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For Immediate Release
July, 26 2013, 11:31am EDT
Contact:
Douglas Kim, GAP External Affairs Officer
Phone: 917-907-4394
Email: douglask@whistleblower.org
NSA Whistleblowers Praise Snowden at GAP Whistleblower Conference
WASHINGTON
The Government Accountability Project (GAP) conference "Whistleblowers, Journalists, and the New War Within" held yesterday, July 25, at the National Press Club featured a panel of three ex-NSA whistleblowers, along with experts on digital surveillance, telecom systems engineering, and whistleblower legal protections.
Moderated by syndicated columnist David Sirota and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times writer James Risen, the morning conference gave insights into the clandestine world of the NSA, the challenges inherent to working within the organization's hierarchy, and the increasingly tenuous relationship between today's embattled journalists and their confidential sources.
"These whistleblowers give tremendous insight into the plight of Edward Snowden right now," observed GAP Executive Director Beatrice Edwards. Edwards launched the conference with opening remarks characterizing a new cyberwar that she described as "the endless war ... the forever war ... the war within."
In defense of whistleblowers Snowden and Bradley Manning, ex-NSA Senior Executive Thomas Drake stated: "I stand with them without equivocation." Citing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which gives the government broad authority to detain Americans deemed hostile without trial, Drake defended Snowden's actions seeking refuge abroad.
Similarly, former NSA Technical Director William Binney said: "I don't see what other choice he had ... He felt his only option was to leave the country and I don't blame him."
When confronted with the argument that Snowden was not revealing illegality and was therefore not a whistleblower, Binney responded: "If all this was legal, why did (telecom companies) need retroactive immunity?"
In a rare moment, Binney further alluded to the NSA program Stellar Wind, which he characterized as constructing social networks for any American based on their personal and professional associations. This program is presumed to be the predecessor for the controversial NSA PRISM program that was among Snowden's key revelations. "You have no freedom of association with the NSA knowing about it ... it's a matter of software," stated Binney.
"We've become the enemies we're trying to thwart," concluded former NSA official J. Kirk Wiebe. The former Senior Analyst further condemned the NSA by stating that 9/11 was the result of the organization's "self-interest, ego, and arrogance."
Thomas Drake, the most public NSA whistleblower until Snowden made his disclosures, also commented on 9/11, revealing that the NSA actively obstructed three Congressional investigations into the security failures that left the United States exposed to the attacks. Drake further revealed the agency set up a "War Room" to manage its communications with Congress.
Since 1977, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) has championed government and corporate accountability and transparency by advancing occupational free speech, defending whistleblowers, and empowering citizen activists. The mission of GAP is to make large bureaucratic institutions accountable through the effective exercise of conscience.
The Government Accountability Project (GAP) is a 30-year-old nonprofit public interest group that promotes government and corporate accountability by advancing occupational free speech, defending whistleblowers, and empowering citizen activists. We pursue this mission through our Nuclear Safety, International Reform, Corporate Accountability, Food & Drug Safety, and Federal Employee/National Security programs. GAP is the nation's leading whistleblower protection organization.
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The country's largest Muslim civil rights group on Thursday called for added protections for U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar after Florida state Sen. Randy Fine issued an apparent threat against the two Muslim lawmakers.
Fine, who has the endorsement of President-elect Donald Trump in his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives, called himself the "Hebrew Hammer" in a post on X on Tuesday and suggested Reps. Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Omar (D-Minn.) should leave office for their own safety.
"Bombs away," he added.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has spoken out previously about anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim statements by Fine (R-19), called the lawmaker an "unhinged anti-Muslim bigot."
His apparent threat of violence "must be investigated by state and federal law enforcement authorities and condemned by both Democratic and Republican Party leadership," said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy executive director of CAIR. "President-elect Donald Trump, in particular, should denounce Mr. Fine's remarks and the Florida Republican Party should expel him."
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Fine was held in contempt of court in Florida earlier this year for making obscene gestures and mouthing curse words at a hearing. He is running in a special election set for April 1, 2025, due to Trump's appointment of Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) to be national security adviser.
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Despite rainy conditions, the United American Indians of New England held its 55th annual National Day of Mourning at Cole's Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Kisha James, who is an enrolled member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and also Oglala Lakota, shared how her grandfather founded the event in 1970 and pledged to continue to "tear down the Thanksgiving mythology."
"The past influences the present" and "the settler project" continues with racism, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, James told the crowd. "The Pilgrims are not ancient history."
James took aim at fossil fuel pipelines, oil rigs, skyscrapers, corporations, the U.S. military, mass incarceration, and the criminalization of immigrants, and declared that "no one is illegal on stolen on land."
Jean-Luc Pierite, a member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana and president of the board of directors of the North American Indian Center of Boston who helped organize this year's gathering, toldUSA Today that "while we are mourning some tragic history but also contemporary issues, we are also expressing gratitude for each [other] and building this community space."
"Coming together as a community for a feast and to express gratitude—that's not something that was imported to this continent because of colonization," Pierite said. "Indigenous peoples have had these practices going back beyond, beyond colonial contact."
This year's event in Plymouth included speeches about the suffering of Palestinians—as Israel wages a U.S. government-backed war on the Gaza Strip that has killed at least 44,330 people, injured 104,933, and led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice—and of people impacted by extractive industries.
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In New York City, police
arrested 21 pro-Palestinian protesters who blocked the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade route.
According toABC 7:
For the second year in a row, the group ran in front of the Ronald McDonald float to briefly stop the parade.
This year, they jumped the barricades at West 55th Street just after 9:30 am.
Many sat on the ground, locking arms and chanting "Free, free Palestine!"
Others held a banner behind them, reading "Don't celebrate genocide! Arms embargo now."
Video footage shared on social media shows members of the New York Police Department grabbing protesters and their banner, and throwing at least one person face-first into the road.
Multiple Indigenous groups circulated messages about Thanksgiving on social media Thursday.
NDN Collective said that "as Indigenous peoples, we reject colonial holidays rooted in the genocidal erasure of our existence. We demand #LANDBACK to reclaim sovereignty, repair ties with Mother Earth, and protect Indigenous ways of life—honoring them for generations to come."
The Indigenous Environmental Network similarly
highlighted that "'Thanksgiving' is a white-washed holiday designed to conceal its true origins of violence, genocide, land theft, and forced assimilation."
"We must re-evaluate what we've been taught about the history of this land and recognize that genocide, extraction, and exploitation of our lands and communities continue today," the group argued.
Brenda Beyal, an enrolled member of the Diné Nation and program coordinator of the Brigham Young University ARTS Partnership's Native American Curriculum Initiative, wrote about the history of Thanksgiving on Wednesday for The Salt Lake Tribune.
"Our history books mark 'the first Thanksgiving' in 1621 when at least 90 Wampanoag men, led by Massasoit, walked in on a Puritan harvest feast," Beyal detailed. "Approximately 150 years later, all 13 colonies celebrated a day of solemn Thanksgiving to celebrate the win of the Battle of Saratoga in December of 1777. [U.S. President] George Washington called for a day of thanksgiving and prayer in 1789 to give gratitude for the end of the Revolutionary War."
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Israel imposed a last-minute curfew on Wednesday night, prohibiting Lebanese citizens from crossing into the south overnight.
The IDF then accused Hezbollah of violating the cease-fire, announcing on Thursday: "Over the past hour, several suspects were identified arriving with vehicles to a number of areas in southern Lebanon, breaching the conditions of the cease-fire. The IDF opened fire toward them."
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