing a pro-

gram dubbed Prism, which allegedly empowers NSA snoops access

to all the private data stored by internet giants such as Microsoft,

AOL, Skype, Google, Apple, and Facebook, including email, video

chats, photos, files transfers, and more.

Snowden also released Presidential Policy Directive 20-a top-

secret memo from President Barack Obama directing US intel-

ligence agencies to draw up a list of targets for American cyber

attacks. Then came proof of the existence of a program called

Boundless Informant, which creates a global "heat map" detailing

the source countries of the 97 billion intercepted electronic records

collected by the NSA in the month of March 2013. Among the top

targets were Iran, Pakistan, Egypt, and Jordan. The leaked map

color codes countries: red for "hot," and then yellow and green.

That month, the United States was yellow, providing the NSA with

close to 2.9 billion intercepts. A program called XKeyscore, ac-

cording to Snowden, allows the NSA and its partners around the

world, like the British spy agency Government Communications

Headquarters, or GCHQ, to conduct global searches of any indi-

vidual's internet activity. Glenn Greenwald and colleagues at the

news organization he helped found in 2013, the Intercept, wrote in

July 2015 that XKeyscore "sweeps up countless people's internet

searches, emails, documents, usernames and passwords, and other

private communications ... NSA documents indicate that tens of

billions of records are stored in its database." These records are

available for searching by countless NSA and allied technicians,

they write, with "no built-in technology to prevent abuse." 8

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit

immediately after the programs were revealed in 2013, arguing

that the "practice is akin to snatching every American's address

book-with annotations detailing whom we spoke to, when we

18 DEMICUCY NIWI

talked, for how long, and from where. It gives the government a

comprehensive record of our associations and public movements,

revealing a wealth of detail about our familial, political, profes-

sional, religious, and intimate associations." Parallel lawsuits were

filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the New York Civil

Liberties Union, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. In May

2015 a federal appeals court ruled that the NSA bulk phone data

collection program was indeed illegal, calling it "unwarranted and

unprecedented." 9

Snowden's revelations have had far-reaching implications ,

exploding the debate on warrantless wiretapping and mass sur-

veillance, and alerting not only American citizens but also people

around the world that the US government is aggressively spying on

whomever it wants, wherever it wants.

Snowden knew he might go to jail, but that was not his big-

gest fear. "The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for

America of these disclosures," he said, "is that nothing will change.

People will see in the media all of these disclosures. They'll know

the length that the government is going to grant themselves pow-

ers, unilaterally, to create greater control over American society

and global society. But they won't be willing to take the risks nec-

essary to stand up and fight to change things, to force their repre-

sentatives to actually take a stand in their interests."

After meeting with Poitras, Greenwald, and MacAskill in

Hong Kong and revealing his identity to the world, Snowden

needed to find a safe place. He was granted political asylum in

Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Ecuador was considering it.

With help from Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in Lon-

don and other members of the WikiLeaks organization, Snowden

managed to board a plane headed for one of the Latin American

THE WIIITLEBLDWHI 87

safe havens, with a flight connection in Moscow. While he was en

route to Moscow, however, the US government revoked Snowden's

passport. He became stranded in the airport's transit zone, where

he stayed for thirty-nine days, along with WikiLeaks staff editor

Sarah Harrison. Russia granted him temporary political asylum,

so rather than proceeding to his intended destination, Snowden

has been living in Russia ever since.

The scale of his disclosures, the impact he had, and his abil-

ity to avoid arrest provoked a chorus of establishment condemna-

tion. Jeffrey Toobin, a legal analyst for CNN and the New Yorker,

blogged quickly that Snowden is "a grandiose narcissist who de-

serves to be in prison."

New York Times columnists chimed in, with Thomas Fried-

man writing, "I don't believe that Edward Snowden, the leaker of

all this secret material, is some heroic whistleblower."

Fellow Times columnist David Brooks engaged in speculative

psychoanalysis of Snowden, opining, "[t]hough obviously ter-

rifically bright, he could not successfully work his way through

the institution of high school. Then he failed to navigate his way

through community college." Others critiqued Snowden's military

service. In 2004 he enlisted in the army in a special program that

fast-tracks applicants to the Special Forces. He broke both of his

legs while at Fort Benning, Georgia, and left the army after five

months.

Secretary of State John Kerry declared in 2014, "There are

many a patriot-you can go back to the Pentagon Papers with

Dan Ellsberg and others who stood and went to the court system

of America and made their case. Edward Snowden is a coward, he

is a traitor, and he has betrayed his country." 10

Daniel Ellsberg is perhaps the most famous whistleblower

98 DEMOCRACY NOWI

in US history. In 1971 he released the Pentagon Papers, a seven-

thousand-page top-secret history of US involvement in Vietnam.

