Obama's Crackdown on Whistleblowers

In December 1772, Benjamin Franklin was living in England. He was spending his time negotiating fragile compromises between the crown and the colonies. An anonymous source leaked to Franklin some letters that had been written by the governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson. Hutchinson had written of his concerns about the growing dissent in the colonies, and made a number of suggestions of how to quell it. He went so far as to suggest they begin taking away rights. Franklin felt that his friends in Boston should know about this, and so he passed them along, asking that they not be published. His friends published them anyway against his wishes.

The British government was outraged. Three people were soon accused of leaking the letters, but Franklin came forward to protect them. He was called before the Privy Council in January of 1774, accused of attempting to incite riots and unrest. This was treason, and punishable by death. For the whole hour-long spectacle, Franklin stood there and watched the council berate and slander him, refusing to utter a single word in response.

"[Franklin] stood conpicuously erect, without the smallest movement of any part of his body. The muscles of his face had been previously composed as to afford a placid tranquil expression of countenance, and he did not suffer the slightest alteration of it to appear."

Edward Bancroft, observing the hearings

Had he not fled England for America immediately afterwards, he likely would've been arrested and hanged. Franklin and the colonists couldn't comprehend why the British government was focusing on the whistleblowing, while completely ignoring the content of the letters. The suggestions in it were clearly illegal, and yet there wasn't any amount of outrage over them. Franklin felt betrayed. It's when he chose his side.

238 years later, the corporate police state that the American colonies became have just charged ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou with revealing confidential information to a journalist. He revealed that the CIA tortured Abu Zabaydah.



Torture is illegal. But that's not what this government is focusing on. This government, Barack Obama, granted full immunity to the war criminals who conducted this torture. They're going after the guy who was courageous enough to tell the rest of us about it. Kiriakou faces up to 20 years in prison. He threw away his life for us.

Kiriakou is the sixth person the Obama administration has charged with the Espionage Act. This traitorous act has a long and distinguished history. In its heyday in World War I, it was used to suspend the first amendment, and lock up anyone who spoke out against the war, including socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs (he ran his 1920 campaign from prison and still managed to get nearly a million votes).



The act is now being used to go after whistleblowers. In 2010, Bradley Manning leaked the infamous "Collateral Murder" video, which showed U.S. troops murdering innocent people. They looked for any excuse to open fire, claiming that a small camera was in fact an RPG launcher. Once they were given the 'okay' to shoot, they uttered disgusting comments such as "Nice" and, upon seeing that they had just shot children, "Well it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle." It actually wasn't a "battle" because they were killing civilians. Bradley Manning's reward for revealing a war crime is a psychological torture, a show trial, and calls for his death.

Manning could possibly face a life sentence. Meanwhile, a marine who led the massacre of two dozen civilians, including five children, gets 90 days. 90. Days. Needless to say, the Iraqi people are pissed.



This is what tyrannical governments do. They punish the heroes, and give the war criminals medals. Business as usual under Obama, just as it was under Bush.