Obama's war on whistleblowers leaves administration insiders unscathed

[jakeXT]

Since Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, his government has waged a war against whistleblowers and official leakers. On his watch, there have been eight prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act – more than double those under all previous presidents combined.

And yet other apparent leaks have gone entirely unpunished or have been treated, as in the case of General David Petraeus, as misdemeanors. As Abbe Lowell, lawyer for one of the Espionage Act eight, Stephen Kim, has argued in a letter to the Department of Justice, low-level officials who lack the political connections to fight back have had the book thrown at them, while high-level figures have been allowed to leak with “virtual impunity”.

Panetta, the former CIA director and defense secretary who has been a fixture in the Democratic firmament for decades, today spends his retirement on his walnut farm on California’s Monterey peninsula. Had his name been more obscure, or his position lower, he might have found himself in a less hospitable locale after permitting the makers of the film Zero Dark Thirty access to details about the secret raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Film-maker Mark Boal was permitted to attend a secret speech Panetta gave at CIA headquarters on 24 June 2011, less than two months after the raid. Military special operators were “all in uniform with name tapes” and seated at the front, according to a 2013 draft Pentagon inspector general report. Panetta’s speech – the text of which read “SECRET//NO FORN” – ie, not for release to foreigners – revealed “the unit that conducted the operation and identified the ground commander by name”.


http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/16/whistleblowers-double-standard-obama-david-petraeus-chelsea-manning