Ellsberg scoffs at the distinction between today's whistleblowers

and himself. He told Democracy Now!, "If I released the Penta-

gon Papers today, the same rhetoric and the same calls would be

made about me. I would be called not only a traitor-which I was

then, which was false and slanderous-but I would be called a

terrorist ... Assange and Bradley Manning are no more terrorists

than I am." Ellsberg has called Snowden "a hero." 11

Daniel Ellsberg was an advisor to President Richard Nixon

and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In the 1960s, while Ells-

berg worked as a military analyst for the RAND Corporation, he

was asked to join an internal Pentagon group tasked with creat-

ing a comprehensive, secret history of US involvement in Vietnam.

Ellsberg, who was working at a RAND office in Santa Monica,

California, at the time, removed sections of the massive report

each day. He and a RAND colleague, Anthony Russo, began the

painstaking work of photocopying page after page of the secret

documents at night.

Ellsberg first offered the documents to key officials in Wash-

ington, such as Senators William Fulbright and George McGov-

ern. The antiwar senators were interested and sympathetic, but

they were not willing to disclose top-secret information. Finally, he

leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, which began

publishing extensive excerpts on June 13, 1971.

Nixon immediately got a restraining order, stopping the news-

paper from printing more. It was the first time in US history that

presses were stopped by federal court order. The Times fought the

injunction and won in the Supreme Court case New York Times

Co. v. United States. Following that decision, the Washington Post

and other papers also began running excerpts.

TIE WIISTLEBLIWEIS II

Ellsberg wanted to be sure that all of the Pentagon Papers

were in the public record, because he knew the newspapers

would run only excerpts. So he gave the Pentagon Papers to the

Washington Post on the condition that one of its editors, Ben

Bagdikian, deliver a copy to Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska.

Gravel could then read the papers into the public record on the

Senate floor. What happened next was like something out of a

John Grisham thriller.

Gravel recalled the exchange with Bagdikian, which he set

up at midnight outside the storied Mayflower Hotel in Washing-

ton, DC: "I used to work in intelligence; I know how to do these

things." Gravel pulled his car up to Bagdikian's, the two opened

their trunks, and Gravel heaved the boxes personally, worried that

only he could claim senatorial immunity should they get caught

with the leaked documents. His staff aides were posted as lookouts

around the block. Gravel first brought the documents home, then

carrried them into his Senate office, where he had them guarded

by members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, who were in

wheelchairs as a result of injuries sustained in combat.

Gravel attempted to read the Pentagon Papers into the public

record. He went to the floor of the Senate to filibuster a bill he op-

posed that would extend the military draft, but a Senate quorum

was not present, so that ploy failed. He then called a late-night

meeting of the Subcommittee on Buildings and Grounds, which

he chaired, and began reading the papers aloud there. He opened

with a statement:

"Recently I gained possession of the Pentagon Papers. I do

not have all of them, but I believe that I possess more than half

the work. I did not seek these papers. When they were offered

I accepted them ... It is a remarkable work." He continued, "As

I speak now, the war goes on. Immediate disclosure of these papers

111 IEMICUCY NIWI

will change the policy that supports the war. If we act today, per-

haps one life will be saved, one village not bombed."

Senator Gravel broke down crying while reading the details of

Vietnamese civilian deaths, and could not go on. But because he

had begun the reading, he was legally able to enter all of the pages

of the top-secret Pentagon Papers that he had in his possession into

the public record.

Though ridiculed by the press for his emotional display, Gravel

was undaunted. He wanted the Pentagon Papers published as a

book so that Americans could read what had been done in their

name. Only Beacon Press, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Uni-

versalist Association, accepted the challenge.

Unitarian Universalist Association President Robert West ap-

proved the publication. With that decision, he said, "We started

down a path that led through two and a half years of government

intimidation, harassment, and threat of criminal punishment." As

Beacon weathered subpoenas, FBI investigations of its bank ac-

counts, and other chilling probes, Gravel attempted to extend his

senatorial immunity to the publisher. The bid failed in the US Su-

preme Court (the first time that the US Senate appeared before

the court), but not without a strongly worded dissent from Justice

William 0. Douglas: "In light of the command of the First Amend-

ment, we have no choice but to rule that here government, not the

press, is lawless."

Meanwhile, Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act

of 1917 with theft and conspiracy, and faced up to 115 years in

prison. It was one of the first times the act had been used against

someone who was not actually spying for a foreign government.

