{"id":162008,"date":"2015-06-25T19:32:10","date_gmt":"2015-06-25T19:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/war-on-whistleblowers-after-obama\/"},"modified":"2015-06-25T19:32:10","modified_gmt":"2015-06-25T19:32:10","slug":"war-on-whistleblowers-after-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/war-on-whistleblowers-after-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"War on Whistleblowers, After Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"485.48602287166\">\n<p>The war on whistleblowers has injected fear of prosecution into all honest communications between national security officials and reporters, meaning that the public instead gets a steady diet of U.S. government lies, propaganda and self-serving rhetoric, a problem addressed by John Hanrahan.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-15315\"\/>By John Hanrahan<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the thing about President Barack Obama\u2019s war on whistleblowers: In bringing espionage charges in nine cases involving disclosures or alleged misuse of classified information, the current administration has set a floor, rather than a ceiling, on the number and types of whistleblower espionage cases a future president can bring.<\/p>\n<p>And here\u2019s another thing: With leaders of both political parties having either kept silent or cheered on the Obama administration\u2019s unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers, who in high position in Congress would have one shred of moral authority or credibility to challenge a future president\u2019s excesses under the Espionage Act? On the question of keeping American citizens in the dark and of punishing whistleblowers who dare to enlighten them, we truly have bipartisan authoritarianism.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_10375\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" readability=\"34\"><a href=\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/edward-snowden-10-9-13-wikileaks.jpg?55ac53\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10375\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif?55ac53\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/edward-snowden-10-9-13-wikileaks-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden speaking in Moscow on Oct. 9, 2013. (From a video posted by WikiLeaks)\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10375\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/edward-snowden-10-9-13-wikileaks-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden speaking in Moscow on Oct. 9, 2013. (From a video posted by WikiLeaks)\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden speaking in Moscow on Oct. 9, 2013. (From a video posted by WikiLeaks)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>And then a third thing: Don\u2019t count much on major U.S. news media for any meaningful oversight of, and opposition to, the treatment of whistleblowers under future presidents. The mainstream press and big-name journalists \u2013 with some intermittent, notable exceptions such as\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/05\/13\/opinion\/overkill-on-a-cia-leak-case.html?_r=0\"><u>these<\/u><\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/01\/02\/opinion\/edward-snowden-whistle-blower.html\"><u>two<\/u><\/a>\u00a0<em>New York Times\u00a0<\/em>editorials\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nj.com\/opinion\/index.ssf\/2015\/04\/prosecutorial_bias_whistleblowers_whacked_but_all-.html\"><u>this<\/u><\/a>\u00a0<em>Newark Star-Ledger<\/em>\u00a0editorial \u2013 have largely ignored the jail-the-whistleblowers policies of the Obama administration.<\/p>\n<p>Or, worse, as we\u2019ve\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/exposefacts.org\/whistleblowers-and-the-press-heavyweights\/\"><u>reported<\/u><\/a>\u00a0before, some of the most prominent names in the media joined elected and appointed government officials in calling for harsh penalties for Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Wikileaks, and others whom they claim (without proof) to have endangered U.S. national security by providing classified information to the news media.<\/p>\n<p>With his Justice Department having produced three times as many Espionage Act indictments for classified document disclosure&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2015\/06\/25\/war-on-whistleblowers-after-obama\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The war on whistleblowers has injected fear of prosecution into all honest communications between national security officials and reporters, meaning that the public instead gets a steady diet of U.S. government lies, propaganda and self-serving rhetoric, a problem addressed by John Hanrahan. By John Hanrahan Here\u2019s the thing about President Barack Obama\u2019s war on whistleblowers: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-162008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}