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senate intelligence committee
'Wyden Siren' Sounds Anew as Senator's Cryptic Letter Hints at CIA Wrongdoing
"When Wyden sends a cryptic letter or asks a pointed question suggesting something concerning is happening behind the classification curtain, something concerning is absolutely happening," said one observer.
Feb 05, 2026
Sen. Ron Wyden "only talks like this when the spies do something *real* bad."
That's how journalist Spencer Ackerman reacted Thursday to a letter from the Oregon Democrat to Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe expressing alarm over unspecified CIA activities, as observers noted Wyden's history of heads-up previews of government wrongdoing.
“I write to alert you to a classified letter I sent you earlier today, in which I express deep concerns about CIA activities,” Wyden, who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in the letter. “Thank you for your attention to this important matter.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner “shares many of the concerns expressed by Sen. Wyden in his letter, and in fact he has expressed them to... Ratcliffe himself," according to a spokesperson for the Virginia Democrat.
This is how Sen. Ron Wyden clues the public into activity that he finds extremely alarming. He does a press release about a letter he sent to the director of the CIA that basically says, 'I want to make sure you saw the classified letter I sent early today.' www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/do...
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— Kashmir Hill (@kashhill.bsky.social) February 4, 2026 at 1:53 PM
Wyden told HuffPost Thursday that “the reason I sent the public letter is that is all that I’m allowed to say publicly, and I’m gonna leave it at that.”
“I said what I did for a specific reason," he added. "I wrote it for a specific reason. That’s all I can say.”
Wyden has a storied history of issuing cryptic warnings about classified government or intelligence misdeeds before they are disclosed to the public, going back to the Obama administration's secret reinterpretation of the PATRIOT Act in 2011.
The senator also warned about a withheld 2015 Department of Justice legal opinion on cybersecurity, Section 702 surveillance during the first Trump administration, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) use of bulk administrative subpoenas to collect millions of Americans’ financial records during the Biden administration, and more.
Techdirt blog editor Mike Masnick calls it the "Wyden Siren": "The pattern repeats. Wyden asks a specific question about surveillance. The intelligence community answers a slightly different question in a way that technically isn’t lying but is designed to mislead. Wyden calls them out. Eventually, the truth comes out, and it’s always worse than people assumed."
"The track record here is essentially perfect," Masnick added. "When Wyden sends a cryptic letter or asks a pointed question suggesting something concerning is happening behind the classification curtain, something concerning is absolutely happening behind the classification curtain."
Masnick continued:
So what’s happening at the CIA that has Wyden sending a two-sentence letter that amounts to “I legally cannot tell you what’s wrong, but something is very wrong?"
We don’t know yet. That’s the whole point of classification—it keeps the public in the dark about what their government is doing in their name. But Wyden’s letter is the equivalent of a fire alarm. He’s seen something. He can’t say what. But he wants there to be a record that he raised the concern.
"Given the current administration’s approach to, well, everything, the possibilities are unfortunately vast," Masnick said. "Is it about domestic surveillance? Something about current [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard? International operations gone sideways? Some new interpretation of the CIA’s authorities that would make Americans’ hair stand on end if they knew about it? We’re left guessing, just like we were guessing about the PATRIOT Act’s secret interpretation back in 2011."
"But here’s what we do know: Ron Wyden has been doing this for at least 15 years," Masnick added. "And every single time, he’s been vindicated. The secret programs were real. The abuses were real. The gap between what the public thought was happening and what was actually happening was real."
"The Wyden Siren is blaring," he added. "Pay attention."
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Push Back Against Sen. Cotton’s McCarthyite Lies About CODEPINK: Women for Peace
Sen. Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a U.S. congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends, and family.
Mar 27, 2025
On Tuesday, in the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats with the five heads of intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton accused on national TV a group I have worked with for over 20 years, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of China.
During the hearing CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry stood up following the presentation of the Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s lengthy statement about global threats to U.S. national security and yelled, “Stop Funding Israel,” since neither Intelligence Committee Chair Cotton nor Vice Chair Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) had mentioned Israel in their opening statement, nor had Gabbard mentioned the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in her statement either.
As Capitol police were taking Barry out of the hearing room, in the horrific style of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, Cotton maliciously said that Barry was a “CODEPINK lunatic that was funded by the Communist Party of China.” Cotton then said if anyone had something to say to do so.
CODEPINK members have been challenging in the U.S. Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Sen. Cotton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2014.
Refusing to buckle or be intimidated by Cotton’s lies about the funding of CODEPINK, I stood up and yelled, “I’m a retired Army colonel and former diplomat. I work with CODEPINK, and it is not funded by Communist China.” I too was hauled out of the hearing room by Capitol police and arrested.
After I was taken out of the hearing room, Cotton libelously continued his McCarthyite lie: “The fact that Communist China funds CODEPINK, which interrupts a hearing about Israel, illustrates Director Gabbard’s point that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are working together in greater concert than they ever had before.”
Sen. Cotton does not appreciate the responsibility he has in his one-month-old elevation to the chair of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee.