During Ellsberg's trial in 1973, it was revealed that President

Nixon authorized a break-in at the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist

in an attempt to smear him. Other revelations followed, including

TIE WlllnEBLIWERI 111

one that the FBI was wiretapping phone calls between Ellsberg

and National Security Council aide Morton Halperin without a

court order; the government later claimed the records of the wire-

tap were lost. Under questioning by Ellsberg's attorneys, Judge

William Matthew Byrne revealed that he had met twice during

the trial with Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, who offered Byrne the

directorship of the FBI, which he declined.

The illegal government actions finally brought down the case.

Judge Byrne dismissed all charges against Ellsberg and Russo, rul-

ing, "The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have

only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice. The bizarre events

have incurably infected the prosecution of this case."

Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security advisor and secre-

tary of state, who was an architect of the Vietnam War, called Ells-

berg "the most dangerous man in America," which later became

the title of an Oscar-nominated documentary film about him.

THE HIGH PRICE OF WHISTLEBLOWING

The Obama administration has charged more whistleblowers

under the Espionage Act than all previous presidential adminis-

trations combined. Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter

James Risen of the New York Times has called Obama "the great-

est enemy to press freedom in a generation." 12

In addition to Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, others

have been charged under the Espionage Act:

THOMAS DRAKE, NSA. Revealed the existence of a widespread illegal

program of domestic surveillance. His house was raided by the FBI

in 2007, and he was charged in 2010 under the Espionage Act. In

m DEMDCUCY NDWI

2011 he pled guilty to a minor misdemeanor of unauthorized use

of a government computer. He did not serve jail time.

JEFFREY STERLING, CIA. Sentenced to three and a half years in prison

in 2015 for leaking information to journalist James Risen about a

botched CIA operation to deliver faulty nuclear bomb blueprints

to Iran. Risen vowed he would go to jail rather than divulge his

confidential source, but the US Supreme Court denied his appeal.

In January 2015 the Justice Department stated in court filings that

Risen would not be called to testify at Sterling's trial.

STEPHEN KIM, STATE DEPARTMENT. Sentenced to thirteen months in

prison in 2014 for leaking information about North Korea's plan

to test a nuclear bomb in a conversation with Fox News reporter

James Rosen.

JOHN KIRIAKOU, CIA. Sentenced to two and a half years in prison in

2013 for revealing to journalists the names of two colleagues who

used harsh interrogation techniques on prisoners, including wa-

terboarding. He is the only high-level official sent to prison over

torture-not for engaging in it, but for exposing it.

The Espionage Act has been the weapon of choice against whistle-

blowers partly because of its unusual penalty: those charged with

violating the Espionage Act are gagged. They cannot even tell a

court why they took the actions they did.

"You can raise no defense," explains attorney Jesselyn Radack,

director of national security and human rights at the Government

Accountability Project (GAP), which represents whistleblowers.

She is counsel for Snowden, Drake, Kiriakou, and other targets of

Espionage Act investigations and prosecutions. "It does not matter

TNE WNllnEILDWEIII 1D3

whether you were leaking secrets to a foreign enemy for profit or

whether you were giving information to journalists in the public

interest to give back to the people who have a right to know what's

been done in their name."

Edward Snowden is the most famous of her clients. Former sec-

retary of state Hillary Clinton said that Snowden should return to

the United States, where he could mount a vigorous legal and public

defense. Secretary of State John Kerry said that Snowden "should

man up and come back to the United States" to face charges.

The comments are absurd. As Daniel Ellsberg said, Snowden

"would have no chance whatsoever to come home and make his

case-in public or in court. Snowden would come back home to

a jail cell-and not just an ordinary cell block but isolation in

solitary confinement ... probably [for] the rest of his life." By

contrast, Ellsberg noted, "I was out on bond, speaking against

the Vietnam War, the whole twenty-three months I was under

indictment." 13

Ellsberg concluded, "[N]othing excuses Kerry's slanderous and

despicable characterizations of a young man who, in my opinion,

has done more than anyone in or out of government in this cen-

tury to demonstrate his patriotism, moral courage, and loyalty to

the oath of office the three of us swore: to support and defend the

Constitution of the United States."

Whistleblowers also challenge members of the corporate

media, who often can't decide which side they are on: the rul-

ing elite or those who reveal truths that threaten the elite. That's

why when journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was reporting for the

Guardian, published Edward Snowden's explosive revelations, he

was confronted by David Gregory, then the host of NBC's agenda-

setting Sunday talk show Meet the Press. Gregory demanded:

"To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even

184 DEMOCRACY NDWI

in his current movements, why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be

charged with a crime?"

