Snowden And Manning: A Tale Of Accused Leakers

Washington Declares War Against Whistleblowers

Washington Keeps Getting Worse For Whistleblowers -- David Freddodo, Washington Examiner

With espionage charges now laid against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed government collection of data on all Americans' phone calls, the Obama administration has initiated prosecutions of more than twice as many leakers as all previous presidential administrations combined.

Snowden has certainly broken the law, and with his subsequent revelations about U.S. spying on foreign officials, he has arguably ceded the moral high ground as well. But what about whistleblowers who have merely violated the unwritten bureaucratic code of silence? By prosecuting so many leaks, and by creating its so-called "Insider Threat Program" to combat even less serious leaks, is the Obama administration creating an especially hostile environment for innocent officials who step forward to point out wrongdoing and incompetence?

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My Comment: When President Obama himself comments that those who leak are enemies of The United States .... the message is out .... people who leak are to be targeted and punished .... and targeted and punished they are as a deterrent to those who may want to leak critical information in the future.

Will High-Level Obama Officials Who Leak For Political Gain Be Punished?

President Barack Obama is briefed on his upcoming trip to the Republic of Korea during a meeting in the Situation Room of the White House, March 23, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Probing Obama’s Secrecy Games -- Glenn Greenwald, Slate

Will high-level Obama officials who leak for political gain be punished on equal terms with actual whistleblowers?

Over the past several months, including just last week, I’ve written numerous times about the two glaring contradictions that drive the Obama administration’s manipulative game-playing with its secrecy powers: (1) at the very same time that they wage an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, they themselves continuously leak national security secrets exclusively designed to glorify Obama purely for political gain; and (2) at the very same time they insist to federal courts that these programs are too secret even to confirm or deny their existence (thereby shielding them from judicial review or basic disclosure), they run around publicly boasting about their actions. Just over the past month alone, they have done precisely this by leaking key details about Obama’s commanding role in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, drone attacks that have killed allegedly key Al Qaeda figures, sophisticated cyber-attacks on Iran’s nuclear program, and the selection of targets for Obama “kill list”: all programs that are classified and which the White House has insisted cannot be subjected to judicial review or any form of public scrutiny.

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My Comment: When even your allies in the 'left' know that you are playing games with national security and intelligence leaks .... that is when you will have to stop. Or .... to quote former US Sec. of Defense Gates .... 'Shut the F--- Up'