Sen. Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a U.S. congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends, and family. In today’s polarized political environment, we know that the words of senior leaders can rile supporters into frenzies as we saw on January 6, 2021, with President Donald Trump’s loyal supporters injuring many Capitol police and destroying parts of the nation’s Capitol building in their attempt to stop the presidential election proceedings.
CODEPINK members have been challenging in the U.S. Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Sen. Cotton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2014. We have been in the U.S. Senate offices and halls twice as long as he has. We have nonviolently protested the war policies of former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump, Joe Biden, and now Trump again.
After getting out of the Capitol Hill police station, a CODEPINK delegation went to Sen. Cotton’s office in the Russell Senate Office building and made a complaint to his office staff.
We are also submitting a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee over the untrue and libelous statements Sen. Cotton made in the hearing.
The abduction and deportation of international students who joined protests against U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the scathing treatment of visitors who have wanted to enter our country, and now the McCarthyite intimidating tactics used by Sen. Cotton in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing of telling lies about individuals and organizations that challenge the policies of the U.S. government, particularly its complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza, must be called out and pushed back against.
And we must push back against U.S. senators who actually receive funding from front groups for other countries. Sen. Cotton has received $1,197,989 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to advocate for the genocidal policies of the State of Israel.
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Jeffrey Sterling Completes One Year Of Unjust Prison Sentence
Jun 17, 2016
Yesterday, June 16th, marked one year since Jeffrey Sterling began his 3.5-year prison sentence for divulging classified information to a New York Times journalist, a crime he did not commit. One year, he was deprived of the freedom that so many of us take for granted every day; one year separated from his loving wife, his friends, and his family, and one year of wasted talent as a licensed attorney, a former CIA case officer fluent in Farsi, and a successful investigator who uncovered over 32 million dollars in healthcare fraud.
Today, we want to remind the American people that Jeffrey's conviction and sentence were unjust and renew our appeal to President Barack Obama to pardon him.
Why has he had to suffer such an injustice? Because the United States government wanted to punish Jeffrey for blowing the whistle and for fighting for his civil rights against the CIA?
Jeffrey is a beloved husband, a brother, a friend, and an honorable man who has consistently worked to keep our country safe. He was one of the few African Americans to work as a CIA case officer, and he was incredibly proud of this accomplishment. But he soon became disillusioned by a work environment characterized by racial disparity and was dismayed to learn that the government he worked for was shrouded in mistruths and secrecy.
The CIA planned to use a former Russian nuclear engineer to pass flawed designs to Iranian scientists, a program that was revealed in New York Times Journalist James Risen's book "State of War." Jeffrey had grave concerns about the mismanagement of this program and the potential harm to the citizens of our country, and so he used proper legal channels to inform the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
During Jeffrey's trial, the Department of Justice was unable to present any direct evidence proving that he divulged classified information to James Risen. To convict him, the DOJ relied solely on circumstantial evidence -- emails and telephone conversations -- to try to prove that Jeffrey was Risen's source. In the end, Jeffrey was severely punished for merely communicating with a journalist, which caused a public outcry from press freedom organizations like Reporters Without Borders.
How did the government justify that Jeffrey was their only suspect when over 90 additional individuals had access to the same classified information and could have easily leaked it to James Risen?
As Jeffrey repeatedly made clear throughout his trial, his relationship with Risen was related to his interest in Jeffrey's discrimination lawsuit against the CIA.
When Jeffrey was preparing for his first overseas post for the agency in Germany, his supervisor told him "we are concerned you would stick out as a big black guy speaking Farsi" and informed him that another person would be taking the assignment. When he filed an Equal Opportunity Employment complaint, the CIA fired him. Shortly afterward, he became the first African American to file a racial discrimination lawsuit against the CIA. Still, his suit was never allowed to go forward because the government claimed it would reveal "state secrets."
According to the United States government, Jeffrey then "retaliated" against the CIA by leaking classified information to James Risen. The moment that the administration felt there was an opportunity to incriminate him for fighting for his civil rights, every finger pointed to Jeffrey, and no amount of evidence or lack thereof could defy the verdict that followed.
Jeffrey's case drastically differs from that of former CIA Director General David Petraeus, who pleaded guilty to divulging huge amounts of classified information to his biographer and lying to an FBI agent, far more egregious acts than Jeffrey was accused of. Yet Petraeus was able to walk away with two years probation and a fine. Suppose one strips away the race, financial status, and political clout of each of these men and solely compares their alleged crimes. In that case, it is glaringly obvious that this was selective prosecution and sentencing.
Petraeus' treatment solidified the belief in this country that the white man is presumed to be innocent and can do no wrong, and at worst, receives a slap on the wrist, while the black man is guilty until proven innocent and belongs behind bars. Never in the history of this nation has there been a black person who had the courage to fight racial discrimination in the CIA, and a black man in the White House that would allow him to go to jail unjustly.
Justice must be served for this mockery of the truth. Jeffrey is innocent and always has been. Our appeal to the President to pardon Jeffrey is a request for the acknowledgment of this undeniable injustice done to Jeffrey and amends to the wrongful conviction that changed our lives forever. Please don't forget him; he serves time for a crime he didn't commit.
To learn more about Jeffrey's case, click here. To sign the petition asking President Obama to pardon him, click here.
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