It was a stunning accusation, laying bare the way that some

elite journalists view their proper role as partners in power.

Greenwald shot back: "I think it's pretty extraordinary that

anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly

muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged

with felonies ... It means that every investigative journalist in the

United States who works with their sources, who receives classified

information, is a criminal."

Gregory responded, "Well, the question of who's a journalist

may be up to debate with regards to what you're doing."

Others were not so confused about "who's a journalist." In

April 2014 the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded to the

Guardian for its reporting on NSA surveillance by Glenn Green-

wald, filmmaker Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill, and to the

Washington Post for its reporting on this subject by Barton Gellman.

Gregory's plunging ratings might have improved had he chal-

lenged those in power instead of aiding and abetting them. In Au-

gust 2014, NBC fired him.

A DOUBLE STANDARD ON LEAKS

Leaking information is punishable by jail or exile-unless you are

a high-level government official, in which case you get a free pass

to the White House.

David Petraeus, the retired four-star general and former head of

the CIA, did not leak information to expose government wrongdo-

ing. Instead, in 2012 Petraeus gave classified material to his mistress,

Paula Broadwell, who was writing a fawning biography of him.

THE WHISREBLOWERS 105

Petraeus let Broadwell access thousands of emails on his CIA email

account and other sensitive material, including the names of covert

operatives in Afghanistan, war strategies, and quotes from White

House meetings. The FBI and federal prosecutors recommended

felony charges and a possible prison sentence for the general.

But Petraeus was too big to jail.

In April 2015 General Petraeus reached a plea deal, admit-

ting to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classi-

fied information. Prosecutors did not seek prison time but instead

requested two years probation and a $100,000 fine. Petraeus re-

mains a trusted administration insider, advising the White House

on the war against ISIS.

Attorney Abbe Lowell reacted to the sweetheart deal for Pe-

traeus by demanding the immediate release of his client, impris-

oned State Department whistleblower Stephen Kim. In 2010 Kim

was charged under the Espionage Act for a conversation he had

with Fox News reporter James Rosen, in which Kim allegedly dis-

closed that North Korea might test a nuclear bomb-information

that was widely known. In 2014, after endless investigations and

legal maneuvers, Kim pled guilty to a single felony count of dis-

closing classified information to an unauthorized person. He was

sentenced to thirteen months in prison.

In a letter to the Justice Department, Lowell wrote, "The deci-

sion to permit General Petraeus to plead guilty to a misdemeanor

demonstrates more clearly than ever the profound double standard

that applies when prosecuting so-called 'leakers' and those accused

of disclosing classified information for their own purposes."

Lowell said prosecutors dismissed his offer to have Kim plead

guilty to the same misdemeanor that they ended up offering to

Petraeus. He wrote, "You rejected that out of hand, saying that a

large reason for your position was that Mr. Kim lied to FBI agents."

101 DEMOCRACY NDWI

But Petraeus also lied to the FBI, telling agents falsely that he never

provided classified information to Broadwell.

Lowell concluded, "Lower-level employees like Mr. Kim are

prosecuted under the Espionage Act because they are easy targets

and lack the resources and political connections to fight back. High

level officials ... leak classified information to forward their own

agendas (or to impress their mistresses, in the case of Petraeus)

with virtual impunity." 14

The lenient treatment of Petraeus falls in line with similar

responses to leaks from other administration insiders:

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE ASHTON CARTER used his personal email ac-

count to conduct some government business, in violation of De-

fense Department rules. When the New York Times reported this

in December 2015, Carter acknowledged that he had made "a

mistake." The Senate Armed Services Committee promised to re-

view the matter. Joe Kasper, chief of staff for Rep. Duncan Hunter

(R.-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee,

said "Carter is the type of guy who can be taken at his word when

he says it was a mistake, and no classified information passed

through." 15

SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON used her personal email ac-

count on a private server to conduct government business. Some

emails included classified information. In October 2015, during an

FBI investigation into Clinton's emails to determine whether she

broke any laws, President Obama told 60 Minutes, "I don't think

it posed a national security problem." 16

CIA DIRECTOR LEON PANETTA helped provide secret information to the

filmmakers of Zero Dark Thirty, the blockbuster Hollywood film

THE WHIITLEBLDWERS 107

about the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Panetta

never faced punishment.

JAMES "HOSS" CARTWRIGHT was a top-ranking Pentagon general

and close advisor to President Obama who was investigated

for allegedly leaking highly classified information to the New

York Times about a US cyber warfare operation against Iran.

