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exposefacts org
Is the Vault 7 Source a Whistleblower?
Mar 14, 2017
It is the leakiest of times in the Executive Branch. Last week, Wikileaks published a massive and, by all accounts genuine, trove of documents revealing that the CIA has been stockpiling, and lost control of, hacking tools it uses against targets. Particularly noteworthy were the revelations that the CIA developed a tool to hack Samsung TVs and turn them into recording devices and that the CIA worked to infiltrate both Apple and Google smart phone operating systems since it could not break encryption. No one in government has challenged the authenticity of the documents disclosed.
We do not know the identity of the source or sources, nor can we be 100% certain of his or her motivations. Wikileaks writes that the source sent a statement that policy questions "urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA's hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency" and that the source "wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyber-weapons."
The FBI has already begun hunting down the source as part of a criminal leak investigation. Historically, the criminal justice system has been a particularly inept judge of who is a whistleblower. Moreover, it has allowed the use of the pernicious Espionage Act--an arcane law meant to go after spies--to go after whistleblowers who reveal information the public interest. My client, former NSA senior official Thomas Drake, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act, only to later be widely recognized as a whistleblower. There is no public interest defense to Espionage Act charges, and courts have ruled that a whistleblower's motive, however salutary, is irrelevant to determining guilt.
The Intelligence Community is an equally bad judge of who is a whistleblower, and has a vested interest in giving no positive reinforcement to those who air its dirty laundry. The Intelligence Community reflexively claims that anyone who makes public secret information is not a whistleblower. Former NSA and CIA Director General Michael V. Hayden speculated that the recent leaks are to be blamed on young millennials harboring some disrespect for the venerable intelligence agencies responsible for mass surveillance and torture. Not only is his speculation speculative, but it's proven wrong by the fact that whistleblowers who go to the press span the generational spectrum from Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg to mid-career and senior level public servants like CIA torture whistleblower John Kiriakou and NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake to early-career millennials like Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The lawbreaker does not get to decide who is a whistleblower.
Not all leaks of information are whistleblowing, and the word "whistleblower" is a loaded term, so whether or not the Vault 7 source conceives of him or herself as a whistleblower is not a particularly pertinent inquiry. The label "whistleblower" does not convey some mythical power or goodness, or some "moral narcissism," a term used to describe me when I blew the whistle. Rather, whether an action is whistleblowing depends on whether or not the information disclosed is in the public interest and reveals fraud, waste, abuse, illegality or dangers to public health and safety. Even if some of the information revealed does not qualify, it should be remembered that whistleblowers are often faulted with being over- or under-inclusive with their disclosures. Again, it is the quality of the information, not the quantity, nor the character of the source.
"Whether an action is whistleblowing depends on whether or not the information disclosed is in the public interest and reveals fraud, waste, abuse, illegality or dangers to public health and safety."
Already, the information in the Vault 7 documents revealed that the Intelligence Community has misled the American people. In the wake of Snowden's revelations, the Intelligence Community committed to avoid the stockpiling of technological vulnerabilities, publicly claiming that its bias was toward "disclosing them" so as to better protect everyone's privacy. However, the Vault 7 documents reveal just the opposite: not only has the CIA been stockpiling exploits, it has been aggressively working to undermine our Internet security. Even assuming the CIA is using its hacking tools against the right targets, a pause-worthy presumption given the agency's checkered history, the CIA has empowered the rest of the hacker world and foreign adversaries by hoarding vulnerabilities, and thereby undermined the privacy rights of all Americans and millions of innocent people around the world. Democracy depends on an informed citizenry, and journalistic sources--whether they call themselves whistleblowers or not--are a critical component when the government uses national security as justification to keep so much of its activities hidden from public view.
As we learn more about the Vault 7 source and the disclosures, our focus should be on the substance of the disclosures. Historically, the government's reflexive instinct is to shoot the messenger, pathologize the whistleblower, and drill down on his or her motives, while the transparency community holds its breath that he or she will turn out to be pure as the driven snow. But that's all deflection from plumbing the much more difficult questions, which are: Should the CIA be allowed to conduct these activities, and should it be doing so in secret without any public oversight?
These are questions we would not even be asking without the Vault 7 source.
