Louis Clark, president and financial accountability director of the Government Accountability Project, speaking at the FIU School of Business earlier this year. Photo courtesy of FIU Business via Creative Commons’ flickr.
Jessica Meszaros/Staff Writer
The American Whistleblower Tour is returning to the University this week for the third consecutive year.
With a focus on National Security leaks, this year’s event will be the first to discuss blowing the whistle on government activity.
It is extremely timely due to former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden’s leaks of United States surveillance programs this past June. He is the seventh person charged under the Espionage Act by the Obama administration.
In July, Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army soldier, was convicted for espionage after releasing classified documents to WikiLeaks. He was sentenced to 35 years in confinement and was dishonorably discharged from the Army.
“What this does is turn the focus to government and government accountability and what transparency and government means to democracy,” said Frederick Blevens, professor of journalism and mass communications. “So there’s a pretty big difference in this year’s as opposed to last year and the year before.”
Speaking at the University will be Thomas Drake, a former NSA senior official who was prosecuted under the Espionage Act for retaining documents about a data collection program that threatened Americans’ privacy rights.
Drake was charged with 10 felony counts, including five counts of espionage.
He was the first to be charged with espionage under the Obama administration. All charges were dropped after he agreed to a plea bargain arrangement in June of 2011. He also was one of four whistleblowers to present Edward Snowden with the Sam Adams Award in Russia two weeks ago.
“I’ve relived the last 12 years,” said Drake about the Snowden case. “I was reliving all that I had been through, reflecting on what had happened to me in terms of my own whistle blowing and clearly recognizing that he was standing on my shoulders.”
Drake said he had been hoping over the years for more people to come out with further documentation about government surveillance programs. Although, he did not wish for anyone to go through the surveillance state he went through.
“It’s not pleasant at all, When you’ve got two cars sitting at the end of the road watching your every move, and they told me later ‘Yeah we knew everywhere you went Mr. Drake- when you left home, what vehicle you drove out in, where you stopped, where you shopped, when you left work, when you arrived at work- we knew,’ like they were proud of the fact that they were tracking me,” said Drake “I don’t want to live in that kind of world.”
According to Drake, Snowden saw what happened to him and others, which is why he escaped the United States- “to have any hope of keeping his freedom.”
“You’d have to actually go to another country outside the U.S. and live there for political asylum because you’re wanted as a criminal in your own country for having exposed government wrongdoing and criminality,” said Drake.
Sheldon Aristibe, a freshman in computer engineering, believes that the international diversity of the University’s students will play a vital role in the audience for the whistleblower talks.
“It’s going to give us varying opinions on it when they come here. So I’m very interested in seeing how that plays out,” said Aristibe.
Jesselyn Radack is the second panelist for this week’s discussion. She served as an ethics advisor to the Department of Justice when she learned that FBI agents unlawfully interrogated “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh. Radack is now Government Accountability Project’s National Security and Human Rights Director. GAP is a non-profit organization designed for U.S. whistleblower protection. Radack has worked with Thomas Drake on his own case.
“She came out of her whistleblowing experience with a devotion to helping others who were going through the same thing,” said Blevens.
Blevens has been putting the event together since the summer. He said he enjoys this work because “the payoff is huge.”
Barbie Guebara, a sophomore theater major, has never attended one of the University’s whistleblower events. She said: “Them coming would bring awareness to students about the issues that have been exposed by what they’ve done, which is very important because it’s people and their privacy”
The American Whistleblower Tour will take place Thursday, Oct. 24 from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. in CBC 155 at the Modesto Maidique Campus.
Louis Clark, Government Accountability Project’s president and director of its corporate accountability program, will be moderating the panel discussion.
“Every time we go on campus we have these similar conversations and discussions,” said Drake. “And they are deeply resonating without fail because this stuff matters. It matters because it’s who we are as human beings. It affects our each and every day, and having lived that surveillance state, I don’t want anyone else to live what I’ve lived.”
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