According to the Washington Post, the probe of General Cart-

wright ended in 2015 because he had authorization to speak to

reporters. The Obama administration was concerned that de-

fense attorneys "might try to put the White House's ... use of

authorized leaks on display, creating a potentially embarrassing

distraction for the administration." 17 Meanwhile, CIA analyst

Jeffrey Sterling was treated far differently for allegedly reveal-

ing information to Times reporter James Risen about a failed

CIA operation against Iran: he was sentenced to three and a half

years in prison.

Even General Petraeus believes that leaking secret information is

terrible-when others do it. In 2010 he said on Meet the Press

about Chelsea Manning's revelations: "This is beyond unfortunate.

I mean, this is a betrayal of trust ... that is very reprehensible."

Attorney Jesselyn Radack responded on Democracy Now!,

"The government has gone to great lengths in every single case of

whistleblowing to claim that great harm occurred from the dis-

closures of Chelsea Manning ... I went to the court-martial, and

when it came time for the government to present a damage assess-

ment, it in fact could not come up with one. So, although in all

of these cases-Snowden; Tom Drake [who] was said ... to have

blood of soldiers on his hands; John Kiriakou was said to have

caused untold damage now and into the future-the government

111 IEMICUCY NBWI

waves its hands and screams and cries about damage, when none

has occurred."

Leaks by high-level officials are not only overlooked, they re-

quire our sympathy. Senator Dianne Feinstein said about Petraeus,

"This man has suffered enough ... He, I think, is a very brilliant

man. People aren't perfect. He made a mistake. He lost his job as

CIA director because of it. I mean, how much do you want to pun-

ish somebody?" 18

Radack, who has seen the lives of her whistleblowing clients

unravel, responded, "I think they're right that people have suf-

fered enough, and this is a life-crushing thing to be charged with

espionage or to be under any kind of criminal cloud whatsoever.

However, with a number of my clients, we approached Congress,

who did nothing ... There were no crocodile tears. There were no

public statements.

"Tom Drake and John Kiriakou ... lost their careers, their life

savings, their pensions, their marriages and families-same with

Stephen Kim. People have paid a huge price and suffered tremen-

dously, far more than Petraeus, who ... enjoys a lucrative speak-

ing career, still has his security clearance, and is, in fact, advising

the White House on ISIS. He has suffered no damage from this.

Whereas John Kiriakou and Stephen Kim have both spoken about

being suicidal over having the sword of Damocles over their head

for so many years."

Edward Snowden saw what happened to the other whistle-

blowers at the NSA. He knew that raising concerns about ille-

gal surveillance with his superiors at the NSA would likely bring

charges against him, not against those breaking the law. So in

2013 he went directly to the press. Snowden pointedly declined

to go to the New York Times with his revelations because of how

the newspaper spiked an expose about widespread NSA domestic

THE WHIITLEBLOWERS 188

wiretapping in October 2004. The story could have cost George W.

Bush reelection that year, but the Times delayed the story at the re-

quest of the Bush administration. The Times did publish the story

over a year later because its star reporter, James Risen, was about

to release it in his own book. It would have been embarrassing for

the New York Times to have a story as big as Risen's NSA expose

released somewhere other than in its pages.

"He had a gun to their head," New York Times reporter Eric

Lichtblau, coauthor of the story with Risen, told PBS's Frontline.

If the story came out in Risen's book before the Times published

it, Lichtblau predicted "the paper is going to look pretty bad." 19

Risen faced possible jail time as he refused to testify in the

trial against Jeffrey Sterling. His bank, email, and phone records

were monitored by the federal government. Despite this, he contin-

ued reporting while waging a seven-year legal battle to protect his

sources. After furious protests by news organizations, the Obama

administration finally announced in January 2015 that Risen

would not be called to testify.

Current New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet con-

ceded that Snowden's decision to avoid the Times "meant that

somebody with a big story to tell didn't think we were the place to

go, and that's painful. And then it also meant that we got beaten

on what was arguably the biggest national security story in many,

many years." 20

Radack, one of Snowden's attorneys, has negotiated with the

Obama administration regarding his possible return to the United

States from Russia. She has been unable to extract many promises

from the government, other than that he would not face the death

penalty.

"They also promised he would not be tortured," she added.

"I think that's setting a very low bar."

110 DEMOCRACY NOW!

TRUTH TELLER IN THE PUZZLE PALACE 21

Thomas Drake is in a hurry. He apologizes that he has to be at

his job at the Apple Store in Bethesda, Maryland, by ten o'clock

in the morning. He agrees to meet and talk in a hotel lobby in

Washington, DC, at eight.