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Operation Merlin: Did CIA Seek to "Plant a Nuclear Gun" on Iran and Iraq?
A New York Times editorial today titled "Overkill on a CIA Leak Case" is critical of aspects of the government's prosecution of CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling who was sentenced to 42 months on Monday.
May 13, 2015
A New York Times editorial today titled "Overkill on a CIA Leak Case" is critical of aspects of the government's prosecution of CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling who was sentenced to 42 months on Monday.
But the Times claims that what Sterling did was disclose "details about a covert operation involving a former Russian scientist and CIA informant who gave Iran intentionally faulty schematics in an attempt to forestall the country's nuclear capabilities."
However, some evidence exposed in the course of the Sterling trail indicates that the intention of the operation -- known as Operation Merlin, after the former Russian scientist's code name -- was not to forestall Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities.
Rather, the analysis indicates that ultimately, the main purpose of the program may have been to give Iran -- and Iraq -- nuclear weapons information that could then be used as a pretext to attack those countries for having such information.
DAVID SWANSON, david at davidswanson.org, @davidcnswanson
Swanson's books include War is a Lie. He just wrote the piece "In Convicting Jeff Sterling, CIA Revealed More Than It Accused Him of Revealing," which analyzes a secret cable that was made public in the course of the Sterling trial. Swanson writes: "During the course of Sterling's trial, the CIA itself made public a bigger story than the one it pinned on Sterling. The CIA revealed, unintentionally no doubt, that just after the nuclear weapons plans had been dropped off for the Iranians, the CIA had proposed to the same asset that he next approach the Iraqi government for the same purpose."
Swanson wrote back in January: "CIA on Trial in Virginia for Planting Nuke Evidence in Iran," which states: "The stated motivation for Operation Merlin is patent nonsense that cannot be explained by any level of incompetence or bureaucratic dysfunction or group think.
"Here's another explanation of both Operation Merlin and of the defensiveness of the prosecution and its witnesses ... at the prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling which is thus far failing to prosecute Jeffrey Sterling. This was an effort to plant nuke plans on Iran."
RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com, @raymcgovern
McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. McGovern was quoted Monday in U.S. News and World Report: "Jeffrey Sterling Sentenced to 42 Months for Talking to Reporter." He just wrote the piece "Punishing Another Whistleblower," about the Sterling case, which states: "The CIA was, of course, eager to help the Justice Department imprison Sterling as a message to other potential whistleblowers, not to divulge any secrets that might make the agency look bad. Never have I seen the agency release so much operational cable traffic to nail someone for supposedly revealing some operational secret.
"Many of the cables were redacted, but not redacted carefully enough to disguise what, in my opinion, was the real objective of the operation, which involved preparing nuclear weapons development blueprints to be given to Iran -- and later possibly to Iraq.
"Those affable 'case officers' explained that the objective was to include serious design errors that would serve to impede progress on a workable nuclear weapon. For me, that never passed the smell test. It seemed more likely that the flawed blueprints were actually a ploy toward making a case that Iran and Iraq were secretly working on nuclear bombs.
"The thinking may have been: Why not create blueprints 'showing' how far along the Iranians (and possibly the Iraqis) were toward a nuclear weapon and then mount a daring clandestine collection operation to steal the blueprints back as proof of what the CIA and the White House wanted everyone to believe.
"Remember the 'yellow-cake-uranium-from-Niger' caper of a dozen years ago. That worked for a while until the International Atomic Energy Agency showed that the 'evidence' was a crude forgery. Yet the quest for learning how the caper began -- and who was ultimately responsible -- got lost in the byzantine strategies of George W. Bush's White House to destroy a key whistleblower in that case, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson."
