It is time for unauthorized truth-telling.
Citizens cannot make informed choices if they do not have the facts--for example, the facts that have been wrongly concealed about the ongoing war in Iraq: the real reasons behind it, the prospective costs in blood and treasure, and the setback it has dealt to efforts to stem terrorism. Administration deception and cover-up on these vital matters has so far been all too successful in misleading the public. Also See:
TruthTellingProject.org Many Americans are too young to remember Vietnam. Then, as now, senior government officials did not tell the American people the truth. Now, as then, insiders who know better have kept their silence, as the country was misled into the most serious foreign policy disaster since Vietnam.
Some of you have documentation of wrongly concealed facts and analyses that--if brought to light--would impact heavily on public debate regarding crucial matters of national security, both foreign and domestic. We urge you to provide that information now, both to Congress and, through the media, to the public.
Thanks to our First Amendment, there is in America no broad Officials Secrets Act, nor even a statutory basis for the classification system. Only very rarely would it be appropriate to reveal information of the three types whose disclosure has been expressly criminalized by Congress: communications intelligence, nuclear data, and the identity of US intelligence operatives. However, this administration has stretched existing criminal laws to cover other disclosures in ways never contemplated by Congress.
There is a growing network of support for whistleblowers. In particular, for anyone who wishes to know the legal implications of disclosures they may be contemplating, the ACLU stands ready to provide pro bono legal counsel, with lawyer-client privilege. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) will offer advice on whistleblowing, dissemination and relations with the media.
Needless to say, any unauthorized disclosure that exposes your superiors to embarrassment entails personal risk. Should you be identified as the source, the price could be considerable, including loss of career and possibly even prosecution. Some of us know from experience how difficult it is to countenance such costs. But continued silence brings an even more terrible cost, as our leaders persist in a disastrous course and young Americans come home in coffins or with missing limbs.
This is precisely what happened at this comparable stage in the Vietnam War. Some of us live with profound regret that we did not at that point expose the administration's dishonesty and perhaps prevent the needless slaughter of 50,000 more American troops and some 2 to 3 million Vietnamese over the next ten years. We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm's way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties.
A hundred forty thousand young Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq for dubious purpose. Our country has urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials. Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.
SIGNATORIES
Edward Costello, Former Special Agent (Counterintelligence), Federal Bureau of Investigation
Sibel Edmonds, Former Language Specialist, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Daniel Ellsberg, Former official, U.S. Departments of Defense and State
John D. Heinberg, Former Economist, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor
Larry C. Johnson, Former Deputy Director for Anti-Terrorism Assistance, Transportation Security, and Special Operations, Department of
State, Office of the Coordinator for Counter Terrorism
John Brady Kiesling, Former Political Counselor, U.S. Embassy, Athens, Department of State
David MacMichael, Former Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council, Central Intelligence Agency
Ray McGovern, Former Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency
Philip G. Vargas, Ph.D., J.D., Dir. Privacy & Confidentiality Study, Commission on Federal Paperwork (Author/Director: "The Vargas
Report on Government Secrecy"--CENSORED)
Ann Wright, Retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel and U.S. Foreign Service Officer
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatowski, recently retired from service in the Pentagon's Office of Near East planning
(snip)
John D. Heinberg, Former Economist, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor
Anti-Lame-Signature Sarcasm Torpedo ARMED. FIRE!!
Pardon my French, but WTF is an economist from the US Department of Labor doing here? Is he some left-over Marxist plant or a Union thug?
Cheers!
Larry C. Johnson says:
"Thanks to our First Amendment, there is in America no broad Officials Secrets Act, nor even a statutory basis for the classification system."
So if nothing is classified how the hell do you have a leak, Larry?
So glad the DNC has annointed this traitor and pathological liar as their spokesman. So perfect.
Larry C. Johnson says:
"There is a growing network of support for whistleblowers. In particular, for anyone who wishes to know the legal implications of disclosures they may be contemplating, the ACLU stands ready to provide pro bono legal counsel, with lawyer-client privilege."
Thank God for the ACLU. Always ready to pitch in and help traitors, no matter the cost.
Say, did they offer to help Rove or Libby--even though we know now they leaked nothing. But does the ACLU know that?