Drake is a decorated navy and air force veteran whose previ-

ous job was as a top official at the National Security Agency run-

ning secret electronic surveillance programs, supposedly against

foreign enemies. When he discovered that the NSA was breaking

the law and spying on Americans, he did what any law-abiding

person should do: he said no. He notified his superiors. He trusted

that America was a nation of laws. He figured that when he alerted

senior officials that laws were being violated, he could bring a halt

to the illegal activity.

Instead, the full weight of the law was turned against Drake.

His career came to a screeching halt.

Thomas Drake is a tall, earnest man who carries himself with

the posture and discipline from his years of military service. He is

full of nervous energy, eager to talk, but hyperalert to the people

coming and going in the room where we sit. A single question is all

it takes for him to burst forth with his incredible story.

"My first day at the job after I started [at the NSA] at the end

of August 2001, I had to take the oath again to support and defend

the Constitution for the fourth time in my government career ...

The day I reported to my new duty station was the morning of

9/11 ... Those weeks and months after 9/11 are the basis for what

took place years later with me."

Drake was in a meeting in the legislative affairs office at the

NSA when an executive assistant opened up a back door and said

THE WHISTLEBLDWERS 111

there had been a freak accident: an airplane had hit one of the

World Trade Center towers. It was disturbing news, but the people

in the meeting were not alarmed. The assistant returned a short

time later with news that the second World Trade Center tower

had been hit. Drake stood up and declared to all those assembled,

"America is under attack."

"Those four months [after 9/11] and all the secret decisions

that were made at the highest levels of the government that I knew

were fraught with enormous strategic consequences would change

history," Drake says. "9/11 had already changed history, but it was

used as an excuse for the government to unchain itself from the

Constitution in ways that I don't think are yet fully appreciated.

We were basically put under emergency decree ... Raw executive

authority was invoked.

"What that meant in terms of the NSA is they were granted

a special license. They were designated the executive agent for a

mass domestic electronic surveillance program-basically turning

the United States into the equivalent of a foreign nation for a data

dragnet on a scale that still has not been fully revealed in spite of

all the Snowden disclosures.

"The United States as a country became the petri dish for

dragnet electronic surveillance .... It didn't matter that you're

in total violation of the Fourth Amendment ... It didn't matter

that you were in violation 9f the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance

Act. It didn't matter that the NSA had been caught in previous

decades ... The scale and scope that have occurred after 9/11 is

far, far more pervasive."

I ask Drake when he first began to suspect something was

wrong.

"Within days after 9/11-just days. This is the dirty knowl-

edge that I'm burdened by.

112 DEMOCRACY NDWI

"The moment in which I knew that I could not remam

silent ... was that first week in October when I confronted [NSA

deputy general counsel] Vito Potenza ... I still shiver and shudder

when I think about his response. He says, 'You don't understand,

Mr. Drake. The White House has approved the program ... It's all

legal.'

"And as soon as he said, 'It's all legal,' I'm thrown right back to

when I was a very, very young teenager growing up in the 1970s.

When the president said, 'If the president says it's okay, it's not il-

legal.' That was the Nixon era. This is now making that era look

like pikers by comparison; this is now the government saying the

Constitution is in the way; that the Constitution itself no longer

applies."

Drake continues recounting his conversation with the NSA at-

torney. "I said, 'Wait a minute ... If the law doesn't work, there's

a constitutional means in our form of governance in which you

change the law.' "

Drake says Potenza scoffed at the idea. He recounts Potenza

saying, "If we go to Congress, you know what they'll do? They'll

say'No.'"

"Say 'No'?" Drake just shakes his head. "I shiver again when

I think about that.

"I knew in that moment when I ended that conversation that

I was now confronted by Pandora's box. I'm looking into the

abyss that Frank Church warned the nation about in 1975." Sen-

ator Church headed the Church Committee, which investigated

abuses by the CIA, FBI, NSA, and other national security agencies.

Church said famously about the NSA: "I don't want to see this

country ever go across the bridge ... I know the capacity that is

there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that

THE WHISTLEBLOWERS 113

this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate

within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never

cross over that abyss. That is the abyss · from which there is no

return." 22

Drake reflects, "It was almost prophetic what Church said:

that with advances in technology, could we reach a point where

effectively we'd cross the Rubicon and could we ever come back

across? I'm confronted by that moment.

"What do you do? I decided in that moment that my fidelity

to the oath took primacy over everything else ... National secu-

rity has clearly become for elite power the deep state religion. You

don't dare question it. 'If you question it, then we'll excommuni-

cate you.'"

There were swift consequences for questioning. "I became

identified early on as a dissident. And when you become a dis-

sident within the system, they begin to do everything they can to

isolate you."