Marcy Wheeler, who covered much of the Sterling trial for ExposeFacts.org wrote the piece "The Sterling Trial: Merlin Meets Curveball" in January. She made a series of parallels between the disinformation on Iraqi WMDs being used as a pretext for invading that country and details of Operation Merlin gleaned from the Sterling trial, for example: "On June 25, 2003, on the evening before George Tenet had to testify to Congress about why the U.S. had found no WMD in Iraq, CIA hailed the claims of an Iraqi nuclear scientist, Mahdi Obeidi, who claimed to have stashed a blueprint and working parts from an Iraqi centrifuge in a hole in his backyard since 1991. The story was riddled with internal contradictions, which didn't stop Obeidi from having the almost unparalleled luck among Iraqi WMD scientists of settling in the vicinity of CIA headquarters. One of the oddest parts of Obeidi's story is that the blueprints, purportedly developed in Iraq by Iraqis from German plans -- which CIA briefly posted on its website, then took down -- were in English.
"On April 30, 2003, less than two months before CIA would roll out those nuclear blueprints in English (and at a time when U.S. government officials were already working with Obeidi), Condoleezza Rice called New York Times' editors to the White House and persuaded them not to publish Risen's story about Operation Merlin, in which (we now know) a Russian parts list rather curiously written in English were dealt to Iran back in 2000. Rice actually went further; she asked Times editor Jill Abramson to make Risen stop all reporting on this topic."
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First Time: Voice of CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling
May 12, 2015
For the first time since he was indicted on Espionage Act charges more than four years ago, the voice of former CIA case officer Jeffrey Sterling is being heard by the public today in a documentary produced by ExposeFacts.org and just released by The Huffington Post. The film's immediate audience includes hundreds of thousands of viewers of "Democracy Now, which aired it this morning.
On Monday, Sterling was sentenced to 42 months in prison.
NORMAN SOLOMON, solomonprogressive at gmail.com
Solomon was a producer for the film on behalf of ExposeFacts, which is a project of IPA. ExposeFacts extensively covered Sterling's trial. Solomon is IPA's executive director.
JUDITH EHRLICH, mousethatroaredfilm at gmail.com
Ehrlich is the director of the just-released short documentary "The Invisible Man: CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling." Her past films include the Oscar-nominated "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers." She just wrote the short piece "On Jeffrey Sterling: From the Filmmaker of 'The Invisible Man'," which notes: "Jeffrey Sterling was convicted in large part on the basis of metadata -- not the content of his communication."
RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com, @raymcgovern
McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. McGovern was quoted Monday in U.S. News and World Report: "Jeffrey Sterling Sentenced to 42 Months for Talking to Reporter." He just wrote the piece "Punishing Another Whistleblower," about the Sterling case.
McGovern said today: "It seems clear that the White House told the Department of Justice to make an example of Jeffrey Sterling -- an example of what one can expect if s/he decides to blow the whistle....
"But the wrist-slap administered to former Gen. David Petraeus for far more egregious behavior -- including lying to the FBI -- made it indecorous for her [the judge] to mete out the draconian sentence, after which the Justice Department and White House were positively lusting. Plans for a draconian sentence for which DOJ had been pressing fell through and the pizzazz fizzled out of the intended deterrent effect.
"At the same time, the trial surfaced real questions. Were the CIA faulty blueprints foisted on Iran aimed at sabotaging any nuclear nuclear weapons program of Iran ... and perhaps Iraq? For me that does not pass the smell test.
"Or was it something trickier still -- actually too tricky by half -- aimed at 'discovering' documentary evidence 'showing' how close Iran AND Iraq were to a nuclear weapon -- and, of course, how much they need to be stopped."
JESSELYN RADACK, jradack at whistleblower.org, @jesselynradack
Radack is the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project. She said today: "Like all other whistleblowers prosecuted under the Espionage Act, Sterling is only guilty of embarrassing the government.
"If you're a former CIA director like Petraeus and Panetta, you can leak with impunity or receive a slap on the wrist at most. As demonstrated by the Petraeus case, there are numerous other more appropriate ways to punish leaks. If you're loyal to the truth rather than the CIA, you'll be bludgeoned. While Sterling was sentenced to less jail time than the government asked for, the two-tiered system of justice is still unacceptable.
"Sterling is collateral damage in the government's war on the media.
"Sterling is the latest casualty in the Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistleblowers.
"The biggest leaker in the country is the United States government. They're not doing damage assessments on their political leaks for propaganda or self-promotion purposes rather than the public interest.
"'National security' is not the U.S.'s reputation. If the government wants to stop being embarrassed, it should stop doing embarrassing things."
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