Larry C. Johnson says:
"Some of you have documentation of wrongly concealed facts and analyses that--if brought to light--would impact heavily on public debate regarding crucial matters of national security, both foreign and domestic. We urge you to provide that information now, both to Congress and, through the media, to the public."
But not if this means correcting a lie, such as "Dick Cheney sent me to Niger."
** Where were they when Clinton's Senior Military Aide, Col. Buzz Patterson, was rightfully trying to interrupt Clinton's golf game per Berger's insistence on the phone that a critical target was in sight and they needed his ok ... only to be rebuked with impatience .. with the optimum strike time lost, and with lives and this country's security on the line?
** Where were they when Clinton ignored his presidential obligations to the troops fighting in Kosovo, so he could indulge himself in pathetic sexual romps on the job?
** Where were they when he sold the White House and our security to the foreign agents?
** Where were they when Bernard Schwartz (Loral) gave millions to Clinton for the green light to transfer our priceless technology to the Chinese?
** Where were they when Clinton disemboweled our military force strength and integrity and hamstrung our intelligence agencies?
** Where were they when the 900 FBI files went "missing?"
** Where were they when utter and abject presidential incompetence occurred in the handling of the mission in Somalia, with disasterous results, and giving OBL the perception that we could be rolled .. we were cowards??
How do I define the revulsion their hypercritical, meglomaniacal and dangerous self-serving actions provoke? Let me count the ways.....
So the left likes whistleblowing, and they want those who blow the whistles put in jail. Oh, wait, they don't, they want all whistleblowers praised except Karl Rove, just because.
These yahoos like Ellsberg really long for the good old days of the 60's, don't they? They should be happy for the Iraq war, they get to act like kids again.
Posted on 03/19/2004 4:11:22 PM EST by gcruse
snips:
There hasn't been much in the mainstream press about a Democrat-written document, "The Treason Memo," aptly named because it appears that Democrats seem willing to sacrifice both bipartisanship and national security in their attempt to use the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) as a political weapon.
This memo is one of the unsolved political mysteries of 2003. Who drew up the plan for Democrats to abuse SSCI as a stealth weapon to undermine and discredit President George W. Bush and the U.S. war effort in Iraq hasn't been released, other than Vice Chairman of the committee, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), defending his staff and the outrageous document itself, calling it a "private memo that nobody saw expect me and the staff people that wrote it for me."
Senator Rockefeller has rebuffed calls from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) who, after reading the memo, ordered an end to cooperation with Democrats on the Iraq investigation. He also wants the responsible staffers to be exposed.
It centered on duping the panel's Republican chairman, Pat Roberts, into approving probes that, in actuality, would just be fishing expeditions inside the State Department and Pentagon, and its authors hoped to dig up and hype "improper or questionable conduct by administration officials."
The committee would then release information during the course of the "investigation," with Democrats providing their "additional views" that would, among other things, castigate the Republicans for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry. They would "manufacture and denounce" a cover-up where none existed.
They intended to drag the issue through the 2004 presidential campaign by creating an independent commission to investigate, according to the memo.
Fox News made the plan public on Nov. 6, 2003 and said the Democratic Committee members would launch the plan "when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority." This plan wrecked more than two-and -one-half-decades of unique bi-partisanship on the SSCI, whose job is to oversee the CIA and the rest of the nation's intelligence services.
This all started when the Democrats demanded that the committee staff be split, instead of reporting directly to the chairman, it now is bifurcated, with Republicans reporting to the GOP chairman and Democrats working for the Democratic vice chairman.
Mellon has worked at the Department of Defense (DOD) and civilians there have complained about Mellon, as he tried to keep conservatives out of key Pentagon posts and to undermine (tough) anti-terrorism policies after 9/11. He has worked for the late liberal John Chafee (R-R.I.) and for George Tenet, a Democrat and CIA chief.
He was a former SSCI staffer under Clinton (you might know) when he went to work as a deputy to the assistant secretary of defense for C3I (Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence). There he held a civilian rank equivalent to a three-star general.
This gives a pretty good idea of the possible person behind this plan to highly abuse the SSCI committee.
Even revealing intelligence is part of their plan. No wonder those in the know feel this "dirty trick" is so close to treason