Feeling that he was being targeted by the NSA, Drake took his

concerns to investigators on the congressional intelligence com-

mittees. But strange things kept happening. "No one can find any

of the evidence I provided them or any of the formal notes that

were taken. In fact, as I found out later, they considered what I

gave them so sensitive a state secret that it couldn't even be in the

secret report. All have been suppressed and censored."

What Drake revealed was details about a program called Stel-

lar Wind, a vast domestic surveillance program in which the emails,

phone calls, and other communications of American citizens were

being data mined and monitored without a court order. "That's the

thing they really wanted to cover up," he says.

Drake also told investigators what the NSA knew prior to

114 DEMOCRACY NOWI

the 9/11 attacks. "It's an absolute lie by the US government to

continue to say that we didn't know about the two hijackers liv-

ing in San Diego. The fact is, they knew. It was in the database,

and then there was this critical report that the NSA had done. I

remember I was given this report shortly after 9/11, and when I

presented it to [the NSA's third-highest-ranking official] Maureen

Baginski, it was just one of these moments where she got incred-

ibly rigid."

"I wish you had never brought this to my attention," Drake

recalls Baginski telling him.

"She wanted plausible deniability," he explains. "It was ex-

tremely damaging to the NSA that they had actually done this

comprehensive report on Al Qaeda and associated movements,

yet had refused to share it with the other critical intelligence

community partners. We're talking months and months prior to

9/11."

Drake remained at the NSA for several years, pursuing his

complaint about agency abuses with the Department of Defense

inspector general and with his superiors. Then in December

2005 the New York Times published its explosive expose by Eric

Lichtblau and James Risen revealing the NSA's secret warrantless

surveillance program-which, Drake says, "was just the tip of the

iceberg." Following the public revelation of the surveillance pro-

gram, the government stepped up its attack on Drake and other

NSA whistleblowers.

On July 26, 2007-two days after US Attorney General Al-

berto Gonzales underwent a testy Senate Judiciary Committee

hearing about warrantless wiretapping-FBI agents raided the

homes of NSA whistleblowers Bill Binney and Kirk Wiebe, who

also revealed details about illegal NSA surveillance, as well as

THE WHISTLEBLOWERS 115

former House Intelligence Committee staffer Diane Roark. In

2002 the three of them had filed a formal complaint with the

Department of Defense inspector general about problems at

the NSA.

Binney, a senior NSA official and forty-year veteran · who was

largely responsible for automating the agency's worldwide eaves-

dropping network, described the early-morning raid in an inter-

view on Democracy Now!:

There were, like, twelve FBI agents with their guns drawn. My

son opened the door ... and they pushed him out of the way at

gunpoint. And they came upstairs to where my wife was getting

dressed, and I was in the shower, and they were pointing guns

at her, and one of the agents came into the shower and pointed

a gun directly at me, at my head, and of course pulled me out of

the shower. So I had a towel, at least, to wrap around [me].

And then they took me out and interrogated me on the

back porch ... They said they wanted me to tell them some-

thing that would implicate someone in a crime ... I said I

didn't really know about anything. And they said they thought

I was lying.

Well, at that point, I said, "Okay, I'll tell you about the

crime I know about." And that was that [NSA director Michael]

Hayden, [CIA director George] Tenet, [President] George Bush,

[Vice President] Dick Cheney-they conspired to subvert the

Constitution and the constitutional process of checks and bal-

ances, and here's how they did it.23

Afterward, Binney contacted Drake. He delivered a chilling warn-

ing: "Tom, you're next."

11B DEMOCRACY NOWI

A KNOCK AT THE DOOR

Four months later, at seven o'clock on a cool morning in Novem-

ber 2007, Thomas Drake's twelve-year-old son was getting ready

to go to middle school when there was a loud knock at the door.

The boy opened the door and was greeted by heavily armed agents.

He called to his father. "There's someone here to see you!"

"I knew who it was," recounts Drake. "My family didn't know.

All the whistleblowing, they didn't know."

For nine hours, about a dozen agents were "just shredding

the house ... I'm being treated as a spy, so they were everywhere.

They were down in the basement. They were looking for hidden

compartments. They were looking for something like a Robert

Hanssen"-an FBI agent who spied for the Soviet Union and later

for Russia-"where he had a locked room, safes, all of that. They

went through everything."

The raid on Drake and most of the other NSA whistleblowers

occurred under President Bush. But it was the Obama administra-

tion that pursued the legal cases against them with a vengeance. In

2010 the government ultimately charged Drake under the Espio-

nage Act-the first time in forty years, since Daniel Ellsberg, that

the act had been used to go after a whistleblower.

Sometime later, Drake was brought to an FBI facility. "There's

someone here to meet you," he was told. It was the chief prose-

cutor.

The two men looked across a table at each other. The prosecu-

tor said, "How would you like to spend the rest of your life in

prison, Mr. Drake, unless you cooperate with our investigation?

We have more than enough information to put you away for a

long, long time. You better start talking."

THE WHISTLEBLOWERS 117

Drake returned the prosecutor's stare. "I'm not going to plea

bargain with the truth."

Drake recounts, "I found myself defending the Constitution

against my own government. So who's the threat now? The gov-

ernment is now a threat to the constitutional form of govern-

ment."

Drake tells me, "I consider myself a human being who has in-

alienable rights, and as a citizen of the United States, I've taken an

oath four times to support and defend the Constitution ... I was

not going to break the oath that I had taken to that Constitution.

Because if we don't have the Constitution, then what are we?"

Drake refused to cooperate with the FBI. He was scheduled

to go to trial on June 13, 2011. The date was significant: it was

the fortieth anniversary of the publication of the Pentagon Papers,

and also the very day that the US National Archives and Records

Administration was declassifying and releasing the full forty-seven

volumes of the Pentagon Papers.

On May 22, 2011, Drake told his gripping story on CBS's

60 Minutes. The publicity might have saved him: in early June

the government dropped all of the serious charges against Drake

and did not seek any jail time. A case that began with a dramatic

charge of espionage ended with Drake agreeing to plead guilty to

a misdemeanor of misusing the NSA's computer system. He was

sentenced to one year of probation and community service.

"It was an extraordinary victory against the government," he

says proudly.

But whistleblowing has taken a staggering toll on Drake. He

spent nearly $1 million to defend himself, draining his retirement

funds and all his assets. He says that he is "essentially broke-I'm

in severe debt." And then there are "the personal costs with family

and colleagues and friends. You're being cut off. All your social

118 DEMOCRACY NOWI

networks that you previously had are essentially gone. They're just

destroyed."

He recalls one moment that softened some of the pain of his

ordeal. It was when his son told him, "Thanks for standing up for

our rights. They do matter."

Drake has been unable to find a job beyond being an hourly

employee at a neighborhood Apple Store. "One of the prices you

pay as a whistleblower is that you become radioactive," he says.

But people come to the store and occasionally acknowledge him

quietly. "They'll thank me for my service; thank me for standing

up. They're extraordinarily grateful that I didn't end up in prison.

I realize increasingly that I'm an example that you can in fact stand

up to power and survive, even at extraordinary cost. You can keep

your freedom."

He reflects, "The media, in the end, became my saving grace.

The judge was not immune to what was happening in the press."

The media shined "enough light to say what was [true]."

In 2011 Thomas Drake was awarded the Ridenhour Truth-

Telling Prize, named for Ron Ridenhour, the Vietnam veteran who

wrote to Congress in 1969 to expose the My Lai massacre that

happened the year before. Drake also received the Sam Adams

Award, a prize for intelligence professionals who have taken

ethical stands. In 2013 he traveled to Moscow with fellow gov-

ernment whistleblowers Jesselyn Radack (Justice Department),

Coleen Rowley (FBI), and Ray McGovern (CIA) to present the

Sam Adams Award to Edward Snowden.

Drake continues to speak around the world in support of

transparency, whistleblowers, and government accountability.

"This is a fundamental break of the social governance compact

with the people," he says. "It is in the end about We the People-

and We the People is what's been absolutely defiled by government.

THE WIIITLEILIWEH 111

This is the pathology of power. You just can't have this kind of

power essentially saying, 'No, we know what's best. This is for

your own good, but don't question and don't ask us to account

for ourselves.' ... This is a clear, compelling danger to democracy.

"You can't have a national security state-sort of this dual

state, this secret dark state. It can't coexist with a democracy in the

special form that we have called the 'constitutional republic.' ...

I really fear for the republic. I really fear that what we're seeing

is you have an extraordinary, almost a blanket immunity that's

granted the secret and elite powers, and anybody who dares come

forth, particularly in a post-9/11 context, is considered criminal.''

Hunted, persecuted, and nearly destroyed, Thomas Drake nev-

ertheless considers himself lucky. "I'm extremely fortunate that I'm

sitting across from you as a free human being ... I wake up every

morning, and I pinch myself ... because what does it mean to be

free? It means more to me now. It's more precious now than ever.''

Drake concludes our conversation with an urgent plea for

open government, free media, and an end to secrecy: "Democracy

dies behind closed doors.''